The Summer You Were There - Vol. 1 Ch. 5 - Confession

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There's the aquarium date for the yuri checklist.

To be honest I still remember how I abandoned someone who people were teasing for being gay (or at least for being perceived as gay) and I didn't want to be ostracized and I'm still haunted by the remorse from that. Even though I was a kid at the time.
 
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Oh this got serious , thought she killed someone by accident but she was being a bad person on purpose ? lol or maybe it will end up good , i dont know.
 
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@WhereTheYuriAt

There's three paragraphs on there. I do not think they are valid arguments and are mostly my opinion based on the stuff I've been reading these last three years. Don't read to much into it, I'm in an edgy mood lately.

The way I understand it is that kindness itself might be a pretty self-centered thing, because you are pushing your good will in others without their consideration or consent. Following that train of thought, there's nothing more self-centered than altruism because it means that while you think you are doing good for someone else, in the end is just pure self-satisfaction.

Self-satisfaction in this context becomes a behaviour that not only is not negative, but desirable. Most of the validation comes from within and not from the others and that's quite positive in most scenarios. Being true to yourself and your values it's also a form of self-satisfaction, and it's egotistical with all the weight of the word. So, the question is: Is egoism truly a bad thing overall?

No, it's not. It's the excess of it that is really troublesome. And I think you would agree with me at least on that.

TL;DR: While I admit the election of the word egotistical might have been an exageration, I do not think that the word has to have a negative connotation per se.

Also, that's why I said we don't really know if there's an specific situation that makes her repent her elementary school days that much. Like, something way harsher than just bullying should have happened because of her actions and the guilt rendered her a loner all the way through middle-school, summerging her in a pool of self-deprecation for YEARS. You are right the motivation is lacking right now, but that's just an interesting mystery for later I guess.

I'm afraid the author would just use Hoshikawa as a self-insert character tho...
 
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If I was going to bet on a trope, I'd put money down on "Joined in on bullying someone that resulted in the individual leaving the school." Suicide seems a little heavy for this manga.

On the other hand, Target driven out of school means developing another character for setting up a reconciliation/apology arc, which could make it a little less likely.
 
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Somebody send help. This manga is an enormous pile of bad end flags. I don’t remember feeling this uneasy about a manga...

Still... it was a very heartwarming date. I hope that we get more insight about her backstory in the next chapter (and I hope that it does make sense, like @Bistai said).
 
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@NightmareWeeb Bad end flags? I don't think it's that kind of genre. In the romance fluff world, airing out the past baggage is just the step you take to be able to get over it and move forward with lurve.
 
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Aaaah i dont wanna cry again if something happend i will freaking scream i just hope to wish nothing will happend :-(
 
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Well sh*t.
Imagine Asuka is the she used to bully and she has serious health problem now......
God damn it
 
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The incessant toilet-breaks is yet another terminal-illness death flag... but it would also be inconsistent as it didnt happen at the library and this activity wasn't much more strenuous. Feels like the author is spamming so many terminal-illness death flags that it is either not going to happen, or mc is going to be the one dying, as a "twist".

Since she knew of her past (and address, etc.), I assume she is the little sister (because she is so tiny mc looks like a levitating ghost on some panels) of the friend she bullied into suicide (no clue how they are in same year. maybe she was held back from locking herself in her room for some while? Or lil sis did something to get elevated? Or the ages aren't that apart and she simply is tiny for her age?), either wanting a convoluted revenge, or feeling like it wasn't actually her fault and saw her ruin her life with guilt she wants to help fix. With the symbolism of the morningglory, I assume its at least not revenge (they might symbolize the love the theorized dead sister held for mc instead tho, expressed in a theorized novel. Would also explain why she would keep on having flashbacks to "disgusting" relating to writing novels, with her rejection being joining in on or even starting bullying when said novel was found).

But at this point I have taken over 3 leaps of logic, running fairly solidly in farfetch'd territories. Doesn't stop me from making another leap tho, and that to avoid the terminal-illness death flag this will end with mc's suicide to uphold the narrators prophecy of it being the "first&last summer", this piece of narration looping back into a novel of their love which serves as her suicide note.


On a more grounded level tho, I think the death flags will remain true despite being too prevalent, and that much of that above speculation is incorrect. Solely because the girl spends too much money without seemingly any restraint whatsoever, which only ever makes sense if she truly expects to die that soon.
I do prefer the more farfetched interpretation tho :p

@Shintaro_71 while it might be possible for ppl irl (such as for me) to entirely not recognize ppl after years has passed, I really doubt that is the case here, in manga world, where such a thing would break immersion for too many people.

@WhereTheYuriAt @Bistai I find that with the way the story flows, there is a very high chance said "bullying" was so traumatic for her because the victim took her life. Like in ch1, she said her novels themes were "empathy, sexism, shame, death", which sounds like a strong indication of bullying a lesbian girl into suicide. Unsure how empathy joins in there, but mostly because I can imagine too many interesting ways.
So no, even if the bullying actually was somewhat tame and "for understandable reasons", if my guesses are anywhere near the correct ballparks, I can see why mc's character might be envisioned the way she is without being deflated just because she didn't actually want to hurt the kid or do anything more that say words and/or reject/ignore her.
All that said, considering it happened in elementary school, my guesses are probably extremely off in the entirely wrong ballparks (iirc elementary school is pre-puberty).
 
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@Raknasuu I get what you're saying, but I must insist when it comes to the word: "egotistical" is a word with a negative connotation, you may not use it as such yourself, but it is, otherwise it wouldn't carry the descriptor "excessive" in pretty much every dictionary. It's by definition self-absorption, self-centrism etc. beyond a point of it being reasonable/acceptable. I like what you said about the self-insert though, I think that could be the case.

@feha hmmm that's technically possible, but I think it would be really weird if it was the case. An elementary school kid comitting suicide would way too dark, far darker than Asaka dying at the end due to some illness or such, cause her dying of that leaves no one guilty and it being at end is less painful, but Hoshikawa bullying someone to the point of suicide is almost criminal (also, it would make it straight up bizarre for Asaka to be kinda in love with her). Plus, the way she described it as "I used to bully my friends" would be a really weird way to put it, since you'd imagine she'd focus on the one person she got killed and also that would be the understatement of the century. If that ends up being the case, this manga will lose a lot of points with me.
 
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The little girls on page 16 and 17 reminded me of something

Turns out it's VTubers who Yuama is fan of

https://twitter.com/maymaymay7523/status/1295053561462579200?s=19
 
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I mean she's not bullying anyone now, and she hasn't bullied anyone in a long time, she regrets doing that and thinks she is a terrible person, therefore, she's not a terrible person, because she can admit she was wrong and doesn't do the same things anymore.

Thank you so much for the chapter, I loved it πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–
 
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@feha
But at this point I have taken over 3 leaps of logic, running fairly solidly in farfetch'd territories. Doesn't stop me from making another leap tho, and that to avoid the terminal-illness death flag this will end with mc's suicide to uphold the narrators prophecy of it being the "first&last summer", this piece of narration looping back into a novel of their love which serves as her suicide note.

Holy smokes, look at the first page of chapter 1, the axolotl doll is there, it's Asaka's room!

Or it could be Asaka left it to her along with the letter, so I guess the twist is still in the air Β―\_(ツ)_/Β―

Edit: Also I'm incredibly sorry but the line about her describing the book's themes was way off from my part, I was pretty inexperienced at the time but that still doesn't excuse it. I've corrected it, it's not that interesting, speculation wise :( Sorry again!
 
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@punpun I hadn't even considered looking at the very first page for such details :p Nice catch. Doesn't really tell us much, but it is a nice detail, the kind that makes re-reading certain stories really interesting&emotional. But I agree that it says very little as to what exactly the twist is going to be, personally I hope the Asaka death-flags are red-herrings and the story takes a much darker turn, with the narration being Asaka's instead. I guess a double-suicide where they lock hands like at the start would be really nice too, kinda like that candy loli, everyone is a yandere manga whose title I forgot. Candy crush saga? ;d

Don't worry about the incorrect tl, at least nice to know it was caught :d I must admit it was a rather large error though, if it is the bubble that was meant to say "that would make any reader die from cringe" :D Blows a huge hole in my hope for this manga taking that dark turn into pokemon territory.
 

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