No wonder Kouhai-chan has a crush on both her sempais. Douki-kun was going to stand up for her (but she stopped him), and Douki-chan did stand up for her.

After thinking about this scene a bit more, I've got even more questions. I am hardly an expert on Japanese culture in general or Japanese office culture in particular, but is this not unusually confrontational behavior from Douki-chan? Openly disagreeing with someone else like this doesn't seem like it's the "done" thing. A scene like this would not be out of place if it happened in the US, which is much more of an 'ask' (vs. 'guess') culture than I thought Japan was.

I wonder what yomu's Japanese audience is making of this storyline.

I wonder what yomu's Japanese audience is making of this storyline.

I don’t know where the main Japanese fandom lives, but the Twitter replies are basically positive. They roughly fall into 3 groups.

1. “Douki-chan/kun are so cool/capable.”

2. “That’s a good memory!”

3. Shipping stuff/comments about the origin of Kouhai’s Douki-dokis.

Group 3 also contains the subcategory of horny comments. For example, “This is… the Kouhai-chan is bi theory. Hot.” Also, “I feel like it would be best if Kouhai-chan devoured both of them at the same time.”

Old comment, but the fact this not exactly the common attitude is what makes it so good on Douki-chan's part. She stood up for her Kouhai, conventions be damned.