Shin'yuu no Otto wo Ubatta no wa, Watashi deshita - Ch. 5

[Radicool21]

Seeing Rio's jealousy in full swing though, I'm not certain they could have salvaged things even if everyone had been honest from the start. Rio seems so prideful and wanting to appear 'better' and more put together, that some sort of crashout might have been inevitable for her.

Yeah, I think this is a scenario where at least one involved party has to have a certain level of self-awareness beforehand, otherwise it ends up snowballing (which is why Momoka is so important later). If Rio had been properly able to seek counseling / been honest with her friends / gtfo of that marriage or at least set boundaries, it wouldn't have gotten to this point in the first place. Same applies to Mahoro. (Not to say that the blame is on them; both of their men are unrepentant narcissists)

The author also making it blatant how in her own head Rio is, when Rei's co-worker outright says, "of course you can never tell what's real or not, this is 'Rei' we are talking about". She's only met Rei like 3-ish times up to this point so she has no idea how much he could be exaggerating and basically self-confirms that he's telling the truth.

Feel like this is also pretty relevant to social media, where we only see curated images of people's lives and not the functional reality. Rio was scouting Mahoro's page in an earlier chapter to validate her assumptions, and it was the same sort of publicizing that led to her downfall too.

 

[donlanthirion]

Yikes, now I wasn't expecting to have a complete 180 on my opinion on Rio; but I wasn't expecting to hate her more with a factor rather than a percentage.

Given the blame game they played when they got caught, I was expecting Rei to be the one to come onto her; but this is complete seduction attempt.

Well... We knew she was the sort of person who would record her cheating videos for profit, and who would keep used condoms to "gift" them to her friend. I don't expect her to take any decent action.

Man Rio is just really awful isn't she. I can't think of one good character point she has other than small business owner.

And an AV actress!

Yea this 10000% is not a redemption arc. More like a irredeemable arc JESUS RIO!

Yeap. Just enjoy the ride and hope you won't meet anyone like Rio. Or Rei. Or Itsuki, Ryouko, manga-authors-with-fingerprint-kits...

 

[wiz_gmc]

Why were Rio and Mahoro so intent to lie and not correct the (frankly a bit callous) assumptions about their couples?

It's so sad. Kyouko gave Mahoro the perfect set-up with "my bedroom is already dead", but then tore it right back with "I doubt Mahoro needs help", which dumped a bunch of social pressure on her. Something we can learn from this, leave that room to open up instead of closing it for no reason.

 

[Miskatonic81]

Also it shows Rio shaking whenever her husband comes near but she says she doesn't hate him. Girl can't even be honest with herself.

 

[Achaius]

The friend is saying as clearly as he's allowed to not trust the jackass' words lol.

This is your brain on idolatry.

 

[silverpetricof]

Thank you for the translation.

 

[Jatopian]

lol at the author's note. Cookies usually aren't an attack, especially from a supposed friend!

 

[Beatrice]

Rio continues to ignore what she doesn't like to hear

She continues to see only the most superficial side of things

She's a hypocrite who fails to empathize with Mahoro. Both unsatisfied with their lives and lying. The difference is that Mahoro didn't really know it, so Rio comes off as a much worse person.

On the other hand, Rei continues to seem charming to those who don't know better. His friends on the other hand all say the same thing. He's an unreliable man and a liar.

As for Itsuki...again, nowhere near as bad as you'd expect. He really just has shitty expectations of his spouse and manipulates her to get it. That's the worst of it. Rio isn't even justified in cheating (as if you could ever be) because she didn't love him for anything but superficial reasons in the first place.

 

[Jatopian]

As for Itsuki...again, nowhere near as bad as you'd expect. He really just has shitty expectations of his spouse and manipulates her to get it. That's the worst of it.

Let us not forget that he also destroyed at least one of her possessions, which is beyond manipulation and firmly into abuse territory.

 

[Friendly-Sentence710]

Ah so even Rio's claim that he forced himself on her was a lie huh.

I'm telling you. Rei has that magic cancer-curing dick that tastes like fine dutch chocolate. Him just existing is seducing every woman in 30ft radius, he cannot help it. He is mentioned by name in the employee sexual harrassment training as someone to help keep from being sexually harassed by the female employees.

I hope we can see how struggle Rei and his mom life after Itsuki sue him, i need that!

Itsuki uses settlement from Rei to hire a maid, fixes their marriage.

This is your brain on Rio. Lewd seduction of Rei there. LMAO at Mahoro happily eating the cookies without a care in the world. Sorry Itsuki, but hair-sniffing will always be creepy.

Eh, hits different when its their wife/spouse.

 

[feignedremoteness]

lollll all of Rei’s friends saying that he’s kind of a bad person never stops being funny. it seems like he’s the sort of guy that’s good to have around (ie can make work social events less awkward, knows how to keep the mood chill) as long as you know exactly how far to trust him

Rio is such a perfectionist….she thinks as long as she “behaves correctly” she should receive rewards, and that it’s wrong for Mahoro to get nice things if she’s slacking off. She’s probably only okay with her other friends because they have enough life problems that she can look down on them. Maybe they were okay friends in college because they were all pursuing different majors and career paths? But now that there’s “comparison” it’s setting Rio off.

I think that Itsuki and Rio are both perfectionists, and that’s why they got along while they were dating. I also feel like I understand Itsuki’s motivations for the party more…he knows that showing the sex video publicly is an awful thing to do, so he needs to “justify” it…Rio having cheated isn’t enough, so he waits for Mahoro to confront her. Then he can say “WELL, if you had just owned up to the truth instead of lying and blaming it on your friend, then I wouldn’t have HAD to show that video.”
It’s important to frame it as “Rio’s fault that this happened.”

 

[ghostkun]

oh of course the cookies were an attack, can't just be eating cookies noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

[UdenEmpati]

Let us not forget that he also destroyed at least one of her possessions, which is beyond manipulation and firmly into abuse territory.

there's also his behavior at Mahoro's anniversary party.
It takes a special kind of person to demand naked dogeza from your wife in front of others, along with the man she was having an affair with (also it's not your house, it's the house of that man and your wife's soon-to-be-former-friend), and Rio was so conditioned to his treatment of her that she responded almost mechanically before Mahoro stepped in and stopped it all.

And Ituski dragged Rio from the party by her hair, as well, so.
That was all behavior he had no qualms with complete strangers (to him) bearing witness to.

 

[xaoxao]

people online are only capable of viewing people as victims or victimizers. rio is human and making some very poor choices under duress. clearly her sense of what a relationship should constitute is messed up and she's searching for any scrap of connection without expectation. it's interesting to look at the layers within her, the whole point of this spinoff is to analyze her own motivations. the fact that she's being abused doesn't make her a good person any more than cheating with her friends husband makes her a bad person. putting all characters in a box labeled good or bad is such a boring way to read literature.

 

[iris_19]

lol at the author's note. Cookies usually aren't an attack, especially from a supposed friend!

You would be surprised.

(Something something about two nickles. Although, I wonder if it's because of culture norms in Japan? because baking might express feminity and such? Because it's expected from a "perfect" housewife?)

I feel like Rio's mindset might have been "I can bake these cookies for all of you, with such delicacy, and exquisiteness... but I bet for sure you cannot even cook as much as that, my friends... especially you, Mahoro~". Like, feeding your own ego and the like, an act of superiority towards her friends - the always single Momoka, the "married but zero sex life!" Kyouko and "failure wifey with a perfect marriage" Mahoro.

And it's kind of sad? Because I think the others were all simply like "yay! cookies! expected from a friend with her own café!" kind of way?

And since Mahoro didn't react negatively or threaten or whatever... maybe that's why Rio ended up going to the next step with the letter and the used condom? in a "lmao, I'm having SO much better sex with your husband than you have!" way (although I feel Rio setting up the SNS account was probably the step before that).

 

[SleepyDemon]

"hurr durr I'm a brokie pay for me"

"get me tickets"

"ugh chores???"

How tf did this pathetic bitchboi basically land 3/4 of the friendgroup? I need a spinoff of Itsuki torturing this man in a derelict warehouse.