u/AceBoyAnnGirl

In this volume Kiyotaka plans to test his feelings by attempting to cause a break up with Kei. And in order to do that he deliberately sets up a scenario to strain their relationship.

He decides to meet with Ichinose privately, stating his intention to follow through with that meeting regardless of Kei's opinion. Knowing Kei is insecure and prune to jealousy he expected her to be extremely dissatisfied with the scenario. Additionally, he upsets Kei further by adding that she can go ahead and disrupt his meeting with Ichinose if it bothers her so much, painting her objection as a selfish obstruction to his ambitions, making it harder for Kei who cares about him and his ambitions to aggressively object. Finally, leading their relationship into a state of "cold war" where the two openly avoid one another.

There's a clear dissonance between Kiyotaka's and Kei's perception to this conflict.

Despite being upset, the reason Kei couldn't bring herself to fully object and set an ultimatum is because she cares both about Kiyotaka and his ambitions, and she doesn't want to stand between them, making her reaction far more suppressed, by subtly showing Kiyotaka that while she won't stop him, his behavior is unacceptable and she distanced herself from him.

Whereas Kiyotaka on the other hand believes Kei who is "parasitic" can't afford to lose him, her survival chip in this school, therefore no matter what he will do, she will never object him.

In the end, Kiyotaka met with Ichinose with no disruptions and Kei distanced herself from Kiyotaka, leaving him to accept the current situation as the result of his own wrongdoing. Which turned out to be exactly what he wanted, a state of separation from Kei and strain on their relationship that will shed light to his feelings towards both her and their relationship.

During their separation, we see Kiyotaka's reaction from multiple POVs:

Kei: notes that Kiyotaka maintains his usual expressionless face, suggesting that outwardly he doesn't seem affected by the separation.

Kiyotaka: feels extremely bored and lonely, he has no one to talk to or meet with. He starts doing menial tasks like cleaning his room or mindless activities like watching TV, basically looking for anything to keep his mind occupied. Until, at some point he thinks that it enough time passed since the start of his "cold war" with Kei and he starts contemplating whether he should give Kei a call and apologize in order to fix their relationship as he self deprecatingly considers Kei might not take him back, understandably so, knowing he behaved awfully.

Eventually, he couldn't contain himself anymore and called Kei, multiple times, but she didn't answer, sending him into an even greater troubled state. Until he learns that the reason for Kei's unavailability is a sickness, influenza, making the two lose out on their promised new year's eve date Kiyotaka planned to patch things up at, troubling him yet again.

Due to their current awkward relationship state, Kiyotaka had Maya take care of the sick Kei for the time being. Meanwhile he started to stress even more and really lose his mind.

In Japan, especially between the 2010-2020 (COTE timeline), as a great influx of people catching influenza, yogurt machines were propped up as a great treatment for it.

Coincidentally, Kiyotaka starts developing interest not in yogurt, but in a yogurt machine specifically, and he embarks on a journey to purchase one. Though, as he unusually made a careless mistake, he ended up going to a different venue and missed the opportunity to buy one, causing him to become quite upset.

Attempting to consult himself with the store bought yogurts in the convenience store, despite their discounted price, he finds himself unable to stop thinking about his desire for a yogurt machine and homemade yogurt.

Kiryuin: She sees Kiyotaka in the convenience store, noting his extremely unusual behavior that resembles a normal student's behavior, additionally she observes his dejected expression. After hearing Kiyotaka's story and she points out that if he wanted a yogurt machine so much he could've just ordered it online. A detail that feels very off Kiyotaka wouldn't have thought of, again suggesting his uncharacteristic like behavior.

Though Kiyotaka's response riddled with excuses reveals that it's not just buying the machine that was important to him but buying it now, suggesting that it's related to the current Kei situation as well as his lousy attempt at keeping himself busy to avoid feeling lonely. A detail that tightly ties up to the chapter name: "Song of loneliness".

Kiryuin then notes that Kiyotaka's weird story feels off when presented as a spontaneous obsession with a yogurt machine and fits something else more, hinting the readers that it'd make more sense if this was Kiyotaka yearning for a person and not a simple yogurt machine.

Arisu: Later in the volume, Kiyotaka receives an invitation from Arisu to share a luxurious cake, which gives off the vibes of Arisu going out of her way to keep company to someone who's going through a rough time and he gratefully accepts.

On another interaction between the them, Arisu confesses her love towards him, knowing Kiyotaka will reject her. In turn he advises her to turn that love from a weakness to strength. After they bid farewell to one another, Arisu muses to herself that Kiyotaka is unaware of her actions to ruin his plans, referencing to her bet with Ryuuen and a hidden weakness of his she noticed in the island exam.

When it comes both to the hidden weakness and knowing the Kiyotaka will reject her, I tend to believe that Arisu is aware of Kiyotaka's feelings for Kei, that is because Arisu's classmates observed Kiyotaka and Kei in the island exam, as well as in end of Y1, when their romantic relationship began Arisu told Kiyotaka that there is nothing wrong with human warmth and apologized for being late in giving that message, as if she was hinting that she lost her chance due to him already being romantic with Kei.

During this "cold war" Not only we observed Kiyotaka leaking a facial expression and emotions, but also behaving like a normal student, all which are unusual details and combined with the current circumstances, the temporary separation from Kei, they suggest lingering attachment.

Maya: Before meeting with Kei, Kiyotaka happens to notice Kei and Maya talking as well as later on her receives a phone call from Maya. Both scenes end up calming Kiyotaka as Maya sheds light into Kei's mind and Kiyotaka understands that Kei will most likely not break up with him, allowing his earlier anxieties to dissipate.

Finally, the time for Kiyotaka and Kei to meet arrives and Kiyotaka internally maintains a pessimistic view on romance, stating that his heart hadn't been swayed by Kei from the very start of their relationship, with his pragmatic view he is essentially saying that whatever feelings he has for Kei they were not capable of making him behave differently than he had determined to.

To Kiyotaka, feelings are irrational, and are supposed to make him act irrationally. Though he fails to take into account the fact that decision making is based on the clash between different instincts. For example, If your desire to survive is stronger than your empathy or love for another person you'll prioritize your own survival even at the cost of theirs.

And Kiyotaka's flaw in judgement is that he rushes to base his conclusions on the end results, the fact that his actions remained rational led him to invalidate of the existence of feelings, despite the obvious implications that the feelings could be lacking in comparison to the other instincts within him.

Once Kei and Kiyotaka meet, he confuses Kei's romantic attachment as parasitic survival instinct, and it is revealed that he was contemplating ending the relationship with her at the time, but with Kei's behavior he excuses the need to delay it further. In reality, it alludes that Kiyotaka aimed for Kei to be disgusted with him, causing her to break up with him, and the fact that he didn't break up with her despite that not happening shows that he just couldn't do it, instead he tried to prolong their relationship as much as he possibly could.

Since Kiyotaka's decision obviously contrasts with his statement that his heart wasn't swayed by her at all, he doubled down on excusing his actions under Kei's exponentially increased parasitic nature. Where as in reality he already prepared a gift ahead of time in the event that she did decide to break up with him and he could have the chance to win her back.

Additionally, he justifies the continuance of the relationship as a chance for him to perform a new experiment and see whether he can break up with Kei in the future, again cementing that he indeed planned for this instance to have Kei break up with him.

Kiyotaka says that he doesn't feel overjoyed about making up with Kei, completely disregarding that he was anxious before being reassured that Kei won't dump him by Maya. He expects that anxiousness to turn into extreme happiness despite already knowing there is no chance for Kei to break up with him, now wouldn't that be impossible? It's a flawed test.

After the two finished their date, Kei left to celebrate with her friends leaving Kiyotaka alone, prompting him to unconsciously burn her cheerful image in his mind the moment she left him, depicting a desperate reaction from him to almost losing her, cementing his attachment.

And with that the KiyoKei stuff ends in that volume, forgive me if I missed anything or got some minor details wrong, I did it all from memory and in a rush since I struggled to find the time to release it, so for the time being, bear with me 🙏, until I find the time to re-write it!

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! 💛
Please check out the other analysis in: Kiyokei Analysis Dictionary
Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!

Credit to @tenuedu, for this beautiful coloring in this art.