being kind to friends social story
# RELAXED Liu Qing is reborn and goes back two years in time. He starts his reborn life at the point of getting a breakup text message from his girlfriend. Previously, in that life, he dated his girlfriend for a few years, and used all the money he earned from being a security guard to support her and pay for her lifestyle and living expenses when she quit her own security guard job to go back to school. However, in the end, she looked down on him after she found an office job, then cheated on him and eventually left him for another man. To add insult to injury, in his desire to have a simple life with his girlfriend, he rejected the chance to reunite with his wealthy estranged mother and missed out on the opportunity to become a rich second generation. He was overwhelmed by immense grief after all that and fell into a deep depression that eventually destroyed him. In this life, Liu Qing is determined not to become a simp again, especially since he is being given another chance to change the path of his life. He says to her, “Let's come clean. Isn't it good to break up? I don't have to be your spare tire anymore. You can also live with your one true love. We would each get what we want.” Then he resigns from his security guard job to reunite with his mother. When everyone asks him why, he says, "Because I am going to inherit assets worth billions of dollars!"
The biggest issue for me is the lack of any kind of side character development or social/relationship development. The protagonist apparently has 3 OC friends but as a reader it's impossible to name a single trait that any of them have, as the protagonist rarely has any kind of interaction with them that isn't time skipped. This not only goes for these 3 friends, but pretty much all of his social interactions. Apparently he's also friends with Harry despite only speaking with him 3 times, same with Hermione, and once with Ron. None of it is believable or engaging as there's nothing being shown. You can even go 4-5 chapters without a single piece of dialogue between characters. Plot wise, I was initially fully onboard, despite the lack of conflict or any real challenge. The protagonist enters Hogwarts a couple of years before canon starts, so it makes sense to grow his power and prepare. However once canon starts, nothing changes, the protagonist continues being a side character, the frequent chapter long research infodumps continue, and the plot continues to stagnate. Some of the spins the author puts on the HP world are unique and interesting, however they're undermined by the too frequent info dumps and long winded explanations. Despite my issues with it, there is a definitely a good story here, maybe it's just not my thing. However, I feel the author could make some minor tweaks that would drastically improve it, the main ones being improving the social development and reducing the info dumps, or at least making them more concise.