Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 10

When a sadist is flogging the crap out of his victim, he might, for a moment, put down his whip and treat them with something soft, but this isn't mercy, it's to make the contrast even harsher for what's to come next.  While Episode 8 was hard to watch, Episode 9 was the caress of some bunny fur before the savage beating that is Episode 10.  Like a slow wall of lava coming down the Volcano, threatening to push you into the shark-infested sea.  You see inevitable disaster coming, no matter which path you take.

And of course, Tsubaki being Tsubaki, every wrong decision he makes only pushes him deeper into the jaws of the trap.  The poor sot, being destined to make the wrong choices by narrative necessity.

This was very difficult to watch.  I found myself stopping the player a lot.  I didn't want things to go the way they did, but I guess that says something when you're involved enough you want to characters to be happy, and this episode set things up for them to be anything but.

To start with, Tsubaki is being an idiot again at a bookstore buying some magazine that is featuring Imai Momoka, but that isn't the source of his problem this time.  That's waiting for him outside.  The short-haired girl is Hayakawa.  The same one who used to have waist-length hair and was Tsubaki's crush throughout middle school.  The one whose picture he used to carry around in his wallet, and whose picture he destroyed in the first episode to prove his love for Urabe.  He blew her off once before, but she's back.

At first, Tsubaki didn't even recognize her with her hair cut short.  But she knew who he was, and wanted to talk to him.  Now, I can't write this from the point of view of not having watched the episode through, but I'll try to avoid jumping too far ahead.  She makes casual talk about their old friends, but she's actually pumping him for information.  Asking about Ueno and Nishida, for example, gets her to know about Ueno having a girlfriend, and allows her to go after her first real bit of intelligence, asking Tsubaki if he has a girlfriend too.  (Oddly, HS picks up on the name Nishida, while SD misses it, they also miss his use of the English "Nice body" to describe Oka).


Of course, he denies it.  She flatters him by saying she was positive he did.  Why?  Because she knew he was so totally into her in Jr. High, but now he acts like he barely cares, as proven by the fact he didn't recognize her with her hair cut short.  This is a bit shocking to him, because he didn't think she knew about his crush.  And as they discuss it, she apparently didn't mind his creepy staring, because she was checking him out with a mirror in the lid of her pencil box.  He admits he was staring at her beautiful hair.  She teases him a little bit about it, making him uncomfortable. ("Did you want to touch it?")


They adjourn from the playground to a bench nearby where she tells him that it makes her feel better to talk about the past, when she knew someone had a crush on her, because her boyfriend just dumped her (and there's only one reason why a woman will let a piece of information like that slip).  Tsubaki realizes that the breakup must be why she cut her hair - Okay, I don't get that, but it must be a Japanese thing.  Because talking about the past makes her feel better, Tsubaki says they can talk about it all she likes, and offers some rather creepy details about his obsession with her.  Upon telling her, he realizes what he did with a lost strand of hair sounds creepy, but she says it isn't, and confesses to a creepy bit of her own behavior - stealing a coffee mug that someone she liked used, and kissing the place where his lips drank from it.  (I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering if it was his in retrospect).  So she says she thinks this kind of behavior is normal, while Tsubaki thinks to himself that it definitely is not.


But instead of finding an excuse to bug out, he continues to try to cheer her up, but at least he tries to shift back to the present, telling her that he can't believe any guy would dump such a nice and wonderful girl like he knew her to be when he had a crush on her.  She thanks him, then turns on the waterworks.  Making a woman cry is one of his weaknesses, but the mess she's made of herself is another one, including a drip of saliva running down her chin, and the poor conditioned boy can't help but react.  He is sorely tempted, and she starts asking him if they can see each other and keep talking from time to time.  He looks at the drool, and curiosity overwhelms his good sense (which as we know is very easily overwhelmed) and almost unbidden he utters that if he can taste her saliva, he will agree to continue meeting and talking.  Instantly he catches himself and swears it was just a bad joke.  But the fool gave her an In, and she would gladly do it in order to get what she wants - him.  So she pulls out a moistened finger (hmmm, Pink.) and offers him up a sample, and he is quite sorely tempted, but he remembers that this is his bond with Urabe, something that doing this might break, and he does the first sensible thing out of the whole encounter, he refuses her.  But he's still the loser here, because she uses this refusal to guilt-trip more information out of him, the fact that he DOES have a girlfriend, what they do, AND he gives her her name.


Advantage Hayakawa.  Having obtained the necessary intelligence, she cheerfully takes her leave.  He has the barest glimmer that something is up, but he has NO idea.


Hayakawa, meanwhile goes home and integrates this new information into her fantasies of having him.  I would say that her fantasies have a rather dominant flair to them - like she could have made him do whatever she wanted in Jr. High, and she wants to recapture that opportunity.



After the break, we see Urabe walking by herself when she is intercepted by Hayakawa, who politely introduces herself, and is greeted with entirely appropriate skepticism by Urabe.  Urabe interrupts her spiel by saying "I know who you are."  But this doesn't deflect her one bit.  Starting with a base of flattery, and building on their commonality with Tsubaki, she tries to ingratiate herself to Urabe.  She gives Urabe a program book and Invitation to the Hoshinome Girls School 70th annual cultural festival (That's Hayakawa's elite school, an the reason she's not still a classmate of his), and then further sets the hook by telling her that Tsubaki is going to be there, and she might see something very interesting.  Can you say "Trap?"


So the next step is to bait the trap.  That night, Tsubaki comes running out of the house in the dark to rendezvous at nearby phone booth from which Hayakawa summoned him. (more suggestions of a pre-cell-phone era).  She is sporting a bruise on her left temple that she claims came from her ex-boyfriend wanting to get back together.  She called to enlist Tsubaki's help in a lame scheme to drive him off, Tsubaki must accompany her to the Hoshinome Girls School 70th annual cultural festival this Sunday so that he can see them together there and he will give up on her.  Tsubaki, as a Man and as a friend, agrees, but mentally he's apologizing to Urabe because he knows this looks bad, but he still hasn't gotten it through his thick head that hiding things from her and lying to her is the wrong way to handle things.


But he's not the only one lying.  After Hayakawa leaves him, having extracted his promise to be at the festival, pretending to be her boyfriend, she stops in a park and using the public faucet there, takes a moment to wash off the makeup she used to fake the bruise on her face.  If the bruise is fake, it calls into question the entire existence of the "Old boyfriend who dumped her."  One might even take support for that from the truthful statement that going to an all-girls school, she doesn't meet many guys who would be friends and could help her out.  Which is probably her motivation for the entire plot.


Hayakawa is clearly a much more accomplished liar than Tsubaki.  This is amply demonstrated when Urabe tests him.  Hayakawa told her that he would be there, so she innocently asks him if he has any plans for Sunday.  He stammers out that he and Ueno are going to go shopping on Sunday.  She already knows this is a doubtful, but to her, Hayakawa is not a reliable source.  It doesn't matter, the next day Oka comes running up with a program for the Festival, telling her that she is making Ueno go with her to it.  (Urabe's reaction to the sight of the book is brief shock.  Blink and you miss it, but funny).  Oka has her role in the evil, suggesting that it could just be that Tsubaki got the dates wrong, OR he's lying.


No chance for a confrontation (Although logically there should be, since there's a trip home after this scene) because it's off to the Festival.   And this is where things push the creepy scale to 11.  The Festival involved cultural costumes, but Hayakawa's "Costume" is her middle school uniform, and a wig to restore her looks to how she was when Tsubaki was crushing on her, she thought it would be the best thing to wear "for him."


Roll credits.  It may be the tenth episode, but it's the first two (or more) part plot in the series.

While there have been a lot of threats to Tsubaki and Urabe's relationship, they've all been internal, (mostly caused by Tsubaki) but this is the first time there is an external threat to their couplehood, and it looks serious.  It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and it's really hard on you if you're hoping they work it all out.

Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to be getting any bunny fur in Episode 11.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:06 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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