That said, I do think it's fair to criticize the pacing for being choppy and the structure of events to be more like a dumb soap opera than a realistic character drama, which is disappointing when Kodama is trying to tackle such heavy subjects. As a result, while I think this premise had potential to be her best work, it ends up clearly inferior to Segull Villa Days and Fake a Marriage With my Junior. But it is interesting enough to be worth reading if you can handle dark subject matter and mutually toxic relationships.
While this sort of story isn't my main cup of tea, it certainly is interesting as change of pace from the run-of-the-mill yuri story.
But I think it's pretty clear that a lot of readers don't have much (like any) patience with stories about "mutually toxic relationships." In fact, a lot of readers seem to be dead-set on identifying "the good one" (as opposed to "the least messed-up one") in a story no matter how much of a trainwreck all the characters might be. It's remarkable how often people will go to the mat for "[X] did nothing wrong!" when it's pretty obvious that, while X might not have been the worst of the worst, X still did plenty of things wrong.
To be frank, I think a lot of people can't handle a female character specifically who's significantly flawed but still treated as sympathetic. If you look at het romances, male love interests (or even protagonists) are often far worse than even Meiko here -- and for not nearly as good reasons -- and yet are given way more leeway by readers than Meiko was. People, even a lot of yuri fans, just have way higher standards for female characters in general.
