Skirt no Naka wa Kedamono Deshita. – Episode 10 (RAW)

While Ryou is in class, Shizuka walks the campus alone and runs into Sumire Sakurai. The rumor she hears is simple and poisonous: Sumire and Ryou look good together. People already pair them in their heads. Then Shizuka sees Ryou and Sumire talking, and the sight hits her in the chest.

The pain is jealousy, even if she is slow to call it that. She has spent the series asking whether she is allowed to want him. Other people’s eyes answer first. If the campus already imagines Ryou with someone polished and matching, where does that leave the girl who met him at a mixer and found a man under a skirt?

Ryou’s quiet “you’re so cute” is aimed at Shizuka, not at the rumor. The episode is the first time her feeling is not only confusion or heat. It is possessiveness. She does not like watching him look like he belongs beside someone else. That ache is how she finds out this is no longer just something happening to her. She cares who stands next to him.