Friendship Schemes Arc

The Friendship Schemes Arc is the twelfth story arc of SPY x FAMILY, covering chapters 64 through 68 (volumes 10 and 11) and adapted in season 3 of the anime from the B part of episode 41 to the A part of episode 43. The fan-coined title links Loid's Past Arc to the Bus Hijacking Arc.

Where earlier arcs approached the Desmonds through Damian, this one opens a second route: his mother, Melinda, introduced here as an unexpectedly warm woman whose friendship with Yor may carry the mission further than any of Loid's plans.

Stranded at the bus stop after class, Anya helps Henderson carry supplies in exchange for tea cakes, and the housemaster uses the walk to probe why she wants to become an Imperial Scholar. Her flippant answers earn her a tour of the portrait hall of past Scholars and a lesson about respecting effort accumulated one day at a time. Watching her secretly exhausted parents that evening, Anya absorbs the message and startles Loid by volunteering to study.

Yor's storyline begins with a shopping errand. At a department store she catches a woman toppling under a stack of boxes, and the grateful stranger drafts her as a ringer for her volleyball team in a Lady Patriots Society mothers' match. Yor initially plays like a lone soldier, breaking rules and doing everything herself, until her new friend teaches her to relax and trust the team. Over post-game cakes, the woman learns Yor's daughter attends Eden and finally introduces herself: Melinda Desmond, wife of the former prime minister.

Loid immediately suspects a setup, given Melinda's estrangement from the rest of the Desmond household, but authorizes the friendship and builds Plan C around it: the Mommy-Friends Scheme, using Yor's social lifeline to inch toward Donovan. Anya reads the plan straight out of his head and interprets it as a competition; if Yor's scheme beats hers, she fears being discarded. Becky's romance-novel coaching for winning Damian over backfires into public humiliation for them both. Yor, for her part, asks the Shopkeeper's blessing to continue seeing Melinda, and when she offhandedly notes that Loid has been curious about Donovan, the assassin broker takes visible note.

Two side chapters close the arc. At Berlint General Hospital, chief medical director Gerald Gorey, jealous of Loid's popularity and of his closeness to Fiona, reports him to the SSS as a spy; Loid has Franky intercept the call, stages a fake arrest with Fiona in costume, and converts Gerald from enemy to grateful debtor. At home, a housekeeping duel erupts when Yuri finds Yor nursing injured hands: cooking, chores, and a shopping race, all of which Loid wins, though Yuri claims final victory after unearthing a snack from the Briar siblings' childhood.

Melinda Desmond enters the story as Donovan's wife and the mother of Demetrius and Damian, and her budding friendship with Yor becomes a standing pillar of Operation Strix under the banner of Plan C. The seemingly ordinary encounter also puts the Shopkeeper on alert about the Desmonds, quietly entangling Garden in the spy plot.

Loid's manufactured goodwill with Gerald secures his position at the hospital, the access point he needs for patients connected to Melinda in the arcs that follow.