>>90559691> EVERYONE BLAMES MIKE FOR IT. This is INSANE.They blame Mike because they lack (or conveniently forget) context.
Let's go back to the first crucial point where the friend group starts turning on Mike. Lucy finally admits her feeling for Mike. To the friend group, them this is a HUGE fucking deal because she's finally dropping the tsundere act which was getting beyond old to everybody at this point. They wanted Mike & Lucy to finally get along like they should've from the beginning. Instead, Mike rejects her, basically punishing her for putting herself in that vulnerable position and probably regressing to her old behavior because it's "safer" for her that way. If you only work on that information then, yeah, it's understandable that they see him being a dick.
The context they lack is that they didn't know just how worn Mike had been over the last year or so. He was already long past fed up on Lucy's behavior and only hung around her out of out of obligation to "keep her safe". Plus, the obvious point that Mike was already in a long-distance relationship that everyone would keep conveniently dismissing, thinking it wasn't really serious.
Mike appreciated Lucy's gesture, but it would've made things worse to lead Lucy on while being in another serious relationship. He let Lucy down as honestly and politely as he could, considering how he was caught off-guard by it. So he was fucked if he did, fucked if he didn't. So obviously he'd get defensive over getting shit on for it.
Keep in mind, too, that it wasn't until AFTER Lucy disappeared that Mike, in a drunken rant, finally told them why he wanted to avoid Lucy and how fucking alone he felt because nobody would give him the benefit of the doubt. Why would he feel comfortable with confiding with anyone how he felt when he couldn't trust them to just take Lucy's side?
Lesson is: everyone's a piece of shit