Fukuda is so good at getting tension across. Those pages of the two of them talking were dripping with discomfort even when neither of them were shown.
Calling Non-chan's appearance "forced drama" is silly considering Non-chan is the reason for basically everything about Gojo's personality. She's literally on PAGE ONE of the whole series! It would be more surprising if she didn't show back up at some point. Her reappearing means he can finally get closure.
Thanks for the translation!
This is how I'm feeling about this arc. It's genuinely very funny to see the author very deliberately establish tension and frustration in the characters, only to check the comments and see a bunch of people assume she has to be doing it by accident or because of some evil greedy motivation lmao. Like "damn how dare art have complex challenging feelings, if your art has complex challenging feelings that is bad and 'forced'! wah!"
For posterity:
1) the reason Wakana reacted negatively is because he saw the results of his perfectionism with the cosplaying result in Marin getting put on a pedestal far beyond his understanding or perceived reach. He turned her into, at least for that moment, a celebrity, or even more than that some kind of ethereal being beyond humanity, and is frustrated that she's so far away and anxious that she'll only keep moving farther, but feels powerless to control it.
2) Even without the phone call Marin would have struggled to say what she wants to say, because she's not even sure what the problem and she can't just blurt out "hey what's wrong with you". She can sense Wakana's distant and feeling bad but has no idea why, because her perspective on the Haniel crowd was completely different from anyone else's.
3) this ain't getting resolved next chapter either, because the cousin isn't going to be an obvious easy villain Marin can defeat by sticking up for Wakana. She doesn't even know who that is, and Wakana's nightmares about something that happened over a decade ago are very unlikely to reflect on the present day person in front of them.
4) seriously these characters are fifteen years old, they could not remotely describe how they're feeling like how I'm describing them now based on observation. They just feel bad and anxious and will take some time to work it out. They're going to need some excuse to spend a whole night together like when the 'contrived' plot 'forced' the drama of Wakana having to stay over at Marin's apartment because of a storm shutting down the trains.
