Meraooni

So with what we know, there are only a few things we can really speculate about.

First, I think MC is someone who can tolerate Lane's antics without actually enabling them. She doesn't laugh at every dumb joke or encourage his behavior. She usually sees him as a nuisance, but she also isn't afraid to react when he crosses a line. The slap on their first shift is a perfect example of that.

If you pay attention to MC during her first shift, she's actually very polite. She's more outgoing when it comes to doing her job, but she's also incredibly timid. She's young, and she even tells Lane she doesn't know how to use the POS system when he asks if she's worked customer service before.

That makes me think she'd either never worked in customer service before or maybe she'd never had a real job at all. I like to imagine she finished school, left home, and started picking up random jobs just to survive until she met Amy, who introduced her to RJ.

We also know the story takes place in 2009 during the Great Recession in US. Whatever job MC had before probably wasn't enough to support her anymore. Or based on the memory loss theory, maybe her medical history made employers hesitant to hire her.

Meanwhile, RJ's had been doing well 3 years before the story but slowly started declining. We still don't know exactly what happened there, but RJ clearly needed Lane around, which suggests there was more going on behind the scenes than we currently know.

If that's true, then MC probably came from a completely different environment than Lane. Their life experiences would've been very different, and I imagine Lane had mostly been surrounded by people similar to himself. Meeting someone like MC would've naturally caught his attention.

Something else that stands out is how seriously MC takes her work. She's terrified of being late, she's extremely strict with her schedule, and she's constantly neglecting her own health just to keep working. It almost makes me wonder if whatever job she had before was incredibly demanding, or maybe she had a strict boss who made her anxious all the time.

That might be why Lane finds her behavior so funny. Even if other employees were better workers than he was, they probably weren't nearly as uptight as MC. She stands out. Maybe he became curious about why she acted that way, even if only on a surface level. On top of that, she knows Amy and is friends with her, and according to her, Lane has a habit of hitting on Amy's friends anyway.

So I don't think the slap made him go "Oh, she's feisty."

I think what interested him was everything surrounding it.

MC spends so much of her time suppressing herself. She hides behind this polite, restrained version of herself. Weirdly, that's not so different from Lane hiding behind his loud, carefree bravado. They're completely different people on the surface, but they're both wearing masks. I think Lane could sense that before he consciously understood it.

There's also the fact that Lane literally writes in his notes that MC is "weird."

I don't think he means she's weird just because she slapped him or because she was mean to him. I think her entire presence feels strange to him. She's difficult to read. She doesn't fit into any category he's used to, and that's exactly what draws him in.

Jessica (the girl at Lane's old job) also tells us a lot about how people usually treat Lane. Most people either tolerate him, ignore him, or joke and flirt back with him.

MC does none of those things but everything at the same time. 

She doesn't really flirt. She doesn't joke back. She doesn't completely shut him down either. Her reactions stay a bit neutral, which probably makes Lane wonder what it'll take to get a real reaction out of her. He's constantly trying to push her buttons because she's so hard to figure out.

I also don't think Lane fell in love overnight. I think he developed a crush first, and that slowly became love. Lane just feels things more intensely than most people so you'd feel he's falling in love a bit too quickly, but that's just who Lane is.

I don't think there has to be some huge dramatic reason for him to like someone. He seems like the type of person who falls for people he genuinely enjoys being around, people he can vibe with. MC just happened to be someone he naturally clicked with.

At first, MC doesn't really show any romantic interest in him. But once she does start opening up, she asks questions about him, his past, and his life. She actually wants to understand who he is instead of keeping everything casual. Even when their relationship starts casually, she still puts genuine thought and effort into it.

And Lane notices that.

That's why he's always telling her she shouldn't like him, or that she'd be better off hating him because it'd make things easier. Deep down, I think he knows MC wants something real and stable, and he doesn't believe he can give her that. At least not at that point in the story.

To me, that's the real reason he falls for her.

MC forces him into emotional territory he's never had to deal with before.

With other people, everything could stay casual. He could flirt, have fun, and walk away without thinking twice. That's the image he builds for himself, the carefree playboy who never gets attached.

But with MC, he can't treat things that way.... I don't think he even wants to.

Once she becomes part of his life, I think he realizes it'll be incredibly difficult to let her go again. That's why he tells her he'd be an idiot if he ever gave her his heart. It's not because he thinks she isn't worth loving. It's because he knows that if he lets himself fall, he'll fall much harder than he ever intended.

So no, I don't think Lane fell in love with MC because she slapped him.

I think he would've fallen for her anyway.

The slap was just the catalyst. It accelerated everything that was already there. It forced him to notice her much sooner than he otherwise would've. If that moment never happened, I still think working together and gradually getting to know each other would've led him to the exact same place.

It just would've taken longer.

So yeah, technically Lane was only talking about work, but somehow he always found a way to bring MC into the conversation. Bro doesn't even realize he has a crush. He's in complete denial.

"She reorganized the stockroom today."

"She made these new price tags."

"She said this."

"She did that."

"She likes this. She dislikes that."

"She laughed at this. She slapped me yadayadayada"

At the same time, Lub understands Lane better than anyone. They've known each other for so long that he probably knows if he straight up asked "So... do you like her?" Lane would instantly deny it and get all defensive. "No?? We're just coworkers."

That's why I don't think Lub ever pushed the topic or even cared enough to ask for MC's name. He even said Lane would get there eventually. To me, that says Lane talked about MC so much that Lub knew he'd eventually find out who she was anyway because Lane just kept rambling about her.

Lane was obviously going to keep yapping about her until Lub learned everything by accident.

And this all happened after they'd only worked together for a month. A MONTH. Imagine how much Lane must've been talking for Lub to clock it that fast.

I'm also convinced Lane told Lub about the stockroom date and the price tag MC printed for him during her first week at MD. You don't even need Lub to spell it out. You can already picture the kind of stories Lane was telling him.

Lane coming home like "So today at work…" and somehow thirty minutes later the conversation is still about MC while forcing his bro to play game with him XD

So I imagine there was a lot of drama and constant squabbling around him. If MC wasn't the type of person who wanted to get dragged into drama, then she'd probably avoid Lane, his friends, and anyone associated with him, whether they were on good or bad terms.

And with the recent confirmation about the dare Lane made, I imagine he was even more... difficult back then than he is now. His antics were probably harder to tolerate, more obnoxious, and more annoying. I think that's partly why he sees himself as someone who's difficult to love and why he's so insecure and full of self doubt.

I'd say even if he met MC back then, she would've been a teenager too. She might not have known what to do to help him or even tried to understand him if they only knew each other as classmates. Without knowing anything about his family situation and only seeing him through rumors or the stupid image he put on the surface, it's probably just like Lane said. She wouldn't have wanted to associate with someone like him.

BUT...

I do think there's a chance they could've become friends. Maybe not extremely close friends, but close enough for Lane to feel like life wasn't completely unbearable. That's all.

She could've been friends with Amy too.

If MC was someone who was emotionally aware or had high emotional intelligence from a young age, then maybe she'd notice certain patterns in Lane's behavior. If she approached him and they became friends, I think it could've prevented a lot of things from happening in his life, or at least changed the direction of his development.

For example, if he got kicked out of the house and never graduated, I like to think that if he'd met MC instead of Bianca, he probably would've still tried to graduate. Maybe they'd even learn how to drive together and take their driving tests together :))

So in that sense, I think they'd grow alongside each other through their friendship. It wouldn't necessarily have to become romantic.

Now, if you imagine MC as the kind of girl everybody likes because she's kind and understanding, then yes, I do think Lane would probably fall for her.

But I think that's more of a universal thing.

Even with everything he told us about Bianca, I still don't know whether he pierced his eyebrow because he wanted her to finally look his way, or if it happened after she'd already started approaching him and then he kept doing even crazier things because he wanted to look cool and impress her.

If it's the first one, then I think Lane having a crush on an MC with that kind of personality is pretty understandable. She's the type of person everybody likes, but people don't approach her because they assume she has better things to do than waste her time on them.

If it's the second one, then I can definitely see Lane falling for MC in a much more serious sense.

He emphasized that he had no idea what he was doing back then, but he genuinely believed he was in love because he didn't actually know what love was at the time.

So if his type isn't specifically Bianca's physical appearance, then I think he'd probably shoot his shot with MC. And if they actually dated, I could see them having a much healthier teenage love story. At the very least, it'd probably be a lot less messy than what happened with Bianca.

That said, I personally like thinking of MC as a more flawed person.

She's only human, and she's a teenager too.

If her own family is dysfunctional, then I imagine she'd already have enough going on in her own life and be struggling herself. It's hard for me to imagine someone who's deeply caught in their own downward spiral being able to notice someone else's pain that easily when they're just as hurt and devastated.

If she did notice him because she thought "This boy has the same wound as me" then I think their lives would've needed to collide much more deeply than them just being classmates.

For example, maybe a teacher randomly assigns them to be project partners, and one of them has to visit the other's house to work on the project.

That kind of bonding time gives them the chance to see each other's home life up close.

Maybe they'd realize just how dysfunctional each other's families are, understand each other much faster, and become friends on a much deeper level.

He does say MC's name once though, when he's talking about her name tag.

The second reason is something I've already mentioned in one of my theories about BB's family background. I think names carry a lot of weight for him. They're not just casual labels. To BB, they're something deeply personal and intimate.

You can actually see him hint at this during the conversation at SLM after MC finds his dog tag and realizes he's a veteran. He says he doesn't really use his name anymore, almost like it's something forgotten or not worth remembering. That feeling seems especially tied to his last name, which came from his father and clearly left a deep mark on him.

At the same time, he melts when MC calls him by his first name. He even says she says it the same way his mom used to, and you can tell it makes him feel all warm, soft and genuinely happy.

So I think, in BB's mind, a person's first name is something incredibly private and intimate. That's probably why it bothers him so much when someone he cares about, loves, and is obsessed with lets a person like Lane casually use her name.

We get even more insight into this because BB already sees Lane as someone who's constantly walking all over MC. So from his perspective, hearing Lane casually call her by her name probably feels like proof that MC lets him get too close and push her around. They've only worked together for about a month, yet Lane already gets to address her so comfortably.

Whatever happened between BB and MC in the past, I just assume MC wasn't nearly as open or casual with him when they first met as she is with Lane. I can see that making BB a little jealous.