Confessing to his popular childhood friend Marika feels impossible for the unpopular high school loner Kanata Kitami. After a desperate wish upon a shooting star for the ability to understand people’s feelings like in a dating simulation game, he awakens to find floating love meters visible above every girl he sees. The surreal sight of these meters leaves him confused until he checks Marika’s. Instead of a low score, her meter is not just broken but has completely malfunctioned, plunging into negative territory that seemingly indicates utter hatred. This revelation directly contradicts her consistently kind and gentle behavior toward him, forcing Kanata to question whether her affection is a lie or if the meter itself is misreading the truth.

The story is set in a modern Japanese high school where Kanata must navigate the chaotic new reality of seeing everyone’s hidden feelings. The truth about Marika’s meter quickly comes into focus: she harbors a secret, intense, and even obsessive love for Kanata, decorating her room with his pictures and keeping him as the wallpaper on her phone. Her feelings are so overwhelmingly powerful that the love meter cannot process them, causing the system to break entirely rather than display a high score. This ironic malfunction creates the central romantic comedy conflict, as Kanata misinterprets the broken meter as proof of her dislike, leading him to act on a completely false assumption while Marika remains unaware that her secret is exposed in such a misleading way.

Kanata Kitami is the protagonist, a timid boy whose wish inadvertently complicates his life. Marika Chitose is the object of his affection, a cute and popular student whose hidden yandere-like devotion is the source of the title’s malfunction. Other students include Sayuki Toyotomi, a classmate whose initially low meter rises after Kanata helps her younger sister, and Kokona Mikasa, an energetic girl who secretly loves romantic dramas.

Notable narrative arcs center on Kanata learning to interpret the meters while remaining completely oblivious to the true reason for Marika’s broken gauge. One early arc involves his interaction with Sayuki, where a good deed causes her meter to increase, inadvertently sparking jealousy in the secretly obsessed Marika and leading to comedic misunderstandings. As Kanata continues to trust the broken meter over Marika’s actual behavior, his misguided attempts to be nice to a girl he believes hates him fuel a series of awkward and humorous situations, all while Marika’s hidden affections grow more intense just out of his sight.