Tani’s birthday is coming up, so Suzuki’s fishing for ideas. She probably knows what she wants to do, but it never hurts to hear other people out. Yamada makes a pretty darn good suggestion: a photo album. It’s the sort of sentimental gift that rarely disappoints unless you’re with someone materialistic (in which case, you should probably dump them). But you need good photos for something like that, which Suzuki seems to realize. Taira, on the other hand, gives us the good ol’ “It’s the thought that counts!” Well, at least he isn’t being negative.

Don’t you hate it when someone randomly hits you up after ghosting you? All you can think is, Oh no, what the hell do they want now? Considering how it’s Azuma’s ex-boyfriend, dude’s probably just looking for a quick hook-up. He knows she won’t throw a fit, so he probably figures why not shoot his shot? The problem with Azuma is that she under-reacts, but this makes her the perfect polar opposite for Taira. Sure, he’s an overthinker, and there are lots of underthinkers among the cast. But his main problem is that he over-reacts to everything and everyone around him. Girls giggling off to the side? They gotta be making fun of him! And Azuma is the direct opposite of that. She refuses to take offense; she just goes with the flow. Sadly, that also makes her a doormat — the chill, easygoing girlfriend that usually just ends up being second, third, or fourth priority. And it’s infuriating because she knows she deserves an apology from her ex, but it doesn’t take her more than a couple seconds to get over it. Girl, c’mon. Where’s your self-respect?

We finally get to see what happened between Yamada and Nishi during the school festival. They even address less-than-fulfilling text conversations over the summer. It’s nice of Yamada to tell Nishi that she can make mistakes with him — that she can be stupid with him. Sure, that’s great. But if I recall correctly, his one-word replies to her long text messages were pretty much conversation killers. He kinda takes ownership of that? Some people are bad texters, and I know he wanted to have a phone call at one point. But it would been nice if he had been a little more explicit about what he could do to help her feel more comfortable.

It’s school festival time, which means people from outside the school will be paying a visit. If you want to be dramatic, you can say that Suzuki’s past has come to haunt her, ooooh~! But it’s anything but the case. I always found this portion of the story to be a little odd. More specifically, people keep trying to act as though Suzuki has a romantic history with a former friend, but she doesn’t. She and this Oka guy were and are still friends, people suggested that they should date, he jokingly went along with it while expecting Suzuki to shoot him down, but she didn’t. We know how she used to be. She would read the room and get swept up with the flow. As a result, they agreed to date… without actually dating. There were no feelings involved. They held hands maybe once? She even deliberately turned away from Oka when he tried to kiss her, but he wasn’t even doing it ’cause he liked her. He was just going through the motions. From my Western sensibilities, nothing happened. But back in the present, Yamada says, “Hey, don’t pretend like you and Ricchan were never a thing.” What thing?

We finally get a proper introduction to Nishi, and she’s personally pretty relatable. It’s not that you ever want to eavesdrop on the conversations around you, but we have ears. Even when you try to distract yourself, you can’t hear but hear things with those same ears. Luckily, her chatty classmates don’t seem to mind. They even try to loop her in, but she just can’t keep up with their tempo. In any other show, there would probably be a side plot where Nishi gets bullied by the popular kids, thereby forcing one of Suzuki’s friends to step in and save her, blah blah blah… then bam, romance. I’m just glad this isn’t that type of show. I’m not trying to deny that bullying exists, but from a storytelling perspective, I’m just so tired of it.