Who Are The Main Characters In 'A Dangerous Deal And The Girl Next Door'?

I noticed the humanness in error of the hero. He is not an action hero, for example, he forgets to charge his phone. He gets told off for not completing his homework. The girl next door to the hero of the story has a collection of vintage erasers. She won’t explain why she has collected them, and her locker is full of mysterious sticky notes. Her chipped nail polish hides bloodstains in one of the scenes. The author has written the characters so well that you get to see the flawed human error in them. Even the ‘villain’ has moments where you get to see his warped logic. For example, in a scene full of violence, he spares the life of a cat. You even get to glimpse some of the humanity in him. The author doesn’t explain the backstories of the characters in too much detail. You get to piece together their motivations from occasional remarks or from what they are wearing. It’s great character writing that trusts the reader to join up the dots.

Character-driven tension is the main focus of this story, and it does very well at creating relatable characters, especially the male lead, who is playing the everyman role very well. At first he’s worried that his test answers have been stolen, by volume 3 he’s negotiating with various syndicates while stammering in panic, and it’s quite endearing. The female lead, on the other hand, is subversive. While she’s been portrayed as a cute, harp-strumming, pigtails-wearing little girl, she’s really tearing apart security systems while talking to the main character. The dialogue between the two of them during their stakeouts is hilarious, with them debating the flavors of different snacks while they’re tracking their target.

Unlike typical novela antagonists, this guy’s reasons for being a villain stem from the same kind of corporate cover-up of real-life scandals. And therefore his cruelty is more disturbing. It was also cool how his scenes were linked with the homeroom teacher of the male protagonist, exposing secrets he hadn’t suspected the man kept. And yet another domino effect of consequences has fallen: the girl’s past collides with the present of the hero of this story, creating a lot more tension as the plot keeps racing.

A Dangerous Deal and the Girl Next Door is a light novel based around two main characters. The first is a seemingly normal high school student who finds himself dragged into an underworld deal after a random event. The way he responds to situations and the moral dilemmas he faces whilst constantly trying to survive makes him a really relatable protagonist despite the circumstances. The other main character is the ‘girl next door’-like protagonist of the light novel’s title. However, this girl is far from the typical and sweet next door neighbor. The girl is sharp-tongued and very morally ambiguous. She is also a schemer, and her true connections to the big plot of the light novel are slowly revealed throughout the story.

The secondary characters are also wonderful and bring in a lot of tension. There’s the grumpy but lovable detective who seems to be following a few steps behind our hero and heroine and the chapters he writes are done in a noir style. There’s also the big crime boss who is incredibly charming in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way. The author has also done a great job of giving even the tiniest of secondary characters backgrounds that we have never seen. Even our hero’s parents are seen and they are so oblivious. It’s also really fun to read about the random people that our hero meets throughout his day. For example, the guy who runs the corner convenience store is so nice and always seems to notice our hero when he is up to something. In chapter 8 the girl mentions her ‘former mentor’ in passing which leads to so much speculation and fan theory among the readers.