Previously on Kamisama Mou Sukoshi Dake: Masaki has managed to catch a glimpse of the elusive loser-type guy! What will happen now? Oh, and Keigo’s not infected. Whee.
Masaki catches up with Loser-Type just as he’s digging out the keys for his apartment. She is a vision of vengeance as she asks, “Remember me?” Then the guitar starts up and we’re once again watching Keigo run across the sands in the opening credits.
HIV testing is apparently not a big deal in Japan, as Loser-Type admits that he himself found out only when he was hospitalised for pneumonia. “Did I pass it on to you?” he solicitously asks. I don’t know what to make of Masaki’s stunned expression, or the upbeat little jazz number that starts up right about now.
Meanwhile, Keigo is being haunted by the ghost of Masaki’s last words, until the music stops on an “Aha!” note. Perhaps he got an idea for a song, but we’ll have to wait as we pop back in on Loser-Type’s apartment. And now for the grand reveal: Loser-Type tells us how he got infected! This is hilarious, you’d never know it from looking at him. He got involved with a gang. What, was he their accountant or something? Nah, I think maybe he did drugs or something of the sort.
The phone rings and Loser-Type lies to his mother that he’s busy with work, so he won’t be seeing her. So he hasn’t told his parents, and are we surprised? No, but this is the cue for Masaki to start thinking about telling her parents, and also the cue to switch to Okaasan putting Masaki’s abandoned birthday cake in the fridge.
Okaasan puts Masaki’s beautifully-wrapped gift on her bed, and in true mama style, starts clearing up her daughter’s room. While flipping through a book, she sees the graffiti left there by malicious schoolmates, including the one that proclaims boldly, “AIDS”.
Loser-Type, fulfilling his role as a pathos delivery device, tells Masaki how alone he realizes he is, and goes off to eat his medicines while Masaki looks at his photos, showing a life he can never return to. Conflicted, she turns to leave, and he grovels (literally) for forgiveness. Still in her vengeful aspect, she says that she can never forgive him.
A butterfingered lackey knocks a picture to the ground, and the camera pans away to show Keigo at the PC, while the lackey shows him cover art for the upcoming CD. We continue with the exposition of Keigo’s past as the lackey asks about the woman in the photograph. Keigo, seemingly without emotion, answers that he lived with her when he was a nobody. “Did you break up with her?” asks the silly lackey. Hello, you don’t keep pictures of your ex displayed on your piano, dungu! “She knew she was dying, but she looked at me and smiled.” Some foreshadowing on Keigo’s part here, or maybe just explaining why he finds chicks with terminal illnesses appealing.
Back at the Kano residence, Okaasan lays down the parental law by, um, asking where her daughter has been. As she’s pressing Masaki for information, Masaki lashes out about her mother’s infidelity. Oooh, tit-for-tat secret blowout! At breakfast the next morning, Masaki takes her dad to task when he says that she’s out till late. She points out that he stays out late too, and he counters by saying he’s entertaining clients. When she asks what kind of places he goes to, he cuts off the conversation. Hmm!
Masaki gets bullied again as she walks out of school, and while she’s busy screaming at their retreating backs, Keigo is sitting in his black roadster. Yum. His face tells us that he feels the long-unfamiliar stirrings of pity, sympathy, and of general caring about another person. Bereft of human friends, Masaki takes to feeding pigeons at the park. And then the Prince comes and scares away Cinderella’s little animal friends.
“Are you hungry? Let’s go eat ramen.” Now that’s getting your priorities right, Keigo!
Masaki’s a sharp tack though, and tells him (over ramen) to drop the sympathy act. He replies that she’s a strong person who won’t be crushed, and that she has puraido (pride). I love how there’s no Japanese word for this. “I have HIV,” Masaki reminds him, “I’m not normal! Don’t be with me!” In a scene scripted for awareness campaigns, Keigo replies, “It doesn’t change anything about you.” Then he picks out her cha-shu from her bowl and eats it. Aw lookit that! He made Masaki smile!
They stand on an overhead bridge and talk about their parents. Poor Keigo, his parents weren’t around for him, while Masaki’s parents just want her to be a good girl. She turns around to look at the poster ad behind them, which has… Keigo’s face on it. “That’s nice! I want it!” So they go down to where the ad people are pasting up the ads. “He looks cool,” Keigo comments without a hint of irony. The ad people pay him no heed. He takes off his sunglasses and continues standing there, and the ad man finally gets it. He points comically at the ad, while Keigo just kinda smirks.
Masaki’s standing watching this, until she sees Keigo’s hand, hidden from the ad man, giving her some sort of signal. She gleefully grabs a poster, and they make a run for it. Why, I don’t know. Doesn’t his record company give him posters by the carton already? They finally stop under a tree, she staggers a little bit, he catches her, and they don’t kiss. Instead he gentlemanly sends her home, and she says she had fun. Which is kind of a rare commodity nowadays for her.
“I’m so glad I can talk to you,” Masaki says. In reply, Keigo says she can call him whenever. Haha if Keigo were any less attractive, he’d just be her cuddle bitch, for her to run to when she’s feeling sad. Note she’s saying “I like having you to talk to” and not “I’m in love with you”. While they’re so busy smiling at each other, an unnoticed Hibino leaves the spot outside Masaki’s house where he was waiting for her. Then Keigo puts up the top on his convertible. Is this a symbolic closing-off of his feelings? Interpret however you like.
Masaki passes by Hibino anyway, and he hands her a gift while trying to be casual about it. But his curiosity takes over, and Masaki tells him that was the real Keigo and not a lookalike that she came home with. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” “What! It’s not a crime!” and then Masaki runs away. Hibino then callously says that Keigo’s maybe seeing Masaki out of curiosity, which really gets her dander up. “You told your girlfriend about my illness!” And in this I think her anger is justified, as that’s what led to her bullying and ostracization. “At least Keigo is different!” Yes, for starters he’s an adult who has better things to do.
Masaki runs back to her room where she unrolls her new poster, which makes for a very nice floor rug. She demonstrates to us that it’s larger than life-size by lying on it and lovingly stroking the image. Heh. She must be in a really good mood, because she made stew and offered it to her brother when he returned from school. Her brother looks like a 10-year-old but speaks like a man of 40. After taking her parents to task, it’s now her brother’s turn. She laments that all he does is cram for the examinations, and he says that, well, that’s the way things are. When she challenges this, he walks off to be left alone.
Okaasan comes home and praises Masaki’s stew, then goes off to prepare the salad so they can all eat together like the happy family that they aren’t. Masaki decides it’s time to bite the bullet, and prefaces it with the old “I have something to tell you.” Okaasan too knows what’s coming up, so she wisely puts the china down on the table first. It turns out Okaasan has something to say, too! Upon hearing this, Masaki backs out and says she’ll tell later, her mum can go first. Haha!
After Okaasan is done, Masaki shocks her further by offhandedly saying, “Who cares, do what you want.” She too knows that “Otosan is a workaholic and boring”. As long as her family remains intact, Masaki no care! Ah well, and there’s the rub.
Back in her darkened room, Masaki retrieves her phone (complete with antenna-topper) and looks at it sadly, while saying Keigo’s name. The dude, meanwhile, is having to deal with an angry female singer whose career is being threatened by his lackadaisical attitude. The president of the company comes in and gives his hit-churning machine an ultimatum: Come up with something by tomorrow, or he’s out on his ass. Unfortunately, Keigo is an advocate of the 3rd way: Your way, my way, or Go Away. He says he’ll work when he feels like it.
On his way out, his phone rings. Compared to his greeting, her “it’s me” is a tiny, timid creature. She gets all clingy on him. “You’re my friend, you won’t leave me, right?” Then she realises how silly she’s being, and cheers up. And goes to sleep on her giant poster.
The next day, Masaki returns from PE to find her uniform in the wastepaper basket. She actually smiles, probably because: hey, this is the worst you can do? Peh! I’ll just call up my super-hot celebrity friend and whine to him! Only he’s not available on the phone. He’s gone to visit the grave of his former girlfriend. Bluff la, Japan has no more space for graves!
Kaoru joins him with a large and showy bouquet. “When your cell’s turned off, I know you’re here.” When he continues standing there, resenting the invasion of his private moment, she defends herself by saying “I want to talk to my sister sometimes too.” Boring scene follows where Kaoru tells him to get off his lazy ass and start working and loving.
Okaasan interrupts Otosan’s baseball match to tell him something. Namely, she wants a separation. Otosan swallows, then asks, “What?” She says after Satoru (their son) is done with exams, she would like a separation. Otosan demonstrates his ignorance by asking why she wants to split all of a sudden, and Masaki exits her bedroom in time to hear the exchange.
Otosan thinks working hard and giving her his pay fulfils his duties. Obviously, this clashes with Okaasan’s “listen to me” type of duties which she had in mind. Hearing her family structure break down all around her, Masaki takes to the streets. Meanwhile, Hibino is confronting his selfish, bitchy coworker, who ratted on Masaki out of jealousy, because she wanted Hibino all to herself. He hops on his bike to go away, far far away from this land of crazy women!
Masaki’s nocturnal wanderings have taken her to Keigo’s doorstep. She’s unable to reach his phone, he’s in a car with Kaoru… I smell potential misunderstanding! Yeah, you know what’s coming up. Cougar-in-training Kaoru takes the opportunity to attack Keigo’s face with her mouth. “Don’t tease me,” he says. “I’m not,” she replies. Kaoru li-ikes Keigo!
Masaki is standing near a convenient wall, so she turns her face away as Kaoru rushes past. But Keigo catches a glimpse of her in his wing mirror, and whips around in horror as the opening guitar chord jangles out. It’s a combination worthy of Dramatic Prairie Dog! The dungu sits there watching Masaki cry, then when she turns to run, he’s spurred into action. He leaves his car engine running, and decides to chase Masaki on foot. Not very clever, but this is Japan, the land of low crime, so I don’t foresee any GTA-type happenings in the next episode.
Masaki’s run for freedom is halted by a railway crossing, but Keigo’s lost her scent and is now gasping for air in the middle of a junction. The final 2 minutes of the episode are just rehashes of the most aww-worthy parts from earlier. The producers really know how to stretch a budget. At the last minute, Keigo seems to have an epiphany on her location, and starts running his heart out. Masaki decides to stand on the path of the oncoming train. How original. And CUT! Let’s find out what happens in the next episode.
