Recap

Yutaka arrives home in a daze, not sure if the kiss was real. After kissing him on the cheek, Minoru immediately apologized and left.

Minoru is home, looking depressed.

The next day Minoru’s boss has some ramen-love wisdom for him about not pretending everything is fine and dealing with the problem.

Meanwhile, Yutaka’s nice coworker had a fight with her boyfriend and wants advice. He tells her to reach out to her boyfriend and realizes he should reach out to Minoru.

Yutaka hesitates over the “send” button when Minoru texts him first. They meet at a cafe and things are awkward. 

Finally, we hear about their first meeting. Minoru and Tane’s mother had just died, and Minoru was struggling with his feelings. And Tane. While Tane was throwing a fit, Yutaka showed up and helped.

Thanks to Yutaka’s kindness, Minoru felt better for the first time since his mom died. 

Present-day Minoru confesses that he likes Yutaka and that being with him makes him happy. Yutaka has no answer, and a sad looking Minoru takes Yutaka’s hand. He knew this would make him uncomfortable and he wants things to go back to the same as always. 

At home, Yutaka is in a daze again. At home, Minoru looks depressed again. 

Some other day, Minoru tells Tane that Yutaka might not come by anytime soon because he’s busy. Their Dad looks concerned.

Yutaka lays in bed and reflects that it’s been a while since he’s been at home alone on the weekend. He cleans his house and eats a riceball.

The brother’s father burns their meal while Tane tries to steal Minoru’s phone to call Yutaka. Minoru wonders if they can really go back to before

Yutaka rewatches a video the brothers sent on Christmas and remembers the feeling of Minoru kissing his cheek and touching his hand. He gets a text from his older brother about visiting for New Year’s. Laying in bed, he is overwhelmed by his problems.

Thoughts

Full points to Minoru for giving a confession beyond ‘I like you’ and being unambiguous about how Yutaka makes him happy. 

Non-consensual cheek-kissing aside, I don’t think there was any way Minoru could share his feelings with Yutaka without startling him. Yutaka, probably by nature but made worse by his upbringing, can’t process what’s going on in this relationship and or his feelings that quickly. 

His even being a part of the Minoru/Tane family happened without much thinking from him. Minoru and Tane just pulled him in and he slid right into place. I think that’s how he was able to become so close to them. If he’d thought about it too much it wouldn’t have happened.

Now the relationship requires input from him and he needs time to think it over and realize his own feelings about what’s happening.

If he were less emotionally involved, Minoru might realize this about Yutaka. But having given that kind of confession and gotten no answer, of course, he’s backpedaling. 

Side note about our side character, I love that both Minoru and Yutaka have people at work who support and help them. And they’re all connected by food! Makes up for this, once again, being an episode with no new food. We didn’t even get to see their coffee.

So here, are recipes for ramen.

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