#ooo i was wondering this myself

I think the he/him thing was because Panda knew them/her by those pronouns when they/she was still at school. And once they meet Kirara in the present, Panda switches to they/them and Megumi uses “this person”, they notice what Kirara looks like and aren’t sure what to make of it.

In Japanese, people will be often referred to in gender-vague ways like just by their names or by “this/that/morethat person” aka konohito このひと/sonohito そのひと/ anohito あのひと. And if you look these words up in the dictionary you will see translations like “the person in question”(sonohito) or “she/he” (both for konohito and anohito) <- the binary genders are there because dictionaries are not the fastest to catch up with language and cultural changes, these words don’t indicate a gender binary in any way, they are exactly genderless. That’s why it’s very easy to have nonbinary characters in manga, or characters whose gender is unclear. (Kono/sono/ano are a wonderful quirk of the Japanese language. “Ano” doesn’t mean “morethat” it’s a bad joke way for me to indicate that ano and sono are different but I’m not going to explain it because it’d turn into a Japanese lesson - if you’re curious I’m sure there are lessons on it online)

The thing about pronouns in Japanese is that they aren’t used that much. The clear gender pronouns do exist (he = kare かれ 彼; she = kanojo かのじょ 彼女) but if you look these words up you’ll see that they also are translated to boyfriend/girlfriend and they are often used like that, to indicate the romantic partner. It’s complicated like that.

That being said, when it comes to Kirara I think that if it’s not the safer choice of they/them, it’s she/her because in chapter 181 Hakari says: “I don’t know when I’ll be able to bring a woman here”. He uses the basic and unambiguous word for woman (onna 女).

He’s referring to the Ferris wheel ride, clearly treats it like a date spot/activity and is disgruntled that he’s there with a guy. It indicates that he’s interested in women - exclusively or mostly, because that’s the gender that automatically comes to his mind. And Kirara’s heavily indicated to be his partner so he’s the most likely to use the right pronouns and gender identifiers for her.

Thank you to @cursedvibes for the raw image.