I feel like that even though you shouldn’t kiss your friend who has a PARTNER even with good intentions, I think it was justified. Without the friend’s actions, the MC wouldn’t have known about the ML’s weird creepy stalker toxic behavior, and confronted him about it. If the friend did’t act, the ML would’ve stayed distrustful and wouldn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong. In the future, he might grow so possessive that he’d cut off all of the MCs friends as well, completely isolating the MC.
Even though I have an entire list dedicated to possessive seme’s because that shit is hot, realistically and understandably, this kind of stuff needs to stay in fiction. Also I think we should assume that the friend apologized since he told him what had happened and after confessing his feelings, didn’t try to push the MC to get together, so he knows that what he did was wrong.
basically, without friend kissing him, no character development ╥﹏╥
The only part I have a problem with is the 'conflict' near the end. It felt a bit dumb and over the top. The MC got mad at the ML even though everything he said was true and his reaction was justified. And afterwards when the 'friend' told him everything, he still didn't have the decency to apologize to the ML. The ML basically had to beg to take him back.
Meanwhile the friend, after nearly destroying a relationship got away scot free without even getting chastised for it. Dude was like "Hey I kissed you knowing that you're in a relationship because I just wanna cause a rift between you two. Sorry lol." and the MC was like "It's fine lmao, it happens. Have fun in France". Like wtf?
Look I get that the author wanted to add some drama to spice things up for the finale, but that was dumb as hell..