Hello, I Am a Witch and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion! ‒ Episode 6
Some things just can't be hidden. Among them are Rose and Harij's feelings for one another, although it must be said that they're both doing a bang-up job of attempting it. The difference is who they're hiding from: Rose is concealing her love for Harij from Harij while he's hiding his feelings for Rose from himself. It never occurred to him that once his business with her was done she wouldn't expect him to come back. It never occurred to her that he'd want to. And rather than assume that they both have the emotional intelligence of an aardvark, I think it speaks to the fact that this is new territory for both of them. Rose grew up isolated and, whether because of something her grandmother taught her or her own anxiety, believed that that was how things had to be. (There's no mention of a father or a grandfather, which may be pertinent.) Harij we know less about, other than that he's devoted to his work and sees the princess as a little sister; the fact that he rarely took time off before meeting Rose may indicate that he, too, has been largely isolated in a social sense. He's also clearly the son of a wealthy noble household, which, in its way, could be as lonely as being the witch of the lake. Expectations could get in the way of experiences.
What's interesting is that Harij is still very much working through his emotions. He doesn't understand why he wanted to kiss Rose, why the issue with calling her by name bothers him, or why he was upset that she put the tablecloth away in a sign that she assumed he wouldn't be back. If he really thought about it, he might realize that he's upset that she doesn't understand that he likes her. He may grumpily tell the lady at the bakery that Rose isn't his girlfriend, but that's certainly not how he's acting, and he may be peeved that she's not reading the signals he's unaware he's sending. A piece of him knows the truth; the rest of him is in serious denial.
This is such an “almost” episode that it risked being intensely frustrating. The truth is that it is frustrating, but in a good way, a Lizzie Bennet rejects Mr. Darcy's proposal kind of way. Harij hasn't earned Rose's admission of love yet because he's not come to terms with his own; He's Expecting more from her than he is from himself. In Harij's mind, Rose should want to see him, love potion or not. He's not fully accepting that she's working through her own issues, partially because she's told him before (as recently as last week) that she can do everything by herself. Harij knows that “by herself” means not cleaning and just eating wilted lettuce, but he hasn't quite grasped why Rose seems to prefer to live that way. In part, that's because he only just realized that she thought the love potion was for him, but he's really having a lot of trouble separating his logic from hers. Until he more fully understands Rose, to say nothing of himself, he's not going to succeed.
None of this is to say that Rose doesn't also have work to do. Even without feeling like she embarrassed herself horribly by pressing little kisses to his hand and asking him to call her by name, she's still very conflicted about her feelings, in no small part because she can't imagine that someone like Harij would ever like someone like her. But she always told herself that their relationship had an expiration date, so to discover that he wasn't making the same assumption is mind-blowing. She'd just steeled her heart to never see him again, what do you mean he's still planning to come for lunch every day?! She doesn't have a way to process this.
Both Rose and Harij need time, something he more or less admits when he asks for another love potion. Fortunately, they've got six more episodes to figure out that what they feel is mutual and in no need of a potion for either of them.
Rating:
Hello, I Am a Witch and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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