TL;DR Version:
We go into the past with Sakura and his Mom as he slowly lost his hearing. His Mom watched him suffer and tried to help, but mostly got rejected. Questioning his past decision to ghost his friends, Sakura understands why his mom was so helpless and kept saying the same things. Back in Tokyo, he buys a CD from Aoba and they have a skinship-sign-language moment.
Recap:
Flashback to that time Sakura didn’t tell Aoba about losing his hearing, and now we see him coming home crying. His mom follows him to his room, and he tells her to keep his condition a secret. She doesn’t want to, but he’s adamant.
Sometime later, his Mom is making some dishes like Aoba’s mom last episode. The older sister is there and they talk about Sakura quitting sports. The mom takes a magazine on Deaf sports over with the food.
Sakura is wearing hearing aids but doesn’t hear her. He already got rid of his soccer stuff and when she mentions Deaf sports, he pulls off his hearing aids and covers his ears. He doesn’t want to hear her talk about him being hearing impaired when he can still hear.
At some other time, I got confused about the timeline in places, Sakura is home again. His mom gives him a New Years’ postcard from Minato that he ignores and goes upstairs. When the younger sister gets home she’s warned he’s in a bad mood.
There are loud noises from upstairs. Sakura has yanked his CDs from his shelf and some are broken. He blames his headphones not working. His mom tries to talk to him, but he cries and can’t hear her. The father makes the women leave and sits with him.
More time passes. Sakura’s older sister is pregnant, and their Mom is going to see Sakura rather than buy baby clothes. The pregnant sister is worried about her baby, and whether it’s a genetic thing and it’ll be her fault. The Mom isn’t sympathetic, and the sisters feel neglected.
But when the sister is in the hospital after having the baby, the mom is visiting every day. They’re overjoyed to learn the baby can hear. When the sister visits home with an older-looking baby, Sakura also wants to know if his nephew can hear.
Aoba is sorting through her CDs. Her younger brother teases her love for the outdated media. She also prefers to read the lyric cards that come with them instead of looking online. The younger brother wants to know if it’s okay he can’t sign (which is when I figured out we were back in the present). Aoba says it’s okay. The younger brother asks about Minato, who also can’t sign.
Minato and Sakura meet up in their hometown so Minato can hand over the note Aoba wrote to Sakura that ended up in a CD Minato received. It came up in an earlier episode and I’m not sure I kept it in my recap.
Sakura’s mother comes across them and sees Sakura smiling. She tries to invite Minato over but Sakura declines. When Sakura comes home alone, the Mom apologizes for overhearing their conversation.
Sakura signs that he’s not sure why he was hiding his condition. He thought it was better for everyone to forget rather than get their hearts broken. But instead, it was even more heartbreaking, and it turns out he can still talk to them. He realizes now that it was similar for his mom, she didn’t know what to say so she just said “It’s alright.”
She signs that she knows because she’s his mom he might not want to tell her things, and that’s okay, but he can also talk to her. Also, she worries about him even though he doesn’t want her to.
His younger sister directs him to come upstairs, and they look at the CDs and then start putting them back on the shelves. Soon the older sister joins. They start teasing each other, and downstairs the parents are happy to hear them being noisy together.
Sakura thanks his mom with his voice when she drops him off to go home.
Sakura shows up at Aoba’s work to get a CD. She offers to loan him her copy, but he wants to buy it and read the lyric cards. When Aoba gets off work he’s sitting outside, engrossed. He pulls out the old note from her, and she’s embarrassed. He offers it back in exchange for her lending her favorite CDs. She agrees, but he still won’t give the note back and she’s annoyed with Minato.
Minato is drinking with a friend at the bar when the sign language instructor shows up. The teacher drops the letter from Nana, and Minato recognizes the name. He and the friend tease the teacher about their relationship until the teacher mentions it’s been 8 years. Outside, Minato gets poetic and blames Sakura.
Sakura and Aoba are walking and Sakura gets poetic. Aoba wants to revisit plans they made back in college and go to different places. Sakura teases they just did that by going to the big Tower Records in Tokyo, which is where she works now. When Aoba does a sign poorly, Sakura physically fixes her hands. It’s the sign for ‘forever’ and a nice little intimate moment.
Thoughts:
My mom also felt guilty when both her children had hearing impairments.
I enjoyed this episode, but I also felt a little frustrated by it. I feel like we just glided over the surface of what was really going on. But maybe I also liked that about this episode. Because it was a lot about people’s inability to communicate. As her son lost his hearing, his Mom couldn’t say or do anything that would make it better. And when he didn’t want his friend to know, and she tried to argue with him, he pointed out that nothing they could say would make it better. So she got stuck in this place where she couldn’t say anything. And as a viewer, I think that’s more frustrating to watch than people fighting. People fighting are at least communicating, though it can be very destructive.
The timeline was confusing though. I think they added some moments with Aoba, which I didn’t cover, at her job to try and orientate us, but they didn’t do much for me besides break up the Sakura sections. I’m still not entirely sure when some things happened, but it’s not a big deal.
I always appreciate Asian dramas’ ability to show intimacy. When Sakura touched Aoba’s hands and repositioned them it was a nice little moment.
I really appreciate how slow this show is going. Sakura and Aoba are getting close pretty soon after her break with Minato, which I don’t think is unrealistic and I do think is necessary for the story to keep moving. In these past few episodes, they haven’t immediately started a romantic relationship and are just working on being together. But for the final two episodes (because apparently there are 11 total when I’ve been thinking it was 10) I am hoping we focus on Aoba and Sakura and them moving forward.