#anyway. if you know her irl swipe left or she tells you the date of your death.

[recentanimenews]

Horimiya – 08 – Reaching Milestones

I. Exclusion Zone

At some point after being with Hori, Miyamura has a dream in which he meets with his old socially awkward, and above all angry self, who was so tired of being left out and made to feel so pointless that he even considered dying. The older Miyamura urges him to hold off on the whole dying thing and hang in there, as he actually ended up doing IRL.

While telling him about all of the wonderful people waiting to be friends, and most importantly, a girl who he’ll need as much as she needs him, Present-day Miyamura takes stock of how far he’s come from those dark brooding middle school days before Shindou reached out. He wakes up with tears in his eyes, likely weeping for that old Miyamura, and wants to see Hori. Who wouldn’t want to see their lover after that dream?

II. Bestselling Tearjerker

From there, we shift to the relationship of Remi and Kakeru, who came as a pre-made couple at the outset. Remi waxes lovingly about why she loves Kakeru, who has never been strong or athletic but always strives and stuggles to be stronger for himself and for Remi, which in turn inspires her to be better. She remembers him being very different back when they first started talking.

Remi recalls a key moment in understanding Kakeru when she overheard his buds talking about the wildly popular Remi and her BFF Sakura as “Beauty and the Beast”. Kakeru refused to subscribe to his mates’ assessment, insisting the two girls both looked “normal.” He wasn’t so much defending Sakura, whom he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to lie to fit in.

Remi ends up approaching Kakeru first, asking about the old-looking book he has. It turns out to be Goethe, who channeled his own unrequited love into his confessional novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Assuming her interest in books is genuine (and it is!), he starts lending her and Sakura editions of all kinds, starting with Grimm’s Fairy Tails.

When answering Remi’s question of where all these books come from, Kakeru gives her the perfect opening to invite herself over. Remi finds a book on a high dusty shelf about the last day before the end of the world, and when he asks what she’d do, she says she’d indulge herself by eating desserts and whatnot. Kakeru notices she’s wearing her pigtails slightly higher, and Remi is clearly happy he noticed.

Back at school, Kakeru is grateful that Remi is talking with him on the regular, but makes mention that his friend Kamioka has a crush on her. Remi responds immediately with an indifferent “so” that notably lacks the usual stutter employed to indicate genuine interest. Basically, she doesn’t give a shit about Kamioka! She asks to come over to his house again, but he says he might “get the wrong idea” about her intentions.

Back in the library, Remi asks Kakeru what he’d do if the world was going to end tomorrow. Again, Kakeru cannot lie, and in any case doesn’t want to, as he says he’d tell Remi he liked her. Of course, by answering so truthfully (not to mention blushing like a beet) he makes it clear he does like her, giving her the opening to say she likes him, accompanying her confession with a beautiful smile.

In the present, Kakeru is loved and fawned over by girls and boys alike, and is the damn StuCo President besides. Remi loved him back when he wouldn’t get swept away by others, but she also loves him now, swiping a spider she’s not at all scared of (but he is) from her shoulder when asked.

III. Spicing Things Up

Hori and Miyamura may have slept together, but thankfully that isn’t the end-all, be-all of their relationship, only a key milestone on the long road ahead. While they know each other quite well by now, they’re also still learning. Miyamura uses the excuse of having some old polish lying around to paint her boyfriend’s toenails, a less violent way of marking her man than neck bites!

Through most of their time together, Hori has done most of the “messing around”, so while she’s painting his toes, Miyamura decides to get playful and put his foot on her head, as if stepping on her would make him “level up”. He immediately prostrates himself in apology, but Hori isn’t mad, just confused.

After all, the same Miyamura who rages at Sawada and beats up Shindou is always so calm and well-mannered around her, making her wonder sometimes if he’s “faking it” for her. He asked if he’d rather treat her like he does them, yelling at and hitting them, and in a purely rhetorical sense, Hori imagines it and is kinda turned on, simply because it’s so unlike how Miyamura really treats her.

The next day at school Hori basically has Miyamura act like the wild delinquent that pops out when Sawada Shindo are around, which includes speaking like one—which thoroughly spooks Tooru and Kakeru. When he drops the act and starts to cry, they immediately know: he’s indulging Hori’s whims.

When the couple find themselves in an empty classroom waiting for the next period, Miyamura realizes it might just be the time to bust out “Meanyamura” on Hori. As he yells at her, grabs her collar, and pushes her against the wall, two underclassmen pop into the room, and one look and “Huuuh?” from him send them running away screaming. How does Hori feel about all this? She’s entertained and turned on.

This segment walks a fine line between actual relationship abuse and the mere trappings as a means of spicing things up. Hori loves the kind and gentle Miyamura, but because he’s someone she loves, she loves all sides of him, including the theoretical or fanciful ones. Miyamura, in turn, goes along with her because he loves the big ol’ weirdo who gets a kick out of it.

IV. Love Needs No Stinkin’ Glasses

Another key milestone for lovers is a desire to share and spread that love, doing what they can when they can to help their lovelorn friends (if any). Yuki is asked out by some random guy in Class 6, but keeps quiet about it for four days until Hori and Miyamura both get involved. Knowing how Yuki has a tendency to let things she wants pass her by, Miyamura gets the ball rolling by having Tooru agree to be Yuki’s fake boyfriend.

Tooru is all for this, and even takes Yuki’s hand in a totally platonic way he’s always been with her, unable to see the signs that she likes him. Tooru is ready to help Yuki turn a guy down…up to the point he gets a look at the guy. Horimiya’s bishounen game continues to be solid, as the lad in question—one Yanagi Akane (even his name is cool!)—is so ridiculously gorgeous Hori says even her boy can’t compare!

Tooru is so intimidated by Yanagi’s beauty he utterly fails in his role of possessive boyfriend, but Yanagi senses he’s Yuki’s boyfriend anyway. Could it be he can sense their history, and even Yuki’s unspoken feelings for Tooru? But mostly, Tooru wonders why the heck she’s turning this guy down…if he asked him out he’d say “yes” in a heartbeat—after it stopped skipping, presumably!

While Yuki says Yanagi is “kind of too hot, you know”, the main issue is she just doesn’t know the guy, or why he’d be into someone he didn’t know. Yuki learns from Remi (in a welcome role as Hot Guy Knower) that in addition to being super-hot, he’s also “hilarious”, as evidenced when Yanagi repeatedly bumps into a wall. Turns out the kid is virtually blind without glasses he seems to have misplaced.

Yuki waits for Yanagi at the gate after school to tell him she believes he might’ve had the wrong girl, due to his poor eyesight. Maybe the one he wanted to ask out was Hori, whom she declares to be “much taller and prettier”. C’mon, Yuki. Yanagi says no, he asked the right girl out; he knows what she looks like, and surprisingly for a guy at this school, he doesn’t know Hori at all.

Hori, Miyamura, and Tooru eventually arrive at the gate, resulting in a bit where Yanagi can’t tell Miyamura from Hori or vice versa, even at close range. The others admit this is hilarious, as Remi promised, but it seems Yuki has a choice to make. She can dismiss Yanagi’s confession out of hand and remain in an unpleasant love triangle with Tooru and Sakura. Orrr she could go on a date with the one guy at school who knows her but not Hori, learn more about him, and see how it goes. Like if Tooru were asked out by Yanagi, the choice is clear!

  By: sesameacrylic

[itsjayyyy]

July 24, 2019 2:19 pm

Have I studied like I said I would? No. Am I in dire need of an update? Yes. Looks like there’s only one option.

okay so I have to go all the way back to june 26th, huh? Well rose REALLY didn’t take the talk about her finances well. She acted as if I was still just mad at her over memorial day, as if she wasn’t a massive burden on our parents. See that’s the difference between rose and I; when I see that I’m a burden on someone else I remove myself from their life so that I don’t hurt them, but rose just doesn’t give a fuck. She’ll be a leech for her entire life and not even bat an eye. Anyways that’s not the point. She wouldn’t say it to my face, but clearly she heard what I had to say. Apparently iris told me that rose was shocked; nobody had ever told her that before. Which is surprising to me, why would mom and dad and iris all tell me about how tired they were of rose being a mess but not say it to her face???? I swear I’m the only person with a spine in this family.

Anyways rose plans to move out in september now, and shortly after she announced that, mom and dad made plans to move back to michigan in november. I haven’t been talking to rose, but I really hope that she sees the direct relationship between the time that she’s moving out to the time that they’re moving out. Since she’s making progress towards fixing her finances, I’d say that issue is a closed case now.

But really, I never looked down on her for her life being a mess. To me, you can do whatever; get a college degree, not get a college degree, work minimum wage, make six figures, none of it really matters to me. I only care that you treat me with respect, treat me like a friend. My issue with her, and not just on memorial day, has been that she doesn’t listen. I told her that on my birthday this year, three months ago, and no change. Memorial day just served to reinforce the idea that I’m just a side character in life to her. She tried to twist it and say “you’re making me choose between you and my boyfriend” which is a load of shit, I’m asking that you DON”T choose between us and rather treat us equally. Or at least, I dunno, say one word to me when the three of us are together so that I know that you still acknowledge me. Or I dunno, maybe not invite your boyfriend to family events when the rest of the family hasn’t explicitly invited him?

Iris has been in town since the whole issue with rose. I hung out with her a few times, but I never saw rose. Iris has told me a few things. I knew that, a while ago, peter proposed to rose and rose broke up with him, for four hours, before she asked him to take her back. He said no, so she bought him an xbox and (according to iris) some weed, because rose said “he can’t say no to me when he’s high.” I really want to say that she meant saying no to her asking for him to take her back. I really want to say that she didn’t rape him. But I can’t. I can’t even say that those four hours were just so that she could think, knowing that she’s cheated on every boyfriend she’s ever had. Honestly I don’t think I can ever look at her the same. Iris wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, saying “we don’t know if she raped him” but I’m not gonna give her that just because she’s a girl, or my sister. Those words came out of her own mouth, after all.

On Saturday, when I got off work, iris and I met up because we planned to see rose at the mall. Iris was leaving on sunday, and she wanted to get a group pic of us. Frankly I can’t stand that iris, despite nonstop talking about how rose is becoming more and more toxic and manipulative, still wants to be on good terms with her. But then iris explained, how when she first moved up to chicago, she thought she’d visit later and see everyone as usual. But before she could come back to visit, her sister in law died. (The main reason for the visit is so that they can help the family fight for custody against the bio dad). She said she was worried that, like her sister in law, she would go to chicago mad at rose and then who knows, what if rose dies while iris is in chicago and they never got closure too? It’s a reasonable fear, but I guess I’m just too hardheaded to feel it too. 

Anyways, we’re at the mall, nick and peter go to gamestop so the three of us could talk in private. This was my plan for how I wanted the conversation would go: I explain that I personally didn’t agree with the texts I sent her about her finances, but that the rest of the family was growing annoyed with her and I was the one tasked with telling her. She would have the chance to tell me what she felt, and what she’s done, etc. We close the finances chapter, and move on to her personality, which I considered to be the ACTUAL issue. I would let her know that I didn’t like that she clearly didn’t care about me. She never listens to how my day was (as in, she’ll be physically present when I speak but she’ll literally be texting peter as I’m talking). She doesn’t take ANY criticism at all. As in, she’ll blow up at you if you even imply she’s not perfect. The whole peter break up situation. I wanted her to know that it’s not okay for her to treat people as machines where she just needs to do xyz to get them to do what she wants. That people have feelings, that people are *human* just like her, and we all deserve to be heard. She never listens to listen, she listens to come up with an argument in response. She lacks empathy.

As you can guess, that’s not how the conversation went. Before I could get two sentences into telling her about how the finances thing, she cuts me off and starts talking about how I “don’t even care about her achievements” and starts talking about how she’s an expert at car pricing (she works for a scrap dealer, they price vehicles by amount of steel) and she knows better than nick, who is an auto insurance adjuster with years of experience. I jump straight to “you don’t listen to listen, you listen to argue” and from there it’s nothing but cutting each other off. Iris tried to keep the peace by making us take turns, but rose cut me off on my turn so I was like ya know what? This bitch clearly will not listen, despite the fact that I’ve tried to listen when she was cutting me off. I give up. So I figured since there was little chance at salvaging the discussion, I said “yeah, you’re right, the whole family is dissapointed in you because you’re twenty two years old and don’t have a degree, a car, a place of your own” and then she stood up and left. It was a really low blow for me to attack her like that, but it’s not fair that she can treat me like literal shit for years but I can’t even dish out a few insults one day. 

Iris, nick and I leave to go to my apartment, where we all calm down, pet mango, look at motorcycles. Then we went to get tacos, then I went home. 

Sunday night, iris says that she’s about to leave town, and wanted to see me one last time. We met up at the starbucks near my apartment. Frankly all of sunday I was just marinating in my emotions, and meeting at starbucks finally let it all out. 

One thing that I’m surprised took me 20 years to realize: rose is actually the root of all of my insecurities. And no, I’m not just saying that to make her look like the bad guy because I’m mad that she cut me off. Think about it. Where did I get the idea of “speak only when spoken to” imprinted into my head? When my parents forced me to be with rose after school and rose and her friends all treated me as an annoyance. How they ignored me, tried to act like I wasn’t there, while they all had fun together. The way they would literally pay me to leave them alone, sometimes. What about my incredibly bad body dysmorphia? Maybe the way her and her friends used to say “oh, you’ll have a glo up some day jasmine” as if I was ugly at the time. How I was just rose’s ugly little sister to them. Or, most glaringly, the time that rose did my makeup when I was 15 or so, and she took a step back to look at it halfway through, started laughing, and said “you just look so ugly.” I cried in the bathroom for 45 minutes after that. And the worst part is that that memory feels so faded, like I almost forgot about it. What else did I forget?

Anyways I tell this all to iris, and she said that I needed therapy. I scoffed at that, of course, because I’m fine. (Narrator voice: She was not fine). I tell myself that I’m okay now, that the emotional trauma caused by rose is nothing but the past, that I’m a well adjusted individual now. Iris bet me $40 that I couldn’t get a date in a month to see how well adjusted I was. 

Easy as fuck, all I need to do is go on straight tinder. Men swipe right on literally anything, so it’d be easy as hell to get a date. I even wrote the most batshit insane bio ever (I literally talked about my issues with rose and the $40 bet), and within 24 minutes I saw that 99+ men had swiped right. I swiped left on at least a few hundred guys, before I finally swiped right on one. Apparently he super liked me, so I said “was the super like by accident or do you just have that poor of taste in women” and yet! we actually made plans. Like kinda plans, like “I’m free tomorrow if that’s not too soon, we could get sushi” so it wasn’t set in stone, but there was decidedly something. And he was cute, too.

Monday morning I woke up and immediately unmatched him, followed by me deleting my account. Followed by me crying violently in bed for two hours, thinking about how he would have thought I was ugly irl, that I really am hideous, and don’t deserve love. That I deserved to die alone, because I have no personality and I’m the ugliest person alive. It sounds overly dramatic to see it typed out, but man, that morning I really wanted to die. That’s when I realized that maybe iris was right, maybe I do need therapy. 

But this is my issue, I don’t like letting people know about my feelings. I feel like I look weak. And it’s so easy for me to just, not tell a therapist things, because it makes me uncomfortable. I tried therapy a year ago, literally all I did was say “yeah I’m fine :)”. I’m starting the online therapy sessions that my college offers, because I don’t have to talk to anyone for it. And on top of that I have all of those things that I’m planning to do that I wrote in the last 2 updates. I want to improve my life, and I’m gonna start on it now. 

Tuesday I texted peter, letting him know my side. He said “I have my own opinions on the matter” and by that I assume he means his opinion is that he’s on rose’s side, of course, otherwise he would have stood up against her. After seeing that I left class an hour early and cried in the bathroom. I thought I was being quiet but this girl in the stall next to me knocked and asked if I was okay (I said yes). 

And yeah, like I said in the last update, it hurts that rose (and peter) are pretty much cut out of my life. They were kind of the only friends I had. But I have to remind myself that this is the exact same situation I dealt with in sophomore year of high school, with jackie. She stopped being my friend, and because of it I lost all of my friends. But this time around I’m gonna be able to meet new people, and a lot easier, since I’m in college. As a matter of fact, I got an email from this sorority I plan on joining today. I need time to heal, but I will heal.

And as soon as I get my braces off, I’m going to maybe try tinder again (no!!!!! I just said I don’t like tinder!!!!!! but maybe I’ll try again when my braces are off......)

Anyways, let me tell you about today, wednesday (we finally reached the end!). I woke up, scrolled through my socials like usual, then watched a few really old music videos. Like, pop punk old. Went to publix, got my waffles, then came home and watched the next episode of ore monogatari, basically as I had planned. But then I just started slacking because I didn’t feel like studying (I still haven’t studied). Went through my main blog’s archive. I really noticed that my blog has been dead exactly since I moved out. I guess I’ve just been too busy. My dashboard isn’t really my style, it’s very multifandom when these days I really only care about bts. I think I’m gonna get back into tumblr, at least it’s more stimulating then scrolling down the same reddit posts 20 times an hour. Anyways I saw my posts from when mono came out and MAN that’s some strong nostalgia. It was only about 10 months ago, but it feels so distant. That’s when I lived with my parents, and they were on vacation so I had the house to myself. While rose went to a halloween party, I stayed home and watched the forever rain music video on repeat while downing 4 beers and doing my econ homework (I got a 100 somehow, despite being sloshed). Anyways I’ve been listening to it on repeat the entire time I’ve been writing this.

Okay it’s 3:44 now. Man, this was a really long update. I think now I’m gonna make my cesar salad that I bought from publix, then study. I mean, the lowest test grade is dropped and I already passed the first two exams, so no big deal. Ugh I wish rose could buy me another pack of cider right now.