It's interesting, because yeah we do just still not really know who Sakuma, Ema, Naruse is underneath the pretense. And while Ema is definitely a public facing persona given she has a job at a bar before Houjou ever even ran into Sakuma to start with she's very much a work persona more than anything else.
Sakuma would also be a public facing persona because unless she was scheming right from the start it's unlikely for her to have already been dressing up to catch Houjou. Additionally Sakuma is likely the "realest" one at least in terms of looks, because that's the only persona who doesn't require a wig though of course, given the end of the chapter, Sakuma's looks can be natural but her personality can be faked.
To that extent. Naruse does stick out, not just because he's the only male persona out of the three, but because we haven't seen him outside of his ploy to appear in front of Houjou and ask her on a date. At this point he is arguably the fakest out of the three, built purely for the purpose of potentially satisfying Houjou's type. But who knows maybe he is just as real as the other two, or maybe the other two are in fact just as fake.
Maybe underneath it all, every part we've seen here is masks, maybe in the end when we get a true version, none of the three will (to say it dramatically) survive.
last edited at Apr 10, 2025 5:20PM
