Sukitte Ii Na Yo [Chapter 23]

Summarized by: Maggie

The chapter starts off with Momo greeting Megumi in the hallway. Megumi glances at her and then just walks past her. Momo looks dumbfounded and sad and seems to realize what is actually going on. The narration goes - “A frail heart ends up hurting people”. The scene changes to Mei, Asami and Aiko greeting each other a good morning. They start talking about the soon to be summer holidays and Mei is asked whether she has already made plans. Mei looks stiff and blushes while saying: “eh? I… well….” Her rather shy reaction caught the other two girls’ interest; they get excited and try to make Mei to tell them. Mei looks away and while blushing slowly tells them that she will probably go on a trip with Yamato. Asami and Aiko are happy for Mei and loudly start talking about her finally losing her virginity. Mei gets even more embarrassed and turns pink. Asami then suddenly gives a surprised Mei a present from her and Aiko: “It’s because it’s Mei’s and Yamato’s one year anniversary.” The present is a double picture frame so Mei can put in nice photos of her and Yamato. Mei thanks her but then tries to apologize for it seems as if she’s always only receiving things. Asami is slightly surprised at first but then starts smiling gently: “What are you saying? There is no obligation to give or not give. It’s because I want to receive something from you, that’s why I give this to you. If I receive a truly happy Mei-Chan then I’m completely fine with that. Right, Aiko?” Aiko agrees with a proud, smiling face. Asami then tells the girls that she’s happy that Mei and Yamato get along so well unlike herself and Takeshi at the moment. Apparently, they had a date which he had cancelled. However, she saw him walking with another girl in the city that same day: “Well, since then, it has already been three days that we haven’t spoken to each other. Just as I thought it’s no good… For Takeshi, it after all seems alright if it isn’t me but someone else…” When listening to Asami’s troubles, Mei immediately starts emitting a dark aura. While Asami is flabbergasted, a pissed off Mei darkly and determinedly says: “Let’s go …to Nakanishi-Kun’s place. That he doesn’t know his own place is going too far. Let’s make him understand.” And so the three girls walk right into class 2D to meet with Takeshi who looks rather scared and wants to know why they are all gathered before him. A pissed Aiko tells him to his face that he must already know why and that it is of course because of Asami. Mei calmly asks him why he canceled his date with Asami to meet with another girl. Takeshi turns his head away and says it wasn’t for any special reason and that the other girl is a friend. Mei wants to know why he didn’t tell Asami about it if she was just a friend. Takeshi gets irritated and defends himself by saying that he has already apologized to Asami about that and it is not like he went there without cancelling the date beforehand. Mei poses the question that if Asami would do the exact same thing he had done, would he then think nothing of it? “Did you think it would be fine if it wasn’t exposed? In love, the rules are no different because you are a guy or a girl. You have to protect the rules together; the considerate feeling towards your partner is important right? If it’s a partner that you are indifferent about then you wouldn’t consider it… but you were trusted by Asami that then got hurt. It’s just as if you yourself got hurt”. Takeshi feels a prickling pain. Now it’s Aiko’s turn, she puts her arm around Asami and tells Takeshi that it’s ok already because if he says doing such things is fine then that means it’s all right for Asami to also do things like that. While harassing Asami’s boobs, who is looking slightly embarrassed, she continues: “Well if it’s not Nakanichi-Kun, there’s a bunch of other people that want to go out with Asami.” Takeshi’s shocked and unhappily shouts at them that it’s not all right, definitely not all right!! He then finds himself in a minor position to Mei and Aiko who look down on him and with evil, scary looks on their face tell him: “If that’s so then you shouldn’t have done this from the start!! We tell you now but if that happens again, it’ll be returned three times!!!” Takeshi looks out of it and starts shaking slightly. Mei calmly continues: “Please don’t hurt Asami… because she is an important person to Nakanishi-Kun… because she is an important person to us. Because she is an important person, don’t make her have a sad face”. Takeshi looks a bit surprised. Mei and Aiko start walking away while Asami tears up and calls out their names. The girls turn around. Asami slightly blushes and tells them: “Somehow… for a lot of things, thank you so much!! I… that I was called ‘important’ by girls is my first time so… I’m amazingly happy!!” Mei and Aiko look at each other and start smiling. Aiko hugs Asami and tells her how cute she is.

The scene changes to Takeshi and Yamato speaking next to a windowsill. Takeshi tells Yamato that he was really scarred by today’s ‘assembly’ although he really just met and did nothing more with that female friend. “They told me to think about it from the opposite position (Asami’s viewpoint)… That for mine and Asami’s business… Aiko and Mei would come as a double…” Yamato laughs but sympathizes that it would sure be tough with those two extreme girls. While looking out the window, Takeshi says that he really thought he was going to be killed but…: “Asami is really being loved by those two. Although I was getting scolded… I was kind of happy. I knew that Aiko gets angry just like that but I didn’t think that even that Tachibana would lunge out for another person. It’s unusual that people of the same sex get so into it for each other’s sake. When I saw Tachibana getting so angry, I kinda thought… that I had probably hurt Asami… my heart started hurting”. Yamato silently keeps listening and starts thinking that if he’d heard that he would have also felt bad. Takeshi continues: “Somehow I, unexpectedly, have fairly some things that I can learn from Tachibana”. Yamato looks at him and agrees: “Un. Me too”. Yamato thinks that in the beginning Mei suddenly kicked him and when he tried talking to her he was completely refused… His feelings were on a level that he thought that if he went out with her it could be fun but… “It wasn’t just that. ‘Right things are right, wrong things are wrong’, she can clearly convey things to people. It was just that she didn’t know people, she didn’t know love… but her interior was so very much like a normal girl. And now that she has made friends, more and more, Mei is, even now, growing… To have such a wonderful woman as my girlfriend now I am very happy but…” Yamato had been imagining Mei’s smiling face for a while now and starts to slightly blush: “n…”… He puts his hands between his legs and blushes a lot… “If I think about Mei…” (<--He’s a guy!) Yamato then starts thinking about how his worries increase with Mei becoming so wonderful and imagines Kai. “The actual feeling that she is only mine is frankly still not there yet… on the contrary…” He slightly blushes and looks down. The scene changes to Mei who is getting some tickets out of her bag. She thinks that she should better do this soon properly and in this kind of situation, it’s better to go by herself. She then starts looking for Kai and finds him in the middle of a crowd of girls. Kai is delighted to see her and asks her what’s wrong. She just tells him to come with her for a bit if that’s ok with his time. He says it’s fine and they walk away together while the girls he was surrounded by are left behind and look sad about it. The scene changes to a smiling Asami telling Yamato that Mei hasn’t come yet and that it’s rare for him to come looking for her. Yamato looks sad about it. He starts walking down the hallway while thinking that she also hadn’t been to his class or the class next to that so… he then looks outside the window just to see Mei and Kai walking next to each other in the school yard. He recollects Takeshi’s words that he was scolded by Tachibana for being with another girl. He closes his eyes, clenches his fist and calls out to Mei. Mei and Kai turn around and notice him. Yamato first looks to the ground, then looks up into Mei’s eyes and calmly says: “I don’t understand Mei’s doings. You told Nakanishi those things… but what about you Mei. Just now you also do it like that, without me knowing you met Kai right.” Mei looks surprised. Yamato continues: “I also know that Kai asked you to go to ‘Lando’ with him. You’re not going with me… but you’re going with Kai?” Kai friendly asks him what he is getting so angry for but Yamato just tells him to shut up. Kai is now pissed and tells Yamato that he gave the tickets to Mei because she wasn’t feeling so good lately and it should become some kind of diversion for her: “Yamato just talks like that but… nonetheless you recently left her alone. You made her feel lonely and hurt her. Why don’t you realize that? You’re really not in the position to get angry. You don’t speak your thoughts directly, leave out the action and then wait for your surrounding (people) to find a solution… That part of you hasn’t changed from before at all!” Yamato suddenly has a short flashback from when he and Kai were still a bit younger and Kai was being bullied at school. Young Yamato takes young Kai’s hand and they ran together into a reference room where they hide themselves from Kai’s bullies. Kai is worried that if they continue to talk like this, Yamato would also get into trouble but he reassures him that he’ll be fine and that those bullies cannot continue doing such a boring thing for a long time. Young Kai says that that’s probably true and thanks young Yamato. Back to the present Yamato is a bit speechless and asks Kai if he thought of him in that way… Kai first looks down and then directly into Yamato’s eyes and tells him that he is very thankful towards him but his sly part gets on his nerves: ”You get on in the world very well, you always laugh and are surrounded by everyone. Your surroundings are constantly bright and showy. I envy the you in the middle of that that always carelessly shows his good face to everyone but on the other hand, it makes me feel irritated.” Just directly after Kai finishes his sentence Yamato tries to hit him. Kai looks a bit surprised but quickly blocks the attack with his arm. He then slaps the also rather surprised-looking Yamato in the face shouting that he is not the same anymore because he is now able to strike those he feels angry about.


Yamato sits on the ground with the imprint of Kai’s handon his cheek. He says that he felt miserable for not being able to help Kai at that time and that he felt really happy when a comparatively stronger Kai returned and still just like before kept talking to him: “So it wasn’t like that for Kai…?” Kai answers that he says it really well but after all he couldn’t do anything with just staying by his side and that he was always at the people’s center of attention: “I was also very happy that a person like you kept talking to me… in the beginning. But then I thought that this was probably also some kind of hypocrisy that you often show people. And when I thought like that I gradually became afraid. I… fled from those bullies and fled from the school… However, when I met Yamato again I honestly felt relieved because you hadn’t changed at all. When I heard that you were the one going out with Mei it was a shock to me because I thought I couldn’t win against you… however though it was by chance that I had similar experiences to Mei and could therefore understand her feelings even more so than the unrelated you that had always been in the middle… so the I that had a mass of inferiority complexes… could now be on equal terms to face you head on and fight you is what I thought”. Yamato looks down and asks if he wants to be put above him to him that much… : “It’s true that I might not be able to understand every painful part of Mei but… those parts I want to … to show Mei a lot of happy things she doesn’t know yet, I want her to get to know them I think. If Kai has even a little feeling of winning against me, if you get closer with Mei, then all the more I won’t hand her over. I don’t know how she thinks about you but I won’t give her to you!!” Mei starts blushing while Kai looks irritated. Kai tells Yamato that just like that it’s good to tell them what he thinks. Kai continues that the reason Mei came to see him today was that she wanted to return the tickets to ‘Lando’ to him. He shows the tickets to Yamato and tells him that Mei doesn’t seem to want to go with him. Yamato looks slightly surprised but understanding. Kai explains that his love for Mei is pure and he doesn’t love her like in a love relationship but as a human…. just like he loves Yamato. Kai then crouches down and tells him that he is really irritated by his sly side but if at that time he didn’t have Yamato’s support he might really not be here anymore: “I’m sorry I hit you. But please understand that I didn’t hit you because I don’t like you.” Kai bids his good-bye and leaves. Yamato still sits on the ground. His name is then called by a crouching Mei: “I’m sorry”. Mei excuses herself that she went to see Kai without telling Yamato. Teary-eyed, she explains that she didn’t realize it would hurt him as he was always laughing, but that from now on she will be more careful. Yamato looks surprised when a blushing Mei informs him: “I want to go to ‘Lando’ together with Yamato. … That’s what I’m looking forward to the most...” Yamato looks into her eyes and start smiling. He then pulls her to himself and they both lay on the ground. They look into each other faces again and Yamato say: “Me too“. He then gives her a reconciliation kiss on the forehead. The scene changes to Kai who somehow has gotten a lot of guys attached to him because of the fight he had with Yamato. They congratulate him etc. Yamato on the other hand got as usual surrounded by girls who are asking him how his cheek is etc. Meanwhile the rumor of the fight has also reached Megumi’s and her friends’ ears. Megumi accuses Tachibana for definitely playing a big part in that fight. Her friends just exchange glances but keep silent. Suddenly Megumi’s phone starts ringing – it’s Momo. Megumi then complains that Momo is quite insistent. Taku-Kun asks her if she still hasn’t made up. Megumi shouts that of course she hasn’t! It’s because Momo repudiated her so she couldn’t possibly forgive her. She then orders Taku-Kun and her other friends to also diss Momo. Taku-Kun however firmly tells a rather surprised Megumi that he will not do that. He didn’t care about what happened to Tachibana Mei but he doesn’t approve of doing that to a friend: “Do it alone/yourself!”

Shmook's Sidenote - Hey, everyone. This is Shmook. I'm helping Bebe out with the updates from now on. Sorry if the images doesn't tally with the paragraphs. I'm still new to this. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.