Ichikawa’s class is told to form groups of six “with similar interests” for upcoming workplace visits. (An aside: our class once went to the local sewage treatment plant, where I experienced smells I will never forget.) Ichikawa, who isn’t great with groups, is content to join a group of boys. When Kanzaki has an opportunity to join Hara’s group and Adachi to join Yamada’s, the boy’s group decides to split up.
But when they approach Yamada’s group, Sekine proposes a “boy draft.” After some deliberations, Adachi and Ichikawa end up joining them. In trying to help Kanzaki join Hara’s group, he inadvertently calls Yamada’s group dumb, and tries to save face by saying he scored a 40 on a science test. Yamada later calls him out on his lie, but is clearly glad he’s in her group.
Back in the library, Yamada hangs out with Hara and talks about her progress with Kanzaki (they’ve gone shopping together) and “how far they’ve gone” (Just Koyama, not Shibuya). Hara was hoping to chat with Yamada about her romantic pursuits, only for her (and an eavesdropping Ichikawa) to learn Yamada has no BF and has never had one.
When the girls take a selfie and Ichikawa is in it, Yamada and Hara agree it’s okay if he heard them, since he’s unlikely to tell anyone. He wonders if they’re taking a dig at him, but I choose to think Yamada trusts him, since he’s only ever helped him out since her library visits began.
It’s a rainy afternoon, which means the time is ripe for umbrella sharing. When Yamada spots Ichikawa with his oversized raincoat, she asks to borrow it so she can buy an umbrella. The coat fits her perfectly, and you have to think Ichikawa is feeling some kind of feelings about a girl wearing an article of his clothing.
Alas, she forgets her bookbag and wallet, so he chases after her to give it to her. As she has at least a foot on him, she holds her long, elegant arms over his head to shield him from the rain, and asks him to get her wallet out and put it in her jacket pocket. In the process, Ichikawa finds an umbrella, but she blushes and insists it’s broken.
It isn’t broken, but when she returns with a huge bag of snacks, Ichikawa understands why she lied. To his surprise, Yamada is in a giving mood, offering him a mint chocolate chip ice cream just like hers, prefacing the gift by asking if he loves or hates the flavor. She ends up loudly proclaiming she loves the flavor, but it sounds a lot like she’s saying she loves him.
The day of the workplace visit arrives, and Ichikawa finds it awkward. He’s at a manga publisher that makes a lot of manga he likes, but he doesn’t want to reveal how much he knows, especially to girls. The only one he can talk to easily is Adachi, who is an idiot who goes on about the boobs of Yamada’s modeling colleague and gets the appropriate response: a look of disdain bordering on pity.
While Sekine claims to know about manga, she really only knows the big ones like One Piece and Attack on [Titan]. When an employee offers to show them some drafts of a specific mangaka, it’s actually Serina who reveals she knows a little more.
Yamada can tell Ichikawa wants to go see the draft too, so she takes him by the wrist and asks the others to make way so he can get a good look at it. He’s so impressed by the detail that his face lights up and he loudly declares it amazing. Yamada is shocked by his show of enthusiasm—but not in a bad way!
Then the group ends up on a packed elevator and another person gets on, resulting in Yamada giving Ichikawa the always welcome Gender-Swapped Wall Slam. Unable to look up at her face, ahead at her chest, or down at her legs, Ichikawa simply closes his eyes, and ends up able to smell her scent and hear her breathing better as a result.
When he opens his eyes, not only is Yamada still there, but she’s even closer to him, with her hand on his chest. They stay that way for just a moment until they exit the elevator, but it’s definitely the most intimate and romantically charged moment they’ve had so far.
The lasting effect of that is undercut a bit when Yamada asks Ichikawa about manga he likes, and he ends up listing off a whole bunch and worries he’s geeking out too much (even though he isn’t). Then Yamada asks if he wants to borrow a shoujo manga she owns. Chihiro expresses doubt he’d be interested in such a sweet, lovey-dovey, girly manga, which leads to her and Yamada laughing.
Ichikawa takes this to mean the girls are making fun of him, and that while he likes Yamada, there’s no way she likes him back. This is nonsense, but he is a dumb teenager, and thus nonsense is his stock and trade. He returns from the restroom to find Yamada waiting up for him, but they end up separated from everyone else, and miss the train home. It’s the ideal kind of scenario to hopefully disabuse Ichikawa of the inaccurate notion Yamada has no interest in him.
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