#karutaku codependency

[SDU truth spoilers! This one's short]

So it feels like the early relationship is a point of contention, lately. Takumi made this promise to Karua and obviously was happy to be with her, but also started to get kind of standoffish and weird with her even while he was still a gradeschool child. Why is this?

Slightly broken up caps, but the points here suggest that Takumi had established a sort of 'hide and seek' relationship with her - whether it was on his own, or Karua's mum's suggestion (that part's a bit more vague in the JP) - which is on-the-nose for 'chaser and chased'.

(He's really passionate about it, too- he loves being her hero.)

This leads into Takumi's fixation on keeping the status quo- he has One Job(tm) and everything else feels superfluous. Not that he would know that this isn't a healthy way for a relationship to be, his ages here are like five-six, to maybe ten years old. Still very young.

From a child's perspective, that's a lot of time to be caught in a cycle of lose and find, protect, etc- it's likely going to wear on a kid after a while, doubly if said kid doesn't allow himself to think of much else. This would probably account for a lot of Takumi's mounting irritation, especially when Karua wants to bring their dynamic to the classroom.

Not helping the matter is that while they're still kids - maybe slightly older, though Karua looks much the same here - Takumi's mother gets involved, bringing Karua in to their home without his prior knowledge. Whether this becomes a pattern or not is hard to say, but given that we also see similar happening in the opening sequence, it would account for why Takumi seems to be stuck in the loop to the point of reflexive irritation with Karua's presence as a late teenager.

(Karua takes on more of a supporting role in this scene, at the least, though Takumi is still his usual annoyed self. Figures)

What I find curious here though, is Takumi will find at least some interest in 'new to him' things Karua talks about- it's just that he winds up bringing it back to 'potential dangerous thing, assess for safety' pattern of thinking that he displayed in the classroom scene. In this case he questions, rather than deflects and denies- like there's some connecting tissue there between them, just that there's too much baggage in the way of him really investing himself in it.

Maybe he wishes he could be that passionate child self, so he shares in Karua's 'vintage films' interest- symbolised by his hoodie

Everything you can remember about your childhood may seem fairly normal and fine. That’s because you remember what your well-meaning parents gave you, but you cannot recall what they were unable to provide.

...well, damn. 'The Physically Present But Emotionally Absent Parent' feels like a perfect match for Takumi's mother here. Just saying.

Highlights:

[You know that your parents love you, but you don’t necessarily feel it.] Try: that opening scene where Takumi questions if he's unwanted, yet still looking back on this scene oddly fondly.

[You feel confused about your feelings toward your parents.] In at least one route he talks about them happily, and thinks about getting gifts for his mother in the main timeline, but he also acts as if they wouldn't stand up for him and there's 'nothing to go back to'.

[Being with your parents seems boring or flat.] The way he talks about 'nothing ever happening to him' in the memories, would suggest this kind of emptiness overall- maybe originating here.

[You also struggle with a lack of emotional skills since you had no opportunity to learn them in childhood.] Lack of emotional intelligence at times- can be dense to others' feelings unless he's concentrating on them, and spent the entire prime timeline too wrapped up in his own issues to actually get to know others.

I've had the impression for a while that this childhood recollection was a traumatic memory, but never was this more apparent than when Takumi experiences something that's unquestionably a nightmare - in particular, relating to his failure to protect Karua/Nozomi - and he reacts the same way- waking up screaming, heavy sweating, heart racing. He's not feeling good about either one.

But there's something more to that first memory-

This is very on the nose way of spelling out one of the reflexes of anxiety- the 'Fight' reflex. Funnily enough, it's the very thing that makes Takumi more high-geared for battle over thinking deeply.

And the 'Flight' reflex, causing Takumi to run from things that are making him anxious- exercising in order to decrease the anxiety. Which also feeds into 'preparedness for battle', thus into 'Fight'.

Most likely, he has felt that he is unable to question that role as a protector, since even as a gradeschooler is stuck trying to assess for risk vs reward. Thinking about things that changes his concept of the world feels dangerous- and in a high-adrenaline/cortisol state geared around 'promise to protect someone from dangerous things', makes about as much sense to him as trying to touch a hot stove.

Takumi has mentioned that he 'gets like this a lot' when he has a lot of spiralling thoughts that he can't reconcile, and if you combine with his chronic inability to question his own role, it gives the impression he's been trapped in this state to the point of learned helplessness. Thus when the people around him in the complex didn't validate Karua's curiosity, it likely led him to passively accept the majority.

Something about this just makes me uneasy. Clearly Takumi's mother romanticised the two of them, though how much she knows about the pair, and their - well, Takumi's - promise, is entirely unclear.

I daresay, that really does look like outright scorn. The reaction was instant- like Takumi didn't want Karua to be there, or to see him waking up like that. Though he explains later on that he just wanted an advance notice of her being there- no matter the time of day.

Reason being that a bit prior, I'd found that post about Takumi having wounded his sense of identity and self worth for the sake of upholding a 'male role model' image, and I felt vindicated. What followed was a realisation he was codependent on Karua in a similar way to how Ima was on Kako. Bear in mind that up to this point, I'd thought of identity issues, of a source for instability, and posited that Takumi could be a transfemme egg (Matrix theming, yey!). So you could imagine my horror when I thought back on the diner scene in hindsight and recalled that Karua was twisting Takumi's arm into saying the promise, so that she would forgive him for forgetting about her. That same promise. That likely caused Takumi's self worth issues. As if he could even distance from her at all, most of the time.

This... sure left a bad taste in my mouth. Note that at this point, I kind of forgot that later on Karua spends a lot of time getting 'carried away'- in hindsight, it felt like trying to compensate for her relying on Takumi, to the point of making herself sick over it. She would then proceed to take rest while Takumi took over what she was doing, and to tell him at the end that she would help him out 'no matter the cost', if he was in any trouble. To which he thought she was 'getting carried away' again- because wow, where did this come from all the sudden?