Hakari and Karane are introduced to Rentarou’s new girlfriend Shizuka and her unique mode of communication. Rentarou breaks the ice by noting one cute quirk that each of the girls have: Shizuka’s animated feet, Hakari’s finger nomming, and Karane’s hair twirling. Each comment turns each girl bright red, but are uniformly touched by how much he care for them.
There’s some friction when Shizuka learns that Rentarou has already kissed the other girls. When asked if she wants to, she states (though the app) that she’s not quite ready. Of course Rentarou is fine taking things slow while being upfront about only wanting to kiss her if and when she’s ready.
Lunch continues with Hakari and Karane competing to see who can stuff the most lunch into Rentarou’s maw, and they start bickering as usual. When Rentarou sees Shizuka being quiet in the corner, he devises a team-building plan: a game of Old Maid in which the winner of each round gets to tickle the loser.
As you’d expect, all three girls are on board with this plan. Rentarou tickles Karane first, resulting in a much steamier situation that he planned. When it’s the extremely ticklish Hakari’s turn, she has to cut the session short before she “ecsta-pees” (her term, not mine!).
Rentarou, looking forward to hearing Shizuka’s laugh, is instead surprised to find that she laughs silently, and has the app report her hearty laugher. And now that they’ve all been tickled, Hakari and Karane get real serious about beating Rentarou so they can tickle him.
But when Shizuka wins and merely gently pokes Rentarou with one finger, the exercise hits another bump. When Rentarou heads off to the bathroom, Karane calls Shizuka out for holding back on her tickling. Sensing she’s intimidated, Hakari has Shizuka’s back..
When Shizuka apologizes, then admits she was indeed holding back out of fear, Karane is upset…is she really that scary? But Shizuka isn’t scared of Karane, she’s scared of rocking the boat and causing Rentarou to compare them. In any such comparison, Shizuka wrongly believes she wouldn’t compare favorably, going on to descrube Hakari and Karane’s positive attributes.
In response to that, Hakari and Karane both make it clear that Shizuka is cute and has plenty of positive qualities herself. Hakari also makes clear that Rentarou loves them far more than they can imagine. Shizuka doens’t need to hold back, and she can call them by their first names, too.
It turns out Rentarou didn’t go to the bathroom. Instead, he saw the friction between the girls, knew that he shouldn’t be the referee, and stepped back, trusting his soulmates to work things out themselves. That’s precisely what happens, and Shizuka immediately takes her fellow girlfriends’ advise and expresses what she truly wants: to kiss Rentarou.
One he does, Shizuka ends up in a blissful daze, and then it’s Hakari’s turn to be upfront about what she wants, so she kisses Rentarou too. Karane is last as expected, but despite her tsundere-ness she doesn’t want a kiss any less than the other two. The buildup to each kiss is gorgeous in its execution, as Rentarou assures the other two that his love for them hasn’t paled in the slightest now that Shizuka is in the group.
Quite the contrary: Rentarou continues to consider all three to be the cutest girlfriends in the world. He also shows remarkable emotional intelligence for a horny high school kid, knowing that the girls would be better served sorting out their issues, as they did.
Karane was never mad at Shizuka for holding back, she was mad for her. No one should feel like they have to hold back what they truly want to say or do. I left this episode amazed by how well everything is going, how compelling this episode was despite never leaving the school rooftop, and super excited for the addition of yet another soulmate to the mix.
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