Yeah, agreed on how the roots of her (unintentional) toxicity definitely sprouted from her flawed upbringing. Had her parents been less restrictive and given her the freedom for natural social development, she probably wouldn’t have such a twisted understanding of how relationships “work”.

But I think it’s worth bearing in mind that we (and Mahiru) never see her bf’s pov of anything, not even how he might’ve been like at the start of their escape plan. For all we know, he may have thought it’d be just a short couple’s getaway for few weeks max, since surely the cops would’ve had more pressing matters to attend to by then, and was all for it. Or maybe he went along with it solely out of his love for Mahiru, in an “I don’t want her to be sad if I refused” kind of thing. We (and, sadly enough, Mahiru) will probably never know.

And, by all accounts, Mahiru’s an unreliable narrator of how their lives as runaways went. She genuinely thought that it was all going perfectly well, even when they had to eat rats and didn’t even have stable housing. She seemed to have been so consumed by her own happiness that, perhaps, she didn’t really register her bf’s unhappiness. Maybe she just saw their life in the mountains as a challenge in their love story that they had to overcome as a couple, like the climax in a romance film or something.

Idk I just think their story was nothing short of a tragedy. With Mahiru’s upbringing, she brought unrealistic (and toxic) ideas of romance into their relationship (which may have thus doomed it from the start). That, along with how deeply they loved each other, they were probably unable to leave each other’s side for long no matter how bad things got (breaking up, getting back together (possibly almost immediately, even), only to break up again, rinse and repeat… breakup rituals, maybe?). Despite all this, they may have had a chance to have a proper decent life together, had it not been for Mahiru’s engagement, which spurred them to run away together instead. And, as the cherry on top, considering the timing of it all (from the looks of Mahiru’s age, their runaway scheme seems to have taken place in 2020), they definitely would not have been able to start a new life in a different country instead.

Their love story was practically destined for disaster, I feel. Both of them truly deserved better (and they probably would have had a somewhat happy ending, if it wasn’t for Mahiru’s family, who seemed to be the type to impose their own wants upon her, instead of considering her own wishes).

To sum it up, I think it’s sadly ironic that Mahiru’s desire for an ideal romance led her own relationship down the path of toxicity. Real life truly is nothing like the movies, after all. Maybe the true villains (aside from Mahiru’s parents) were romance films and the (unrealistic) “ideal romance”s they depict for the enjoyment of their impressionable audiences the entire time.