the seemingly rushed ending. Not necessarily the pacing, but how everything left answered (MC's head surgery, the ghost, alternative timelines, parents backstory (especially the mom) was pretty much answered in the last 2 chapters by 1) MC tricking the brother to spill it by making him confess because "they were going do die", where the brother was somehow "to young to underhand what was going on at the time" and able to recall everything in detail, at the same time. And 2) the mother's flashback, which was more presented as showing the readers how thing went down, rather than the MC seeing what happened through forced memories of some kind. It was not a lot of discovering, like the foreshadowing seeds that had been dropped throughout the story and built of a lot of anticipation, but simply telling - having someone literally state what happened.

The doctor's death was a bit anticlimactic since I would've liked for the mutants to see him die or even have been party responsible for his death. I crave some following up with the MC telling them the doctor is dead and them having a healing moment together. To end on a wholesome note would bring a lot more closure and feel like a nice way to wrap it up since it began wholesomely too.

I liked the relationship between MC and the "love interest" (calling him ML is kinda a stretch). There's a lot of focus on friendship, companionship, and love that's not just romantic. MC doesn't show much interest in romance before the apocalypse so it's not unexpected that there's no romantic subplot. During the apocalypse the focuses lies on finding his friends (the mutants) and simply surviving. The ML is the most "advanced" and displays a lager set of human emotions and complex thinking, while the rest rely on animal instincts. It makes a lot of sense there wouldn't be any romance between MC and "an animal", but as the story progress so does the mutants ability to think and feel in a more human way. Undeniably, MC and ML shares a special bond. ML being moved my MC's character in the first timeline and MC sharing ML's pain and suffering, getting to underhand him at a deeper level, when he was evolving. Both of them are inexperienced in love. In some way ML has chosen MC and MC has opened his heart and accepted it. It's stated that in human terms, ML feels that his feelings for MC is what MC describes as the love between two life partners - that's a lot to unpack, but at the same time enough. There's a lot of potential romantic development between them after the main story ends (ch 143), but I think it makes a lot of sense why the romantic development went at the pace it did (or didn't), focusing on the plot which I love. This pacing is kind of rare imo and I love it.

You'll understand what I mean when you get to the scene with number Two