Leah is very interesting. She's a very compelling character, but also for me one of the hardest to understand. At least she's one of the hardest to understand without conscious effort and thought. She is the most traditionally Japanese character both by upbringing and by her ethnic heritage (She's almost full Japanese with some Chinese ancestry while most of the cast is between 1/4 and 1/2 non-japanese, usually with the other being western/white). She's been raised in a strict traditional household to be obedient and polite, all while training herself to suppress her rebelliousness and rage. She lies as naturally as breathing. She always keeps her mask up, even around her closest friends. She's absolutely the character whose experience is least similar to my own experience growing up, and that means that the way she reacts to situations and her instincts are the absolute farthest from my own. And so the drama in her arc largely revolves around her own inability to trust herself, to let down her guard about how she's really feeling and show vulnerability, and to actually allow herself to rebel against her mother against an entire lifetime of suppressing that urge (rebelling in ways that were "safe" or indirect). So her arc can be incredibly frustrating from the perspective of the reader because we know there's an obvious solution from her. "Gosh this drama would be so easy to resolve if she just did the obvious thing." But like, for her, its not. Its hard. And when you think about it, it feels earned, justified. Its not just another low effort drama plotline caused by people not talking honestly to each other.
