I mean it is a pretty heavy theme for this Manga.
Also some people don’t like to think or be reminded of these things, since many are just here for the sugar.
I agree that this story doesn’t need for someone to almost die, just to flip the script and character growth, but Asian authors do love their whiplash, so I’m used to it.
It's pretty heavy stuff for this manga... I wonder what will happened next, even if I started to sort of walking away from it since Kaoru practically stopped crossdressing... it turned into a slightly heavier slice-of-life manga.
This happens with any story where the author dare actually have something meaningful happen or write situations where characters experience growth. All the people who just wanted it to be a bunch of superficial jokes complain that it's not what they signed up for.