Kieta Hatsukoi / My Love Mix-Up (Vol. 1) by Hinekure Wataru / Aruko

If you’re in the mood for a very light, cute romance with an actual love triangle (instead of a love-Y), Kieta Hatsukoi / My Love Mix-Up might be for you.

SPOILER

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I’ve only read the first volume so far, and what’s nice about Kieta Hatsukoi / My Love Mix-Up is that it’s nearly a complete story in one volume (and it is TRULY complete in 9 volumes). You do, at least, get to the end of the “joke” of the set-up by the end of the first volume.

I can see, however, how fans might clamor for more. I really want to see what happens with these characters.

The meet cute (mess) goes like this: Aoki has a crush on the girl who sits across from in in class, Hashimoto. One day, during a test, he need to borrow an eraser and Hashimoto–whom he adores in part because she is always so kind to everyone–loans Aoki her eraser. HOWEVER! Written on the eraser is I ❤ Ida. Ida is the dark-haired, serious boy who sits in front of Aoki and, while freaking out about realizing that his crush is crushing out on someone else, Aoki drops the eraser. Who should pick it up, but Ida!

Now Ida has seen the heart!! Oh noz!

Aoki would like to just explain that the eraser belongs to Hashimoto, but she’s so easily embarrassed that he doesn’t want to do that to her! It might make his crush hate him. So, instead Aoki lets Ida believe that, yes, in fact, it’s his eraser… and that he’s got a secret crush.

This could easily turn into one of those romcoms where the readers spends the entire yelling, “OMG, this whole thing could be solved if you’d just TALK to each other!!” But, Aoki immediately tells Ida that they need to meet on the roof afterschool. His plan is to explain the whole mix-up and, because he’s a good guy, connect his crush up with the guy of her dreams and stand back and try to root for her.

Of course, Hashimoto grabs Aoki before he can head up to the roof where Ida is waiting and makes him pinky swear that he won’t tell a soul about what he saw on that eraser. So, now he’s headed up to the roof not exactly sure what he’d going to say to Ida.

Ida, expecting a love confession, is prepared to turn Aoki down gently. Aoki is all, “You weren’t meant to see that, just forget it!” and so it’s sort of solved? Except, Aoki seems depressed about it (though it’s really other things) and so Ida, being genuinely a good guy, offers to get to know Aoki before fully turning down the offer to go out.

The rest of the volume is Aoki becoming a confidant to the one he likes, Hashimoto, as she looks to Ida, while Ida starts entertaining the idea of maybe Aoki?

The final chapter of the volume hits us with a surprise twist, which I won’t spoil her, because it’s delightful.

I enjoyed this and, from what I can tell without Googling too deeply, things may work out for our heroes (and possibly the heroine as well…)

Apparently, this was popular enough that there was a live-action TV series made.… so you could watch this, if you prefer.