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This one is complicated, the professor thinks.
Oh, she’s a perfect candidate for the program. She’s so far away from becoming the person she’d need to be to become a full duelist—even more than the others, more than the elementary school boy.
There’s no joy in it, in her. Just pure, distilled self-loathing—deep in her bones, rotting them to the marrow. But she’s made herself think that it’s loathing for someone else.
She doesn’t hate Juri; she loves her.
She loves her and she hates it, so she blames the object of her affections. She punishes Juri, for loving her and making her love her back.
Why?
Because to admit to what she feels would mean admitting to something else.
Something she’s not ready to show the world.
She may never be.
He thinks of his own young man, dipping his fingers into the pool to select a rose—long, slender, lovely fingers.
Shiori has those, too. She could be a Rose Bride herself, if she wanted.
She might like it. To submit herself to the woman she desires, to shake all the shame off her frame, to live honesty—
But when has anyone done that at Ohtori?
(When has he, ever?)
So she subsumes it under layers, turns what should heal her into a disease, a corrosive cancer that is slowly eating her.
She won’t stop until she’s an empty husk, feeling nothing.
Because it’s better than feeling the wrong things.
Better than her love.