Huh, weirdly enough, I feel like seeing their childhood relationship made some parts of this story fall into place for me. Don't get me wrong, it's still absurd on the face of it, but I feel like I can see an internal consistency in the story and characters that I was missing before.
This chapter didn't really give us any new information, but maybe because it's among the first time the story has shown us some core traits of the characters, rather than just telling or implying through dialogue.
To lay it all out in explicit terms: Komaki fell in love with Wakaba early on. She was aware of her feelings, even being on the brink of confessing them. Seeing how Wakaba interacts with her, it would be hard to blame Komaki for even thinking that her feelings might be requited. Then obviously something happened between them, likely related to the guy Komaki dated and Wakaba had a crush on. The order of causation is still left to speculation for now, but Komaki feels compelled to interfere between Wakaba and the boy, Wakaba comes to resent Komaki, and Komaki comes to believe that her feelings for Wakaba are irreconcilable.
The most straightforward interpretation of events is that Komaki became jealous when Wakaba started showing interest in someone else, and decided to sabotage and antagonize Wakaba as she immediately assumed that was the only way she could continue to capitalize Wakaba's attention for herself, but there are slightly more convoluted ways we could've reached the current point in the story with the information given. For example, Komaki could've known the guy Wakaba was interested in to be a scumbag and thought she was protecting Wakaba from him, only to be distraught when she realized her own actions hurt Wakaba, and is now playing the villain as a confused form of self punishment, while fulfilling her most selfish desires in a forceful way, as a villain would do. Convoluted, but it's clear from this chapter that the cynical sociopath isn't simply Komaki's 'true nature' or something so shallow.
Regardless, at some point, Komaki probably felt confused and hurt by her own interpretation of her relationship with Wakaba appearing to be innaccurate. How, when, and even if she confronted and coped with this betrayal of expectation is still up in the air, but it clearly led to or was involved in a series of events that lead to their relationship becoming twisted and distorted.
Another thing that still needs explanation is Wakaba's own romantic experiences. She's clearly attracted to Komaki, and was affectionate with her at one point, so the question is what was going on with the boy in middle school and how did she crush Komaki's hopes so badly? Was it purely comphet and she didn't really care for the boy that much? Is she bi, the crush was genuine, and was never conscious of Komaki until she became more aggressive? Or was it a misunderstanding and she never actually liked the boy in that way? Idk, all seem possible at this point.
Anyways, this is semi-incoherent rambling and I kind of forgot where I was going with this. I guess I was just using text to sort out my thoughts a bit, but since I typed it all out, I guess I'll just leave it here. Not sure if there's anything to get out of it for anyone else reading though.
Basically, Komaki and Wakaba are both still huge idiots, but whereas before it felt like the story's concept was forcing them to act like idiots for them to carry it out, now it feels like the concept itself is a natural result of them being idiots, and makes sense in world, or something like that.
Great write up and I like the idea of using spoiler tag for extended analysis to save space. I will definitely be stealing that and saying it was my idea.
