She's great, I agree. And he's the perfect counter in that he embodies EVERYTHING she's struggling against while professing he LOVES her.
His parents? no obstacles at all.
His friends? wholeheartedly root for HER
Schoolmates? genuinely in awe of her, cheering her on and protecting her PEACE to reach her goal
What's his contribution? Ask her out on dates, because he wants to make good on time he lost with her, while taking away from study time towards the final steps of her goal, not even noticing how selfish that notion is.
Does he notice her perseverance? Her bravery? Bullheadedness? Willingness to invest herself and apply herself with all her might and passion?
Even the testing rival looks straight ahead at her, while her fiancé possibly STILL doesn't know WHY she learned a language she didn't have to learn. Because he can't be bothered to ask and only reluctantly learns to let go of this notion that somehow, from now until forever, everything she does has to revolve around him. And woman working, women having ideas, women having dreams aside from marriage just isn't compatible with this.
So he better get his head out of the hole he put it in. I know he will, but he should like... start hurrying about it.
Personally his actions don't really come across as him wanting her whole world to revolve around him, or him being actually against her studying abroad or even working-- it's just that if she left while still not caring about him, he could easily lose her forever; especially since she has been mentioning breaking off their engagement quite a lot the past few chapters. And he has no idea how to win her over until her departure (and, tbh, there is no way he could considering the damage done). So I just see this as more of him panicking than being against what she stands for.
The thing about taking her on dates when she could be studying isn't that bad, though, because nobody stays too healthy by doing nothing other than study... so taking her on breaks from studying would be kind of sweet of him actually-- but unfortunately, he's going about it in the worst way possible. Because rather than trying to connect to her meaningfully in the time they have, and trying to understand/empathize with Nicole's drive and strong will, he's just trying to think about ways to buy himself more time. Which sucks, bc it's basically like he forgot the main thing here should be Nicole.
Knowing how storytelling usually goes in manga, things are probably going to continue this way until she inevitably leaves and he notices last second then tries to follow her abroad. Which is good, in the fact she's probably still gonna go, but also sucks because he's going to remain this blind for a few more chapters... but atp that's just speculation so.
I just hope he starts trying to actually communicate and connect with Nicole soon enough.
Honestly, the FL here is so good I was shocked. A lot of these tropes of "girl becomes independent after having her heart broken" do a terrible job of having the FL have real and relatable ambitions, but here they're doing a wonderful job so far of growing her interests and showing her fascination for women's rights. Go feminism!!! Hell yeah!! Her little circle of supportive friends is also super cute to watch, I loved the jojo-posing lol
I'd say I'm liking the ML so far, and I can see in this comment section I'm a minority. Honestly, it feels a bit too much to get mad and call Caius (Keios?) a loser when he's still a teenager... like, he 100% deserves a lot more groveling since he was being neglectful of Nicole, but if there's ever any time for him to learn from his mistakes, this is it so lol I just hope he actually grows as a person and becomes appreciative of Nicole and her drive.
I'm no king of social awareness and social cues (human interaction as a whole, really...) so honestly I just can't get too mad when a character is shown to be genuinely unaware of what he has done. Like, as long as it's not malicious, it could always be salvageable ig ╮(￣▽￣)╭ rn he is really delulu tho so I hope his character development kicks up a notch soon...