I was hoping that they wouldn't go so far as to have sex immediately since high school and no actual feelings. I guess we can assume what we want about what actually happened given an unofficial story will show but like I kinda prefer Hozumi over our main otaku since he literally only gets involved by being the only guy supporter she had...
Yea 100%, if he leaves her alone, she would end up doing something incredibly stupid or harmful to herself and he knows this
It has to be legit stressful to fall for someone like her, hell even being just friends with her has to be stressful af with all the babysitting you'd have to do
I could probably tack on a number of others to reply to here, but I thought to keep it limited in scope for brevity's sake. This is going to be a bit of a doozy that I feel I had to get off of my chest, but everyone is more than welcome to completely pass it by.
I'm not going to say that I'll be speaking for absolutely everyone here (though I will be writing with first person plural), but I do want to speak to a bit of my reminiscing back to high school to try and put in what I think is appropriate context. Keep in mind, I graduated more than 23 years ago now...
Those adolescent years are when we do dumb things, influenced with how our bodies are going through the changes that are inextricably tied to those years. Things can get murky trying to figure out who you want to be while being subjected to the sway of your peers. And more likely than not, there's going to be one thing or another that you'll come to regret.
10th grade English I let a classmate copy a paper because she played sweet with me, and all I got from that was a failed grade on it. The teacher knew it was my work, but the grade had to be meted out properly. She did grant me the opportunity to override that mark by submitting a new essay, so suffice to say it never happened again.
Now, that's nowhere near comparable to this scenario where Hozumi is pushing forward with explicit manipulation of Hachiouji's feelings, but she also laid out that she wants to understand more about herself that she's not certain what the answer is. And while the situation is not happening in an ideal circumstance, it is happening with both a person she trusts and an environment that is as safe as possible.
In the end, teenage years are by no means simple, and I don't think their choices and actions should be judged through a lens of someone in their 20s or 30s............Or 40s...