Hark! She speaks!
While she’s been keeping quiet so far, Akane CAN speak if she wants to. She’s got a case of something called selective mutism, in which she is only willing/able to speak in certain circumstances, and to certain people – and one of those people is Masahiro. Even with him, she tends to communicate in short or one-word sentences, and relies mostly on facial expressions and gestures.
So we’ve got one grumpy dude who is not exactly a champion conversationalist, and a little girl with a pretty severe speech-disorder. Luckily, there are new characters coming up in chapter two who are not at ALL afraid to speak, and some of them will even stick with us as integral parts of the main cast!
I cannot stop laughing at Masahiro’s expression in the final panel.
Hahahaha! XD Yeah, it’s supposed to be a shock-and-amazement, “What the, did she just SPEAK? D:” kind of moment, but it works equally well as an “Oh. Crap.”-panel.
I immediately thought of Miyamoto Musashi.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi