Chapter 42: I Was Used

**I Was Used** is the forty-second Chapter of *Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu*.

## Summary

Ichikawa is in his room, reading chapters of *Your Color's Octave*. He considers the content of the manga, and whether or not Yamada is into guys similar to the male lead. He goes over the traits the character has, concluding that no such person could ever exist. He gets especially angry at a moment where the character calls out the female lead for fluttering around him, asking if she likes him, and calls him arrogant, but he mentally connects the girl with Yamada fluttering around him, and can't handle the implication. He only makes it through three pages.

The next day, at school in the hallway in front of Class 2-3, Nanjou is trying to get Yamada to come over to his place to play video games. Chi is standing in front of her and is trying to distract him, saying she's not interested in games. Moe and Serina, who are watching from the doorway next to Ichikawa, comment on a girl who is hanging around him, and wondering who she is to him, with Moe claiming she may be a girlfriend because he's a polygamous character, with Serina saying she knows way too much about the lives of trashy people. Nanjou finally gives up and says he'll see them later, but Chi says he doesn't need to bother. The two enter into class, with Yamada commenting on Ichikawa's upside-down book he's using to poorly blend in.

Later, in the library, Yamada asks Ichikawa if he plays games. He offers up that he has a Smitch, and recalls a scenario two years prior where he was talking with some other kids about the system, acting like a know-it-all about the controller wearing out and acting negative. The other kids ignore him and continue talking about it. The awkwardness of the memory hurts his head, and he grabs at it in response. She asks if he's okay, and changes the conversation to game consoles and the PC, and her father, who plays games, though she is not very knowledgeable. At that time, two girls, one of them being the girl with Nanjou earlier that day, enter into the room, and Ichikawa jumps up from the table and heads to the bookshelves, not wanting to drag down Yamada's social standing. She addresses Yamada, apologizing for Nanjou's behavior, and the other girl brings up Yamada having a boyfriend, which she denies immediately. They press her, not wanting to believe it, but she gets upset and yells that she doesn't have one, even turning to Ichikawa to reconfirm. The girl, making a connection, gets up and takes her friend with her. Ichikawa sits back down, and she tries to continue her talk about video games. He cuts her off and begins to bring up that she shouldn't interact with him when people are in the room, but at that moment, Nanjou enters in the library, accompanied with his female companion. Ichikawa again begins to spring up, but Yamada suddenly grabs him by the arm, and pulls him close to her, placing her hand on his shoulder as he panics in confusion. He and Nanjou make eye contact, and he promptly turns to leave. She apologizes, then rushes off, flustered. Ichikawa runs through all that just happened, concluding that he must have been used to avoid Nanjou. These thoughts follow him all the way home, and he considers all the interactions they'd had prior, thinking that they all must have been him being used.

## Trivia

* Based off the interactions with the Nanjou's "girlfriend," she appears to have recognized Ichikawa and Yamada's relationship and then lured Nanjou into the library so that he could see and potentially give up on her. She confirms she has no boyfriend, but then sees that she yells this out to Ichikawa, reacts in disbelief when she realizes what is going on, then immediately comes back in after leaving, with Nanjou in tow, but with zero reason to have come back in. Her half-cut reaction in one panel shows how surprised she was when Yamada grabs Ichikawa, though, showing she underestimated with how strong her hunch was.

* The first appearance of Mamiya, though she won't be named until Chapter 53.

* This is the first appearance of Kinoshita and Takano, Ichikawa's friends in Elementary School, though only in a flashback.

* Ichikawa's talk about the Smitch having poor-quality controllers is a reference to Joy-Con drift, where Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers had a tendency to wear out causing the sensors to "drift" in a certain direction.

* The cover page shows Yamada with a blue butterfly, a motif that is also on the cover pages of 43 and 53. In Asian countries it's supposed to symbolize love and finding your soul mate.