he’s a CEO… he’s thinking about more moving parts than everyone else. he sees how difficult this whole situation is and actually doubts his ability to save the company from a scandal
He (hopefully) calmly talked with all parties involved and after getting Miel’s side in the end, he realises that there’s no way everyone gets out of it happy, their takes are just too contradictory. Acier now has to make a difficult decision who to sacrifice for the greater good.
Also, I think this just shows he’s good at showing a calm exterior even in stressful turmoil.
Well, he needs and wants Miel. He is not really interested in having to curate another lieutenant. He does not need or want Amaryllis, particularly not her raising a ruckus and filing official complaints. He does not need or want his favoritism for Miel to blow up over Miel’s scandalous behavior in public that’s hard to keep under wraps with Amaryllis around. Miel clearly currently is a package deal with Abeille.
It is a bloody mess.
Now some of the commenters on the last episode were rather predicting “Ha ha, my and Amaryllis’ plan is working great.” from Acier.
I mean, I think we can cross that off the list now.
I think it suggests that the pressure to get Miel to go with him is coming from someone else. If that were the case, he could be being honest about understanding and kindness but have obligations are now make the situation a mess.
We’ve seen him depend on Miel on getting administrative/computer problems dealt with gracefully before. It’s not an official capacity of Miel, so he cannot easily get a replacement for what he apparently is expected to do alone.
So there is nothing ominous or romantic about him wanting Miel. Badly.
Well, peak comedy would be happy Roomba having listened to all this and then tripping up Amaryllis slapstick style. Or counseling Acier and then cleaning up all this mess while leaving the flower debris for Acier to deal with.
He probably wants a chance at Miel but doesn’t know how to go about it unless he doesn’t even realize it himself? I dunno. This was a somewhat surprising reaction.
I’m hoping that his recognizing Miel as a romantic, and his seeing how devoted Miel is to Abeille, will get Acier to let go of his crush on Miel.
As for the mess… a double transfer sounds like a plan to me! Miel will have his new position, and I’m sure there’ll be foster work or an entry-level gardening position for Abeille in the second city.
Of course, the double transfer probably won’t at all assuage Miel’s overbearing mom…. though (I think?) it’s becoming clearer to me that despite her general disappointment in Abeille, there’s something in her current behavior that is related to the sister’s death. Overbearing because she can’t stand to lose another child? Her general disappointment feeding that fear because she condescendingly can’t possibly see Abeille actually being able to take care of herself?
I’m really surprised that people think Acier has a crush on Miel. I think it seemed pretty obvious from earlier pages that Acier is not interested in romance and he thought Miel was a kindred spirit, someone he could relate to. Maybe he’s been hurt in the past by love and sees Miel making the same mistake. But his interests do not seem romantic at all; they are definitely not wholly professional either, but I think it was more that Miel was ‘like him’. I personally think getting Miel to drop Abeille was just the quickest and easiest way, in his mind, to make the Amaryllis problem go away (and as an added bonus he also he would get his asexual buddy back).
This, for real. I get zero notion of Acier wanting to be romantically involved with Miel. Plus, just because you really enjoy working with someone, doesn’t mean you automatically want to be romantically involved with that person. At the end of the day Acier is Miel’s boss and Miel has just caused a huge scandal that now Acier has to clean up. The fact that this dude kept his cool with his employee and has only swiped a potted plant off his desk is, quite frankly, commendable on his part, lol.
The scenes where he asks Miel to go to Doublefleur happen before Mr. Acier is shown knowing about Amaryllis, I think. So, the relocation might not have started as a way to deal with Amaryllis’ lawsuit.
In real life, there are supposedly asexual/aromantic partners/partnerships. What that actually means would be up to them and it doesn’t matter what people’s definitions are or what dictionaries say.
I know a lot of people who use ‘hon’ ‘sweetie’ ‘dear’ ‘sweetheart’ etc without it being romantic *in the least*.
I think it’s a bit damaging (to friendships, to platonic encounters, to asexuality in general) to assume any use of ‘hon’ or ‘dear’ or similar is romantically inclined. It’s an affectation and often a product of upbringing (particularly in the southern US) for many.
It doesn’t have to be that kind of attraction, but he still doesn’t sit well with me. Even before Abeille and Miel’s relationship came out this way the first hint that Miel wasn’t just being a dog for work anymore he started acting very off. He saw Miel had lost interest in spending so much time working, the second he realized the source he tried to shove her out of the picture and cripple their ability to see each other.
Miel volunteered to work more hours and help out and I am sure that is something that Acier certainly appreciated. They were productive together and suddenly Miel’s priorities changed and that meant potentially more work for him, but when he drew Miel in to discuss his change in overtime hours he almost treated it like Miel was in a disciplinary meeting he refers to not taking over time as ‘slacking off’ for not picking up late hours. Though that might have been partially due to him also delegating a project or two. Sure he put a positive spin on it trying to think he understood the situation but if Miel wanted a personal life outside of work, that kind of isn’t his place to fuss about it.
It wasn’t a coincidence that the moment he saw them paying attention to each other Abeille got suddenly transferred to a week in foster and-in not knowing the fact that Abeielle doesn’t mind touch, put her into a position that might have brought her to want to quit, which was probably in his mind, a bonus if that were to happen.
https://lovenotfound.com/comic/ch17-p13/ that and the subsequent two pages after. Funny how these are called ‘volunteer’ programs but she got assigned it signed off by Acier.
I don’t trust him because he has been manipulative from Day one of noticing his change in priorities of trying to control Miel’s life. He’s been pressuring him for this move ever since he noticed the change, and it’s clear he never saw it as a positive one. He never had to push Miel to do more before and perhaps that spoiled him, but he has overstepped his bounds more than once in this. Not least of these was causing Miel and Abeille to be caught because he disclosed her whereabouts to a volatile woman who was already acting pretty nasty when he approached. Sure them hugging in the supply tent was risky, and was a big work faux pas considering the climate of where they live (social climate-not weather ;P) but it’s entirely his fault that Amaryllis knew where to LOOK. You don’t tell people you don’t know where your off the clock employees are. This mess is just as much his fault.
A pair of employees get caught in public at a work function doing something extremely explicit if not an outright taboo by someone who made a scene. While their society’s standards are a mess, his position wasn’t inaccurate. The easiest solution would have been to relocate. It would avoid any drama. And honestly, if this were strictly sexual deviance (which is how it seems to be perceived) that would probably would have worked. Instead, he has to find some way to smooth this over that doesn’t end up with Miel getting fired (and potentially himself as well if they believe his favoritism is playing into defending Miel. I know a lot of people are sure he’s got some underhanded motive (like wanting Miel himself,) but we really haven’t seen anything to suggest that and his position makes sense in their society. He wants to protect a good employee and a friend and can’t without risking all their careers.
So I have had two theories about Acier this whole time and I think this page supports that one of those two is correct. 1. He is secretly in love with Miel – the obvious one. Not buying it. 2. Perhaps more interesting. He really IS aro/ace (which he has heavily alluded to on previous pages) and he simply CANNOT understand having romantic or sexual feelings for a person be more important to someone than a job/life goal. He is CLEARLY super passionate about work, and I think he saw Miel as a kindred spirit when they first met. Someone he could rely on to put the job and the research FIRST, which must have been so refreshing to him being constantly surrounded by alloromantic values. Over the course of their professional relationship, Acier came to harbor strong PLATONIC feelings for Miel based on their (percieved!) shared values. This whole incident showed Acier in a very indisputable and public way that his perception of Miel was wrong. He feels frustrated and a bit betrayed, which is heavily supported by his inflection and expression on the previous page where he tells Miel “you’re romantic, aren’t you?”
It could be interesting to have more confirmation that Acier is fundamentally aromantic. I thought he says he has no interest in romantic relationships, very casually.
In my teen years, boys or girls being uninterested in sex was taken to mean that they were gay. Today, I think, there is pressure to have an identity. And a Mr. Acier would seem weird unless they declare their identity to be aromantic.
Since sex and romance seem to be viewed very differently on Monotropa, it could be there isn’t pressure to have a sexuality identity.
Folks. This is a human being. There’s no reason he can’t feel complex emotions about a scenario with ZERO under-handedness or personal-feelings involved. A valued employee/friend has just created a very difficult situation for his company, and said individual doesn’t appear willing to take the easy way out. I can 100% empathize with his private frustration and anger. Gods, I would be ripping my hair out!! But also trying to be kind/compassionate with the parties involved, both because it makes things easier and it also is the right thing to do. But none of this means he’s being underhanded/devious/manipulative, or that he has ulterior motives.
He could just be a tired and overstressed manager, who unfortunately is a human being. Gasp.
If we only had these pages to go on, I’d agree with that, but that’s ignoring all his manipulative behavior since Acier learned that Miel and Abeille were a thing. I can’t look back at those pages and NOT conclude that he purposely tried to put a wedge between them because he wasn’t getting as much work out of his golden boy anymore.
He may have been baffled by Miel’s sudden change in the work load he was willing to take on, and initially decided he just needed a new challenge, but after learning why he had stopped working so hard, he’s been trying to sabotage it to where Miel would no longer have outside interests to keep him from burying himself into work again. I put some leniency in the ‘slacker’ comment he made since Miel had also started delegating a few projects to other people, and that’s not the same as him no longer taking so much overtime, but once Miel explained that he had changed his priorities and no longer wanted all the overtime, that should have been the end of it. Instead he made a point of re-assigning Abeille to a job that most people would find ‘brutal’ by Botan’s comment (Likely wanting to make her quit or to punish her in some way for distracting Miel) he was actively shoving her out of the picture on purpose in hopes of refocusing Miel the direction he wanted. There’s not really another explanation for that.
The fact that he also used this situation to try to pressure him into something he’d already been pressuring him on for the past few chapters carries a bad smell as well. He has wanted Miel to cut ties with her since he learned about them. It’s his fault that Amaryllis found them, and innocent as that might have seemed, that was a big NO NO on his part. He disclosed an employee’s location to someone he didn’t know, and even if he did know her, if Abeille pulled away she’s perfectly allowed to do that as an adult. Granted he didn’t know what they were doing, but any opportunity to separate Miel and Abeille he’s already shown he’d jump on, because he wants his diligent, overworked employee back to the way he was before her. If he’s not spending time with her, he is far more likely to do what Acier wants (AKA join them for drinks with the influential people he was wanting him to visit with and schmooze). He called her the ‘problem’ instead of Amaryllis at the start and there’s very little denying that he considers her a problem one way or another and has before all this blew up, just this incident gave him a chance to say it without seeming out of line.
Whether he planned it this way to try to separate them or he’s using the situation I don’t see how this isn’t manipulative, because it’s using the situation to keep pushing toward motives he’s clearly shown in the past and acted upon. He wants Miel to leave. He wants him to keep working with him, and he wants the Distraction out of the picture. If nothing else can be agreed upon I think we can all agree on that.
And why shouldn’t he? He is the boss of this city-state exactly since he does not lose sight of his priorities without sweeping those of others under the rug. He does not want to give Miel the pink slip without necessity but it will make for a lot of headaches to get Miel’s priorities reconciled with his intended role.
What do you expect him to do? Rejoice that his planning is blowing up and eat popcorn while watching? He sounded out Miel and it does not appear like there is a simple way of getting this thing out of troubled water.
Acier does not make the appearance of a habitual liar, and starting that habit with a complex scenario like this is likely to cause problems because people entrust you with power in the expectation that you are to be trusted and they can depend on you.
After all, this is a utopia and not modern politics.
Eww was he faking his understanding/kindness?
he’s a CEO… he’s thinking about more moving parts than everyone else. he sees how difficult this whole situation is and actually doubts his ability to save the company from a scandal
He (hopefully) calmly talked with all parties involved and after getting Miel’s side in the end, he realises that there’s no way everyone gets out of it happy, their takes are just too contradictory. Acier now has to make a difficult decision who to sacrifice for the greater good.
Also, I think this just shows he’s good at showing a calm exterior even in stressful turmoil.
He’s been good at masking his feelings when needed so far, so.. Not unsurprising.
On the one hand, yikes. On the other hand, I can understand not wanting to upset your employees.
Mr. Steel needs another outlet for his messy feelings.
Well, he needs and wants Miel. He is not really interested in having to curate another lieutenant. He does not need or want Amaryllis, particularly not her raising a ruckus and filing official complaints. He does not need or want his favoritism for Miel to blow up over Miel’s scandalous behavior in public that’s hard to keep under wraps with Amaryllis around. Miel clearly currently is a package deal with Abeille.
It is a bloody mess.
Now some of the commenters on the last episode were rather predicting “Ha ha, my and Amaryllis’ plan is working great.” from Acier.
I mean, I think we can cross that off the list now.
I think it suggests that the pressure to get Miel to go with him is coming from someone else. If that were the case, he could be being honest about understanding and kindness but have obligations are now make the situation a mess.
We’ve seen him depend on Miel on getting administrative/computer problems dealt with gracefully before. It’s not an official capacity of Miel, so he cannot easily get a replacement for what he apparently is expected to do alone.
So there is nothing ominous or romantic about him wanting Miel. Badly.
He doesn’t have to be. It’s reasonable to feel compassion/empathy toward someone and also feel anger/frustration towards a situation they have created
He can be sincere in his kindness and frustrated by the situation, lol.
Uh…with a dustpan?
Oh, wait, he probably doesn’t mean *that* mess…
Whoa. I have this feeling he is secretly in love with Miel.
You seem to have posted page 5 again.
Nevermind? It updated to correct page when I commented? Weird.
Yeah, I got a message pretty quick about the incorrect page upload and fixed it!
Peak comedy would be the happy Roomba from earlier coming to clean up that mess.
YES! This is now my head-canon: happy!SpaceRoomba cleaning the floor in his office after all this. XD
Well, peak comedy would be happy Roomba having listened to all this and then tripping up Amaryllis slapstick style. Or counseling Acier and then cleaning up all this mess while leaving the flower debris for Acier to deal with.
He probably wants a chance at Miel but doesn’t know how to go about it unless he doesn’t even realize it himself? I dunno. This was a somewhat surprising reaction.
I’m hoping that his recognizing Miel as a romantic, and his seeing how devoted Miel is to Abeille, will get Acier to let go of his crush on Miel.
As for the mess… a double transfer sounds like a plan to me! Miel will have his new position, and I’m sure there’ll be foster work or an entry-level gardening position for Abeille in the second city.
Of course, the double transfer probably won’t at all assuage Miel’s overbearing mom…. though (I think?) it’s becoming clearer to me that despite her general disappointment in Abeille, there’s something in her current behavior that is related to the sister’s death. Overbearing because she can’t stand to lose another child? Her general disappointment feeding that fear because she condescendingly can’t possibly see Abeille actually being able to take care of herself?
Time will tell….
I’m really surprised that people think Acier has a crush on Miel. I think it seemed pretty obvious from earlier pages that Acier is not interested in romance and he thought Miel was a kindred spirit, someone he could relate to. Maybe he’s been hurt in the past by love and sees Miel making the same mistake. But his interests do not seem romantic at all; they are definitely not wholly professional either, but I think it was more that Miel was ‘like him’. I personally think getting Miel to drop Abeille was just the quickest and easiest way, in his mind, to make the Amaryllis problem go away (and as an added bonus he also he would get his asexual buddy back).
This, for real. I get zero notion of Acier wanting to be romantically involved with Miel. Plus, just because you really enjoy working with someone, doesn’t mean you automatically want to be romantically involved with that person. At the end of the day Acier is Miel’s boss and Miel has just caused a huge scandal that now Acier has to clean up. The fact that this dude kept his cool with his employee and has only swiped a potted plant off his desk is, quite frankly, commendable on his part, lol.
The scenes where he asks Miel to go to Doublefleur happen before Mr. Acier is shown knowing about Amaryllis, I think. So, the relocation might not have started as a way to deal with Amaryllis’ lawsuit.
In real life, there are supposedly asexual/aromantic partners/partnerships. What that actually means would be up to them and it doesn’t matter what people’s definitions are or what dictionaries say.
Mr. Acier blushes and calls Miel “my dear” https://lovenotfound.com/comic/ch18-p09/
It could be nothing beyond work, or it could be more.
I know a lot of people who use ‘hon’ ‘sweetie’ ‘dear’ ‘sweetheart’ etc without it being romantic *in the least*.
I think it’s a bit damaging (to friendships, to platonic encounters, to asexuality in general) to assume any use of ‘hon’ or ‘dear’ or similar is romantically inclined. It’s an affectation and often a product of upbringing (particularly in the southern US) for many.
+1
It doesn’t have to be that kind of attraction, but he still doesn’t sit well with me. Even before Abeille and Miel’s relationship came out this way the first hint that Miel wasn’t just being a dog for work anymore he started acting very off. He saw Miel had lost interest in spending so much time working, the second he realized the source he tried to shove her out of the picture and cripple their ability to see each other.
Miel volunteered to work more hours and help out and I am sure that is something that Acier certainly appreciated. They were productive together and suddenly Miel’s priorities changed and that meant potentially more work for him, but when he drew Miel in to discuss his change in overtime hours he almost treated it like Miel was in a disciplinary meeting he refers to not taking over time as ‘slacking off’ for not picking up late hours. Though that might have been partially due to him also delegating a project or two. Sure he put a positive spin on it trying to think he understood the situation but if Miel wanted a personal life outside of work, that kind of isn’t his place to fuss about it.
https://lovenotfound.com/comic/ch17-p11/
https://lovenotfound.com/comic/ch18-p10/ Also this may be part of why people think he’s interested.
It wasn’t a coincidence that the moment he saw them paying attention to each other Abeille got suddenly transferred to a week in foster and-in not knowing the fact that Abeielle doesn’t mind touch, put her into a position that might have brought her to want to quit, which was probably in his mind, a bonus if that were to happen.
https://lovenotfound.com/comic/ch17-p13/ that and the subsequent two pages after. Funny how these are called ‘volunteer’ programs but she got assigned it signed off by Acier.
I don’t trust him because he has been manipulative from Day one of noticing his change in priorities of trying to control Miel’s life. He’s been pressuring him for this move ever since he noticed the change, and it’s clear he never saw it as a positive one. He never had to push Miel to do more before and perhaps that spoiled him, but he has overstepped his bounds more than once in this. Not least of these was causing Miel and Abeille to be caught because he disclosed her whereabouts to a volatile woman who was already acting pretty nasty when he approached. Sure them hugging in the supply tent was risky, and was a big work faux pas considering the climate of where they live (social climate-not weather ;P) but it’s entirely his fault that Amaryllis knew where to LOOK. You don’t tell people you don’t know where your off the clock employees are. This mess is just as much his fault.
A pair of employees get caught in public at a work function doing something extremely explicit if not an outright taboo by someone who made a scene. While their society’s standards are a mess, his position wasn’t inaccurate. The easiest solution would have been to relocate. It would avoid any drama. And honestly, if this were strictly sexual deviance (which is how it seems to be perceived) that would probably would have worked. Instead, he has to find some way to smooth this over that doesn’t end up with Miel getting fired (and potentially himself as well if they believe his favoritism is playing into defending Miel. I know a lot of people are sure he’s got some underhanded motive (like wanting Miel himself,) but we really haven’t seen anything to suggest that and his position makes sense in their society. He wants to protect a good employee and a friend and can’t without risking all their careers.
I agree. There doesn’t have to be any underhanded motives here. This is actually a reasonable upset-inducing scenario for any manager xD
People the last few pages: Oh, so he’s an okay dude after all?
Yeah, no.
for starters: broom and a dust shovel…
So I have had two theories about Acier this whole time and I think this page supports that one of those two is correct. 1. He is secretly in love with Miel – the obvious one. Not buying it. 2. Perhaps more interesting. He really IS aro/ace (which he has heavily alluded to on previous pages) and he simply CANNOT understand having romantic or sexual feelings for a person be more important to someone than a job/life goal. He is CLEARLY super passionate about work, and I think he saw Miel as a kindred spirit when they first met. Someone he could rely on to put the job and the research FIRST, which must have been so refreshing to him being constantly surrounded by alloromantic values. Over the course of their professional relationship, Acier came to harbor strong PLATONIC feelings for Miel based on their (percieved!) shared values. This whole incident showed Acier in a very indisputable and public way that his perception of Miel was wrong. He feels frustrated and a bit betrayed, which is heavily supported by his inflection and expression on the previous page where he tells Miel “you’re romantic, aren’t you?”
It could be interesting to have more confirmation that Acier is fundamentally aromantic. I thought he says he has no interest in romantic relationships, very casually.
In my teen years, boys or girls being uninterested in sex was taken to mean that they were gay. Today, I think, there is pressure to have an identity. And a Mr. Acier would seem weird unless they declare their identity to be aromantic.
Since sex and romance seem to be viewed very differently on Monotropa, it could be there isn’t pressure to have a sexuality identity.
Folks. This is a human being. There’s no reason he can’t feel complex emotions about a scenario with ZERO under-handedness or personal-feelings involved. A valued employee/friend has just created a very difficult situation for his company, and said individual doesn’t appear willing to take the easy way out. I can 100% empathize with his private frustration and anger. Gods, I would be ripping my hair out!! But also trying to be kind/compassionate with the parties involved, both because it makes things easier and it also is the right thing to do. But none of this means he’s being underhanded/devious/manipulative, or that he has ulterior motives.
He could just be a tired and overstressed manager, who unfortunately is a human being. Gasp.
If we only had these pages to go on, I’d agree with that, but that’s ignoring all his manipulative behavior since Acier learned that Miel and Abeille were a thing. I can’t look back at those pages and NOT conclude that he purposely tried to put a wedge between them because he wasn’t getting as much work out of his golden boy anymore.
He may have been baffled by Miel’s sudden change in the work load he was willing to take on, and initially decided he just needed a new challenge, but after learning why he had stopped working so hard, he’s been trying to sabotage it to where Miel would no longer have outside interests to keep him from burying himself into work again. I put some leniency in the ‘slacker’ comment he made since Miel had also started delegating a few projects to other people, and that’s not the same as him no longer taking so much overtime, but once Miel explained that he had changed his priorities and no longer wanted all the overtime, that should have been the end of it. Instead he made a point of re-assigning Abeille to a job that most people would find ‘brutal’ by Botan’s comment (Likely wanting to make her quit or to punish her in some way for distracting Miel) he was actively shoving her out of the picture on purpose in hopes of refocusing Miel the direction he wanted. There’s not really another explanation for that.
The fact that he also used this situation to try to pressure him into something he’d already been pressuring him on for the past few chapters carries a bad smell as well. He has wanted Miel to cut ties with her since he learned about them. It’s his fault that Amaryllis found them, and innocent as that might have seemed, that was a big NO NO on his part. He disclosed an employee’s location to someone he didn’t know, and even if he did know her, if Abeille pulled away she’s perfectly allowed to do that as an adult. Granted he didn’t know what they were doing, but any opportunity to separate Miel and Abeille he’s already shown he’d jump on, because he wants his diligent, overworked employee back to the way he was before her. If he’s not spending time with her, he is far more likely to do what Acier wants (AKA join them for drinks with the influential people he was wanting him to visit with and schmooze). He called her the ‘problem’ instead of Amaryllis at the start and there’s very little denying that he considers her a problem one way or another and has before all this blew up, just this incident gave him a chance to say it without seeming out of line.
Whether he planned it this way to try to separate them or he’s using the situation I don’t see how this isn’t manipulative, because it’s using the situation to keep pushing toward motives he’s clearly shown in the past and acted upon. He wants Miel to leave. He wants him to keep working with him, and he wants the Distraction out of the picture. If nothing else can be agreed upon I think we can all agree on that.
He PERSONALLY assigned Abeille to foster care, before this whole incident happened. This was not out of his good heart.
lol thinking this dude isn’t after his own agenda? come on.
And why shouldn’t he? He is the boss of this city-state exactly since he does not lose sight of his priorities without sweeping those of others under the rug. He does not want to give Miel the pink slip without necessity but it will make for a lot of headaches to get Miel’s priorities reconciled with his intended role.
What do you expect him to do? Rejoice that his planning is blowing up and eat popcorn while watching? He sounded out Miel and it does not appear like there is a simple way of getting this thing out of troubled water.
He could clean it up by lying that Miel is helping Abeille habituate to the interpersonal contact of her foster program assignment.
Acier does not make the appearance of a habitual liar, and starting that habit with a complex scenario like this is likely to cause problems because people entrust you with power in the expectation that you are to be trusted and they can depend on you.
After all, this is a utopia and not modern politics.