33:49

Good god get to the point please. ( )

Kyoko's talk with Ren gives her the level of positive energy she needs to decide to approach her mother - because approaching her without warning is likely the only thing that'll work. Kyoko almost chickens out but is forced to go through with it by Mr. Todoh, Saena's colleague. It's then that we get glimpses of Saena's past through her eyes. She fell in love with Mr. Misonoi, who seemed to understand her when no one else did (such as her habit of frowning, which didn't mean that she was mad but rather that she was just concentrating on a trivial decision). Unfortunately, little things here and there have her wondering if he's really a corporate spy, using her to win against her in a big court case.

Ohh, this volume was good. After an entire series of only catching glimpses of Kyoko's relationship with her mother, and only from Kyoko's perspective, we finally get to see things from her mother's perspective. I still think she was overly cruel when she said that she didn't have a daughter, but here we at least got some kind of explanation: she thought that Kyoko had quit school and run off to elope with Sho (which she kind of did, only Sho ended up just using her instead). Saena's decision to completely cut Kyoko off was due to her own guilt and inner turmoil about having made a similar bad decision herself when she was younger.

It was nice to learn a little about Saena's past. I'm looking forward to seeing more about how things worked out with Mr. Misonoi. Was he really a corporate spy, or did Saena's suspicions turn out to be false and destroy their budding relationship? It sure did seem like he'd drugged her to get at the disks.

And, oh man, it turns out that Saena has resting angry face.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )