Spoilers ig??

Agreed

Answer for your question (spoiler):

Well, you will see soon in the future the development in romance. They very much suit each other, and the two will have more scenes to develop their feelings more, be it Cha or Jin-woo. They both genuinely love each other and just so you know, Jin-woo is the best and most faithful husband to his wife. I don’t see why you’re hating on the romance. I love shonen with little to no romance, and this story is one of those kind of stories. The romance is very subtle, but genuine and it helps create more depth to Jin-woo’s character. It never actually interfered with the story, instead helped the MC be more relatable and we get to see other side of him after becoming the strongest hunter. This is not the typical annoying shonen romance you see everywhere.

"and he likes her cause...?" if yu had been paying attention he noticed her abilities being way above the norm all along the way, and he's been respecting her the whole time. Even (spoiler-short term) refusing her in the guild is because he doesn't want he to waste her abilities since he fights solo. Same goes for her, he got her attention because he didn't smell but that's just the start she's been paying attention to him even when he was hiding as a miner-hunter. And what's wrong with a bad ass character having feelings and being embarrassed in a social situation? Happens to male heroes too... Maybe you're the one that hasn't been paying attention...

I read the novel, and honestly I like the role he plays as a faithful husband (which you can expect cause he already really cares for his family members), but still did not enjoy the romance bc of how it started and how rushed it felt. I would’ve just liked it to be kept as pure shounen (since we basically never see that), or I would’ve enjoyed it more if she wasn’t the stereotypical fall-in-love-with-MC female lead that’s usually presented in shounen.

So he respects her. Great, not like that’s already expected of any decent MC. And I know he doesn’t want her to waste her abilities, but again I don’t see that as romance development, more as just respect he has for any of his colleagues. Having to justify his love for her through that reasoning is... not what love is? Yes, later on he understands her and they are able to confide in each other, but ultimately I didn’t particularly care for the romance here (it seemed like the main reason the author had them together was she was the only female S-rank in South Korea).
It just felt cliche.

"Great, not like that’s already expected of any decent MC" actually that's not that common in shonen and this is the beginning of their relationship only I didn't want to go deeper into spoilers. But you only want to complain it seems. This is shonen not shojo so the romance is a byline anyway - yes not much romantic development but there often is a small amount of it and poorly developed > standard shonen, or have you not read any other shonen? If you don't like it you an always stop reading, it's your loss. I'm done w this post.

ah also the "respects her" is not how I meant it, it's not like person a respects person b in regular life, it's in the sense he respects her as a top hunter. In the novel (and a few times in the manwha as well) he goes over several times how she's stronger than the rest of S class hunters, and even more so than the guy heading the guild she's in, and how she's skilled. As a matter of fact her strength/skill is more inferred by what he says/thinks than seeing her fight, we've only really seen her fight like a couple of times and once she almost died.