Hana Yori Dango 2 – 07

As the old lady Tama starts laying out Tsukushi’s new strict schedule, Tsukasa comes over to say that he won’t allow her to become a servant. However, Tama entices him with the prospect of Tsukushi becoming his private servant, so Tsukasa decides to leave it all up to the old lady. At school, upon learning that Tsukushi has been staying at the Doumyouji house, the three bitchy girls suddenly change their attitude towards her. Before they can bother her too much, Rui comes to Tsukushi’s classroom and calls her out. Since Rui now knows about her living with Tsukasa, she explains to him how it happened and how she’s working there now. Rui then points out that she had called out Tsukasa for Valentine’s, but Makino claims that it was just to say something she should have said a long time ago. This causes Rui to wonder out loud if he still has a chance. Later that day, when Tsukushi arrives to clean up Tsukasa’s room, he instructs her to talk normally instead of using the formal speech. He reminds her of how she had said that she needed a reason to live with him, and he thinks that the reason is so that she can face him again. Tsukasa then hugs her from behind and tells her that he’d risk his life for her. The two don’t know that Tama is actually watching them, but she leaves when Akira comes to talk to Tsukasa about how he can’t get in contact with Soujirou. By chance, Tsukushi’s telephone rings at the same time and she learns from Okami-san that Yuuki is also missing. Okami-san has been unable to contact Yuuki since the day after Valentine’s, and this worries Tsukushi so much that she spills soup all over Tsukasa.

Seeing Tsukushi so bothered, Tsukasa suggests that they go search for Yuuki. He proceeds to drag her out of the house, and neither of them notices Shigeru on their way out. Tsukasa wants to call the police and even says that because Yuuki is Tsukushi’s best friend, they should mobilize national powers to look for her. He gets sidetracked when he sees a hot dog stand and tries to get her to eat one since they couldn’t in New York. Before biting into what he finds to be a disgusting hot dog, Tsukasa tells Tsukushi that being with her now makes him understand what’s really most important. Tsukushi also dislikes the taste of the hot dog, and the two have a good laugh about it. The next day, Akira recalls something that happened between Soujirou and his childhood friend during Valentine’s Day last year. They had been reunited after a long time, but the girl – Soujirou’s first love – abruptly disappeared after the holiday. From this, Tsukushi remembers what Yuuki had told her about Sara and draws the right conclusion. When they go to the tea ceremony group where Yuuki and Sara met, Tsukasa and Tsukushi learn that Sara had stopped coming because she moved. What they don’t know is that Soujirou has already tracked Sara down and finds her making pottery. He knew that her father had a pottery hobby, and both his and her families came to this place when they were still young. Upon meeting with her, Soujirou returns the tea bowl that Sara forgot to take with her.

Akira calls up Tsukasa sometime later to tell him that he found out that Yuuki has been wandering the area around Tokyo Tower. Tsukushi and Tsukasa manage to find her on the street, but Yuuki collapses soon after seeing them. After taking her home to rest, Tsukasa finds a notebook that indicates Yuuki had been looking for a particular building. Yuuki soon wakes up and explains that on Valentine’s Day, she had gone to Soujirou’s home to give him chocolate. When he had asked her about Sara, she had told him that Sara had quit the tea group. But things are actually a bit more complicated than that. A year ago, Yuuki had run into Sara and Soujirou on the street, but Sara had immediately walked off. Back then, Soujirou had told Yuuki about how Sara had just asked him to come out to a building rooftop at 6AM, and she had agreed with him that it was stupid. In their meeting last week, Yuuki had felt bad about it, but Soujirou had claimed that Sara never had those types of feelings for him because she had instead fallen in love with his older brother Shouichirou. However, Soujirou’s older brother left home three years ago after not being able to endure the family’s customs any more, and Soujirou’s first love had ended back then as he watched Sara cry. Tsukushi feels that Soujirou had been thinking about her for a long time since, but Tsukasa suggests instead that Soujirou forgot until he saw her again. Yuuki then explains that she brought the tea bowl that Sara left behind to Soujirou the day after Valentine’s, and it had ignited the flames in him again. Because she wanted to know what Sara had been trying to say with that building in the morning, Yuuki had been searching for the right rooftop. She tells Tsukasa and Tsukushi that right now might be the most important time in her entire life.

The next day, as Tsukushi and Tsukasa are explaining everything to Akira at school, Soujirou suddenly shows up with a basket of mountain vegetables. When Tsukasa takes Soujirou out to speak with him privately, Tsukushi wonders if it’s ok to leave it up to him. Akira believes that it is fine because, after all, Tsukasa is F4’s leader. Tsukushi then gets a phone call and goes out to meet with Yuuki. It seems that Yuuki has finally found the right rooftop and plans to meet with Soujirou there the next morning at 6AM – it’s something very important for both Sara and Soujirou. Meanwhile, Soujirou tells Tsukasa what happened when he had gone to meet Sara. He had told her that he wanted to apologize for standing her up a year ago, but she had disappeared. Sara had then asked how everyone in Soujirou’s family was doing, and she specifically inquired about Shouichirou. Soujirou replied that Shouichirou hadn’t been in contact, so he didn’t know what his brother was up to. He interpreted her asking about Shouichirou to mean that she really did like him, and he recalled how she had cried when his brother left. Sara, however, claimed that she only saw Shouichirou as only an older brother. Hearing this, Soujirou had questioned what he himself meant to her. Sara didn’t answer immediately, and the two then had been briefly interrupted by a guy Soujirou didn’t recognize.

Instead of replying to Soujirou’s question, Sara had started talking about how Yuuki really loved Soujirou and how he should treasure her. Soujirou had then offered to take her for a ride on his motorcycle, but Sara chose this moment to reveal that she was going to be getting married to the guy who had just interrupted their conversation. Soujirou had said that he was glad and hoped for her happiness before the two of them parted ways. He now feels a bit foolish about it all and asserts that he’s not going to get depressed about it. Tsukasa then asks if Soujirou still remembers the building that he didn’t go to that one morning. He reveals that Yuuki had been searching for and found that building, and she’ll be there tomorrow morning at 6PM. With this in mind, Soujirou goes out partying all night long, but his mind keeps returning to Yuuki. He eventually runs the entire way to the building and finds Yuuki waiting for him. She leads him up to the rooftop right as the sun is about to rise because she feels that he has to see this. It seems that with the way the sun reflects and covers up the words, two of the nearby billboards go from saying Sukiyaki and Cafe Jiro to just Suki and Jiro (aka. I like Jiro). In other words, this was Sara’s way of saying that she liked him since Jiro is the name she called Soujirou. As he realizes why Sara had tried to get him to come, Soujirou starts to cry even as he is claiming that it’s stupid that Sara would call him out for something like this. On the way home later, Soujirou admits that he had thought for a long time that Sara fell in love with his older brother. He feels that what he wasn’t able to do made him uncool, but Yuki disagrees. Soujirou then thanks her since it’s because of her that something inside of him changed.

Having learned his lesson, Soujirou returns to school and tells Tsukushi to do her best. He explains that she doesn’t need to worry about the people and the things around her as long as she faces her feelings. It’s no good if she doesn’t live honestly according to her feelings because she’ll never be able to return to this moment again. He even uses the yojijukugo, ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting). Tsukushi ends up spending the rest of the afternoon thinking about what Rui and Shigeru said to her in connection to her relation with Tsukasa. Yuuki advises her that it’s no good for her to forcefully shut up her feelings and urges Tsukushi to do her best. Tsukushi then returns home and heads for Tsukasa’s room to inform him that she’s meeting with Rui tomorrow in order to tell him that she can’t go out with him. She reveals to Tsukasa that she plans to tell Rui that he’s not the one who’s most important to her, and then she returns to her own room to call Rui. When she asks him if he has time tomorrow, Rui replies that he’d go whenever and wherever she called him to. He wonders if she wants to talk to him about something good or bad, but when she doesn’t respond, he asks her instead about the time and place. After she decides that they should meet at the central library tomorrow at 4PM, Rui sighs to himself.

Having just hung up the phone, Tsukushi is surprised when Shigeru shows up at her door. She apologizes for not telling Shigeru about living here, but Shigeru claims to be ok with it because it allows her best friend Tsukushi to watch over Tsukasa so that strange women don’t approach him. Shigeru then reveals that Kaede will be coming back next week for the formal merger between Shigeru’s family’s company and the Doumyouji Group. It is at that time that she thinks they will also settle on a wedding reception day. Heading over to Tsukasa’s room next, Shigeru ignores his question about if she understands his feelings and instead announces that she’ll be staying the night here. Because they’re engaged, she thinks that no one will complain about this. Nevertheless, the cold stare from Tsukasa soon wipes the smile off her face.

Preview:

I take back what I said last week about the side characters being more interesting. While I wouldn’t necessarily call the Soujirou/Yuuki stuff boring, I just didn’t find it as entertaining to watch as the Shigeru/Tsukasa/Tsukushi/Rui stuff. A lot of it felt too overly complicated – in writing the summary, it dawned on me just how much jumping around in time they did to explain the what happened between Soujirou, Sara, and Yuuki. I did like how the billboard message worked out, but I just couldn’t find myself sympathizing with Soujirou. In the end, I’m more curious about how Rui’s going to react to what Tsukushi tells him and if Shigeru is truly deluding herself into thinking that Tsukushi is just there to watch over Tsukasa for her. And there’s always the chance Shigeru could snap and go a little crazy.
On a side note, I saw Arashi’s performance of Love so sweet from last night’s Music Station. I wonder what the PV will look like and if it’ll be coming out before the single does next week.