Sakurai Ayaka is an excellent student who sucks at tests. A teacher offers her a recommendation to the college Ayaka aims for with a pretty manipulative twist – get a missing student back into the classroom and she’ll get that recommendation. Ayaka agrees, with some legitimate concerns and finds herself again subject to someone else’s whims. Classmate Honda Sora will only come back if Ayaka succumbs to one request” a day…and that request might even be a kiss!

Volume 1 of this series was very cute and also quite problematic, at the same time.

As I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl, Volume 2 evolves, both Ayaka and Sora are trying to understand what they mean to each other. Having met in such an unconventional (and frankly unpleasant) way, neither Ayaka nor Sora really have any way to understand how they feel.

The school sports day festival isn’t helping…but a new transfer student is. Watanabe sees what is going on and jumps right in to make sure they have to talk about it…at least a little. This leads to a chuckle out loud moment when Sora wonders how the costume for three-legged race that she’s just been subbed into fits her so well.

In the meantime, it’s hard to not be rooting for Sora and Ayaka as they navigate other people’s expectations, their own reticence and the unknown.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7, but climbing
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – pushing upwards at 6

Overall – 8

If, at this point, you are wondering what the deal is with Sora, her level of disassociation seems really high for no reason, tune back in for Volume 3…there is definitely a reason.

Oh, and I’m sorry. I localized the author’s name as Kashikaze and that’s what Kodansha uses, but just to complicate things, the author localizes their name as Kashykaze in Comic Yuri Hime now. Woops.