Each chapter is filled with a new twist and turn in the story, and kept me on my toes as to what would happen next in the story. However, it sizzled out towards the end for me, just a bit before the heartbreaking finale.
Throughout the story, you question what the relationship is between the main pair, as you see bits and pieces uncovered. It's both clear and unclear at times whether they feel the same way about each other or not, but ultimately, I think they did love each other, though it's not as obvious as it is to each other.
For example, Narumi is crushed after the first time Mizuho decides not to come anymore to his house. I feel like it was because Mizuho was dissatisfied with the extent of their relationship. They weren't exlcusive, and Narumi openly flirted along with other girls which ended up making her feel unhappy, along with the fact that it feels like she's not aware of her own feelings at this point in time. It felt like she didn't want to be touched with the same hands that touched countless other girls and be treated as the same worth as them -- as casual flings.
However, you can feel Mizuho is growing throughout the progression of the story and deciding to face her feelings no matter the outcome.
Unfortunately, the romantic aspect doesn't end up with a happy outcome.
I hoped that the end of the penultimate chapter would be a lie -- that the final chapter would resolve this issue but it didn't.
Mizuho is left devastated after all deciding to go through with it even knowing that there's a possibility that the outcome won't work out in her favor. The ending feels so bleak for most of the remaining chapter, as Mizuho struggles to accept her rejection. But the entire journey of the manga is shown through all the friends and new relationships she's acquired throughout the entirety of it all, and her newfound acceptance to move forward that propels her.
Although Narumi rejected her feelings, I feel like he did love her to an extent, but just hadn't realized it, which is similar as to how Mizuho started out. That, and he didn't want to wrap her up in his problems with the two gangsters who promised to forever follow him, so he decided to cut off all his connections to her, which was what induced that harsh rejection.
But the end is rather disturbing concerning her mother. At first, I thought it was possible that the story Mizuho was chasing was fabricated as if she was a patient by Narumi's mother, but I re-read it several times before I disregarded that interpretation. With that last bit written in, along with the overall tone through most of the last chapter, the story had a bleak feeling to it after Mizuho's resolve to embrace her feelings.
But there is one last bit of hope even with her mother's input, as she recognizes that her daughter is changing.
I wish there could've been another afterword or extra chapter to see how Mizuho has moved forward in her life, but I suppose it would involve meeting Narumi again and undoing the effects of the last chapter. By the author's intentions, the end all is probably not always filled with happy-go-lucky romantic outcomes, and it's Mizuho's steps to moving forward that shows us how life works out sometimes.
I took off only .5 mostly for the ending but that's more because things didn't work out in the way that I hoped they would and not so much as out of nowhere entirely.
