A year has come and gone quite quickly at Seiran Academy and surprisingly there’s been no real change to Yurine and Shiramine’s relationship. Yurine still has a crush of sorts on Shiramine and Shiramine is still fueled by the desire to beat Yurine once and for all in school. Yurine has continued to try and remain a bit aloof and detached from her classmates but when some third years drag her into becoming the newest member of the gardening club, and only their third member in fact, Yurine is a bit too shocked to properly protest!
It is here that the story’s latest couple is introduced, rich girl Yukina and her childhood companion Towako, and they are the most boring couple so far. The story doesn’t play up the “rich girl, regular girl” dynamic so much as it plays up a jealousy angle which, while it might not be completely out of the realm for a young high school couple working out their feelings for each other, is an angle that the story already used for another pairing back in volume two. There’s also the fact that these two girls are already in their third year and will probably barely show up ever again. The side characters from the first two volumes rarely show up as-is, and it would be much more satisfying to see actual progress on Yurine and Shiramine’s story instead.
At least Yukina and Towako are 100% without a doubt a couple though, with a double spread kiss and explicit romantic motivations. Even Shiramine’s cousin Mizuki and Moe (the track star and manager) were previously as close to a couple as the story went and there was no on-page kissing of that sort. There may still be time for that yet however, given that the couple graces the cover of volume 4, but as third years they certainly don’t have much time left in the story. It would certainly be nice if Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl spent more time further exploring the girls that have already been introduced instead of tossing out one or two more couples each volume. It feels insincere to expect the audience to care so deeply about characters that the story fleshes out and that is far and away the biggest weakness of both this volume and the series as a whole so far.