Aki has started to pray in front of the family altar, asking for her Grandpa to guide her during her Nambu Moguri training. She gets curious and asks Natsu when her husband died. "Last year." Startled, Aki asks if she's okay. Natsu says she has gotten used to his absence and has accepted that he might die any day, out in the sea. "It's the fate of a fisherman's wife." In school, Taneichi is helping Aki review for the qualification exam for the course (If she does not pass it, she will not be allowed to continue). Aki continues studying at the train station when Hiroshi drops in on her. He asks if Aki has thought of her answer to his love confession. He also attempts to give her his love letter. But instead of taking it or answering him, Aki leaves, saying she has to study and must not think of anything else right now. And that this situation between them is "kinda awkward." But the truth is, Aki does not have the heart to say "I have somebody else I love" fearing Hiroshi might go back to his gloomy Stove-san self, sitting moodily in front of his favorite stove. But that night, Hiroshi still enters her mind and could not sleep. She gets up to drink water and finds out her Grandpa's picture at the altar is gone. Natsu says she had put it away but does not explain why. Sensing something is weird, Aki talks about it at the cafe with her mother, Ben, Daikichi, Yayoi and her husband Atsushi. Natsu has been seen, in a good mood lately, acting like a giddy teenager (singing, dressing up). Ben also says he saw Natsu and Rokuro one time at the Co-op looking rather... intimate-ish. They just could not believe that the two might be having an affair. But Yayoi says, "Rokuro has been going around places getting sea urchins for her!" Just then Natsu and Katsue arrive interrupting their gossip. The next morning, Haruko is going to interrogate her mother about it. Meanwhile, Aki is with Yui selling unidonburi on board KitaTetsu. Aki sells one to a curmudgeon-ish old man withou
