Very, very minor thing, where did those kids come from? Just playing in the same area? /shrug Just a little strange when the emotions and story could've been fine without them.
More substantively, I honestly wish he didn't develop romantic feelings for him. They could've been extremely close and friends, but then he just wouldn't reciprocate romantic feelings. He directly says, in earlier chapters, he's not gay. Yet here we are.
It made it feel cheap. It made it feel clichéd. It was predictable that they would get together.
And I just need to head this off before I'm accused of homophobia. Literally not my issue. It's that I could fundamentally tell the ending based on the tags and the first chapter.
As a comparison, imagine this story featured a self-avowed homosexual male and a heterosexual woman, and then they fell in love. And in real life, that does happen. Just the same as this type of story happens, with a self-avowed heterosexual male falling in love with a homosexual male. Both happen. But one of those would get a lot of backlash in comments.