| Chapter 7. Clear and Present Danger | |
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| Titles | |
| Information | |
| Release Date | July 13, 2009 |
| Chapter | 7 |
| Volume | 2 |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-4-06-340762-4 |
| Previous ← Chapter 6. Take Me Out to the Aquarium |
Next Chapter 8. I Want to Be a Jellyfish → |
| Volumes and Chapters | |
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Kuranosuke is troubled by his reaction to Shuu and Tsukimi embracing. Recovering in the bathroom, Tsukimi becomes turned on by the memory but talks herself out of thinking it meant anything. An accidental encounter back at Amamizukan leaves Shuu feeling equally attracted.
Summary[]
Kuranosuke reflects on how his been good-looking his whole life. Agents try to scout him, and he's never had any lack of good-looking, popular girls willing to be his girlfriend. He was always so popular with them that he felt it was too much and became sick and tired of women.
So why is he so pissed off at the sight of his megane political nerd brother hugging an otaku?
Kuranosuke interrupts Tsukimi and Shuu's hug, resorting to physically shoving them apart when they don't respond to his words. After Tsukimi excuses herself to the restroom, Kuranosuke demands an explanation from Shuu. Kuranosuke taunts Shuu, "The son and secretary of a famous politician, clinging to a girl ten years his junior in a place like this?"[1]
Shuu tells his brother that Tsukimi started crying because the jellyfish reminded her of her dead mother, and he tried to comfort her by hugging her.
In the bathroom, Tsukimi soon gets embarrassed over the hug. She strongly remembers the warmth of Shuu's hand on her back, and then his arms and body when he held her close. She has a strong, hormonal reaction to the memory, causing her nose to bleed. She tries to figure out why a man like him would hug a girl like her and decides he was just trying to calm her down because she was making a scene, like an animal tamer on a nature show. How kind of him, all the same.
Kuranosuke arrives in the bathroom and sees that Tsukimi is reacting to the hug. He helps her freshen up and gives her glasses back. Once she has them on Kuranosuke stares at her for a moment, then raises his hands like a magician and cries "Seal and reset!"
Relieved to be able to see again, Tsukimi is still too nervous to talk to Shuu on the drive home. She blames the glasses being on. In the backseat with her this time, Kuranosuke offers Tsukimi condolences about her mom. He also tells her he understands how she feels, which makes Shuu glance back at them.
When she returns to Amamizukan, Tsukimi rushes out with a quick goodbye, not hearing Shuu call out to her. Inside she finds the resident manga author, Juon Mejiro, only has a week until her next deadline so the others have to rush to ink pages. Mayaya is panicking because her calligraphy pen is dried out and the store is sold out. Banba gets ink in her hair, and Jiji has drawn in the background a random older man—which is her obsession. Chieko urges Tsukimi to hurry and change out of the kimono as she's the only other person acting sensibly right then.
Tsukimi tries to get out of the kimono, but can't figure it out. Exasperated, she goes rushing out into the hall, half undone, caling out to Chieko for instruction. It's at that moment that Shuu enters, wanting to finish speaking with her. The two of them freeze in the hallway, feeling the awkward moment. Shuu finally plucks up the courage to apologize for today, meaning that he had been forward by hugging her in public. He bows quickly and leaves. He holds it together until he gets into the car, and then has his own hormonal attraction to Tsukimi fill his thoughts to the point his nose bleeds. "You, too?!" Kuranosuke shouts.
Kuranosuke wonders to himself why both of them would get nosebleeds over something as simple as a hug. he thinks it over and realizes that in the ten years he's lived at Koibuchi mansion he's never seen Shuu bring a girlfriend over. He decided to call Uncle Saburouta and ask if Shuu avoids bringing girls home because their father is too strict. Saburouta laughs and tells him that Shuu is a virgin.
Diligently working on inking pages, Tsukimi can't get what happened with Shuu in the hallway off her mind. She realizes that he saw her in nothing from the waist up but a threadbare tank—not even a bra—and her mortification causes her to knock the ink bottle over, damaging several pages. While Mayaya tries to clean it up with Banba's hair, Tsukimi trembles and goes pale. The pain of the memory makes her grab her hair with both hands.
Similarly, Kuranosuke his grabbing his own hair with both hands, disturbed at his jealousy over a love scene between two virgins.
Characters in Order of Appearance[]
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Quotes[]
- (Kuranosuke, trying to make Shuu and Tsukimi stop hugging) ❝Um... uh... right. Hey... you two. Listen... you're in public, you know! Enough, already! Seriously, knock it off!❞[2]
Trivia[]
- The chapter gets its title from the 1994 political thriller "Clear and Present Danger," which was based on the 1989 Tom Clancy novel of the same name. The novel's title is derived from a doctrine of the United States Supreme Court.