i think the female lead is a nice person, just naive and simple minded. she likes the ml, ml doesn’t appear to reciprocate her feelings, 2nd ml “punishes” her to date him knowing full well she’s not over ml. and she tried really tried to keep herself loyal to him and would probably have stuck with him to keep him happy despite her feelings. also, she probably doesn’t understand her own feelings as well as us readers seeing things from the third person perspective and having a view on the whole situation.
i think the female lead is a nice person, just naive and simple minded. she likes the ml, ml doesn’t appear to reciprocate her feelings, 2nd ml “punishes” her to date him knowing full well she’s not over ml. and she tried really tried to keep herself loyal to him and would probably have stuck with him to keep him happy despite her feelings. also, she probably doesn’t understand her own feelings as well as us readers seeing things from the third person perspective and having a view on the whole situation.