Kimizero – 06 – Shooting Her Shot

Well now, our boy Ryuuto ain’t as stupid as he looks. Maria’s ruse doesn’t last more than a minute from the moment he enters the gym storage room. When she hugs him, he knows immediately she’s not Runa. Thus caught, does Maria quit right then and there? Unfortunately not.

She insists on having sex with Ryuuto, telling him they can keep it a secret, and that unlike Runa he’ll be her first. Ryuuto quite sensibly separates himself from her and tells her no, he’s not going to do anything to hurt Runa. He could have said a lot more.

Frankly, Maria needs someone to tell her that it’s simply not all right to disguise yourself as your fraternal twin sister and try to trick her boyfriend into sleeping with you! But because Ryuuto is an uncommonly kind fella, and has also felt the sting of rejection (from Maria!) she’s feeling now, so she lets her cry on his shoulder.

Big mistake! The next day at school everyone is atwitter about Ryuuto cheating on Runa with Maria. A photo taken from the bushes shows the two on a park bench. He confronts Maria, who denies she had anything to do with it, and for once I actually believe her. She also agrees to deny the rumors. I hope she learned her lesson.

She also makes a remark about whether they’d still be together if only she’d said yes instead of turning him down, before saying there’s no point dwelling on the past. Unfortunately, Runa and Nicole hear this while they’re in the hall. Runa drops her phone, then runs away upset. Nicole slaps Ryuuto across the face for breaking his promise to her.

Unfortunately, that’s the last Ryuuto sees of Runa that day, and indeed for the first two weeks of summer break. She doesn’t respond to his messages telling her she’s sorry and asking for an opportunity to explain himself. He comes close to ringing her doorbell, but doesn’t have the guts. He’s disgusted in himself.

Fortunately, his nerd friends decided to go to the exact same beach in Chiba where Runa is (where all they do is watch game streams), and snap a photo of her with some hot tanned dude when they spot her. While I’m most certainly not a fan of them taking a photo of Runa without her permission, they save Ryuuto’s summer by doing so.

Ryuuto jumps on the next train to Chiba and finds the beach hut where Runa is there with Nicole and still clinging to the hot tanned guy, who is the first of them to notice Ryuuto is there, assuming he’s a customer. When he realizes he’s Runa’s BF, he introduces himself … as Runa’s hot tanned uncle, Mao.

That aside, Ryuuto is there to apologize to Runa for making her worry. When Nicole has to head off to work, Mao assures her he’ll be sure to kick Ryuuto’s ass if he makes his dear niece cry. Ryuuto proceeds to tell Runa everything: how Maria was the girl who turned him down in middle school, and how the night they came back from the beach, Maria confessed.

While he turned her down flat, he knows there’s no excuse for not telling Runa everything sooner. But to his surprise, Runa isn’t upset. She never responded to his texts because her phone broke when she dropped it, and she hasn’t had the opportunity to get it fixed.

But more than that, Runa gets why Maria fell for him, and also that whoever he turned down, he’d do it gently and be kind to them, just as he always is with her. Because it happens to be her little (presumably by a few minutes) sister, she’s grateful Ryuuto turned her down softly.

While Runa ran off upset, she soon calmed down, realizing she’d fled a situation without getting all the facts, and after some thought, decided that she not only still trusted Ryuuto, but wanted to stay his girlfriend no matter what. That he showed up to talk to her before her phone got fixed only reinforces her trust in him.

The question is, who took that photo in the bushes? Couldn’t have been Maria, and we don’t know of any friends she has who would do something like that on her behalf. I also doubt it was Nicole, as she doesn’t seem like the voyeuristic type. It will be interesting to see if we ever learn their identity, and if they cause any more problems for our lovebirds.

Until then, all’s well that ends well, as Runa invites Ryuuto to her granny’s house and asks him to spend the rest of summer break with her, working at the hut and having fun on the beach on their time off. Uncle Mao is cool with it, and Ryuuto can’t very well decline, especially after two weeks of wallowing in despair!