This is almost an exceptionally rare comic element in this arc: Sakura misunderstands the past (part of it), yet correctly anticipates the future. Her feminine intuition does not even need to know that, in Chapter 109, while she stayed up all night searching for the necklace Shinobu-kun had given her, Fumi was spending the night asleep with her arms around her naked boyfriend. Of course, Shinobu-kun’s secrecy regarding Fumi is impeccable. He has even prepared himself mentally for the possibility that “if I really had sex with Fumi while drunk, I need to apologize to her properly, and then I can never see her again.” Naturally, he would never tell Sakura—just as he buries every private interaction he has had with Fumi deep in his heart.
Of course, the author gives Shinobu-kun the same kind of setup: in Chapter 109, Shinobu-kun misunderstands Sakura’s past relationship with Nakanishi-kun—he thinks she cheated on him, when in fact she was only looking for the necklace—yet he also correctly anticipates the future.
Sakura believes that Shinobu-kun has abandoned her both professionally and emotionally—partly because of Shinobu-kun’s concealment, and partly because of Sakura’s own misunderstandings—and she falls apart.
During his depression, Shinobu-kun repeatedly suffers over the unspoken reality that Sakura has abandoned him both professionally and emotionally. Readers with an omniscient perspective, of course, know that he is doing terribly.
Yet the comic effect resurfaces a few months later in another intriguing form: Shinobu-kun does not contact Fumi for several months. Logically, that should mean a return to reason and a cooling-off period, but instead things heat up—within two hours of seeing Fumi again, Shinobu-kun makes her squirt, so long as Fumi takes the initiative.
Those blank months are agonizing for Shinobu-kun and Sakura’s old relationship, but for Shinobu-kun and Fumi’s relationship, they might as well not exist: even with absolutely no contact, they cause no negative effect whatsoever, and the relationship resumes seamlessly.
In Chapter 130, after Shinobu-kun and Fumi search all night without finding anything, they are at the filming location. Even after confirming that Shinobu-kun’s girlfriend is Sakura, Fumi uses the shoot as a pretext to voice her true feelings: “I want you to look only at me.” Shinobu-kun, who should be distraught over Sakura’s unknown whereabouts, instead blushes at the same time as Fumi after they look at each other, and turns his head away.
The author is clearly using similar narrative techniques throughout to portray these complex character relationships: unless you have an omniscient perspective, the people at the center of events do not necessarily see the truth.
But not seeing the truth does not mean being unable to sense it.
