The girl blackmails him into giving him his contact info, then "apologizes" afterward by inviting him to a date (which is obviously an excuse and another manipulation) and he replies by "oh she's so polite". The story then tries to play this evil thing is normal and cute for someone in love. Yikes.

I can't stand this protagonist. I like misunderstanding when it's written in a funny amusing manner, but this is just plain dumb. This protagonist is just outright s*upid, and the heroine is completely manipulative and unlikeable. If you... more>> see this and your thought is "oh my what a sweet love story", then you would be the type to end up in an abusive relationship and not realize it. Because that girl is a walking red flag. <<less

Rating: 4 stars

but I'm gave it 5 stars because currently the rating is undeservedly low

It's an interesting story with a premise for anyone who has ever thought "why do handsome guys always have to be aholes?"

... more>> The ML (Takarada) is handsome but is completely unaware of it. Not only that but he also seems to have serious self esteem issues and might even be suffering from Chuunibyou.

Takarada spins even the smallest things out of proportion and always assume the worst, which I find a reasonable backstory for not thinking of himself as good-looking because he doesn't think positively about himself in general.

But to address a previous reviewer: having a lot of pessimism anxiety and self esteem issues does not make someone "s*upid".

The FL in the story, Yuki, also seems to be your typical romcom heroine. Sweet, sensitive, and intrigued by our ML's lack of arrogance despite his gorgeous face.

The story moves along in a simple, clean manner that gets the job done. If you want a light-hearted, comical read, this one is it!

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Addressing the other reviews:

First, there was a scene when the Yuki first asked for the Takarada's number, and she used some unsavoury tactics. But that was not blackmail! If you want to get into the legalities (since you seem to be a lawyer lol), it would be more attempted defamation?

Spoiler

Because she threatened to accuse him of sexually assaulting her unless he gave him his phone number. Since he didn't actually assault her, when she threatened to do that, she was threatening to tell a lie about him which would defame his reputation.

[collapse]

It clearly wasn't right of her to do that, but I don't know about you but I didn't get into this book hoping that all the characters would be archetypal angels. They're humans, human children at that, capable of having vices.

Plus, this was a one off incident, an attempt made by a desperate girl to get the phone number of the guy she liked. It's not like a pattern of manipulation like that reviewer alleged. On the contrary, from reading until chapter 4, she seems pretty sweet.

Last but not least, I think we should always thank the translators and not be too hard on them for their work, imperfect as it might be. Because I think it's easy for a lot of people to to forget that they're doing this all for free. I hope the translator will continue to translate and doesn't get bogged down a few negative people :) <<less

This one is interesting, but jeez, it’s a love triangle, both heroines are good girls as well. It’s really hard to see heartbreak for me so I don’t know if I’ll continue reading.

TLs need some work though, there’re a few mistakes here and there.