And then he continuously insults her as he absorbs it back inside of him.
I mean, just the line: “You’re not my freaking mother.”
Everything we’ve seen in their relationship from last episode, the affection he has for her, the affection she has for him–these insults are obviously not real. I mean, sure, he’s Yusuke and it probably feels good to call Genkai a bitch while he’s suffering. But let’s be real. Mostly, this is a calculated move on Yusuke’s part.
He loves Genkai. And as clueless as Yusuke can be sometimes, he’s not dumb when it comes to people. He knows Genkai, and he knows she’s not taking the orb because she thinks he’s weak. She’s taking it because she wants to save him, because she loves him too and she can’t watch him go through this.
And yet, he pushes all that aside and bullshits his way through this interaction, even as exhausted as he is, because he needs to create distance between them. In case it doesn’t work. To give her permission to not get emotionally involved. Because he’ll need it, too, even if it does work, in order to forgive her for the pain.
That’s the heartbreaking thing about this. They became something more than mentor/student here. They became a family.
And yet, they can’t sustain that if Yusuke is to do his job here. Genkai CAN’T love him. And perhaps the worst part is that it’s YUSUKE who recognizes this. Yusuke the loner. Yusuke, who needs a stable family, someone to take care of him, someone to love him, more than anything. But he rejects it for now–at his most vulnerable when he needs to cling onto something like that desperately–because he knows Genkai won’t let him go through with it if he doesn’t give her permission to stop loving him.
So she backs off, recognizing it herself, acknowledging his sacrifice. But that’s all. Her face carefully becomes neutral again.
“You’re not my freaking mother.”
My vote for the most heartbreaking line in the series so far.
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