Rent-a-Girlfriend – 30 – Pillar of Support

Kazuya is constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown thinking going off alone with Chizuru will be some kind of huge disaster, but Chizuru pushes past the awkwardness on the train and is legit pumped when they arrive at the picturesque off-season ski resort.

That said, she’s as shocked as he is to learn that Mini only booked one room for the two of them, but she accepts this and moves on, citing the need to save money. But also, if Mini is right about her (and I think she is) Chizuru doesn’t actually mind sharing a room with Kazuya.

After some location scouting and test shooting during the day, Kazuya pores over the footage and storyboards as Chizuru returns from her bath, resplendent in her yukata, which she insists she wears whenever she’s at an onsen.

She legit asks Kaz if it wouldn’t be best if he take a breather, but when he says he’ll rest after they film the post-midnight final scene, she’s again reminded of her stalwart late grandfather. It’s under the light of the starry sky that she finally gets around to saying what she struggled and failed to say before.

Kazuya is worried a confession is forthcoming, but I knew better. There was no way Chizuru was going to confess her love to him. That said, she tells him about how her dream of becoming an actor was originally tied to her gramps, and only after she died did she transfer that dream to her gran.

She doesn’t tell Kaz this, but as we know, her gramps was the one who told her to follow her dreams and one day she’d find her pillar of support. And Kaz seems to be that pillar. Before filming her scene, she makes sure he knows how happy it made her when he suggested they make a film, and how grateful she is for everything he’s done since.

They film the scene, and to Kazuya, after hearing those words, Chizuru has never shone brighter to him under those stars. Later in the men’s bath, he contemplates how this is all coming to an end soon, and how they’ll likely grow apart after the film is made.

But rather than stew in despair over that, he embraces how lucky he was to have been able to finish this project with her, even if he never puts as much of himself into anything else.

He returns to their room to find Chizuru already asleep, and unlike the first time they slept in the same room, he finds himself able to doze off almost immediately. Sure, they worked their butts off all day, but no doubt her words gave him comfort.

Ironically, this time it’s Chizuru who is having trouble sleeping, and wasn’t really asleep when Kaz came in. I always love it when we get her inner monologue, and I loved her characterizing this situation as “sucking”. Girl both wants and needs to sleep after such a full day. But something’s keeping her awake and that something is her steadily growing feelings for Kazuya, her pillar.

The next morning, they check out, and when the attendant refers to them as a couple, Chizuru doesn’t freak out or deny it; she’s simply silent. On the bus ride, Kaz tries some small talk about how great the resort was, and Chizuru comments that it would be a great place for him to take his “real” girlfriend.

Talk then turns to Ruka, and to his credit, Kaz actually puts it out there that Ruka isn’t someone he truly loves. Chizuru then asks about Mami, but Kaz assumes she’s already found someone else. We know better, but in any case who cares about Mami?

Through her pointed yet gentle questioning, it’s clear to Kaz that Chizuru actually cares and worries about him. The one thing that continues to hold Kazuya back is his insistence on losing his damn mind whenever Chizuru gets too close, either emotionally for physically. Case in point: when she nods off onto his shoulder while he’s expressing his gratitude to her.

She stays there asleep on his shoulder until they arrive at Iiyama…where to their horror, Ruka has come to put an end to what she deems to have been a night of carnality. Kazuya insists nothing happened, but when he asks Chizuru to back him up, she heads off to the bathroom, apparently disinterested. That said, it’s clear from her reaction upon remembering she woke up on Kazuya’s shoulder that she’s very much interested.

But Ruka remains Kazuya’s “trial” girlfriend until he dumps her, since she has no intention of leaving him. In perhaps one final attempt to maintain her grasp on him, she demands that he promise to do “whatever she desires” on her birthday. While I’m sure a virgin like Kazuya would like nothing more than to fulfill whatever that desire may be, I hope it never comes to that.

Kazuya needs to get real here: even if he still deems Chizru unobtainable and uninterested (and I fail to see how he can still feel that way), he needs to end things with Ruka, before he does something he can’t undo, for the simple reason that he knows full well that he prefers Chizuru.

Majimoji Rurumo – 02

The book of magic tickets are Kouta’s life (something only he and Chiro know) so even when he desperately wants more female members in the Occult Research Club, he daren’t make any more reckless wishes. But the club quickly learns that their witch-summoning was successful, putting Kouta in the unusual position of having to stop his clubmates from stalking and peeping on Rurumo as she camps in the woods.

So once again, Kouta uses the tickets to help Rurumo (to protect her honor, specifically). And by using her magic, he learned that that was what she and Chiro were doing camping in the first place: waiting for him to use it. She can’t go back to the Underworld until her training is complete, which I take to mean “until Kouta uses up all of his tickets.” In other words, she can return when he’s dead? Something to ponder going forward.

But first things first: Kouta doesn’t think it’s right for a delicate little witch like Rurumo to live like a dirty hobo, so he invites her into his home. His family consists of his mother, who knows what kind of horndog he is and is constantly staring at him, as well as his little brother and his dad (whom we don’t see). Worried by how bringing a girl home might look to his mom, he tries his best to keep it a secret. Between Rurumo’s loud slipper-shuffling and Chiro yelling in the bath, his clandestine guests don’t make it easy.

Indeed harboring a magical trainee is no cakewalk, physically or psychologically, as Kouta is so stress out about being discovered he neglects to realize that for three days he has, essentially, been “living with a girl not related to him in the same room before marriage”, which as it happens is the official SI definition of Living Together. In other words: he has arrived, at the “highest stage” of his life, almost by accident.

The bliss of sharing his room with Rurumo is all too fleeting, however, as his mom storms in the room, and…it looks bad. The situation looks like exactly what she suspects: that he’s abducted a girl and is keeping her captive in his room. Kouta only saves his mom from committing filicide by expending more tickets to magically create a cover story for Rurumo, which is that she’s his sister.

That means the whole family now accepts Rurumo’s existence in the house as perfectly normal, but it also means she gets a separate room, much to Kouta’s dismay. Still, he’s alive (and not in jail) and Rurumo is safe and secure, so he doesn’t have too much to complain about…though I wonder how many of those 666 tickets remain.