Since you ship Kaizo with Sai (which is such a cool ship by the way). I've always wondered, what's your opinion and interpretation of Ramenman or Manramen? The other person Kaizo is mainly shipped with.
Hai! Thank you for the question anon!!
My interpretation of Ramenman is that, I believe Ramenman does have feelings for Kaizo, it's just that he never said anything as he believed that Kaizo can't love someone in a romantic sense..
I think, Kaizo and Ramenman are childhood friends, this was because of the saying "They have a history" and the popular headcanon in which Kaizo and Ramenman were rivals under Masksmana.
So for Ramenman, Kaizo was his closet rival, someone he admired, someone he trusted with his life, the person he always expected to stand besides, and the person he had grown to love.
Yet Ramenman never made a move, he knows how closed off Kaizo is, the struggle Kaizo has into understanding his own feelings. So he never said anything, he isn't scared of rejection, he think that Kaizo can never love someone in a romantic sense. For him, Kaizo wasn't someone who had simply never dated, he was someone who seemed fundamentally incapable of opening that part of himself. Kaizo built walls around his heart so high that the people closets to him couldn't see inside, not even Fang.
Ramenman would look at those walls and think that "Loving someone romantically isn't something Kaizo has room for."
So over the years, he stopped asking himself, "Could Kaizo love me?" Instead, he accepted what he believed was the answer, "Kaizo won't love anyone."
That belief became the truth he lived by. It hurts, but it was a pain he could endure because it felt inevitable. If Kaizo couldn't love anyone, then Ramenman's feelings weren't being rejected, they simply belonged to someone who wasn't capable of returning them.
So ramenman accepted his fate.
And Kaizo couldn't love anyone romantically.
That was the end of the story.
There was nothing to fight because in his mind, there was nothing to lose.
And that completely shattered Ramenman's world.
He watched as the impossible happen.
The walls that he believes are indestructable have a gate.
He just isn't the one who found the key.
And that moment hurts the most, because the truth Ramenman had spent years making peace with...
...was never true at all.
He was capable of loving someone romantically.
Suddenly, every memory becomes a "what if."
"What if I stayed after training instead of leaving?"
"What if i just asked him how he was doing?"
"What if I'd just... told him?"
For the first time, Ramenman realizes that maybe Kaizo wasn't incapable of love. Maybe, Kaizo was just waiting for someone patient enough to reach him.
Ramenman isn't a jealous person, yet he envied Sai, but not in the way that you think.
He is jealous but it isn't because Sai was the one who got Kaizo, though it was part of it, he is jealous of Sai's persistence.
Sai never accepted Kaizo's walls, where Ramenman saw the high and never ending wall, he respectfully kept his distance...
Sai saw the same wall and thought, "Well, someone's gotta knock."
And that is something Ramenman never did.
That realization fills Ramenman with regret because he wonders if he misunderstood Kaizo all along.
Because he realizes he was respecting boundaries that Kaizo never actually asked him to keep.
He assumed distance was what Kaizo wanted.
Sai discovered that what Kaizo truly needed was someone who refused to leave.
Fun fact: I actually made a fic about Ramenman with the same idea from above. saying this now made me realize I never made a post about it....
It's called: How could I...?
For as long as Ramenman could remember, heโd loved Kaizo.
It wasnโt loud or dramatic โit simply was.
From the moment they met, something in him shifted, anchored itself to Kaizo like gravity.
Kaizo was a fortress. Quiet, unreadable, closed off in a way that made romance feel like a distant language. He wasnโt cruel, just... unreachable. Love, relationships, all that tendernessโthey werenโt part of his world. Ramenman knew this. He accepted it, even when it stung.
Kaizo couldn't fall in love. That was the truth Ramenman made peace with.
So why โwhy did Kaizo looked atย himย like that?
It's still incomplete, but worry not as I am still working on it!
You can read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64866544/chapters/166717405
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