Honestly, I'm a bit conflicted on this pair because sometimes it feels like the tension gets flattened. A lot of the popular fics I see lean super hard into the 'soft, shy Seiko' and 'protective, stoic Naomi' dynamic, which is fine, but it misses the messiness that could make it really sing. That initial friction from their backgrounds—Naomi's more cynical, world-weary outlook bumping against Seiko's perhaps more sheltered or principled one—that's where the real emotional friction lives. It's not just about comfort; it's about fundamentally different ways of moving through a harsh world. I'd love to see more where that causes real arguments, real misunderstandings that aren't just solved with a hug by chapter three. The quiet moments after a fight, the unspoken resentments, that's the good stuff.
A friend wrote a one-shot where Seiko quietly starts adopting some of Naomi's more pragmatic, ruthless habits to 'protect' her, and Naomi is horrified seeing her own reflection. That kind of emotional mirroring, the tension of becoming what you fear or loathe for someone else's sake, absolutely wrecks me in the best way. That's the level of complexity I crave but don't always find.