Probably won't bother replying to this thread again, since most people would rather just leave a dumb reaction like cowards, and I don't want to hijack the thread any more than this.
Totally understand it - it's absolutely mortifying to tell your crush about your ex, especially when you idolize said crush and the ex let you think it was a situationship. That's the point right? It's totally understandable and also the right thing to do would have been to do the hard thing of giving Hikari a heads up.
Yes, telling her would have been the right thing. I have just been saying that his reasons for not are 100% understandable, and don't make him the awful person a lot of people think.
His actions did cause her to spiral worse - all the way into convincing herself that ghosting him was the right move. Which again not to absolve her, I just think they really weren't all that good for each other.
I agree and disagree with this part, but they were both definitely a terrible match. I'll get into why I think Aya's actions are worse below.
Eh, I think his actions being understandable doesn't make them excusable. That's the whole agency/accountability drum I'm beating. And I think it's a good lesson in a manga/novel ostensibly aimed at teenagers b/c I think a lot of growing up is learning to own consequences.
Yeah excusable was the wrong word to use, and it seems like people are latching onto that. What I mean is that not telling her about Aya then is the only thing I can think of where he was
actively deceptive. Most of his issues throughout the rest of the series can either be chalked up to dumb teenager mistakes, or trying to hide his feelings in order to not get hurt - not excusable, but he could be forgiven for those if he puts in the effort to change. However when he confessed, he knew for a fact by then that Aya hadn't quit school and was still around, and could easily figure out through context that Hikari at least knew her. This could be Murata hinting that Yuu isn't going to change himself for the better and is just going to continue to wallow in his bullshit, which would probably make sense given what I've read of his writing.
So to be fair to her, like you want folks to be fair to Yuu, she's not thinking all that far ahead. Not to excuse her behavior but she genuinely has been treating the whole paid dating thing as an edgelord joke - she hasn't gone on a date so these men are still abstract profiles to her. She's at least responsible enough to monitor her prank & jumps in immediately to save Hikari. Again her behavior is inexcusable, but it's every bit as understandable as all the stupid decisions Yuu makes.
This is where I strongly disagree. To me there's an astronomical amount of difference between the two of them. Where Yuu has (mostly) indirectly hurt people through his lack of confidence and his annoying indecisiveness, Aya has actively hurt people directly through her actions, even to the point of putting Hikari in legitimate danger (regardless of whether that was meant as a "prank"). I don't think her "prank" is understandable at all if you actually think about it. She found somebody in her class annoying, so she decided the best course of action was to put that person in a position where she thought she was going to get raped. She's lucky that the situation didn't get out of hand and that she was still able to stop it - edgy joke or not that was still a teenage girl baiting adult men. Anybody who willingly does something like that is instantly and permanently irredeemable in my eyes. That's the distinction to me, and why I believe that while Yuu certainly isn't innocent, Aya is a legitimately terrible person.
