neko's thinkbox

Early morning, Ryuuji walks over to Taiga’s house to wake her up and make her breakfast. Ryuuji notices a box in the closet of the living room. Inside is a photo album filled with blurry photos… of Kitamura. Of course, curiosity killed the cat – Taiga stands right behind him, ready to punch him over the head but Ryuuji plays the ignorance card (photos were too blurry to recognize a person) and avoids a fight. In turn, he offers Taiga to take some pictures of Yuusaku for her… Heh, he sure knows how to handle her these days.

So the plan is: take as many photos as possible from every kind of angle. Just thinking about it makes Taiga curl up in her dere fantasies. But it’s easier said than done… During the morning drill, the fifth character that was presented in the opening finally makes her appearance: Kawashima Ami – NOT. SHE’S NOT AMI, THAT WAS CONFIRMED IN IRC, and on second glance indeed, IT’S NOT HER THANK YOU. President of the student council, Ami is a very authoritative (if not arrogant) person.
During her wild speech, she forgets her text, twice even. The problem with this is that Taiga doesn’t like at all when Yuusaku whispers the forgotten text into Ami’s ears. And as we know our outspoken Taiga, she starts protesting against the entire hierarchy, starting a battle of wits against Ami who seems to be enjoying the situation… until Yuusaku intervenes.

After that, it’s a rollercoaster of melancholy for Taiga during class. Picking a fight with the prez worries her, but the fact that Yuusaku grabbed restrained Taiga from behind like that balances it out. Yuusaku, however, claims that Ami isn’t a resentful person, and seeing Ryuuji’s bento on Taiga’s desk also makes him decide to eat together, which Minorin immediately approves of as well. Suddenly, they four of them are eating together!

As always, the uncomfortable ones are our main pair, “Tiger” and “Dragon”. Once they engaged in conversation about Ryuuji’s bento though, Minori and Yuusaku are called out for a meeting of the softball club. Taiga is in heaven, but Ryuuji reminds her that she shouldn’t have blurted that info out, especially after they made clear that there’s nothing between them. Heck just look at them, there is so much between them, even a blind guy could spot it with his eyes closed (oh shit, that wasn’t funny).

Club activities in the afternoon: Ryuuji happily scrubs the walls of the men’s toilet with a toothbrush. His mania for cleanliness really is something… (I’m not saying I envy him for that, though). But then Taiga drags him out to the field, where Kitamura is playing baseball. Of course, she hasn’t forgotten about the plan: stalking taking photos of Yuusaku.
Ryuuji gives up and tries to find the settings of the camera, and impatient Taiga already snags the camera and takes the photos by herself – blurred out, as they all were in the album. Clumsy tsundere.

After contemplating her printed photos at Star-Sudohbucks, Taiga wants to help Ryuuji in the kitchen. Why, because he took the pictures for Taiga? No, because he promised to make a bento for Minorin and… Yuusaku as well. Apparently the food isn’t that bad… heh. And there I thought it’d be worse than Hisui’s food… *gets bricked by Hisui*

Finally, Taiga keeps looking at Yuusaku’s photos again and again, until Ryuuji suggests to laminate some pictures so they wouldn’t wear off. During her selection process though, Taiga becomes all serious, lets off some tsun remarks at the Dragon and leaves.

The next day at school, she still couldn’t decide on her photos so she just tosses them at Ryuuji to have him choose the best ones. And who else would be best to assist him in his task than… the man himself, Kitamura Yuusaku? He even shows Ryuuji a photo of Taiga in his small notepad, tells him that he had liked her before and even confessed, but got severely dumped.
This gets Ryuuji mad, and takes her to the roof for explanations.

She explains how that weird confession went, he told her he liked her, she refused, then after a while she started liking him for no apparent reason. Ryuuji I (with my poor japanese stream listening skills) assume that she must have been feeling lonely in her apartment, and that Kitamura was the only one who had shown her affection.
The reason why she couldn’t pick a picture of Yuusaku was because none had the face of his from that time when he confessed. She wants to see it once again… tsuntsun!