It's lunch break, and Hiroyuki and his friend Aizuma are in the middle of a "love battle" . Hiroyuki wonders how a story can be so successful when the protagonist's brother falls in love with a girl, but Azuma points out that the protagonist can't just follow a set of tropes. They've already shared the same room, and they've been friends for a long time, so they're "bona fide friends." Hiroyuki asks what it means to be "omg" , which is the feeling when a person's heart stops beating. He says that a girl might give him candy, but a boy might give her something, and the boy might say, "Why did I give this to you?" and the girl might go, "Oh, why didn't you give me this? Why did you give it to me?" and so on. The narrator says that boys are more like girls than boys are like girls, and that's why Hiroyuki thinks that boys have more of an omg reaction than girls do. He compares the pickle he's making to the girl's, and says that it's just a taste of his family's pickles. He's been a regular at the pickle shop for years, and he never imagined that the girl would like it so much.