Some further thinking about why it might come slightly as a surprise to see Yuu and Touko turning the sleepover into sleeping together. Again, it does seem like a natural outcome of their relationship, but it is true from a reader's perspective that the 43 + previous chapters haven't given many clues of where they stand, as teens in terms of sexual exploration and experience, and it could be assumed, until we see Yuu initiating the love-making here that there's a difference between herself and Touko.
It's only impressions though that can be drawn from reading the previous chapters.
For a long while I assumed that along with being in the grade above Yuu's, Touko was at least a year older than her. It's only at the end of volume six that it's explained they are really from the same year and just two months apart. Does it matter, maybe not, but it might have made a difference into Touko's attitudes to getting physical, even if we also have to take into account all of the "perfect girl" act she has put on for so long, which wouldn't tie in with the teenage desire that she does obviously feel.
It's really a mystery in the earlier chapters just how physically experienced Touko might be in relation to Yuu. This has to be left to imagination and it might have been trickier for Nakatani sensei to illustrate this graphically in the story. I can also suppose this speculation is left to the reader, but also to Yuu, because the story is seen from her point of view and its often her voice in the narrative bubbles. This is how we know that the stolen kiss at the train crossing was her first, but we've no idea whether it ever was Touko's as well. The impression given from Touko's behavior is that she could well have kissed before, just to try, not seriously, with one of her boy or girl suitors or even Sayaka (though this, we gradually get to understand later, isn't the case, poor Sayaka!)
It's also obvious in subsequent chapters that Touko is feeling ardent physical desires that she struggles to contain. On a couple of occasions we see her get carried away to the point Yuu has to push her off. During her first visit to Yuu's room, even though if it's for a study session, seeing Yuu's bed puts Touko in a state where she's obviously fantasizing about making out there, and Yuu seems completely off page. Then the gym storage encounter goes one further, Touko, who's frustrated because she didn't convince Yuu to be the initiator, tries out a French kiss, gets a startled Yuu to admit she liked it, and then goes on to a little fondling that Yuu doesn't resist. (I think this shows that by this stage in the story, Yuu is definitely physically attracted but also already in love with Touko but just won't recognize this is what it is compared to her earlier conceptions about "fluttering hearts" and "levitating")
The bath scene at the camp also shows Touko trying to contain herself and eyeing up Yuu, surprised that her breasts are more shapely than she assumed. Yuu's confidence in this scene is rather nice compared to the hang-ups both the supposedly more experienced Sayaka and Touko are displaying about undressing together. The camp is followed immediately by a much more intimate encounter in Yuu's room of which, like with the gym storage, we don't see everything. Yet the fact is unlike in the previous visit, they both lie down on the bed and do seem to engage for a lengthy while in both kissing and fondling with their clothes on, and you can see from Yuu's resting expression that she's quite fine with it.
So in fact we're never quite to know at which stage prior to their making love in chapter 44 Yuu and Touko moved up to some sexual experimenting. I can completely imagine, given what we're given to see from Touko's behavior in earlier chapters, that she's probably in the meantime fantasized about Yuu and tried masturbation. It's much harder to figure out what Yuu does, including in the period after she feels Touko rejected her confession and goes through heartbreak, when it would have been pretty human for her to comfort herself on her own. It comes down to the fact we've little idea how much of sexuality either of these teens know, what they've read about, what they might have seen on screen or online, added maybe to their upbringings, how traditionally Japanese they might be about this, with one certainty, at no stage are they actually troubled that their relationship is a same-sex one and what it implies physically.
There's been a lot of discussion about Yuu ending up being the initiator of the sex and being portrayed as the most active, undressing Touko and pleasuring her. We have to assume that in an un-portrayed scene Touko does things to Yuu as well but that bit of their intimate lives has been left to them. As I said before, perhaps this is good payback for Yuu having been subjected to Touko's demands in the prior chapters, and there is the fact that Touko does get scared (and it's pretty normal, considering) about doing it for the first time. That Yuu takes the initiative is something we're not used to, but it shows how much confidence and maturity she has acquired over time, even assuming she is only around sixteen, and still very young. (Touko might be approaching her 17th birthday at this point). The timeline of the later chapters is unclear and even if it still seems to take place still within the course of a school year, and from their clothing we can assume it's gotten to winter or late winter, quite a few days seem to go by between the reconciliation in chapter 40 and the sleepover in chapter 44. Which means there could have been in between some more fondling in the gym storage or elsewhere in which both girls get more confident that their relationship is also getting to be a sexual one as strong as the emotional or vanilla side. The fact that, at the end, Yuu lets her hair loose seems also synonymous of her acting out her sexuality: her previous hairdo is very very cute but does give her a rather more childish appearance than her age warrants. Her new hair also seems to represent her coming of age, losing her virginity and becoming a young adult woman. |