when takumi straddled yukiya i was lowkey hoping that takumi would be the bottom lol,,, i kinda thought the early chapters were setting up for that kind of twist, bc even though yukiya is shorter and skinner, his frame is described as masculine and he has a very low voice... i also just like pretty tops and tall bottoms LMAO i do like them as they are though
i like how even though cheongrim calls sungkyung anything but his name to demean him, in his head he refers to him as sungkyung. it makes it obvious how he actually values him a lot (though he won't admit it out loud), and that he holds a significant position in his mind lol.
i know it's bc woojoo wouldn't be able to leave him easily if they were actual brothers, and their parents would have no reason to seperate them,,,, but saying u wish u were actually blood related right after u had sex with him is insane work
touya's personality only became twisted because of the constant pressure of being compared since childhood; but he has never once took it out on anyone but himself. he never once resented seiya. he had never expressed interest in anything he pursued, and that includes living; his longing for talent overshadowed his own personhood, so much so that he literally killed himself... or else we wouldn't be here lol
he has never been a ruthless sociopath, if anything he has strong empathy that even he was aware of, which is why he tried to avoid becoming close to the others in the beginning because he knew he would hesitate. he has no talent even in being selfish lol, his body always moved on its own to protect and sacrifice himself to protect someone else... i like that he's a dark mc, but he's not supposed to be an unfeeling psychopath villain or anything..., he's just insanely depressed and suicidal lol.
i see a lot of people saying that he's fickle for changing his goals/reasonings but that's kind of his whole thing... and he's realised that saving the world is a lot more fulfilling than stealing a bunch of talents... bc if everyone's dead who is he going to prove his stolen talents to lol, he knows it's not worth it anymore, esp since he now knows that seiya's reason for reincarnating was for touya's sake.
TLDR: they both very mentally ill and have abandonment issues that complement each other. the way their relationship develops is supposed to be strange bc they both have never known what is was like to have a functional family so their idea of family is very different from people who did have the privilege of having a functional family
but if u do want to read allat:
like yea, to most people who grew up in normal families (esp with an older brother) the way they address each other is weird. but both rize and kairi did not grow up with normal, functional families and thus don't rlly know what family is. and they both wanted family, people who would stay by their side and support them.
and speaking of marriage, they both have like a deep distrust of marriage... like they both come from broken marriages. rize's father eventually left even though he married rize's mother, and rize's mother never had a relationship that worked out despite her multiple marriages. kairi's mother wanted to completely rid herself of her connection to kairi's father so much that she chose to say that her son was dead.
like this sounds rlly freudian but ur relationships r kinda based on ur parents LOL, but like. if u grew up never seeing ur parents be romantic with each other ever, chances r u're either extremely affection starved and clingy or emotionally constipated and are embarrassed by acts affection (no inbetween). the reverse is also true.
by becoming siblings (kairi assuming masaki's identity) they are legally bound... like u can divorce ur spouse but even if u disown ur siblings u r still on the same family register. they need that connection on paper to assure that they are connected forever. so it makes sense why they conflate the more inseparable bond of siblings as more than marriage.
(also like they were grasping at straws trying to make sure kairi didn't go to jail lmao, they took it and rolled with it... and then the severe abandonment issues kick in lol and they're like 'wait this is actually a great idea!')
rize literally explained that the title of "brother" for her is a concept of someone who will always stay by her side, will protect her etc. based on her perception of her brother's personality when she was a child, and she said she only referred to her actual brother (masaki) as "brother" bc they were related by blood... meaning if masaski wasn't her brother she would have still seen him as this warm, protective figure, who was always by her side, and she would have been searching for her childhood friend named masaki instead lol.
also i see ppl arguing abt how asian cultures call older people "older brother/sister" and that is true, but i'm 99% sure in japanese culture specifically you do not call your significant other that lol (i'm chinese, where it IS normal for us to refer to our s/o as an older sister/brother) like it is supposed to be weird.
can we just appreciate the writing??? like each bit of information is spoonfed to you and it sets everything up, so you kinda know what's going to happen. but it's not boring bc of how well everything is set up and connected. and the PARALLELS. i love parallels in stories so fucking much. both their fathers were scumbags and rapists (assuming rize and masaki have the same father) and both their mothers abandoned them, kairi ending with a similar scar to masaki, the list goes on. also like. the biggest parallel of how kairi grew up to be what rize thought masaki was going to be.
part of the story is how the characters react to the info... like how masaki was so so obviously kairi's murder victim and the readers know it, but when rize finds out, she copes HEAVY and tries to deny that it wasn't true, even though she herself was not convinced.
also i'm p sure the author meant to make a reference to junichiro tanizaki's naomi with their relationship. tanizaki adopted naomi and raised her from childhood to be his ideal bride and even back then that was fucking weird and illegal so he made her say they were cousins to avoid getting him in trouble. sound familiar??
but yeah this is a prime example of "art comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable" it's supposed to be weird and uncomfortable. u are supposed to not like the connotation of her calling her lover "brother" during sex. it's like how people consume horror media, they consume it so they feel scared. this is psychological manga, you're supposed to feel mindfucked and uncomfortable.