#im half sure i failed my mock yesterday Only bc these two were rotting in my mind

[nomeniko]

when i said how many months ago that i dont think shidou being a stand in for kazuis childhood friend/bartender has canon implications at the current stage of the storyline i Lied. kind of. i still believe that ‘kazui treats and cares for shidou the way that he did bartender’ is just speculation, but otherwise i think the stand in thing is true, just in the form of kazui holding shidou in high regard

high regard bc kazui has directly admitted that he looked up to his childhood friend in his interro. that and the copycat theory if it holds true (kazui looking to his friend as a guide for how he shld act as an adult man e.g. getting married bc HE was married (the gold ring @ the wedding), possibly alcohol (bartender and all), the weirdly similar hair and beard and presentation etc etc)

you know who else kazui compares himself to when it comes to being an adult lol

which. shidous current shtick when it comes to his duties is that he acts under the guise of doing what the 'adults' must do and never under his own accord and self interests, which makes sense when its the whole conflict with his character. 'adults' is his perception of the standard that he embodies, 'adults' is the person that he represents as a whole. its been years since the last time weve seen him talk about anything else but his responsibilities

and when it comes to the man whos obsessed with being what an adult must be, who else is there for kazui to look up to but mr adults himself. kazui even treats helping the prison as synonymous to helping shidou. not the prison or even mahiru, when thats who yunos caring for? whats wrong with you

so i do think the shidou childhood friend stand in speculations are accurate enough. kazui looking to be of use to shidou because his image of shidou (the hardworking one) is the kind of person he believes someone like himself should be, probably in the same way he looked up to his old friend