(I’ve read up to ch30, if things actually get better after that then oh well, I guess this comment will look even dumber)
I’ll be honest if I were to rate this based off the first one or two chapters alone it’d be a 8, even if you included up to the first 10 to 15 or so I’d still give it a 7 or 7.5, the seemingly emotionally intelligent and self aware MC, the mafia men who aren’t heartless bastards and have probably been taking care of him for a while, the mysterious cute rich girl who (surprise!) is actually just some horny freak looking to get her rocks off by forcing some poor kid into playing house with her and satisfying her crippling need for genuine affection and care (enabled by her rich family of course), who would’ve guessed, and the scene of him legitimately breaking down a little at the realization that he was utterly abandoned by the only family he had, completely uninterrupted and not used to either artificially prop up FMC by having her comfort him even though she’s partly responsible but instead entirely by his lonesome which really sells his plight, all of these things were not that groundbreaking or even well executed but it was enough to convince me to meet the story on its terms if it meant the characters were allowed to have at least convincing struggles.
Welp, no surprise that basically goes out the window the minute they go to school, and no I’m not complaining that the romance got put on hold for dumb school drama, i don’t care for how quickly the MC pushed aside his grief and I had already given up on the MC ever giving legitimate pushback to the relationship the moment he started flirting back with her, thus abandoning what made it interesting in the first place, but what truly killed it was the MC’s friends. I don’t need to talk about why Ai is an insufferable 3rd wheel love interest/“best friend” if you’ve read anything past ch18 and I’m confident in saying shinji is practically unlikable although him actually having a girlfriend (annoying as she is) of his own instead of mooching good vibes off the MC was a decent change of pace.
At the end of the day this was destined to be slop from the beginning, but damn it if some of these authors don’t set up plots with legitimate intrigue in them only to immediately abandon it once they see a chance to rehash tropes for the millionth time and turn characters into caricatures utilized solely for stalling anything interesting from happening.