After Rinko’s one-night stand with Key, she talks to the girls about what she should do next. They are unable to offer any advice because they also don’t have experience like that. Kaori doesn’t mention that she slept with Ryo.
On their way back to Nonbe, the girls meet Marui, a salary man who helps pick up the groceries that fell out of Koyuki’s bag. Back at the restaurant, she cleans his coat, while Rinko and Kaori chat him up. Koyuki messages the girls that he’s her type and they help her hit it off with him.
Later, Rinko imagines Key waiting for her outside her door when she comes home. In reality, Key passes by Nonbe but decides not to go in. Hayasaka-san helps Rinko get some work, and she runs into Key at the lobby who is there for a possible role in the TV drama. He apologizes about not locking after he left. She imagines that she asks him about what happened but she cannot bring herself to do it. Seeing that she’s found herself some work, he mentions that as he thought, she’s not yet done, referring to what she said back at her apartment. Their conversation is cut short as Key has to go in for the meeting.
Koyuki is at Kaori’s salon and they talk about her fateful encounter with Marui, and Kaori still doesn’t talk about what happened between her and Ryo. Rinko arrives and talks about running into Key and how they still weren’t able to talk properly. The girls try convince her there must be a reason it happened and ask her how she feels, but she herself doesn’t know. Later at Nonbe, Koyuki and Kaori speculate that Rinko actually does like Key but doesn’t know it yet. Key arrives with Ryo and they take the opportunity to confront him about what happened with Rinko. He doesn’t give them any answers and tells them to stay out of it.
They tell Rinko that he’s at Nonbe and will try to keep him there until she arrives, but she’s not ready to face him. Finally, she decides to go but he’s already gone when she arrives so she goes out to look for him. Ryo reveals to Koyuki and Kaori that Key used to be in a relationship with an older woman, but she died – they deduce that it’s her grave he’s been visiting.
Walking home with him, Kaori tells Ryo she doesn’t have feelings for him, but he still says he loves her. Marui arrives just as the restaurant closes and he invites Koyuki for a drink, which she accepts. They talk and he admits he already likes her although he’s married but currently separated from his wife. Koyuki accepts him anyway.
Rinko finds Key at the park with a view of Tokyo tower and finally gathers the courage to talk to Key and first asks for his name which is revealed to be Kagitani Haruki. The conversation going nowhere, Key gets up to leave, but Rinko stops him saying she wanted to talk to him properly about why he slept with her and what he feels about her.
Instead, he tells her about how the girls confronted him about that earlier. He is clearly annoyed, and says that’s why women like them are no good. He asks her why she couldn’t say it herself and even now she is silent because she’s thinking about what he says first. He says it’s impossible for him to be in a relationship with her. Rinko does not say anything and watches him walk away.
Thoughts:
Let me start with Koyuki, finally getting a storyline of her own. Although Marui being married means this is going to a complicated one. I appreciate that Koyuki is very straightforward with her feelings and acts on them with firmness/conviction.
Kaori hasn’t revealed yet that she’s sort of back together with Ryo even after knowing that he’s still with his girlfriend while pursuing a rekindled romance with her. However, she can’t push him away.
The main thing this episode does is to show the aftermath of the one-night stand with Key and Rinko. We don’t see a lot of Key’s thoughts although he avoided Nonbe most likely because he also didn’t know yet what to say.
I can understand Key’s reaction when Rinko finally asks him. To hear it from her friends first, instead of from her. Yes, Key is blunt/harsh, and that’s his personality. But she lets him walk away. Given their antagonistic dynamic, I expected Rinko to say something.
Rinko herself knows she wants to be happy, and she has considered that meeting him could be her chance to be happy. She is afraid to get her hopes up and even considers that she doesn’t know anymore how to handle a relationship anymore because she has spent these past several years just going out with the girls.
To be fair to Rinko, Key doesn’t answer her questions directly. He immediately concludes given how she’s handled it, that it’s impossible for him to be in a relationship with her. However, this does tell us that he has considered her and maybe there was a chance for them if they had talked properly. So, the one-night stand wasn’t for nothing. When he said, “why don’t you try it with me?”, I think he was also asking himself the same thing. Maybe he also wanted to try to see if he also liked her.
This episode is a good continuation. I appreciate Marui’s arrival, and Kaori’s more or less acceptance of Ryo. Both seem to be starting doomed relationships, but we’ll have to see how they play out. We learn more about Key, through Ryo, Sawada Yoko is a woman from his past but we don’t know why she died. Despite being very blunt, Key also doesn’t reveal much about himself. He doesn’t tell Rinko explicitly how he feels about her or why he slept with her. But he does show a softer side when he remarked that she’s not over since she was able to find work. It shows that the conversation they had at the apartment was honest and real and he was listening to her.
Rinko expresses herself more in the internal dialogues, but is unable to tell Key anything. Frustrating as she is, it is understandable she doesn’t know how to act in the situation. I am kind of annoyed at Koyuki and Kaori though for confronting Key, but I understand they wanted to protect her too. Rinko won’t admit it, but they realize earlier than Rinko that she already likes Key. It seems neither can be honest unless they’re arguing about something. What makes this whole thing work about neither being able to express their feelings is the fact that they haven’t even exchanged any phone numbers or email addresses. So, it was left to their running into one another at Nonbe or at work for any chance to talk. A solution would have been for Kaori and Koyuki to give Key Rinko’s number or email address so he can contact her. But then if that happened, we won’t have much of a plot.
Side notes:
The manga was ongoing when this drama was airing but finished soon after. It’s interesting to consider how the drama would have played out if instead they waited for the manga to finish. I hope to write a comparison when I finish all episodes; so far, I like the direction of the manga better than the drama.
inksmearedfingers 