come out and play~

when kamiya was introduced into the manga, she was described to be tall, cool, athletic, and popular with guys and gals alike.  at this point, my queer coding spidey senses at tingling and i'm tentatively buckling in as its repeatedly implied that she has feelings for the male protagonist's girlfriend and focus of the story, shikimori. but that's not what this manga had in store for kamiya. and honestly, i couldn't be more relieved. if you've read "shikimori san isn't just cute" or whichever of the 100 translations you've heard of the title in the past two or so years, you know that it's a mostly easygoing manga, which is to say an unrequited queer love arc would either be a tonal whiplash or setup for a running joke, which, like, yea, i can do without that. Luckily, it turns out that, instead, she kind of sort of likes izumi instead of shikimori. it was just kind of a bait and switch, which didn't matter anyway cuz she got shut down in like 2 chapters, which is exactly how i'd expect a story so infatuated with the idea of shikimori and izumi being together to be.      so.       why kamiya? why talk about her at all? up till now she's been positively bog standard. what does she offer to the story after that? well, believe it or not, she ends up giving the audience one of my favorite side character arcs to date. 

ya see, before kamiya's introduced into the manga, we have our main unit cast. of that main cast is nekozaki, and it just so turns out that she was friends with kamiya prior to kamiya's introduction to the manga. but here's the catch. like i said before, kamiya's a popular girl. so much so that she kind of got bombarded with affection to the point that it got a little overwhelming for her, so, as an act of self preservation, she just....retracted. and the thing is, it's no one's fault--nekozaki's outreach alone is kindness, but taken in totality with everyone else's similar eagerness, it just becomes, well, a little too much. call it the ordeal of being known. but then izumi happens. and as is said in the manga, she wants to be known, and to know. and with that change of priority comes the frontier of reckoning with the unreciprocated, unsolicited positive attention. the prospective friendships and unforgettable nights she turned down on principle. so she reckons with it. and she apologizes. to nekozaki for her past self. not because she was knowingly malicious or selfish, but because someone got hurt on the sidelines. nekozaki put herself out there to spend the precious commodity of time with kamiya, and was repatedly rejected as kamiya simply wasn't ready for that kind of relationship. again, it's no one's fault, at least not to the extent that anyone has to cast aspersion. it's just a classic case of "wrong place, wrong time". The arc is tender and mindful of feelings, not unlike most of the manga, but unique mostly to this arc is the quality of its messiness and deft nuance.