How are you doing?? Are you ready to start week 2??
Honestly I’m a little behind the schedule because of an exam, but I’ll make sure to catch up asap!
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I just finished reading through both Chapters 16 and 17, and I just have to say that these were probably the most adorable chapters yet (gosh, I do need to find a different adjective for this, though, eh?)
I filled in the vocab sheets as I went along, and that is actually related to the only question I have.
Chapter 16, Pg. 14
When Urushi has the phrase:
ちょちょーい.
I had to look it up, and the closest thing I could find was the link on Jisho that I ended up putting in the vocabulary sheet, since it did fit the context really well. I was just curious what the etymology of the phrase was, if anybody knows? Or if maybe I’m wrong about what phrase it seems to be shortening, and we should strike that line from the vocab sheet?
Other than that, I didn’t have anything that went over my head. Double-checked a couple of the words that I wasn’t 100% on, but nothing crazy!
Story Comments
As always, I do love Urushi’s Smug™, and Chapter 16 definitely had plenty of it.
I loved the “aura” of “Respect Me, Respect Me, Respect Me” from the black bubble in this panel (same one with the ちょちょーい), in particular. It gave me a good laugh.
ナイスキャッチ！！！
This isn’t actually related to the story, just an in-between chapters panel, but I loved this artwork enough that…yep, it’s gonna be my new profile picture for a while. 
Bashful Urushi was extremely cute (for the 5 seconds that lasted) in Chapter 17, as well. I loved the way her stuttering was portrayed in an almost line-artish font. It was really neat!
The final page of that chapter also gave me a good laugh, and this panel would also have been a strong contender for being a profile picture replacement because I like the expression so much.
頑張って！
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I don’t know anything about the etymology, but from what I see, it does seem to carry the meaning that something was done easily or trivially.
Stand out panels and expressions for me:
Page 23
She’s not buying this whole “coincidence” angle anymore.
As a side-note with that page, and the prior “chance meeting”, whenever I see 奇遇, I mistakenly read it as 偶然 out of expectation of what will be said.
Finally, I decided to look into the two and see how they differ.
奇遇 = an unexpected meeting of two people
偶然 = an unexpected occurrence
(It doesn’t help that I’m on WaniKani level 31, and these words have kanji from levels 50 and 52.)
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Etymology
After looking more into it, I suspect it’s this word: Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary
Which it says is onomatopeic or mimetic, so that’s always difficult to place. But it does say it means “easy; effortless; simple.”
I sorta wonder if there isn’t some slight (pardon the accidental pun) relation to ちょっと’s, ちょい shortening in there, as well: Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary
But I think I’ll chalk it up to, “It’s just a phrase, kid, it ain’t that deep,” and move on for now. It’ll definitely linger in the back of my mind though.
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I did originally have mention of ちょいちょい and ちょい (with a manga screenshot of the latter as ちょい待って), but I was way going too deep into speculation, so I removed most of it before posting.
I say, if two people learning a language speculate the same about etymology of that language, that’s good enough for me to accept it!
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Oh wow, I just noticed I’d neglected to track this thread so I completely forgot about it - looks like I have some catching up to do. Thought I was missing something haha
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I can’t find definitive proof of it either, but my understanding is that ちょい, in its nature as an onomatopoeic word, has the ability to be combined in various ways depending on what you want to represent with it.
Take for example the onomatopoeic word ぞく. It’s usually applied when one feels a shudder or chill. However, it’s very normal for these kind of words to be double when you want to make the meaning to be stronger or to imply that it happens continuously. So ぞくぞく means a constant shaking or trembling, or a stronger shudder of some sort.
I feel that’s what happening here. ちょい by itself represents the concept of something small, simple, or by extension, easy. ちょいちょい is just something like super light, or super easy. ちょいちょいのちょい is just a superlative of this “the easiest of the easy easy” or as we would say in English, a piece of 
.
ちょちょいのちょい is just how it would naturally roll out of the mouth since ちょいちょい is a bit hard to pronounce, I feel.
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I finished both chapters, too.
Nothing much too say though. I love how this is just a light and relaxing read.
Both of them are adorable. (Best word to describe this! 
)
@MrGeneric I also loved this illustration very much. Urushi looks so pretty!
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Just read chapter 16 and typed this up as I went. Only one question, feeling pretty good overall.
Just rambling about my own progress
I’m really happy I figured out Ayumu’s first line on page 14, though it took me a moment. になる threw me off and I thought this was some whole other meaning I didn’t understand, but a bit of searching took me to Maggie Sensei’s page and I learned you can use it with particles and that it’s more or less intuitively talking about if it is against [senpai when worn out from the test]. I had actually made the mistake of not realizing at first that that phrase referred to her and not him, because my brain just insisted that line breaks have to be meaningful and arbitrarily start a new thought, but I solved it on my own! Sure beats where I was before.
Page 16 question
Top left panel, not sure about what Ayumu is saying. やるじゃん is kind of the crux of it and… I dunno, I think I can see what it’s meant to be (some sort of praise, “you did well” or whatever), but is this a bit of an idiom or way of phrasing I don’t understand? Cause on the face of it, all we seem to actually have is “to do” and something like “isn’t it?/right?/etc.” The meaning I’m coming to is me just inserting what I think sounds right at the moment. I think the surrounding stuff is basically “Because I want [ X ] to also be thought by senpai about me.” That translation is a mess but it’s passive and I’m trying to be literal.
A little more about me, and the manga
This was a really nice chapter for refreshing somethings I learned! 完全 was a fairly recently wanikani lesson, とはいえ is something I’ve come across recently and sentence mined for, etc. Good stuff!
And aww, that catch! Lovely. This volume is off to an excellent start.
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I was waiting for someone to bring this up.
Here’s from Jisho on やるじゃない:
やるじゃん is used to mean along the lines of:
“You did well.”
“Way to go!”
“Well done!”
“Great job!”
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“You did well.”
Hey that’s what I said! Well that makes it easy – once again I just missed the proper way to search for it to get jisho to give me the easy answer. Thanks!
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I finished reading the chapters for this week and now I want to read chapter 20!
I think this is pretty close to a cliffhanger since chapter 19 and 20 clearly belong together! 
Overall I think chapter 19 was a bit more difficult than chapter 18, but for now I only wrote some questions down for chapter 18 (I might get back to chapter 19 later):
p.34
ダメだ．．．告白は勝ってからときめただろう．．．！！
I roughly understand this sentence like “No, I decided to wait with my confession until after I won.”
But what throws me off is the 勝ってからと :
から I’d understand as “after I win”, “from the time I win” ?
と I thought was more like an if/when construction.
So:
The confession is when/if after I win, that’s what I decided right!!
(???)
p.35
この勝負．．．勝たせるもらいます．．．
Here I’m wondering about the 勝たせるもらいます can someone explain?
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p.34
I think the と here is the quote particle. So something like:
I decided “I will confess after I win”, right?
p.35
It’s actually 勝たせてもらいます, not 勝たせる. It literally means something like “I’m going to get you to let me win”. It’s a way of saying “I’m going to win”, basically. 勝たせる is to let/make someone win, and もらう is the second definition in Jisho. Actually, the example sentence for that one is similar to this one.
That’s my understanding of how it works anyway.
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pg.35
Thanks, I understand this now!
I was wondering about this, since I knew 勝たせる means to let someone win, but I was thinking more along the lines like Urushi lets Ayumu win and it’s not a real win then! (this was what threw me off)
But if it means “I’ll make you let me win” that makes more sense now.
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Chapter 18 is a favorite of mine. I always enjoy the “character concurrently speaking and thinking at odds” type of scene. There are similar scenes in the anime Petite Princess Yucie and the manga School Rumble.
For anyone curious about why chapter 19 has Ayumu and Urushi on the same team, it’s because:
Urushi is in ２年３組 (year two, class 3), and Ayumu is in １年３組 (year one, class 3). In the sports festival, being in the same class number number puts them on the same team (even though they are in different grades). Urushi’s friend is in her class, so she’s on the same team as well.
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About Chapter 18
It was fun how this chapter turned the tables. Usually Ayumu is the one who is calm and Urushi is the one that is flustered. It was nice to see it be the other way around for once.
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Hi hi hello, after a class trip to Houston followed immediately by midterms and a sudden and unusual influx of work at my job, your resident tired college student has caught up and returned.
I don’t actually have any questions this time around! (I mean, there’s probably some things I didn’t quite grasp, but like… my brain is too fried to really worry about the particulars at the moment. Maybe next week.)
I mostly just wanted to pop in and say I totally agree with others about liking chapter 18. It’s probably my favorite so far. It’s always super nice to see the other side’s POV for a change.
Actually, on second thought, maybe I do have a question, but literally not related to the readings at all.
Does anyone who uses Bookwalker—on desktop—know if there’s a way to stay logged in? It’s a bit annoying having to relog in every time, and I’m not sure if I’m just missing a completely obvious button or if it’s just not a thing. Not a huge deal or anything, but, you know, just curious.
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Good stuff as always, my thoughts echo everyone else’s on Ch 18.
I had a question or two that, in the leadup to posting, I figured out for myself, so that’s nice. One was just the result of forgetting 詰め将棋 is a thing and getting a little hung up on 詰め, heh.
Chapter 19 thoughts
I appreciate this chapter taking us out around the other students a little more; it doesn’t happen too often. I hope we see more of Maki or something. It’s great to have another named character.
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Mini-Spoiler
We will.
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If it makes you feel any better, I completely forgot Urushi’s surname was Yaotome and spent an embarrasingly long amount of time trying to figure out what it 八乙女 could possibly mean.
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