Stories about secret adult otaku in the workplace are hardly new, but Akari is in a more precarious position than most. That's not just because she's a self-described stan of her favorite musical actor, the acerbic Ren Nishimori (AKA Ren-Ren) —no, the real problem is that she blows all of her money on Ren-Ren goods and performances to the point where she can barely afford food and shelter. She's embarrassed about this, at least to a degree; she's gone so far as to make up a boyfriend she spends every lunch talking to in order to avoid expensive lunches with her friends and spend time indulging in Ren-Ren's lunchtime podcast. But despite being aware that she's not living the world's healthiest lifestyle, Akari's happy…at least until life catches up with her the way it always, always does.

Akari's not the most self-aware of protagonists, as evident in how she completely missed that her apartment building was being demolished until almost the day of. She's largely painted as the author of her misfortunes, which is a risk because it may not endear her to readers. This is, however, a comedy, so her follies are primarily played for laughs. As the book goes on, however, we do get some glimpses of how depressed she was before she discovered her beloved Ren-Ren, and that adds some needed substance to this fluffy tale. When she casually mentions that she's got no savings because a boyfriend stole them, it becomes clear that she's been in some pretty dark places.

While we could argue that she really needs therapy—she can't bring herself to start a new savings account because of the trauma of having the first one ripped off—she's also been doing a good enough job of keeping her emotional head above water. She's made poor choices, but they do come from a believable place and are compounded by the fact that society tells her that she's a weirdo for what she loves; her work friend Kaho specifically is down on fangirls, leading Akari to believe that she can't ever reveal her secret.

Fortunately for her, she's in the right place at the right time for some help. After a bird flies off with her lunch, Akari bumps into a lone bento box on a park bench, and naturally to the man attached to it. Kazama offers her his lunch, and Akari finds herself unloading her story to him, confident that she'll never see her lunch hero again. We could have told her that's unlikely to be true, and of course, Kazama is her new coworker. He comes to her rescue again when she finds herself suddenly homeless and without the money for a new place. It just wouldn't be a romantic comedy if he didn't offer her a guest room in his ludicrously opulent apartment. (See: My Boss' Kitten, Our Fake Marriage, etc.) Suddenly the two of them are flatmates, neither quite able to figure out how it happened—or why it doesn't feel like such a bad thing.

My Coworker Has a Secret isn't anything particularly new or exciting, and it does sometimes feel like creator Mushiro's just pulling tropes out of a rom-com grab bag. But for all of that, it does work and can be a lot of fun. Akari's prone to believing dumb office gossip, which leads her to make some pretty wild assumptions about Kazama, even when she knows from Living With Him that it's all a bunch of hooey, and for his part, Kazama is about as emotionally intelligent as a piece of cheese, although that's something we see him beginning to work through.

Did the book need his cross-dressing friend as a side character? No, but it also didn't need Akari to be so bad at cooking that she lacerates herself every time she picks up a knife, and neither of them are used particularly badly. Mostly, this first volume feels like a story its creator didn't quite know how to write and is figuring out as they go on, and it's no surprise that this is their first serialized work. But it's also clear that they're learning, and this stands to have a much stronger second volume than its first. That means it will probably be worth giving the series a second chance to prove itself because while this isn't amazing, it is a little bit more than just “good enough.”