I love this part most of all, since it shows Sai relying on his own emotions to understand emotions. I love all that inner logic stuff, it makes me squee.

Thank you! The great thing about Sai is that he HAS emotions. He WANTS to connect to people and he is shown to feel awkward and unsure, so it's fun to show him slowly coming out of his shell.

And the line of cuteness vs. deformed: win. Because we all know that in order to draw or write the ultimate cuteness, we must deform it.

That was a bit of a lightbulb moment. Because I was trying to think what the more literally version of clueless would be, and then I realized that it can also be seen as being deformed. And it just WORKED SO WELL FOR SAI.