Fruits Basket – 45 – It’s Fine to Be Buttoned Up Wrong

We return to Kaibara High as Yuki, Kakeru and the StuCo prepare for the Cultural Festival. Kakeru asks why Yuki has yet to acquire a cell phone, which requires a parent’s sign-off, and Yuki states it’s partly because his family is like shirt “buttoned up wrong”—an expression Kakeru loves.

As the they approach the office, a book flies through the window of the door, shattering the glass. Inside it looks like a tornado went off, and Machi stands alone in there, looking mortified. Kakeru asks the others to leave things to him, and Yuki notes that it’s not the first time.

What is Machi to Kakeru? Well, since he now trusts Yuki, Kakeru confides in him something the other StuCo members don’t know: he and Machi are stepsiblings, with the same father. He brings up a recent heated dispute over succession going on between their mothers, with Kakeru being the older male heir but whose mother was a mistress, and Machi being a younger female but her mother being her father’s wife.

Initially, Kakeru and Machi were caught in the middle at a time when Kakeru took everything his parents and other adults said as gospel. But eventually, he came to see how he was “mixed up in something dumb” and freed himself by acting out, which led his mom to withdraw him from consideration for succession. This means Machi stands alone as the potential successor—or would be, if her gender didn’t complicate matters.

As Kakeru puts it, he may be free, but Machi may not be. Trashing the StuCo office is akin to what he did one night during dinner, only in private; a dry run that lacks the stakes of the real thing. Yuki is able to put his own family troubles into perspective learning that plenty of other families have issues and are similarly “buttoned up wrong,” but also acknowledges that family can’t change, so you just have to live with it. Yuki ends up tossing up the pile of papers they had just reorganized.

It’s a gesture that says it’s okay to accept the things you cant control, and even laugh them off. Yuki then takes the application to his mom, who signs it without complaint. Before Yuki takes his leave, she says perhaps the most “parent-like” thing she’s ever said to him: “D-don’t spend too much time on the phone.” The surprise of hearing those words from her and the awkwardness with which she said them bring a smile and chuckle to Yuki’s face.

The next day, Machi returns to the office to apologize and promise not to trash it ever again (a promise she’s made before), and while Nao continues to fume and scold (he’s really annoying this week), Yuki follows Tooru’s example, asking Machi if instead of simply making such a promise not to do it, to help them understand why she did it.

The other members of StuCo (minus Nao) are impressed with his display of empathy and kindness, but Yuki realizes he’s late for his class meeting to announce the roles for Cinderella, which the class will be performing for the festival. Abstaining from the role of prince due to his workload, a reluctant Kyou is chosen as the prince and Saki(!) as (potentially “Wicked”) Cinderella.

As for Tooru? She’ll be an evil stepsister, and she assures Yuki she’ll work hard to be “more evil than the devil himself!” Uh…yeah. Uh-huh. Members of Prince Yuki hope her role as villainess will hurt her standing with Yuki, but they’re so clueless it’s almost sad. Arisa doesn’t see why they can’t do a more grown-up play, and she has a point: I just got done watching Sakura’s fifth-grade class perform it!

Shortly after returning to the StuCo office, Yuki accidentally ends up trapped in the storage room, the lock for which is broken. He knocks an open can of black paint(?) which splatters on the wall and his uniform, and suddenly memories of when Akito tried to ratttle him at the beach well up inside him, making him anxious.

Leaving aside whether Miki arranged for him to be locked in there (I’m not sure what her motive would be), it’s Machi who ends up busting through the door to rescue Yuki, stating that she didn’t want him to feel anxious, as if she could sense that indeed he was just that. He quietly thanks her and then goes off with Kakeru for some fresh air.

When he’s feeling better, he pays Kakeru back for his openness by bringing up something he hasn’t brought up to anyone yet, due to it seeming “pitiful and pathetic”: regarding what he “yearns for” in Tooru, which he only just learned was something he shared with Rin. While that thing is left unsaid, I’ll be using “familial love” as a placeholder until Yuki says otherwise, but it could just as easily be “the ability to take care of oneself and others, rather than just be cared for”.

While Yuki’s adventures in StuCo lag far behind Tooru’s new connection with Rin and their efforts to break the curse in importance, it was still rewarding to learn more about Machi and Kakeru’s ties, and see Machi and Yuki become a little closer since he gave her that leaf. I wonder if Yuki sees Machi as an opportunity to prove to himself that he can indeed care for and help others, thus paying forward all that Tooru has done for him. We shall see.

Read Crow’s review of the episode here!