Don't let Utaha Kasumigaoka's constant "interactions" with Yukino fool you, or the way she loved to keep that little blonde under her thumb. If she hadn't acknowledged them, Kasumigaoka would never have had anything to do with them...
After all, she had once been known as a flower on a lofty peak.
It wasn't as though she had been born cold, but the aloofness Utaha Kasumigaoka displayed to protect herself had long since left a deep impression on people. Being hard to approach was both her trademark and her weapon for self-protection.
If Sogo Doma hadn't been so infuriating when they first met, and hadn't constantly held the upper hand in their conversations—even knowing that she was Utako Kasumi—Utaha Kasumigaoka wouldn't have been led around by the nose by him...
Still, in this country where people were indifferent yet cared so much about atmosphere, if Kasumigaoka hadn't used such methods to protect herself, she would probably have been devoured clean long ago. Even Yukino wore a cold, arrogant expression around others. For girls like them, sharp tongues and aloofness were merely ways of protecting themselves.
They just weren't very effective against Sogo Doma. After all, he had once lived in a place where even arguments could become classics. Plenty of famous writers had even observed the full process of an argument up close. Not to mention that the Celestial Empire's language was broad and profound...
Take the simplest example: a modern term like "computer" in the Celestial Empire was merely a recombination of existing characters based on their meanings, while in other countries, they had to create an entirely new word from scratch. What was even more outrageous was that everyone in this era had to fucking know that new word!
That was why Japan had so few insults. It