Due to my buying things out of order, we're jumping ahead to volume 4 of Yakuza Fiance. Yoshino returns to Osaka over the summer break. One thing of note, in volume 1, writer/artist Asuka Konishi would show Yoshino's Kansai dialect through words like "youse" that slipped in when she let her polite facade slip. Here, Konishi has Osakan locals use more, well, British or English slang. Some older women at a restaurant where Yoshino finds Shouma say "blokes", and Shouma calls them "gits." A different approach to transcribing regional dialect differences into a different language, I guess.
At any rate, Kirishima tagged along, for reasons other than hanging around Yoshino. An old school acquaintance and hook-up of his, Shiota Nao, is in town as well. Ostensibly there on a school project and networking to boost her career, she's actually being used by some guys Kirishima and Yoshino messed up a couple of volumes ago. The guys want payback, and Nao is supposed to get Kirishima and Yoshino in the same place for that to happen.
Except Kirishima knows this, and is just playing along while trying to keep Yoshino in the dark. Too bad Yoshino is already aware of it. Konishi does a nice job setting that up by casually showing this is Yoshino's home ground and she has lots of connections. Yoshino earlier mentions that if Kirishima wants to take a trip, she knows a lady who can set that up for him easily, and she knows another person who can get him a proper traveling suitcase to deal with cobbled streets if he visits Europe.
So Yoshino's got a plan, but as is repeatedly the case when Konishi shows Yoshino trying to seize the initiative, Kirishima won't play along. Yoshino finds the pretty boy fronting the revenge scheme, with only a few goons to go through, and tells Kirishima to hurry to her location (knowing he's tracking her phone.) Kirishima instead drags in Yoshino's lifelong friend Shouma to look after Nao (by pretending it's Yoshino he needs Shouma to pick up) and goes ahead with his own plan.
Which is a big problem with this manga. Even setting aside all the creepy stalker shit Kirishima does - there's a brief strip at the end of the book that reveals he paid for an illegal app so his phone can take photos without the shutter sound, letting him photograph Yoshino without her knowledge, and this is apparently supposed to be cute - he doesn't really seem to respect her opinions or knowledge. She's known what he's been up to for awhile and made her own plans without his knowing it. She even met Nao and exchanged contact info in a way Kirishima wouldn't catch, but he won't acknowledge that maybe he ought to follow her lead on this, while still claiming he's the only man who could love her.
I like Yoshino, I like Shouma - who seems like kind of a perpetually sullen guy, but is kind in his own way - I like Yoshino's friend Tsubaki (who doesn't show up in this volume but is in most of the others I own), and Yoshino's grandfather (outwardly goofy guy that he is.) There's just a big, Kirishima-shaped problem right smack in the middle of the book.
On another note, Nao spots Kirishima and Yoshino at one point while Yoshino's checking out a potential college (apparently something Kirishima engineered as part of his plan, but which Yoshino uses to learn more about him, and Konishi uses to set up a flashback we'll see in volume 8.) Nao ends up following Yoshino for a while, and after Yoshino asks for directions (allegedly confusing Nao for a student), Nao dismisses her as a, 'basic bumpkin bitch.' She'd already thought of Yoshino as a bitch once, just watching her walk across the campus (see above image). Yoshino didn't say or do anything, seemingly completely absorbed in something on her phone, so I don't know how Nao drew that conclusion.
But Nao's portrayed as someone who uses other people for her own gain without hesitation. Being kind to her male classmates so they'll do her schoolwork for nothing, sleeping with Kirishima to try and exploit his connection to the yakuza. Even people who seem to like her describe as just pretending to be nice to get things from people. So my guess is we're meant to see it as Nao projecting herself onto Yoshino. She thinks Yoshino's, 'never had to compare herself against other girls,' I guess because Yoshino seems unaware of the looks she gets from other women, but we know Yoshino's fully aware of the gossip about her being a club hostess, or how much older and mature she looks than her classmates.
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