Whisper Me a Love Song – 02 – Russian Blue

Yori and Himari have made a habit of sharing their time on the rooftop, and Himari is not shy about telling Yori how she loves her singing. Yori finds her thoughts of late are dominated by the painfully adorable Himari. When she pats her head, Himari blushes, but when she takes off, Yori blushes even more. She’s not sure what she’s doing, but she knows she likes Himari.

She encounters Himari waiting outside her class at lunch, and on Aki’s urging they exchange contact info. This is how Aki learns that Himari is the girl Yori is into (and we later learn that Aki is still into Yori herself). Since it’s raining, Himari meets Yori in her classroom after school, and asks her if she wants to go on a date to a cat-themed merch pop-up at the station on Sunday. Yori enthusiastically accepts, and it’s First Date Time.

Yori shows up effortlessly mature and stylish, while Himari is a tiny goddess of cuteness in her maroon dress and white blouse. Yori compliments her and Himari is glad she dressed up for the occasion. At lunch Himari feeds Yori, and the two end up holding hands to not get lost at the packed pop-up. Himari picks out matching phone straps for them to share, and Yori buys them as a gift for her.

At a music store, Himari tells Yori she wants to see “both sides” of her: the gentle solo artist on the rooftop and the snazzy frontwoman in the band. Yori decides she’ll give the band thing a try after all. Throughout the date, she’s is on cloud nine. Just being beside Himari makes her happy, and all Himari has to do is smile or praise her for that happiness to soar even higher.

When she expresses as much to Himari before they part ways, Himari laughs it off, saying being her girlfriend would be great. But as she walks away, Yori takes hold of her arm and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that she wants to go out with her, for real for real, and asks if she’ll think about it.

When Himari does so in the bath that night, she worries that her love and Yori’s are different. But then again, she also asks herself what love even is. In any case, the cat’s out of the bag and there’s no putting it back: Himari knows that Yori-senpai has feelings for her. I wonder how she’ll choose to respond to them.

Whisper Me a Love Song – 01 (First Impressions) – A Happy Misreading

First-year high schooler Kino Himari joins her longtime friend and classmate Miki to watch her older sister play in a band composed of third-years to welcome the new students. The moment Himari sees the cool beauty of the band’s frontwoman was love at first sight. When Himari catches the older, taller girl by the shoe lockers, she uses those precise words: “I fell in love at first sight.”

Those words, combined with the enthusiasm and intensity with which Himari says them, make it possible to interpret it as a confession of love. The fact the singer, one Asanagi Yori, finds Himari incredibly cute and her smile surpassingly pretty, means the “love at first sight” was mutual.

Yori reports this enchanting encounter to her friends, who partly tease her for having finally found someone, and also encourage her to respond to the girl in however way she sees fit; the better to inspire her to write the love song they want her to compose. She doesn’t know Himari’s name, but thanks to Miki, Himari knows Yori’s, along with her birthday, blood type, and tendency to sing songs on the roof.

So when Himari appears on the roof, Yori works up the courage to tell her she fell in love at first sight too, and learns that Yori wasn’t talking about falling into romantic love with Yori personally. Instead, she used the words “love at first sight” to describe how she became a fan of Yori and her music on the spot.

At first, Yori is crestfallen, and embarrassed for misinterpreting Himari’s words so totally. But she wasn’t really that far off. Words are imprecise in these matters, but she cannot deny she likes Himari and wants to keep seeing her and especially her smile. So when Himari agrees to watch her perform on the roof every day, Yori takes that as an opportunity to her Himari to fall for her even harder.

Himari may not be aware of Yori’s feelings for her, but only because she’s in a different mindset. Perhaps in time, Yori’s feelings will come through loud and clear. In the meantime, the two have such good chemistry together that they spend their first rooftop session simply chatting, and Yori ain’t mad about that at all.

Misunderstanding or not, Yori’s feelings aren’t going away, so she might as well keep playing and singing for Himari in this effortlessly sweet, gentle, and charming story about different kinds of love coming together and resulting in a new, unique, and beautiful sound.