Piece Ep. 2 first impressions

I'm quite sad that there seems to be no one all that interested in subbing this drama as even though I can only following part of what is going on I am finding it much more interesting that the drama it replaced. Hopefully this will be eventually fixed.

We start the episode where we left of in the first episode, with Haruka's mom asking Mizuho about the father of her daughter's unborn child. Mizuho is of course in shock and from what I can tell says she was just a classmate.

We then get a flashback/dream sequence of a young Mizuho taking a bus. It plays out like it should be a flash back minus the man in black that appears and disappears out of now where that she talks to and is played by Nakayama Yuma. It ends with young Mizuho being reunited with her worried mother as she had taken the wrong bus.

We then jump ahead to the second year of high school after the summer when Mizuho had her date with Narumi. She hides this fact from her friends though and Narumi does not act any different than before as he continues to flirt with any girl that is interested in him.

Being next to each other in class they get ample time to talk but Mizuho tries her best to act indifferently to him, especially around friends.

Narumi tries to work his magic and into Mizuho's panties but Mizuho tells him to stop and he actually does. It may take a second time to get him to actually just quit and he clearly is not happy that she does not want to have sex with him. But he relents, and as someone familiar with the usual shoujo tropes this is kind of amazing.

Usually the genre is terrible with consent and sex so the fact that Narumi is actually willing to back off, even if he is not happy with it, comes as a surprise, but a very pleasant one. So congrats Narumi, you may be a jerk but at least you understand that "no" means "no".

Narumi leaves the room to go into a pigsty, or another room of the house he seems to actually live in. He and Mizuho end up talking and playfully fighting. It is overall pretty cute and reminds me actually of my teen years, with the atmosphere of light hearted-ness. If that makes any sense. Mizuho eventually makes dinner from the ready to eat stuff in the fridge and they have dinner together before Mizuho leaves to go home.

Narumi walks her to the bus stop and decides to tease her by not kissing her when she expected him to.

Mizuho comes to school early to begin studying. When she gets there he sees Haruka already there. She notices that someone was written on Haruka's desk in marker insults. After trying to studying while Haruka tries to wipe the marker off Mizuho gets up and giver her handkerchief to Haruka, as Haruka's is all dirty from the scrubbing already.

I think it is easy to tell this is one of the missing pieces of why Haruka thought of Mizuho, as it is clear that the act means a lot to her.

Later that day Narumi and Mizuho meet to go to his house again. Mizuho makes them take separate buses though as she does not want people at school to notice them.

Mizuho greets a woman in the house. I am not sure who she is, Mizuho I believe calls her Nanao-san, and she looks to be preparing food. Not to mention the room that was a complete mess before is clean so perhaps she is a maid that comes by the house weekly or something. In any case she and Mizuho briefly exchanged words before Narumi comes by to take Mizuho up to his room.

"Huggu!"

Narumi asks her what is acceptable for her and she tells him only kisses and hugs (embraces) are okay. Narumi is not completely fine with it but after a bit he gives in and they stick to embracing each other.

The episode ends with the two just laying in Narumi's bed next.embracing each other as thoughts go through Mizuho's head.


While this episode focused heavily on the two main leads I think this is a needed episode to really get into the why of the relationship. That way it is out of the way and they can move on to the other side stories that they need to tie in to the greater story, which is why I think we see so many of the supporting characters in the preview.

Speaking of which going by that for the next episode we get to break away from Mizuho and Narumi a bit and get to see more of the supporting cast. So Matsumura Hokuto, Yasui Kentaro and Suzuki Airi fans rejoice, as all three are featured prominently.