Recently, things keep falling down around Sanda. The kids speculate that this phenomenon occurs whenever a kid lies near him. Amaya further theorizes that this is how Santa can tell the difference between nice and naughty children. Essentially, whenever Santa nears a naughty child, things will magically fall to the ground or break. Um, sure, I guess that’s one way to avoid just giving Santa omnipotence about everyone’s behavior. Just earlier, Sanda had an incident with a fellow classmate. He plucked a stray strand of hair from her head, but a pencil case started jostling when she said thanks. It then completely fell to the ground when she called him sweet. I can only assume that she secretly despises him. To be fair, even if someone has something in their hair, I wouldn’t get into their personal space and pluck it myself. I dunno if I’d be grossed out if anyone does that to me, but I would definitely find it weird.

Realizing that he’s basically a walking, talking human lie detector, Sanda starts freaking out. Personally, this power sounds pretty fucking awesome to me. Can you imagine? No one can ever, ever pull a fast one on you. You’ll always know if someone’s being two-faced. You’ll always know if a salesman is trying to scam you. You’ll always know if your partner is cheating on you. Forget Santa’s six-pack or the sleigh runners on his. This is the best damn special ability yet. The only thing that would beat it is like… I dunno, just plain ol’ money. At the end of the day, in our capitalist society, I’d rather be rich than a lie detector. But the priority right now is solving the mystery surrounding Ono’s disappearance, and Sanda’s newfound ability is perfect for questioning others.

Sure enough, they bump into the creepy headmaster again by simply walking through the school hallways. This is exactly what I was wondering about last week. He’s seen Fuyumura and Amaya’s faces, so how can they ever hope to have a peaceful school life again? Well, Fuyumura creates a distraction in order to help them get away, and it’s kind of a cruel one: she lies by telling Sanda that she likes him. It must be a huge lie, because all of the lights around them begin to shatter. The bigger the lie, the bigger the consequences. Still, couldn’t she have come up with something else? Surely, there’s another huge lie she could’ve told. Nevertheless, she had to pick the one that might hurt Sanda’s feelings. He’s a bit of a sensitive boy. To be charitable, I suppose that they’re under pressure, and this is the best that Fuyumura could come up with. In any case, the kids simply run away, and the next time we see them, the trio is questioning their classmates about Ono. I guess the headmaster isn’t going to pursue them endlessly? This seems weird. Yeah, it’s his school, so he can try and apprehend them whenever he wants. But he has no sense of urgency? Shrug, oh well.

Like I said, we see the trio questioning their classmates for any information whatsoever about Ono. If someone is lying, they’d know immediately. Naturally, most of the kids have nothing useful to tell the trio. They might not think very fondly of Ono nor do they care about her disappearance, but they’re not exactly lying either. But a book falls to the ground when a girl’s voice pipes in and claims that Ono is dead. Again, it has to be a lie in order for something to fall, right? So she’s not just wrong. Assuming I understand the ability correctly, this girl — whoever she is — knows Ono isn’t dead, and she’s knowingly lying about it. But the meeting is cut short before Fuyumura can determine who had lied, because all of a sudden, Sanda collapses to the ground. Weird, isn’t it? They really don’t know who lied? They don’t even know what direction the voice had come from? Are their ears that bad?

When Sanda regains consciousness, we found out that he’s wracked with anxiety. He’s worried that everyone is being fake to him. Waiting for something to fall over and confirm his worst fears is making him paranoid. He would rather have stayed ignorant. Right now, if I had to pick between Sanda and Santa, I’d have to go with the jolly St. Nick. This probably sounds harsh, but I can’t stand how whiny Sanda has been since the start of this week’s episode. I know he’s just a 14-year-old kid. I know he’s kind of sensitive to begin with. But at the same time, we know that Ono is likely alive (because we know that girl lied), and his powers are the only way the kids will be able to find and save her. So, y’know, it’s hard to sympathize with Sanda right now. Sure, his self-esteem is in the gutters, but dude, we have bigger priorities. Get your shit together. Fuyumura rightfully calls him out. I don’t think she had to bloody herself in the process, but maybe this is the only way to get through to the kid.

But out of nowhere, Ono shows up when the kids return to the classroom to clean up Fuyumura’s mess. Mystery solved? Well, not really. because we still don’t understand anything about her circumstances or why she’s running away from them. She also immediately eludes Sanda when he transforms and tries to chase after her. What, does she have magical powers too? This plot is so bizarre. In the aftermath, Fuyumura is shocked into complete silence. Eventually, she does pipe up and laugh mirthfully at Sanda and Amaya goofing around. This is when Sanda tells us how a girl’s laughter puts him on edge, because it sometimes sounds like they’re crying. Uhhhh, I can’t say that this is a thought that has never crossed my mind. All of my friends’ laughter sounds pretty normal to me. Now, of course, Fuyumura’s laughter in this very instance is different for perfectly understandable reasons. She’s gotta be going through a mixture of turbulent emotions. Elation that her friend is alive, shocked that her friend would suddenly appear out of nowhere, confused at why her friend would run away without giving an explanation, scared about what all of this might portend, maybe unsure as to what she should do next, so on and so forth. So yes, if someone were in Fuyumura’s shoes, male or female, I’m sure their laughter would also half sound like crying.

Well, the weirdness don’t stop coming, because suddenly, we get a school funeral for Ono. What is the administration trying to pull? Well, we see a bunch of people wearing red. Apparently, this is how they mourn the dead. If everyone has to do the same, then it’s obvious that this is a ploy to flush Santa out of hiding. Sanda simply has to not attend the funeral, right? Problem solved! Unfortunately, Fuyumura wants to crash the funeral. We learn the reason that Fuyumura can make bombs is because it’s not a crime for children to do so, a fact that she happily embraces. So… the whole thing about how a kid can murder an adult is real, huh? I mean, look, I realize good guys shouldn’t be murdering the bad guys willy nilly, but does someone like Fuyumura seem like a hero to you? She’s an anti-hero at best. So yeah, I could see her killing the headmaster. I mean, why not? She was willing to blow up her entire class just to get Santa to act back in the first episode. And right now, she plans on crashing the funeral just because it’s completely bullshit. She wants to blow it up even if her fellow classmates might end up being collateral damage. If she’s willing to go this far, what’s stopping her from getting rid of the biggest roadblock in their plans to save Ono? Why are we willing to hurt innocent bystanders and not the creepy headmaster?

We are then formally introduced to Yagiuda, some old guy — not really, ’cause he’s only 51 — who then tells us how he hunted Santa down twenty long years ago. Well, his job isn’t very difficult, because all he has to do is walk around the school. It doesn’t take him long before he stumbles upon our trio. Sanda tells Fuyumura that he wants to hear her laughter again, so he’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. I thought breaking the curse meant he wouldn’t have a crush on her anymore. Well, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just genuinely cares about her as a friend. It’s almost a sweet scene. Unfortunately, these kids are having their discussion out in the open where anyone can listen in on them, i.e. the guy who desperately wants to kill jolly St. Nick. These kids aren’t very good at keeping secrets. So unsurprisingly, Yagiuda takes aim and… only hits Sanda in the arm. Bro, we saw you practice shooting at the very start of the episode, but this is the best you can do? Sanda wasn’t even a moving target! Nevertheless, Fuyumura was about to confess something to Sanda before he got shot — I doubt it’s love — and now we’ll have to wait at least a week to find out what she has been keeping from him.

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Stray thoughts & observations:

• They sure do hate Santa in this alternate universe. But the jolly fat man in red hasn’t show any sign of life in decades, right? It was only recently that Sanda awakened to his true identity, so I find it strange that we would even have a Santa-hunting task force. What have they been doing all this time? Just training for the eventual day that Santa returns?
• Again, will Santa take over and eventually erase Sanda?
• According to Furuyama, she’s only 182 cm tall. That’s nearly six feet? Huh, she seems taller than that, but maybe everyone else is just short.
• Fuyumura always has dark circles around her eyes, huh? I assume it’s not makeup. I assume she doesn’t get good sleep. Wonder why.
• I never get Fuyumura’s name correctly the first time around. I always think it’s Furuyama.
• Fuyumura claims that “humans tell 200 lies every day.” Girl, you think I interact with people even more than 20 times a day? What do you take me for?
• Cool “shot.”
• Yeah, I’ll bet.
• A smile from Fuyumura? Is this the first one we’ve ever seen?
• Speaking of society growing ultra old, I read recently that South Korea now has more old people than teenagers. I doubt the situation is very different in Japan. I don’t think you can just push a magical button that will convince people to start reproducing, but I don’t really have a clue on how to solve this problem either. I don’t think anyone does. Yeah, we could all use more money. People who were on the fence might be convinced to start a family if they know they can afford it. I’m not sure if that would be enough, though. It might only be a bandaid at best. People have the freedom to live however they want, and that might not involve having children. We kinda just have to accept that as a society. What else are we gonna do? Shame people for not making babies? That sounds ridiculous.
• You only now noticed?!
• Why would people hunting down Santa put dried holly leaves on their arms?