One Week Friends Volume Three sees Yuuki wrestling with new elements and potential hurdles affecting his friendship with Kaori.

One Week Friends Volume Three
Written by: Matcha Hazuki
Publisher: Square Enix Co., Ltd.
English Publisher: Yen Press
Release Date: June 26, 2018

The volume opens with Kaori talking with Saki’s two friends, and they declare that since Kaori is friends with Saki that she’s also their friend. Yuuki has mixed feelings about this but doesn’t really let on to Kaori. At one point in the volume, Kaori finds her heart racing, especially when she sees Yuuki talking with Saki’s two friends. She hasn’t figured out what this is yet, but it’s pretty obvious that she’s starting to develop some feelings for him.

Summer vacation is coming up, and Yuuki despairs about not seeing Kaori during that time, since they won’t be at school. But thanks to some nudging from Shougo, Yuuki works up the courage to ask her if they can hang out over break. She agrees, but it’s humorous how neither one thinks about setting up an initial day and time to get together. But it turns out Kaori makes a decision on where to go on her own, and Yuuki ends up correctly guessing where she would be. This section of the story starts out humorous, but once the two of them find each other, it turns into a sweet moment.

They decide they want to go to the beach and want to invite Shougo and Saki along, since they would be uncomfortable going by themselves. However, they realize that neither one of them has Saki’s number. Since Shougo and Saki went to elementary school together, Yuuki takes a chance that Shougo might know it. Amazingly enough, Shougo finds he has it and makes the arrangements with Saki.

We get a beach story, which isn’t surprising, since this was being talked about earlier in the volume. But it’s not a traditional beach story, thanks to their initial bad luck with the weather. At least they’re able to make the best of it and have a great time together, anyway.

Shougo and Saki also get some development over the course of this volume, and there seem to be hints that perhaps Saki is becoming interested in Shougo. This is especially true after he reveals that he was someone who was secretly doing something for her back in elementary school. At this point, there are only hints of this interest… but the undercurrents are definitely there to be picked up on by the reader. Now whether anything comes of this or not remains to be seen.

As summer break winds down to a close, Yuuki realizes that Kaori seems to be having an easier time remembering him after her memory resets each week. The section of Volume Three that takes place during summer vacation has little to no tension, and it seems like Yuuki and Kaori have gotten even closer. But, as we see right near the end of the volume, this is basically a “calm before the storm.”

When they return from summer break, a new student named Hajime Kujou transfers into their class. He recognizes Kaori from when he had previously lived in Tokyo, and when she doesn’t remember him, he calls her a traitor. This triggers a surprising event, which leads to the twist that the volume ends on. All I will say about this twist is that I felt so bad for Yuuki. It also kind of feels like an emotional “punch in the gut” to the reader, since things had been going so well for Yuuki and Kaori for most of the volume.

The anime adaptation had a very faithful adaptation of the stories and events depicted in Volume Three of One Week Friends, so I knew what I was in for went I read this one. I appreciated getting some focus on Shougo and Saki, as well as seeing Yuuki and Kaori’s friendship continue to progress, exactly as I originally saw it in the anime. The twist at the end of the volume works as a perfect cliffhanger, because it makes the reader want to continue on to the next volume in order to find out what happens next.

If you’ve read the first two volumes of One Week Friends and enjoyed them, you’ll want to read the third volume in order to find out how the characters continue to progress.

Additional posts about One Week Friends:

Advertisement