Re: college roommates situationship Mizurui where Mizuki attempts to make Rui think sheās poisoning him by putting almond extract in his food, for funsies. Mizukiās trying to get a reaction, Ruiās determined to not give her a reaction and trying to figure out her motives for blatantly poisoning or pretending to poison him. Whoever acknowledges it first loses. They play mind games for enrichment.
It starts because Mizukiās like āit would be really funny if I made Rui think Iām trying to kill him,ā so puts a tiny amount of almond extract in something on impulse, expecting him to notice, say something about it, leading into an opportunity to gaslight him, for fun. A classic one-off bit. Rui pauses fractionally when bringing the food to his mouth, implying that he might smell the almondiness, but then he eats it anyway without comment. Which is insane, because Mizuki expected him to say something, who the hell wouldnāt notice an unexpected almondy taste? Now, more than ever, she really really wants to get a reaction out of him, so she just keeps āpoisoningā him. How far can she push this?
Rui, for his part, absolutely immediately notices the almond extract, thinks thereās a very low but possible chance itās cyanide, and thinks she absolutely wants him to think itās cyanide. In that instant, he knows she wants to see his reaction, and will not give her the satisfaction, for fun, even if it means maybe ingesting a bit of poison. He figures that if she really wanted to kill him, heād already be dead, so he may as well see where this goes.
For what itās worth, Mizuki wouldnāt completely ruin every meal with almond extract, just a single drop on a small piece that she makes really obviously suspicious and easy to avoid if Rui wanted to. Like putting it off to the side, or having a fork already stuck in that piece when giving Rui his plate. And sheās definitely not cooking for him every day, I think they take care of most of their meals separately and alternate making dinner / buying food between the two of them. To meet her quota of āpoisoningā him once per day, on the days she doesnāt cook, she makes tea for herself and asks if he wants a cup while sheās already boiling the water. He says sure, and Mizuki of course always puts a drop of almond extract in his. Rui notices the first time and then can reasonably expect to be poisoned every time she asks if he wants tea, and he still always drinks the tea, because heās committed to playing along, and also it actually tastes pretty nice, cyanide or not. Heās like 94% certain itās almond extract.
And because of the difference in their eating habits, Rui not eating vegetables, Mizuki waiting for things to cool down, it would already be the case that their plates canāt be switched and Mizuki would more often than not watch Rui eat first, which is a normal routine for them but really adds to the suspicious ambiance. The cherry pit on top, you could say. Itās incredibly blatant that Mizuki is tampering with what she serves him, and Rui never once says anything about it, but tries to throw her off in other ways.
Honestly, given his bullshit OP genius shtick, itās possible that Rui just straight up has some actual cyanide for bullshit science purposes and, crucially, hydroxocobalamin, an antidote to cyanide. Hydroxocobalamin is also a form of B12, and though Rui has the exact opposite dietary restriction from what might result in a B12 deficiency, if he takes any other vitamin supplements to replace vegetables, it would be easy to lump that in with them, have it just in case of the off-chance that Mizuki is actually poisoning him, and offhandedly mention to her that it just so happens to be an antidote to cyanide, in order to make her think he thinks sheās actually poisoning him without ever saying that he suspects her. And Mizuki is then left with the implication that Rui might think heās actually being poisoned but is willingly ingesting the poison she serves while taking an antidote, for some fucking reason.
They engage in further psychological warfare, of course. Mizuki changes her perfume to something with notes of almond, Rui notices and compliments her on it. Rui buys almond pastries to share, saying heās been peculiarly fond of almonds as of late. Mizuki buys cherries and apples and other such fruit with notable cyanide content in their seeds. Rui looks up the lethal dose of cyanide where she can see his screen, and quickly closes the tab when he ānoticesā her catching a glance. Mizuki gets almond blossom branches to put in a vase. Neither of them ever say anything about the meals or tea.
Mizuki secures her victory by forfeiting. It goes like this: she runs out of almond extract. Using like 1ml per day, presuming a somewhat used typical 43ml bottle, thereās reasonably about a month of āpoisoningā Rui. Then she runs out, and instead of running to the store to pick some up and continue the game, she simply asks if he wants tea, as routine. He says sure, and he immediately notices the absence of almond extract. Surprised, he slips up, and says it tastes different than usual. Thatās cause they just ran out of almond extract, she says. He mustāve grown used to the taste cause sheās been putting it in all his food the last month, she says. Heās entirely thrown by her giving up the game, just straight up admitting that she has been tampering with his food, and that it has in fact just been almond extract. Why, he asks. Why try to make him think he was being poisoned at all?
Well, Mizuki figured heād be so preoccupied with the threat of cyanide, he wouldnāt notice the [whateverās funniest to be dosing him with].
Rui is speechless. He never considered that she could be adding anything other than cyanide or almond extract. He makes an expression she didnāt know he was even capable of. She gets the reaction she wanted. She gets the best reaction she could have ever tried to get. And in the face of such satisfaction, her world-class poker face breaks. Sheās won. She laughs, and laughs, and laughs. Of course, she did not add anything other than almond extract at any point. But he really, really, really believed her for a second, and even if he never believes her ever again, the look on his face is burned into her mind, and worth absolutely everything. Victory is sweet. Almost as sweet as bitter almonds.
It is sort of fascinating how in following in her fatherās footsteps Kanade outsources domestic labour. It isnāt the same thing as Kanadad as a grown ass man and patriarch letting household duties fall on the shoulders of his daughter in the absence of Kanamom out of negligence or a belief that thatās the Natural Way Of Things, but something about Mafuyu in Unreliable Notes making food for Kanade and their general cohabitance at times feels reminiscent of the dynamic between Kanade and Kanadad in seen in WL2. Both also feel notably different than Honami and Kanadeās dynamic, where I think it feels very evident that Kanade is a teenager that genuinely just canāt manage a household on her own and needs help to ensure sheās fed and her space stays clean and sheās alive and comfortable, and Honami is straight up being compensated for her labour explicitly. Whereas when stressed Kanade and Mafuyu feel like theyāre larping family dynamics, and Unreliable Notes where Kanade pushes herself to the limits under the pressure of Needing to Compose (to work, to Provide for Mafuyu), to the point of collapsing, and Mafuyuās card highlights the domestic labour of cooking falling onto her, it feels pointed.
I think Iāve called Honami and Mafuyu Kanadeās wives before, and Iāve been thinking about that, because it kinda does ring really true to their proximity to Kanade and domestic labour. And I think Kanade herself at her worst, in her clinging to and idolization of her father, acts out a sort of father-husband role that makes everyone including herself miserable. Like I think her work ethic is in the shape of her fatherās, which is inextricable from the pressure he felt as a patriarch, his need to prove himself as capable of Providing in the face of Kanade being better than him at music and ergo emasculating him, and Kanade carries on the torch, in a way that will kill her.
The best, sweetest moments between her and Mafuyu and Honami are when sheās not doing that shit, when sheās acting as herself and not a patriarch. And like, Kanade and Honami getting groceries together in Wedding, Kanade and Mafuyu getting groceries together in Unchanging Warmth, very wives coded in the sense of domestic labour being a collaborative project, working as Partners, and Kanadeās Wedding untrained where she helps Honami in the Yoisaki kitchen with warm light of the setting sun streaming in as an extension of that, and Mafuyuās Unreliable Notes untrained where sheās alone attending the stove with a miserable expression under fluorescent light with the sun long set in inverse. Something about it, anyway.
from mizukiās initial 1 star, side story 2. while we donāt know exactly what was on her mind, āum, nothing? everythingās fineā isnāt exactly convincing. she lies to him in her 1 star.
mizukiās secret distance 4 star, side story 2. mizuki plays completely dumb here, responding to absolutely none of what ruiās saying except the literal words. she DID want to talk to him at lunch, on the roof, like old times, but seeing him happy with wxs as contrasted to her memories of him miserable on the roof with her, she resigned herself to sleeping through lunch instead.
picnic episode 1. mizuki then physically leaves this conversation the second she has the slightest excuse. this is self explanatory, but i do just wanna say rui materializing the second she thinks about the rooftop is really funny. especially after the above.
ruiās picnic 3 star, side story 1. mizuki manages to lie to rui before saying a single word. rui regarding her like a skittish prey animal and himself a hunter who missed his shot. āalarm bellsā insane framing for wanting your friend( in solitude) to open up to you if sheās suffering. i mean itās mizuki so itās apt but still. a little later here, without being able to truly grasp what if anything is wrong, the conclusion he seems to come to about the smile she puts on is that she didnāt want him to feel bad by worrying about her. thereās no way of knowing if this is true, but it seems mizuki-like enough (the line between not wanting to worry her friends because she doesnāt want them to feel sad unnecessarily and not wanting to be worried about because she doesnāt want to think about things and get hurt is blurry, if distinguishable at all.)
picnic episode 8. the second rui tries to probe for more information, on how sheās doing, on how her relationship to ena and her circle is going as compared to āi donāt know if i could call them friends just yet, but i have met some peopleā as said in kamifes, mizuki shuts down the conversation entirely. she gives him a non-answer and all but hangs up on him.
path of thorns, episode 5. this time, rui doesnāt play along with the charade that sheās fine. this time, mizuki doesnāt run away and drops the charade entirely. even when rui offers her an out later, āof course, if you donāt want to talk about itāā she doesnāt take it āānoā¦ i want you to hear me out, or something.ā cue monologues!!! emotional sincerity!!!! FRIENDSHIP!!!!! this shitās crazy. i wept.
The thing with Mizurui is that no matter how much care and affirmation and affection Rui could give Mizuki, it wonāt mean as much to Mizuki as it would coming from a girl, and Rui is not a girl (for these intents and purposes), much less a normative one. Rui is, if in a different sense than Mizuki, also subject to societal condemnation and prejudice. Rui doesnāt understand Mizukiās specific experiences, but does understand where their experiences of marginalization overlap, stripped of a claim to humanity. Through this, Rui is important to Mizuki, as someone who Gets It, even slightly. Through this, Rui is someone that cannot extend to Mizuki a higher social position even slightly, nor is his acceptance something Mizuki particularly covets, though it is nice to have. Rui canāt do ānormalā or āgirlā in a way that would affirm Mizukiās claim to either. Hell, Ruiās exempt from doing āguyā in way that would affirm Mizuki, heterosexually.
As part of this, I think Rui and An necessarily envy or āfeel genuinely happy for Mizuki that she has the other in her life to give her what they canāt but nonetheless feel sort of excluded and wanting when witness toā each otherās relationships with Mizuki. To Rui, that An and Mizuki are friends, are girls, that An is someone that Mizuki will seek out on a good day, is someone she straightforwardly values and seeks the attention/affection of. To An, that Rui and Mizuki are close, are similar, that Rui is someone Mizuki trusts to understand her on bad days, is someone she shares an inimitable inseparable inarticulable history with. Thereās a part of both of them that wants that too.
I really really adore how self-absorbed Mizuki is, I adore her spirals of black-and-white thinking, I adore how sheās deeply self-aware but it never really helps her and she just uses it to make her perceived weaknesses and moments of cruelty into cudgels to hurt herself with, I adore her somewhat covered but deep-seated cynicism and misanthropy, I love how she doesnāt ever let herself really trust anyone, I love how she shuts everyone out having made up her mind of her own inability to be reached, I love how she dismisses other peopleās interiority and makes decisions for them because sheās convinced that a life of having to be hyperaware of how people see her has made her good at really seeing other people rather than an often faulty defense mechanism, I love her faux extroversion despite always keeping people at a healthy distance and spooking any time anybody gets close to connecting to her on a level thatās real, I love her apathy, I love how every single thing she admires about other people she uses to put herself down for lacking, I love how quick she switches up on everyone, I love how sheāll use other people or play to notions of common sense or social conformity to get out of shit, I love how sheās always in her head thinking about every single goddamn thing, I just love her. I adore her.
I love how Mizuki and Rui are just both manipulative as hell. Always thinking more than they say, have practiced strategies for getting what they want out of a conversation. Itās why every interaction between them feels like theyāre butting heads in an imperceptible dimension.
*Rui voice* Mizuki is one of the most manipulative people Iāve ever had the pleasure of knowing ^_^ be ever on your guard! And of course nothing needs be said for Rui being manipulative lol:
Immensely funny when theyāre being funny, but this is also the same strain of behaviour exhibited in like Picnic, where Mizuki keeps up her facade and takes every escape route she can while Rui tries to see through her smoke and mirrors and get through a conversation without her running away. A battle. And then like Cheer Squad, where Mizuki reads Rui to filth based on his expression multiple times over, and Rui wonders her motivations for joining a school event, Mizuki gets Rui to step through the door then take the freaking compliment, Rui gets Mizuki to stay for the after party, etcetera. Using their powers of manipulation and understanding each other to give the other a push on the back.
This is why they get away with their stupid unspoken incomprehensible convoluted oxymoronic nonsense relationship, because they match each otherās manipulative, and are so inclined to reading between the lines they donāt ever have to say anything directly. Of course, thatās what makes the times theyāre straightforwardly honest with each other hit all the harder. The way they move so seamlessly through playful and sincere, like a dance, Ena5 Mizuki ss2 saved me. Or like hiding a pill in a treat, masking concern and care under frivolity, Picnic Mizuki ss2 makes me ill. So awesome.
