Seki is rolling balls of mud and polishing them before putting them down on a large bamboo leaf, so it looks likes dumplings. He makes 3 of various ‘flavours’ (red bean paste, roasted soybean, mugwort) and they are so realistic that it makes him hungry, shown by his stomach growling, so he attempts to eat one but stops himself from doing so. To satiate his hunger, Seki eats his lunch, but this hurts his ability to make realistic dumplings from mud, as his hunger provided him that artistic edge and fails to recreate any dumplings to the same standard for the rest of the lesson.

Seki is playing with some Shogi pieces, however he is sitting next to Uzawa, who takes control over the pieces and board but Seki has accounted for this and has a smaller set of Shogi pieces to play with. He gets his Shogi pieces to practice military drills until one of normal pieces lands on their board after it had been launched from Uzawa’s antics. The smaller pieces move to defeat the larger foe by stacking on top of one another under the board, tilting the board enough that the normal piece falls off and is ‘vanquished’. Uzawa is now bored and returns everything to Seki by dumping them in front of him and, by extension, on top of the smaller board. Seki moves to a different seat, away from Uzawa.

Seki has a lot of small containers and lids and a toy grabber that looks like robot arm, so pretends to be a factory robot that puts lids on containers. He gets so immersed that he doesn’t hear Rumi when she asks him to pick her rubber up when it falls off her desk and lands under his deck. Fearing that he has lost his soul, Rumi tries to annoy him back to reality by flicking small balls of paper at him, but to no avail. She moves to her last resort: throwing her Drama Panda keychain toy on his desk, hoping its cuteness can reawaken Seki’s soul but it initially doesn’t succeed and Seki attempts to throw it away, however it gets caught on the arm’s fingers. He then tries to shake Drama Panda free and seeing it struggle allows his soul to return (of course only the evil part) and Rumi snatches back Drama Panda and gets her dropped rubber.

Seki has brought a pair of jeans and is stone-washing them (who knew he was such a fashionista). After that, he distresses them using a pair of scissors and the jeans come out very stylish - clearly Seki knows what he is doing. He measures them against himself before trying them on (don’t worry, Rumi looks away to protect his modesty) over his current pair of trousers. He doesn’t get them all the way up, but that is a good thing as he is called upon to read something and the jeans hang off of him low enough that his desk hides them from the view of the teacher. However, when he sits down, the fabric is stretched too much and one of the holes ends up ripping further. This hurts Rumi as she is standing up as he sits down, so everyone assumes that she ripped her clothing.

Today is parent visiting day, so Seki doesn’t seem to be playing around as he could be spotted by any of the parents, one of which is his mother. Mrs Seki is standing closer to the students than most and is directly behind Rumi, which doesn’t help her nerves as she believes that she trespassed at Mrs Seki’s house (she didn’t, she was invited by an occupant). Seki is playing around as he is doing rhythmic finger gymnastics, using a pen with a ribbon attached as the ribbon apparatus. Rumi contemplates stopping him, but his captivated by his performance, allowing a mysterious assailant to intervene instead. This mysterious assailant is Seki’s mother, who has fired an elastic band at Seki’s pen and knocks it out of his hand and onto his desk, while Rumi is overjoyed that she isn’t the only one who must suffer Seki’s antics. Seki tries to sneakily pick it up again, but his mother knocks onto the floor with another elastic band, before she then fires at his textbook to indicate what he should be doing - studying. He still tries to reach for the pen anyway and his mother can’t hit it due angle she is above the pen, but Rumi is in the perfect position and she helps her pit by knocking the pen away with preprepared small balls of rubber. Seki, however, has something else to play with: a pair nun-chucks fashioned from a pen which when spun, is impervious to elastic bands. However, Mrs Seki takes 2 of Rumi’s rubber balls, breaks an elastic band, fastens the balls to said elastic band and fires it at Seki’s nun-chucks, disables and knocks them onto the floor. Rumi finishes it off, by knocking it further away her rubber balls. Rumi’s joy is short-lived as she is chosen to answer a question, but as she hasn’t been paying attention she can’t apologises for it.
After the lesson, Mrs Seki gifts her a box of elastic bands and Rumi promises to do her best.

Goto has brought some flowers from home and that inspires Rumi to grow some her own and she isn't the only one as Seki has built a small garden on his desk. Rumi want to reprimand him however: the pots are the bottom of used plastic bottles, the fencing is made from used chopsticks (they have been washed), shredded styrofoam lines the pots, and flowers are nice to look at. Seki offers her a potted flower, which she gratefully accepts until an insect flies onto her desk but she accepts their existence as he has done the eco-friendly thing of not using insecticides. However, her goodwill runs out when she sees him take chopsticks out of his bag to build more fences as he is no longer being green and threatens him with the elastic bands she got from his mother, but she needs to work on her trigger control as she accidentally hits Maeda. Maeda turns around, sees no evidence of any impropriety, sighs and returns to his studying, so now Rumi wonders how he feels about her.

Seki is intently staring at an inkwash painting before putting it away and giving it an 8000 yen (about £37.44) price tag - today he is art appraising! He next appraises an teacup and gives it a price of 700 yen (about £3.27), before moving it to the side with little concern although he treats the next item, a glass bowl with protrusions on the outside, with a lot more care as he appraises its value to be 3,000,000 yen (about £14,100). Rumi is confused at its value until she reads her textbook, which is conveniently about the Shoso-in treasures and they are various artefacts that are currently housed in the treasure house (or Shoso-in) of Todai-ji temple in Nara and the artefacts are associated with 8th century Japanese emperor and empress Shomu and Komyo. This glass bowl most likely made its way to Japan along the Silk Road although Rumi doesn't rule out the possibility that the Seki family excavated this themselves (I am not sure the the treasure laws of current countries that the Silk Road now goes through as well as Japan, but it is highly unlikely that Seki or his family excavated it themselves). There is 1 final item and it is a handmade Japanese teacup that is highly likely made by an amateur (such as a little kid) that wishes good luck with work to its owner - Seki values it at 1 yen (0.47p, so its so low, that it is impossible to pay for it Pound Sterling) and writes the price on the cup directly. Incensed at Seki at his treatments of low valued items, Rumi attempts to buy the Japanese teacup, only to discover that the price has jumped up by 700 times, so pivots to the more western teacup, only to discover its price has increased to 8000 yen! Seki loses a potential customer.

Seki has got a model train and tracks to run it on, so Rumi decides to study while he builds it and she will marvel at it when its done. After some time, she looks over to see if he is done, only for Seki to only have his textbook and notebook out and no model railway but she can faintly hear the model train running from inside Seki's desk. She leans over to get a look, only for Seki to cover the gap she can see as he leans over his desk to look at the train running around from an air vent he built into the desk. Rumi is frustrated that she can't see the train running, but he can although she is granted an opportunity when the teacher asks the students on the back row (this includes Rumi and Seki) to solve some problems on the board on the front. Rumi concludes that if she finishes her problem before Seki, then she can beat him back to their seats and she can see the train running, however her problem solving speed is too quick so the teacher hands her another problem to do, which she begrudgingly solves, but by the time she has finished, Seki has put the railway away. Rumi gets her train fix after school by going to the local station and watching some real life trains.

Seki is making characters out of of clay: a leek, a pine, and an octopus and Rumi doesn't recognise them whilst also is off-put by the pine character. However, she does recognise their local significance as: their hometown is known for its leeks, there are 3 pine trees (most likely Japanese Black Pine trees as that species of tree is the most common pine in Japan and the character's 'skin' is black like the tree's bark) outside the train station that have been around since the Meiji era (1868-1912), and tortoiseshell handicrafts are still made in the town (the octopus is supposed to be made from tortoiseshell) although it is a dying craft due to the dying of the material (a shell-less tortoise is a dead tortoise and cannot make more tortoises). This means these characters are local mascot designs and Seki begins to fan them as a way simulate high winds and the Leek character falls over and is rejected. The next test is how many children it can handle and while both pass, the Pine can handle more than the Tortoiseshell Octopus and wins out. Rumi is not satisfied with the Pines's design and submits her own design and Seki is faithfully recreates it, but Rumi isn't happy about as she is unaware of her poor drawing skills on this occasion. She forces Seki to try to recreate her mascot design according ot her vision rather than her drawn design.

Rumi and Seki's class are going on a field trip and everyone has split into groups to discuss what the see during their free time. The boys of the group, which includes Seki, aren't interested, so it is left to girls to plan, which includes Rumi. Some small guidebooks fall out of Seki's guidebook and that makes Rumi think that the Robot Family will be coming on the trip, so recommend activities that are great for young families rather than young teens.
Now to the main focus of the chapter. On the coach ride to the trip, Goto has to sit between Rumi and Seki and feels bad about it, but it is ok for Rumi. After 2 hours travelling, everyone is pretty much asleep, except Rumi and Seki as the latter is making a load of weather charms before stuffing them into one large weather charm. However, the movement from coach is not helping him draw perfectly nor is him feeling carsick as well, but he eventually completes is his mega weather charm and hangs it up in front of him. Everyone goes to sleep and the movement of coach causes the weather charm wing upside down, so rather guaranteeing good weather, it is now guaranteeing bad weather and that bad weather wakes Rumi up, so she tries to readjust the charm from her seat so the good weather returns. Her movements wake Goto up, who pretends to be asleep, whilst assuming that Rumi is trying to get some quality couple time with her 'boyfriend'. Rumi, however is trying to put the small weather charms back into the big one as it came apart as she tried to readjust it, although it very hard to do that whilst reaching over Goto in an effort to not disturb her, but can get closer to Seki and the weather charms when Goto raises her legs as she recoils at the thought of Rumi being all lovey-dovey with a sleeping Seki. The weather charm is put back together and in the correct orientation for good weather, but Rumi notices that she missed one of the small weather charms and has t olean over Goto again to put it back.

It is day 3 of their field trip and the only sight Rumi wants to see is the Robot family, but doesn't know if they are actually here. Her suspicions are raised when she sees a small flag on Seki's bag advertising "Seki's tours" and they are confirmed when they visit a shrine and Seki has an odd pose when praying, so he can get the robot family to do the same, Rumi tries to get a photo, but by the time she has her camera ready, Seki has finished praying and has moved on. They next head to a scared tree that can better your health and luck by touching it and realising Seki had ran off there before returning to the group, Rumi heads there before anyone else and is ready to take a photo of the family, only for her to hear and see Uzawa and immediately hides them from view to protect them. Once Uzawa leaves, she lets got of the tree and before she can photograph the family, she must photograph her friends and Seki takes this opportunity to put away the family.
Disappointed that she has no shots of the robot family, Rumi has resigned that she won't get want she wants, but when one of the girls mentions that their bath uses hot spring water, she concludes that Seki would take full advantage of this with robot family and heads over to the entrance of the boys's bath in a effort to snap a pic. Goto catches her there and after vaguely explaining her purpose of being outside of the boys bath with a camera, Goto drags her away in a effort to maintain public decency.
With the last moments of the trip being spent in a souvenir shop, Rumi spots the robot family posing with a photo cutout board and tries to sneakily get a photo, but only gets Seki and his hand, which blocks the robot family as he assumes that she wants a photo of him.

Seki has got a tabletop billiard table, balls, and cue, but the balls which usually numbered have monster designs drawn all over them, while the cue has human face drawn on them. The cue can't shift the monster balls, so Seki puts a case around it which styled to look like a Sentai hero mask (Power Rangers for us in the west) which makes the cue bigger and can now move the monster balls around. However, the monsters cannot go through pockets on the table as they are too big, meaning the hero is now in for the long haul against them, so Rumi prepares to intervene, but holds back as she realises that she would then become the hero herself and that defeats the point of the hero. The battle is getting a bit rough for the hero as his mask is coming apart, but these pieces help knock 2 monsters off of the table and this inspires Rumi to launch bits of rubber on the table, so there are more chances for monsters to bounce out off of the table. Rumi is almost too distracted to answer a question when asked, but intensely confirms that she can ,briefly gaining a new nickname of "Atsui" (Japanese for hot or intense).

Seki has some serious bedhead and has nothing to take care of it, except for glue. Rumi offers him her hairbrush instead and tries to simply brush down until Rumi recommends he uses some water so he likes his hand and immediately regrets it after sensing Rumi's anger. He instead decides to collect his own water by: lighting a candle,putting it on the window sill, placing a plastic bag over said candle, waiting 10 minutes, extinguishing the candle, closing up the bag, whirling it around and squeezing it out some water that condensed inside the bag. Now he has some water, he can fix his hair and return Rumi her hairbrush. The next morning he arrives with bedhead again.

The first bonus chapter sees Rumi spot Jun haggling over some food with a seller before heading to another stall to buy gloves for her brother. Rumi sees this as an opportunity to spend time with Jun because instead of buying a pair of gloves, she could make a pair with Rumi helping her of course (got to put that 2nd-rank knitting license to use). Rumi heads to where Jun is and talks badly about the gloves on sale, but unfortunately the only one listening is the vendor and she told to stop scaring customers or leave. At school, Rumi spots Seki with a new pair of gloves and is reminded of the lost opportunity she had with Jun.
The final chapter is autobiographical and is about Takuma and his poor ability to smile, although he is more optimistic about his ability and believes there are situations in which one can naturally smile and photo shoots aren't one of them.