The Exposition Dragon

Day 60 was pretty fruitless.

Pretty much a universal teenage aroace experience, I think. Along with a side helping of "Is something wrong with me?"

I am biting my tongue so hard about your "PORN" shirt right now.

Because as funny as that little irony is, there's really no way to bring it up without falling into the trap of victim-blaming by way of policing the way women dress.

The reality is that this is a pretty common life experience for women. Women dress the way they want to dress, and then men they've never met judge their sexual availability based on it. As if any time a woman wears clothes, it's for the purpose of peacocking.

And that sucks.

Even for the "PORN" shirt. You know, men get to walk around with giant anime titties on their shirts without being harassed in public over it. But for women, the question is always "What signal is she sending me with these clothes? How does she want men to view her?"

Tsubasa's fashion aesthetic is "Laundry Day". It's visibly just whatever she could throw on to go work in the garage. But even that won't spare her from the prying eyes of hungry men, and we know that even without her corroboration here because we've had the other side of this conversation with Gaku.

One of Gaku's hangout events is a "Guy Talk" moment about how erotic he finds Tsubasa's midriff. She can't escape from it. Not even here.

Yeah, that's also pretty common at your age.

It's said that women mature faster than men, though a lot of this comes down to social conditioning. Girls tend to get roped into the housework and have more chores and expectations placed on them than boys do, while boys slacking off and getting into fights is treat as "Boys will be boys".

Boys simply don't get conditioned the way girls do. This leads to a vast behavioral gap that often makes same-age or, worse, younger boys unappealing as romantic prospects.

This goes back to what I was saying in Kyoshika's Romance Route: Shared interests can be very important to the stability of a relationship.

This conversation has the hallmarks of "What if you and I...? NAH JUST JOKING. Unless you're into it...?"

And speaking of Just Joking Unless You're Into It....

Huh. I would have figured you did it yourself, given your propensity for sewing clothes.

In any given family, there are those members who don't really want to be there. Who can't wait to just get out there on their own. I imagine that's even harder when dealing with a foster family, especially a group home like this.

Have you ever considered crime?

So it is, in fact, a surveillance cam. That's going to come in really handy if the culprit is stupid enough to come leave us another letter.

Why would they do that?

Well, if the blackmailer's Gaku, he's dumb enough to try and rerail the perv train.

Demonstrably no. That's why the other version of you proposed a polycule.

Think of it like how we kept conforming the plan to whatever new tech Kako wanted to play with, but we've traded Kako for Tsubasa!

Ima's going to have to redecorate. I hope he likes oil cans and wrenches.

The better to catch Gaku in the act, Takky!

The better to neutralize Gaku before he gets away, Takky!

The better to carry out Gaku's sentencing before he has a chance for due process, Takky!

Wow, I can't believe Tsubasa programmed her surveillance droid for police brutality. She really thought of everything!

Someone's targeting the women of the SDU using you as a proxy. She needs some kind of safeguard in case you end up coming after her.

The very first thing we should do is to find a place outside the door to hide this little guy. We have no way of knowing when or if a next note will drop by so we want the camera prepared well in advance for receiving it.

I need you to take this seriously. I don't want to miss our window if the guy does come back!

Scratch that! Scratch everything! I'm going!

We're all aware.

Less aware of that.

If that's what you want, then you should consider figuring out who you are outside of the tomato. If the tomato is your symbol of following the Oosuzuki expectations then you should try taking it off as a form of separation from said expectations.

When you wear the tomato, you are Kurara Oosuzuki, scion of the Oosuzuki family. But when you shed the tomato, you're just Kurara. Who is Kurara? What does she want out of life?

Just gonna leave that out there without even trying to translate it, huh?

For the record:

大 Ō - Big, large, great 超 Chō - Super

That's convenient. You're being awfully vague about that, Ima. Seems a little suspicious to me.

See, this is what I was talking about. Gaku is acting super suspicious. It reminds me of how suspicious he acted during the Pudding Theft incident.

It's a good thing we didn't actually steal Hiruko's panties or else even if we'd gotten away with it in the moment, this conversation would be going much more violently.

We've pretty much ruined the prank at this point. The bluff has been called, and I doubt the blackmailer actually has the means to put their murder where their mouth is, so it seems like this is over.

Sexual harassment by proxy, probably.

I'm not buying that. You're still on my suspect list, Sirei.

....hmm....

Oh, I can think of a couple of us who would.

I can definitely think of a couple of us who would.

Still eyeing Darumi and Gaku?

More Gaku than Darumi. I find it interesting how eager he is to get away from the topic of one of us being the culprit. Darumi's been off my suspect list ever since the targets moved beyond Hiruko. She doesn't really care about Kurara and Kyoshika.

And considering how much Gaku tends to lean on Takky for his shenanigans, it fits the profile.

We've entertained the more clever possibility that Sirei or Ima might be behind this, as a malfunctioning attempt at some twisted "Know your team" challenge and as a way to fabricate a clever mystery for Kako to solve respectively.

But the Occam's Razor suspect has always been Gaku. If the name of the game is just Pervy Scumbag then that has Gaku's name written all over it.

A surveillance camera? Because parking a surveillance camera outside our door to pick up whoever leaves the next note would be an ideal solution if we believed notes were still going to come.

What happened in Day 58 stays in Day 58.

She filibustered the end of the battle for 48 hours straight. I don't know what's more impressive, her lung capacity or her physical stamina.

Don't take pity on him. He brought it on himself for gaslighting Kako, bullying Kurara, taking advantage of Kyoshika's innocent heart, and kidnapping Kako!

Note that 48 hours was the limit of Takky's stamina, not Nozomi's.

Oh, that's not entirely true.

The blackmailer said that if we tell anyone about this, we'll all be killed. We can now say with certainty that if any member of the SDU is the blackmailer, then they would know that we have broken the rules, and our deaths should arrive imminently.

If we survive the day, then we can conclude that the blackmailer is full of shit and stop listening to them.

You'd be surprised, Gaku. A sufficiently well-made copy might be indistinguishable from the original even to herself. Finding out that you were a copy all along is a staple of sci-fi horror.

In fact, one might even argue that it sorta applies to us even now.

I don't think I've ever seen Nozomi this cold. Not even when we lied to her and tricked her into leaving her friends to die.

Nobody's buying it, Takky. You're just making yourself look pathetic.

For what it's worth, Takky, I hope you come back some day in another life as a better person.

Because I'm going to be stuck with that person in the next timeline and I'd appreciate it if they didn't suck!

...Kay, you know that he was forced to do all those things, even if his method of doing them left much to be desired.

Oh, I know. I'm just cathartically enjoying the hell out of this.

Add me to that list too! I've always prided myself on taking personal responsibility for my mistakes and owning when I've said or done something wrong, and it's been one of my sincerest disappointments to see how rare that behavior is among people.

I'm just saying, maybe if you were a bit more considerate towards Kyoshika and didn't literally tell her, "I got what I wanted so I'm done with you now," then maybe this wouldn't be happening.

I can't really blame you for how you handled Kurara. The task was literally to make her cry. That was going to blow back on you no matter what.

But you made your choices for how you handled Kyoshika.

That's what the 1-Up Machine is for!

Oh, she is mad. She's hitting you with word violence. The most excruciating form of violence there is.

We're saved!

Are we? How much can Kako actually explain without giving the game away?

She can at least try. Let's hear her out.

Congrats, lil buddy! That's the worst anyone's ever done it!

Are we certain she's not trying to get us killed? Is it possible that she's the G'ie Kako from the other timeline?

It's not.

Honestly, I'm enjoying this. Kako owed you one for the gaslighting incident. This is some unexpected sweet vengeance.

Oh! That's right! It's Zen'ta Day!

I know you're trying to redirect their attention but I don't think they're falling for it. I'm pretty sure we're just going to pick this right back up as soon as the battle's over. This isn't salvation; Just a stay of execution.

You can't outrun destiny forever, Takky....

Well, shit.

I'll take Ima, you take Kako?

Sounds fair to me.

Takumi: Wait, who does that leave for me?

Literally anyone else. This is almost certainly either Kako with an update or Ima here to talk about what he's been up to, but if it's anyone besides that, you win.

Takumi: I guess that's fair.

Takumi: Oh hey, I won! It IS a lovely morning!

Uhhh, Takky? Might want to read the room here.

Takumi: Oh no.

There we go.

See, Revenge Moko, I anticipated. She's a day late but I knew she was coming.

I was not prepared for Revenge Nozomi.

See, if we'd gone with my plan, you'd look like an asshole who misjudged Kurara based on something you'd heard instead of a monster who bullied her senselessly for no reason. Still bad but it's a matter of severity.

I mean, you did chat her up for several minutes about manga while yelling at her to declare her love for it. To Kyoshika, that's practically a makeout session. It doesn't help how coded your sudden "Screw off, I got what I wanted" at the end was, either.

You know what, I fully believe that Shouma was standing five feet to the left the entire time and nobody noticed. That is scarily plausible.

It's weird that Takemaru had to hear it through Darumi instead of straight from Shouma's mouth, though.

Since when does Shouma talk to Darumi?

Since when does Takemaru talk to Darumi?

Maybe Darumi noticed that Shouma was keeping quiet about something so she made him spill the beans. Then she skipped into the cafeteria, Takemaru was the first person she saw, and she infodumped on him uninvited.

You know what, I could see that. That makes sense.

That one happened publicly in the cafeteria. Everyone saw that happen.

I vote we break 36. 12 for each of his victims.

Takumi: That isn't even possible!

It is if we kill you after the first 24, then revive you and break the remaining 12.

Oh Takky, we're Space Japanese. Once an accusation is made, you enter straight into the hostage justice system. You're denied rights, detained for extended periods of time, and abused in order to coerce a confession out of you.

Prosecutors don't sustain a 99.9% conviction rate by playing nice, y'know.

Well, this was a nice timeline while it lasted. Looks like it's getting to be time to hit the ol' temporal trail....

Was it a nice timeline?