A female teacher I know once said something: “In a romance it looks like the man is chasing the woman, but the initiative is always on the woman’s side. All she has to do is pick from a menu of things the man does.” I think her version is incomplete, though. There’s a precondition: the woman has to be good-looking. If you look like Shonan’s walking dick, no man is coming over to hand you a menu. You can also read that line the other way. In a normal man-chases-woman romance, it looks like the guy grinds it out with persistence and wins his goddess, but really the woman was just giving him chances, one after another. Think about it. If she genuinely has zero interest in you, she won’t give you a single chance to make contact, and she won’t listen to a word you say. You think you’re conquering her. Really you’re just being allowed to conquer her.