I wrote a little explanation/analysis for the very last hand of this chapter. I think it helps understand the words and actions of some of the characters and increases the enjoyment (hopefully). I'm putting it inside spoiler tags since it obviously contains spoilers for this chapter. Please read it if you like:
The last hand of Shino vs Aina vs Sakura vs Kano
Kano is actually pretty smart. She quickly estimates that Shino's hand can't be worth more than 4500 points, which wouldn't be enough for Shino to surpass Sakura if Shino were to ron Kano. Thus Kano correctly guesses that even if she discards Shino's waiting tile, she won't get ronned. Then Kano proceeds to discard a 9-sou (which is a dangerous tile) but, just as she assumed, Shino doesn't ron her.
This however has the side effect of giving Sakura the impression that the 9-sou is a safe tile. This is in part because Sakura thinks that Shino is ready to let her win the match in order to stop Manbara Middle from getting a second victory. So, from Sakura's point of view, if that 9-sou was Shino's waiting tile, then Shino would have ron it already.
Since Sakura is not very good at hiding her emotions, her reaction to the 9-sou is quickly spotted by Aina. Then, in a stroke of luck, Aina draws a 9-sou herself (this is not shown but we can guess it by Aina's words of "I was lucky to draw a 9-sou"). Here we can assume that Aina did the same reasoning as Kano and she knows that the 9-sou could very well be Shino's waiting tile.
It would be ok for Aina to discard the 9-sou (for the same reason as Kano) but she decides to change her wait, keep the 9-sou and discard a west wind tile. She's betting on the chance that somebody else (like Sakura) will later discard another 9-sou thinking that it's a safe tile, which is exactly what happens. Even if Shino is waiting for that same tile, she'll still get the upper hand thanks to the atama hane rule.
So that's why Aina, being modest, attributes her victory to "luck". Shino on the other hand realizes that it wasn't just luck, since it took some reasoning to keep that 9-sou. But then she also realizes that she should have tried to win at her first opportunity (just as Sakura expected) to stop Manbara Middle from getting their second win. It's a sad moment for Shino but she shouldn't worry too much because this sets the stage for Shizuku and Kyouka to save the day!
This is a nice chapter but unfortunately it's not much more than a draft for most of the pages. Ritz herself said this is the chapter that was "the farthest from completion". Let's hope the next one will have more ink in it.
On another note, someone asked me if I could provide a quick summary of Ritz's blog posts with chapter releases. Sure why not, Ritz reveals interesting things to her readers sometimes and her posts are rather infrequent anyway. There was a post just a few days ago so let's begin with that one after the break:
When writing character's names in romaji, Ritz uses the western order (surname last) and I use the eastern order (surname first). There are no rules about this so
both ways are correct.
I've always used the eastern order so far and
nobody has complained so I assume most of you are fine with this but let
me know otherwise. I like using the eastern order but I wouldn't mind
using the western one if the majority wanted it that way. The only issue
with using the eastern order is that sometimes there'll be chapters
like this one where the western order is used by the author and this
introduces some inconsistency in the naming.
Shino's first official match as a middle school student is against one of the strongest players in the region: Moriwaki Aina. I hope you enjoy it.
Links: Shinohayu ch32 (Mega) Shinohayu ch32 (Mediafire)
