This had everything I love in a drama! Enemies to lovers (ish), marriage of convenience, angst, pining, cute leads, cute second leads and forced proximity! How! It takes a real tragedy of writing to combine all of that and create something that I end up disliking so much.

It's not so much that it was bad (I have definitely seen worse...if that's a metric you want to measure it against), but it started off quite promisingly, so when it just ended up getting worse and worse each episode (when usually its the exact opposite), the disappointment hits you really hard. Akiha and Shu were, INDIVIDUALLY, quite interesting characters, but together? Trainwreck. Shu especially. Up until almost the very, absolute last, he was so clueless about his own feelings and repeatedly hurt the FMC over and over again for no reason- unknowingly! After everything Akiha went through, it shocks me that she would even want to give this relationship a serious go, especially with a man like Shu who is so willfully oblivious of everyone around him. They don't make sense at all, which makes it very hard to watch what is essentially a romance drama.

The reason I didn't like the second male lead as a romantic interest was because I never took him seriously. Not once. It wasn't because his character wasn't written as a serious one, but because there is literally NO reason why he likes Akiha. None. She is a stranger who treats him like everyone does, who hangs out with him sometimes and complains about her marriage life. There is nothing. No chemistry, no tension, no interest. The jump from vague interest to love was so jarring.

Speaking of jarring love, Akiha's sudden "I'm in Love (L capital) with Shu" realisation came way too early. All he did was apologize for annoying her with his alarm clocks in the morning and admit to not being a morning person! Is that all it takes? There is, once again, zero actual romance in what is LITERALLY A ROM-COM. FMCs falling in love easily is whatever, I've been in the J-drama watching business for 7-8 years now, I've been the rat, I've eaten the cheese, I know what's up. But THIS is whole 'nother level of "you can't be serious" insta-love. A commitment-phobe falling in love because her fake husband wants her to wake him up? HA. Okay, Ashton Kutcher, now jump out and scream "You've just been PUNKED!" and we can all go home.