I had a partner with bpd, I guess a few years back at this point. It was for a short while, although I knew them for longer than that (I sort of just fell into it to be honest). It was kind of suffocating, and not entirely due to them but also because due to all of the horrible things they had been through with past partners (this tends to happen a lot to people with bpd) it felt like I had to make up for that. The bpd itself...they were desperate. Not super clingy 24/7, but clingy when they felt especially concerned about our relationship. Absolutely willing to help me in any way possible (even up to offering to give me money, which was kind of the "I can't handle this" moment for me; the sort of thing where if you actually accepted you would feel like a shitty human being) And eventually I broke up with them and at least in my mind I was one of many dominoes leading to a huge spiral. Luckily, last time I checked seemed to have recovered; gotten psychological help, etc.
The point being here is that even if it's not said straight out, Noa clearly has bpd. It's blatantly obvious from the string of abusive relationships to the tendency to have emotional outbursts when they feel particularly unstable or cornered to the fixation on things that clearly are exacerbating the issue. Maybe not 100% accurate, but enough that I can somewhat identify with this story. And I say this in a completely non-"I'm projecting on this character" way (there were other problems that caused the break-up and I'm not enthused on being in a similar situation ever again), but I'm on Team Noa and Rihito getting together in the end. Why? Because it's not necessarily the friendship that is healthy for Noa, it's someone who doesn't feed into her impulses to cling as hard as possible or exploit that impulse. A long term friend is probably a good base for a healthy relationship when (based on my experience) there can be a tendency to become romantically attached to people extremely quickly if they let them.
Not sure why I wanted to say this.
