I echo Maomao’s thoughts. In fact, I would ascribe this feeling to the entire affair. This whole mess was a side story and nothing more. To set the stage, there’s this trope in media, especially Japanese media, where certain women are exceptionally good drinkers. I dunno why, but it’s a thing. I recently played a JRPG where a woman and her friend strike fear into people’s hearts simply by challenging them to a drinking game. Well, Maomao takes full advantage of this trope in order to gain a massive advantage over the landlord and his men. She simply drinks them all under the table. All these big, burly dudes who probably eat a ton of food in order to sustain themselves through hard labor every day somehow can’t compete against a girl who probably doesn’t weigh half as much as they do. Nevertheless, she beats them all combined. Her only weakness is her tiny bladder. Sure, she tests poisons every day. So what?

When the landlord tries to render the bet null and void, she threatens to report them to the authorities (even though Jinshi is already here) for tax evasion (they’ve been turning the surplus rice into alcohol). And just like that, they have to capitulate, and the matter is settled. Guen’s family won’t be thrown out, and Jinshi can continue championing the paper industry. There’s extra drama involving Guen’s nephew and the landlord’s daughter, but like Maomao said, who cares? In fact, who cares about any of this? I thought there’d be a juicy mystery, but all I got was petty family drama. We’ve been slow-building the mystery behind the silver-haired witch and the locust plague just to take this two-episode detour into nothing. I’m honestly kinda ticked off.

There wasn’t even, like, any development between Jinshi and Maomao to justify this excursion. In fact, I’m kinda baffled with a certain scene at the start of the episode. Jinshi asks Maomao to reapply his fake birthmark. This requires him to wash his face first, so he starts using the bucket of water sitting in Maomao’s room. She initially wants to replace the water, but he says it would be too much trouble. The girl doesn’t tell Jinshi that she had already used the bucket of water to wash her feet. Why? I would never let anyone use my dirty water, especially a friend. Is this a fetish thing? ‘Cause I know people can be weird about feet. I’m just grossed out, though. What kind of person does this to a friend?

Also, this apparently makes Jinshi bust a gut laughing. I don’t even know, man…