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.

It’s almost time for the local summer festival, but that also means it’s almost time for term exams. Naturally, Yamada gets the bright idea to coordinate a study session. It’s just funny how Tani rejects him with nothing more than a simple “no.” He doesn’t elaborate further. People usually do, because they want to be liked; they don’t want their friends to misunderstand them. After all, Yamada assumes Tani isn’t worried about the upcoming exams. Meanwhile, Sato is a little more cynical: “More like Tani-kun doesn’t see any merit in studying with us.” Only Suzuki knows the real answer, because she understands him.

It has been pretty Suzuki/Tani-centric thus far, and for good reason: this is their love story, after all. But this week’s episode finally shares the spotlight with a couple of side characters, specifically the aptly named TairAzuma duo. Suzuki is the one who gives them this moniker, so perhaps this is a harbinger of things to come: a girl who keeps stumbling into bad relationship, and a guy who overthinks his relationships — what a pairing they would be.

Now that Tani is dating Suzuki, he’ll find himself gradually integrated into her loud and boisterous friend group. Yamada is only the first of many. But it is a little strange that he doesn’t have his own friends to introduce to her in return. Like who has he been hanging out with all these years? Nobody? Nobody at all? Has he been a loner this entire time? Sadly, this does seem to be the case.