Warning: the following contains spoilers for Sasaki and Miyano, Episode 2, “Someone I Like” now streaming on Funimation.
Even wholesome romances need conflict, and Sasaki and Miyano are no exception. Despite Sasaki having an extremely straightforward personality and Miyano being obsessed with Boy’s Love, their romance is not going as smoothly as one would hope. Surprisingly, it is due to the very fact that Miyano is so familiar with BL, especially the fantasy aspect of the genre.
The Boy’s Love genre’s targeted audience is primarily female and not homosexual males because its place as a sub-genre of the romance category is often considered a type of fantasy, rather than a reflection of real life. As such, while BL fans are free to ship and create stories about homosexual couplings, many fans are quite careful to distinguish their imagination from what’s actually occurring in real life, for fear of attracting further negative stereotypes. This is exactly what’s happening to Miyano.
On top of being a BL fan, Miyano is also a man, so he is not completely open about his interest, and this can be considered a kind of parallel to being in the closet. Miyano understands the type of stigma one has to face for having such an interest, so he not only wanted to avoid this for himself, but he also didn't want Sasaki to experience this. Throughout this episode, he went to great lengths to help Sasaki hide the fact that he was also reading BL. This is despite the fact that Sasaki had no problem with BL or with Miyano’s interest.
As a fudanshi, Miyano also knew how other BL fans thought, and he didn't want to end up as a target of their ships either. This is why he asked Sasaki to stay away from him in the bookstore. He still lacked the confidence to fully embrace who he is, and yet he also could not fully hide them. This meant that Miyano was getting very self-conscious when he was with Sasaki, and he constantly blushed when Sasaki expressed any kind of affection. He even dismissed them as jokes or teases, since Sasaki was also reading BL now.
Miyano is in denial partly because he doesn’t want to be seen as too effeminate since he does have feminine facial features; and partly because he doesn’t believe that Sasaki can truly like him, as he believes that BL stories are mostly just fantasy. He was also quite adamant about his sexuality (for now). But he is slowly becoming aware, as he noticed that he is treating Sasaki differently from his other friends, who all seemed to be completely fine about a potential same-sex couple.
Miyano also doesn’t realize that his denial was implicitly hurting Sasaki, since Miyano’s dismissal could be interpreted as repeated rejections. Sasaki also feared that he would scare off Miyano if he displayed too much affection, jeopardizing his future chances. So he was attempting to hide his feelings as much as he could and keep a respectful boundary, even afraid to touch his hand when they are alone. But this is getting harder as his feelings get stronger. Sasaki was starting to become jealous of the people around Miyano, such as his classmates that get to give Miyano chocolate for Valentine’s Day.
Sasaki’s jealousy will become another potential point of conflict because it won't good combination with Miyano’s denial. While Sasaki has been patient up until now (it has been almost a year since they’ve met), there is no telling how much rejection he is willing to take. Additionally, Miyano’s BL interest might eventually backfire, because he is not taking Sasaki’s real feelings seriously, and his complicated feelings towards BL and homosexuality could be a difficult hurdle to cross.
