I can't say I quite expected it to go where it did regarding the gong, especially as it amounts to both a critical think piece on the pushover shou and the obsessive gong, but I think it actually does lose a bit of it's impact by bringing them back together in the end.

Still, kudos to the author for writing what I thought was going to be a pretty stereotypical pairing only to be like nope, they're both wrong (though really, the gong more so) and they both need to take a step back and figure themselves the fuck out.

And I'll acknowledge this--even if I do think that the message would've been stronger if they'd continued on their separate paths, I appreciate that the shou really did put his foot down and say 'no, nope, I'm not going to continue to deal with this' and that you can see the gong actively trying to reach out and have healthy relationships with people outside of the shou.

Seriously. The bar is so low with these novels.