Kazuya is so pathetic that watching him bumble toward actual feelings becomes genuinely funny instead of just sad. The rental girlfriend premise isn't a gimmick, it's the perfect setup for a guy to realize that pretend dating stops being pretend the moment someone shows up and is real. Chizuru's character design catches your eye, but her actual indifference to his existence is what keeps you watching, because he has to earn something that can't be bought.

Kazuya Kinoshita is a twenty-year-old college student nursing a bruised ego. His girlfriend Mami dumped him after just a month, leaving him bitter and determined to never feel that sting again. His solution: rent a girlfriend through an app. It's supposed to be simple, transactional, fake. The girl who shows up is Chizuru Mizuhara, beautiful and charming, and Kazuya quickly falls for her. When he decides her warmth was only an act and rates her badly, she lets her sweet persona drop and tears into him. Then news arrives that his grandmother has collapsed, and at the hospital Kazuya blurts out that Chizuru is his girlfriend, leaving her stuck playing the role. Chizuru is trying to keep her rental work a secret, and their lives turn out to be tangled together in ways neither expected, all while Kazuya is still hung up on Mami. The result is a romantic comedy with a dramatic streak, built on awkward moments and the feelings that grow out of a pretend relationship.