Kako and Kota's relationship

Spoiler warning! This page contains major spoilers for the whole series. Read at your own discretion!

Kako Motoya and Kota Sagano are the main couple of My Boy in Blue. The series follows the ups and downs of their marriage and how their age gap impacts their relationship in different ways.

Kota proposed to Kako in Case. 3 and the two became an official married couple at the end of Case. 4. For the most part of the series they are a commuter marriage couple, meaning that they live separately from one another (Kota lives alone in his apartment and Kako lives with her parents,) and only see each other when Kota's busy schedule allows for it. The two were married for around two to three years before they had their official marriage ceremony, and during those years Kako kept her maiden name and never wore her wedding ring to hide her marital status from outsiders. (Whether she changed her surname after the ceremony is unclear, however, it is very likely that she did).

Overall, their relationship is very secure and the two love and adore each other very much. Despite this, they are involved in a love triangle, as one of Kako's best friends, Heisuke Okami, is in love with her. He swore to Kota that he would steal Kako away in four years' time, however, this never happened, as he felt it indecent to even attempt to be a homewrecker. Moreover, Kota never fealt threatened by Heisuke's presence, as he trusted both Kako and Heisuke enough to know neither would agree upon having an affair behind his back.

After their ceremony, Kako and Kota have seemingly moved to Kota's hometown, and live there with their daughter, Tsuu.

Kako's Feelings for Kota
Kako realized her feelings for Kota very early on, having developed a small crush on him by the end of Case. 1, and she is initially the one who is more active in pursuing the other's love out of the two. Kota rejects her in different ways multiple times throughout the first volume, leaving her feeling mortified, disappointed and heartbroken. She tries her best to get over him, yet somehow, he always ends up back on her path, and with the help of his superb ability to hide his inner thoughts and emotions, just ends up confusing Kako as she finds herself questioning his actions and feelings. Despite her best efforts to leave him in the past, Kako cannot help but worry for him, and once she overhears a group of local delinquents plan an ambush on him, she decides to intervene after being left with no other options. This leads to her saving Kota just barely from getting hit in the head by Heisuke, however, in the process, she gets hurt instead and gets taken to the hospital. She is out cold for a while before waking up and finding Kota there with her. She begs him to leave her alone if his motive is to just reject her again, but to her surprise he ends up proposing to her instead.

Getting married is not as easy as she had hoped, as while her mother is accepting of the relationship, her father is against it. It takes a while for him to warm up to the idea of his young daughter getting married, however, when he comes to notice how protective of her Kota is, he ends up giving his consent, determening that she will be in good hands.

Once Kako and Kota are officially married, she notices that she does not know much about her husband- all she really knows about him is his age, career, favourite food and that he seems to switch personalities when he is working and when he is off-duty. She ends up feeling uncertain, thinking that perhaps marrying her was a joke on Kota's part which he has now been forced to commit to since she and her family took it seriously, and that perhaps he does not actually love her. Her worries are quickly washed away when Kota opens up around her more and gives her the second key to his apartment. Later he even admits that he finds being with Kako incredibly calming, as he worries for her during work hours whenever reports of local young women come in; his first reaction to these is often a fear that something bad has happened to Kako. After confessing this, he ends up giving Kako her wedding ring and proposing to her once more, and she accepts again, feeling happy that he (probably) loves her.

However, Kako soon finds herself confused again, as she hears others talk about a case related to Kota, which he has not mentioned to her. When she asks Kota about it, he does not tell her. A throwaway comment by Kaoru clues her in that the Saganos' father is dead, and she is able to put two and two together and figure out that this is most likely what the case is related to. After this, she reassures Kota that he does not need to tell her anything if he does not feel ready to- they have many years ahead of them and lots of time to get to know each other better. This shows how mature Kako really is deep down.

Because Kako is rather inexperienced when it comes to many things, she sometimes asks Yui Sendo for advice, much to her friend's amusement, as she gets to pull pranks on Kota and Kako through Kako's obliviousness.

Kota's Feelings for Kako
Kota is quick to develop an interest in Kako, however, he is about equally as fast in trying kill off this infatuation when he finds out her real age. Regardless of his best efforts, he is not successful in ignoring her, and once she gets hurt protecting him, he can no longer hold back his feelings. The incident reminds him of the time his father died from somewhat similar circumstances, and his regrets about not having shown his father how much he truly loved and respected him resurface along his fear of losing Kako.

Once Kako comes to, Kota is relieved to find he did not lose another person dear to him, and so, he ends up confessing his feelings for her and asking for her hand in marriage. He does this because it is the only way the two can be together despite their age gap. Kako accepts his proposal, and after a few days of persuasion, so do her parents, as long as Kako does not get pregnant while she is in high school. Kako and Kota kept this promise, and Kota even notes that he was always very meticulous about his advances toward Kako, holding back on everything that could lead to anything more than a few pecks on the lips (unless Kako urged for more).

It does not take long for Kota to start steadily developing a profound habit of worrying for Kako's well being. Moreover, he can be somewhat overprotective of her. He confesses that he finds himself uneasy whenever a report comes to the office of something having happened to a young woman, thinking it might have been Kako. His worry is not helped in the least bit by the fact that Kako seems to have to spend a considerable amount of time home alone, as her father works out of town and her mother has other business to attend to (and there was a period when Oto had a considerable increase in break-ins). This is part of the reason for why Kota finds being around Kako calming, as she is not going to be harmed if he is around. As the worrywart he is, Kota has found multiple ways to make sure Kako stays safe, such as making sure that everything at the Motoya's is in order before leaving Kako home alone for the night.

Due to his trauma, Kota might in fact be a bit too overprotective of Kako. The ugly side of this rears its head out into the open when Kako started volunteering at Oto Children's Home. One of her co-workers, a young man known as Tee-sensei, was revealed to be the same person who killed Kota's father (as a 12-15-year-old)- even worse, he and Kako had at this point developed a rather friendly relationship. While Kota's reaction to shield Kako from Tee-sensei is understandable and from his point of view highly logical, Kako does not understand this, and ends up siding with Tee-sensei, believing him to be a changed man, especially since he has no memory of the incident. While she tries to be supportive of Kota and his feelings, she cannot just give up on her newfound dream of working to help children from unstable homes, and thus when she refuses to stop volunteering, she and Kota end up in a somewhat heated argument. Kota's worse traits start to show, as he goes as far as scaring Kako in an attempt to maker her quit her volunteer work.

When Kako, despite everything, decides to continue working, he falls into a depressed state and starts to push her away. This eventually leads to the two not seeing each other for a long time and not keeping in contact, until Kako decides to take action by going to visit Kota in an attempt to fix things. She finds him looking worn out and in a state where he clearly has not been fully taking care of himself, and when she tries to reach out to him, he mocks her choice to stay at the care home by implying that it is more important to her than he is. Right after he apologizes for being so nasty, and tells her to just not worry and that soon enough he will be back to normal, as long as he can distract himself with work. Feeling choked and heartbroken, Kako asks if by this Kota means that there is nothing she can do to ease his pain, to which he responds by implying that the two should have sex. This scares Kako, who had previously mentioned to Yui that she is not ready for this. She chokes up once again, and Kota then tells her to forget about it, before noticing that he has been treating Kako like his property and apologizing to her once more. He then tells Kako to simply leave him alone, and for a while the only way the two keep in contact is through Kako sending him text messages about the mundane things in her life to cheer him up. It is not until much later, when Heisuke comes to (literally) knock some sense into Kota that he and Kako patch things up.

Knowing that Kako is but a teenager, Kota sometimes finds himself quite surprised by the amount of maturity the girl holds within her, as well as how empathetic she can be. With time he also seems to learn to fully embrace her bullheaded nature and learns how to deal with it efficiently.

People Who Know of the Marriage
While Kako and Kota try to keep their marriage a secret from as many as possible, they still have people around them who know of and support their relationship. These include both Kako's and Kota's families, Kota's co-workers and Kako's friends (though of note here is that Jiro Nagakura being blindly unaware of the marriage despite its obviousness ended up a running gag in the series). Below is a list of those who knew of their marriage before their official ceremony.

Mikado Yaguchi
Before Kako and Kota got married, Mikado was the only one who knew about Kako's crush on Kota. When Kako got rejected, Mikado developed a disliking of the man, being a supportive friend to Kako through thick and thin. Of course, this also meant that she ended up being the first one of Kako's friends to find out about the marriage. After this, she was forced to change her perspective on Kota, which ended up not being hard for her, as he had already proven himself to be an upstanding person.

Mikado supports the relationship wholeheartedly and even helps the two hide it from the other students at Oto High School, including their friend Jiro, who knew nothing of it. Of note is that while Mikado often ends up improvising and lying to cover up Kako and Kota's tracks, she has also been shown to embarrass Kako in the process, such as when she had to come up with a cover up story for why Kako disappeared during the trip to the beach, lying to the others that Kako had gotten a foodpoisoning and had horrible diarrhea.

It is also through Kako and Kota that she meets Ryu Katsunaga, with whom she ends up developing an unclear, somewhat flirty relationship.

Heisuke Okami
Heisuke finds out about Kako and Kota's relationship by accident. He was able to put two and two together after seeing a picture of young Kota as Kako's wallpaper on her phone, as well as later witnessing Kota disguised as a high school student at the Oto High School cultural festival. His suspicions are confirmed by Kota himself when Heisuke confronts him on the matter, and Kota has no other choice but to reveal that he and Kako are married (and that there is nothing Heisuke can do about this).

While Heisuke originally thought that the person Kako was together with must have been great, the moment he found out it was Kota, all those feelings shattered, seeing as he absolutely despised him. As such, he is both disappointed and angered by having been beaten to the punch by the man he least would have expected or hoped to be Kako's significant other. This further sparks the rivalry between the two young men, and despite them later on warming up to each other, they still remain frienemies and rivals in love for a long while. Despite this, Heisuke respects Kako's feelings for Kota and does not go out of his way to intervene with their relationship- as a matter of fact, all he does is confess to Kako and hug her, and even these actions he took under the firm belief that he would never get to see her again.

Kako and Heisuke do, however, share a few somewhat romantic and cute moments together. These include the previously mentioned hug, both of Heisuke's confessions, as well as the time he and Kako spent together in Tokyo during Class 2D's field trip. While there, the two went out at night to see the lights of Tokyo shine in the darkness, took a bullet train together, traveled to a small zoo to see bunnies and even visited the amusement park. That being said, they shared most of these moments with Yui, or Mikado and Jiro, and were rarely just by themselves.

Yui Sendo
Just like Heisuke, Yui just happened to be able to put two and two together from a few small clues she got, leading her to suspect Kako and Kota's relationship was not as unromantic as they claimed. These clues include her accidentally stumbling upon Kota and Kako while they were embracing, and Kako once being overcome by emotion and holding onto Kota in public despite their attempts to avoid such situations.

Yui is very open about not caring about the relationship that the couple share, however, she is quite annoyed by the fact that Kako still remains on friendly terms with Heisuke. She finds this repulsive, thinking that Kako is purposefully leading him on while married to another man. This ended up affecting the way the two girls saw each other at first, however, they were able to work through their indifferences and become great friends. Yui comes to see that her original suspicions could not have been further from the truth and that Kako and Heisuke are just simply able to keep on being friends despite Heisuke's feelings for her.

While she cherishes Kako, she is not too keen on Kota. She does not like the way he seems to completely switch personalities between how he acts on-duty and off-duty. This is not helped by Kota's complete withdrawal from even trying to make Yui like him, as he makes it quite clear to her he is only interested in Kako's safety, and knows his wife to be too bullheaded to not involve herself with Yui. Whether or not he meant this fully is somewhat unclear, as he is good at reading people and knowing exactly how to act according to what would be most effective- this is why he is able to deal with both Kako and Heisuke quite easily, and why he, by being somewhat rude to Yui, often manages to get through to her and leave her without any counterarguments. Despite this, (or perhaps because of this) Kota and Yui get along. Kota also saved her life when she almost burned to death.

Yui's stance on Kako and Kota's marriage remains the same as it was before she befriended Kako, however, she does take every opportunity to tease the two about it, and play pranks upon the two. That being said, she also ended up becoming something akin to a relationship counsellor for Kako, as Yui is more experienced than Kako in many ways.

Mrs. Motoya
Kako's mother was pleasantly surprised when Kako told her about having gotten proposed to. She fully supports the marriage idea from the moment she heard of it, which could have been partially influenced by her seeing how worried Kota was for Kako when she first met her future son-in-law at the hospital (not to mention that she herself used to have a crush on a local policeman as a teenager, and is still quite excited about officers in general, as showcased by her making Kota dress in uniform when visiting his in-laws).

She is very fond of Kota, and is very caring toward him and enjoys his company a lot, which has led to her embarrassing her daughter many times in front of him. Despite this, she also knows when the two need some space and is more than willing to give it to them. She likes to tease Kako about grandchildren and is extremely proud of her daughter for having landed a husband as reliable as Kota at such a young age.

Mr. Motoya
Out of the two, Mr. Motoya is the one who does not jump out of glee when he finds out his daughter has been proposed to by a man older than her by seven years. He puts his foot down on the matter, refusing it in an instance, thinking that Kota does not actually love her. However, he is later on proven wrong, when he secretly follows the couple as they go out on a date, and sees Kota caring for his daughter just as much as he does.

Before he accepts the marriage, he asks to punch Kota. Kota welcomes him to, and barely feels any pain when he gets hit, as Kako's father is not physically strong. Mr. Motoya explains to him, that despite getting old and weaker, he has still given his all in providing and protecting his family, and now he wants to make sure that his daughter will be in good hands. Kota promises that he will take good care of Kako, and the next day the two finally get the blessings from both of Kako's parents.

Kota has mentioned plenty of times, that Mr. Motoya has good intuition; at the start of the two's relationship, Mr. Motoya seemed to always burst into the room or call Kota when Kako and Kota shared even a tiny bit of skinship. Kota has admitted to being in awe of this ability that his father-in-law possesses. With time, Kako's father seems to worry less, seeing as the number of times he appears out of thin air to interfere with the couple's time together lessens and lessens.

Kaoru Sagano
Kaoru found out about Kota having gotten married in a brief voicemail left on her phone, in which Kota did not reveal the name, age or occupation of his wife, leading to Kaoru having to take matters into her own hands by coming on a surprise visit to Kota's place. There, much to her surprise, she found a young girl waiting for Kota to get out of the shower, instead of an adult woman. She proceeds to assume the worst and that Kota has hired a poor teenaged prostitute despite being married but gets proven wrong by Kako's reaction to seeing Kota's bare chest.

She immediately grows quite attached to Kako, and the two continue to get along perfectly. They share a mutual love for home videos of Kota as a kid, as well as old pictures of him, and Kaoru makes sure to bring Kako these pictures and videos whenever the two see each other.

Shuichi Yamamoto
Yamamoto was suspecting something long before the actual proposal took place. He had developed something akin to a friendship with Kako already, seeing as he was indirectly often associated with her through Kota.

He supports the couple wholeheartedly, though he often teases Kota about the relationship, noting on things like the way he looks at Kako, how his mannerisms soften around her (even on-duty), and so on. He also keeps in contact with Kako through LINE.

Fumi Komori
Komori did not initially seem too thrilled about the relationship, but this could be because she rarely portrays any sort of emotion at work. During her free time however, she acts quite friendly with both Kota and Kako and has even noted that Kota is easy to read when it comes to how being with Kako affects his mood positively.

Ryu Katsunaga
It is unknown when exactly (or how) Ryu found out about Kota having gotten married, however, he is supportive of the relationship, sometimes even giving Kota advice on how to deal with Kako's emotions. He also likes to tease Kota about Kako in a somewhat similar way to how Yamamoto does.

He has not interacted with Kako that often, but he does get along with her well. Morover, he does seem to fancy Mikado, whom he met through Kako and Kota.

Hajime Harada
Harada-sensei does not care about the fact that Kako and Kota are married, seeing as he had never brought it up despite having known about it for over a year before Kako came to talk about her relationship with him. At that point, he straight out said it is none of his or any other teacher's business, and that outside of work, none of them care whatsoever about the whole matter.

Romantic Moments

 * Volume 1, Case. 3: Kota's proposal
 * Volume 6, Case. 23: Kako's birthday