damn, I feel like this author just absolutely loves writing love stories but hates writing endings to them. Like, for fucks sake just let your protags get together for once.
I still don't get the consternation some people have about the ending to
Dagashi Kashi. Hotaru floated the idea of
marrying Kokonotsu, vowed to meet him again, and then actually returned in the final chapter. In one of the 4-koma omakes for the final volume, Hotaru gives permission to Kokonotsu to fool around with other girls with the knowledge that he
will be marrying her
which is equal parts scary and attractive.
What was wrong with her leaving, then coming back?
The entire manga: a teenage human and a teenage-ish vampire slowly falling for each other with other (and the boy wanting to become a vampire which will happen when he fully falls for her) and about the trials of other vampire/human couples around them.
You: Nooooooo it's actually about Healing. You're ignoring the themes to complain about the romance!"
The romance between Kou and Nazuna is indeed the engine of this narrative, but Kou's original problem wasn't "I want to become a vampire"-- it was "I'm fed up with other people". He wanted to become a vampire because he found freedom in the night, he found freedom in the night because he ventured into it, he ventured into the night because he became frustrated with his stagnation after withdrawing from society and wanted a change, and he withdrew from regular society because he found it (and the people within it) unbearable. And why did he find it unbearable?
Because he struggled to
understand other people, girls
or boys. He recognized that early enough (ch. 45, p. 9-11), and it was the reason he was struggling to come to love Nazuna at that point.
If you just focus on the "romance" aspect,
most of this narrative goes to complete waste-- even most of the parts that said focus would recognize have much less value when examined with such a constrictive lens.