You and I Are Polar Opposites (正反対な君と僕)

Congrats!

I'm so happy for you!

Wishing you happiness together!

Yay! Yay!

Thank you.

Yamada got himself a girlfriend.

Who's the girl? Is it someone I know?

Who said it first?

What number date were you on?

Hey! Calm down!

He's really getting grilled.

Girls really love hearing about other people's love lives, don't they?

Why is that?

Why ask me?

It's not just love life stuff.

Your hearing's way too good.

We just want to get excited about good news!

And join in.

That's jumping on the bandwagon.

The life essence obtained from romantic gossip rejuvenates the heart.

Are you a witch?

Who doesn't wanna celebrate a pal's happiness, though, right?

Why are you talking like that?

And don't all answer in a row like that!

Taira, your Prince Shotoku-style retorts are on point again today.

I never agreed to that role!

Did you get a Valentine's gift?

Yeah!

I'm jealous!

Yamada-san, nice work!

Sounds nice! Very nice!

To be honest...

I thought I'd feel a lot more conflicted about this.

I might be headed toward falling in love with someone.

But since I watched the process unfold...

Actually, I'm in love now

I'm honestly glad for him.

Yamada, I'm happy for you.

You're saying that now?!

Thanks

I'm curious. What's the girl like?

I have a photo.

Your phone screen's busted!

GIGGLE

GIGGLE

She works library duty with Tani. Right?

Huh? Tani, you know her from before?

Yeah.

So that's what was going on.

It wasn't me.

It was Tani...

YOU AND I ARE

POLAR OPPOSITES

Once again...

I was a scared victim of a delusion created by my own misunderstanding.

Hey, Taira...

You tend to hold back laughter, don't you?

Huh? Why the sudden question?

It might seem sudden...

but I've low-key noticed it for a while now.

I saw you make a sort of squishy, smiley face a few times today,

Squishy...?

and realized that I haven't really seen you burst out laughing.

And it turns out... that pudding was my older brother's!

The way he laughs is so creepy.

He shouldn't eavesdrop on people's conversations.

My friends are coming over, so stop laughing like that.

Taira's older sister

What?

It'd be weird for me to laugh a lot, wouldn't it?

What?

Do you think you're the cool type?

No, I don't.

I...

have a creepy laugh.

Huh? Is that something you'd know yourself?

People told me a long time ago.

A girl in class, and others...

It was in elementary school, and that's all they said.

But that's when my habit of holding back laughter started.

Wait, why am I...

Ever since elementary school?

A deeply stubborn habit!

"Deeply Stubborn"

"Deeply Stubborn"

"Deeply Stubborn"

That was years ago now, though, right?

m 280 229 l 291 305 311 318 329 311 344 269 344 215 327.67 204.81 306 208 296 208 287.23 212.2

I'm a man who stubbornly holds a grudge...

That must be exhausting.

Huh?

So, every time something makes you laugh,

you get a flash of a bad memory?

That's gotta be rough, right?

Oh... No, it's just a habit now, so it doesn't bother me.

Really?

Why did I tell her that when I didn't have to?

No, it still bothers me! What do you mean, you have a creepy laugh?

People are better off being able to laugh!

This is embarrassing

It's fine already!

What's her problem? Whoever said that...

If it was Nabe, I'll hit her with a cinder block!

Does she have a history of saying stuff like that?

See? The train's angry, too.

No, it's not.

The emergency stop button has been pressed, so the train has come to a stop.

Seriously?

Azuma, do you have work today?

Changing subjects

It's fine. I don't have work today.

SILENCE...

What else? Don't you have any more complaints?

I know you do. Bring 'em on out.

Stop assuming that I do! Why are you doing this all of a sudden?

Taira, you know, before...

you got angry for my sake and said I was the only one getting worn down.

Please forget all that...

Y-Yeah.

The thing is, before you said that, I'd never even considered it.

But once you did say it, I realized that you were right.

I tried thinking back on stuff,

and those times when I shouldn't have just let things slide.

I've gotten better and better at recognizing them.

I feel a little bit better.

It's a sense of progress, right?

Huh? What was I talking about again?

I messed up the landing.

So, um, basically...

I'll listen to whatever you've got, you know?

This time, I'll do it!

That summary is so sloppy.

I appreciate the thought.

Yeah?

Thank you.

Sure.

Oh, we're moving.

Hey, is it okay if I sleep?

Will you wake me up when we get to the station?

Sure.

A sense of progress.

Unlike in the past, I have friends I can honestly celebrate the good stuff with.

And I have someone I can open up to about my weaknesses.

Right now, that's the environment I'm in.

And for me, that's progress.

Or rather, I get the feeling that it isn't.

The way I overthink things and recall a bunch of stuff...

It's like a habit for my head to just overflow with all of that.

It isn't that I'm working hard to resolve anything.

I lucked out by having these people around me right now,

but my own nature hasn't changed at all.

PAST

Azuma is digging through her past...

Improvement

and using it to change her present.

Now

While I drag it out to provide an reason

for why I am the way that I am.

I take all the unpleasant things from my past

and position them where it's easy for me to recall them.

I link them together within myself

to pretend I understand my present.

I'm like this now

because this happened in the past

I'm just staring at the wounds in my heart.

It's like time spent in self-harm.

I'm aware of that, and I'm still doing it.

Forget making progress...

I'm moving backward.

That's how it is. I haven't accepted myself,

so I can't imagine anyone else accepting me as I am.

Unless I break this habit of digging up the past...

Next stop, Yamaneko Station. Yamaneko Station.

Azuma, the station is coming up.

Morning.

Why?

Huh? Why what?

Oh, this?

If you shut out the light, you can sleep for real, right?

Wait... What was I thinking about again?

If I were alone, I'd look suspicious, but you were here, so I figured it was fine.

It's not fine. Don't lay your suspiciousness on me.

Taira, people might've thought you're a suspicious person's companion.

Why am I the companion?

But I was awake

That's a lot of laughing.

It's just... Taira, the angle of your reaction is funny.

What does that even mean?

Now you're starting to laugh, too.

BWA HA...

MNN...

HEE HEE...

Terrible at fine-tuning

He's right. The way he laughs is pretty unique.

How funny...

What happens in March: Number 1...

Graduation!

Well, to start with, a graduation ceremony is...

~Connected through Cheer Squad~

The third-year upperclassmen have graduated.