who cares

ladies and gentlemen

I've always hated the headcannons that Tome didn't love Ogata or that she would have ignored Ogata if he didn't look like Hanazawa, and now I have proof to back up why I hate them. I think the problem wasn't that she was completely neglectful of Ogata, but instead that she was so focused on his future and his success that she neglected who he was in the present.

(Moreover, the guilt he feels from killing her makes him not able to rationalize her fully– hence the lullaby "The way out is joyous, but the way home is frightful." But by commanding the seventh, he can not only get her attention/make her proud but prove that who he was presently was worthy of love.)

Yuusaku loved Ogata too, but when he projects this ideal future version of Ogata onto him, Ogata kills him.

All this calls into question his weird love of being demeaned and treated as less than as a means to prove his current self's worth, if that makes sense. Like he is this fuck up, low class, unloved child of a geisha and he wants to be loved as such almost?

Which is why his ending with Yuusaku hits as hard as it does because it affirms his innate self-worth, that he was inherently always worthy of love as he was. (That's why Asirpa awakened his guilt over killing Yuusaku because she also loved him for who he was. It's like he says, "Asirpa shone a light on me and now I can die.")