Probably the worst arc/chapter/set up I’ve seen in this otherwise mature manga. Literally “stealing candy from a baby” type guy, with a girl who takes literal punches for seemingly no reason or obligation, with a brother who thinks everything is “kinda sus” despite witnessing a metaphorical murder.
The set up is so bad that the next chapters have serious work to do to explain:
1. How she even likes him (to the point of it not being really stupid and consequently make her character extremely stupid).
2. Why she has no backbone to fight back the verbal and physical abuse and serious invasion of privacy (because weak people in these stories aren’t weak by default, they’ll have something the story will resolve/heal by the end of their arc, and because it ties into…)
3. Why she continues to stay when it’s entirely her choice to stay with no reason stated other than a superficial one (because she’s fictional-Twitter owner rich, beautiful, no obligations, no sign of blackmail, loving family, yet this is the guy she will jump off a bridge for, this guy better have something interesting over her, honestly for her sake).
4. Why Arata is pussyfooting around after clearly seeing her beaten and crying (because it makes him extremely unlikable and stupid, he literally took punches for his other sister, now when he sees his other sister beaten he’s suddenly like “hmmmmmmm thats what lovers do I guess?” as if it’s some kind of internal conflict or huge revelation on whether beating up your partner is good or bad, again the same guy who stood in front of punches for one sister and fought off rapists in an alley for another).
The heavy lifting this story has to do to explain away and develop these characters given the above is something I’m interested to see… because it looks fucking terrible right now.
Also this BF is literally twirling his mustache at how evil he is, maybe he’s ready to monologue about racial cleansing next.