I’m really confused. I mean, I understand what’s going on, I just have no idea how I feel about it. So basically everyone is manipulating each other. The MC is using the childhood friend he knows likes him to make his crush jealous for revenge. The childhood friend is using the MC’s heartbreak to get him to go out with her and (attempt) to get him to actually like her. The MC’s rival is using his childhood friend to make the MC act again. Even the MC’s crush is implied to be manipulating her close childhood friend in order to get the MC jealous and acting again (she seemed too eager to go along with the script idea and WAS the one that told the rival about the MC’s acting career). I really just don’t get what the writers going for with this setup and how he wants us (the reader) to feel when all of the main characters are just middle school manipulating assholes (worse has to be the rival who saw how the mc reacted and just taunted; dude you’re in high school. You should have learned empathy by how. Stop acting like an insecure and jealous 5 year old). The whole thing just seems... weird and a bit silly (which could make this work as a comedy if it wasn’t trying to be serious). It gets worse when we have a MC who does a dogeza and apologizes (for nothing?) to a girl right after (and in front of) the childhood friend who just announced herself as his girlfriend. This seems like something a person with serious trust issues would write (seriously do people not know how to just talk anymore? “Hey I knew you were an actor. Why did you quit”; “Hey, I like you”).
The icing on the cake is how poor the MC is written. We learn that he had a really traumatic experience with acting that made him quit despite being a prodigy (and it looked like he nearly threw up just thinking about it), but moments later he’s gong-ho to act because girl (what?). I mean if I had a traumatic secret past, I’d stay away from it or go through a whole episode where I finally learn to live with it (I wouldn’t get over it in seconds to impress my crush). Plus if I were the MC I’d just stay away from the crush and the rival. Generally when people spread information about a secret past (stalker alert), it raises some flags; and the rival just screams “crazy jealous asshole”. The conflict here just seems so... silly (made up/forced). I don’t see a reason why the MC shouldn’t just date his childhood friend. I don’t know; I’ll stick with this series for a few to see if it fixes itself (or tries to), but right now it just feels like a mess.