digiroko:

“Love is a violent word.” 

“Love is a word that shackles you.”

Touko’s ideology that the word “love” is “violent” and “shackles you” ultimately comes from before and after Mio died. Her sister was the typical perfect person that everyone loved, including Touko. By being Mio’s sister, obviously, she didn’t have as much attention as her. Which is why she feels lonely after Mio faced an inevitable death. The people around her say that she should “Grow up to be like your sister” which causes her to believe that becoming her sister is all she has, her purpose. Because before Mio’s death, she had no purpose. For all those years, she still can’t get that thought out of her head, which leads to her to “become Mio” in order to be perceived as “special”.  

“I love you this way” means the same thing as “I don’t love you if you aren’t this way”. This is why she is afraid of change, moving forward. Because she had adopted her sister’s persona of being the perfect person, people liked her. People have expectations of her because she is “perfect”. If people love one another because if this certain aspect of themselves, it holds them down, to be unable to show the side they want to be shown. She wants to be her true self or change, but because people love her for being perfect, she simply cannot. Which is why Touko believes that the word “love” is a “shackle”. 

Whenever the topic of “true self” is centered around Touko, she has this one look of utter disgust. This implies that she hates herself. Because everyone loves her personification of her sister, she hates her true self.

Her true self is being scared and vulnerable. Which she shows to Yuu. She says that Yuu is kind because she doesn’t “possess love”. That she accepts everything (her scared self) about her. She believes that Yuu’s feelings would not change if she (Touko) were to change. She “loves” Yuu because she doesn’t have any expectations for her, which is what she wants. 

“Please, Yuu. Don’t fall in love with me.”

If Yuu were to fall in love with Touko, realistically, she would too eventually start to have expectations for her, which Touko doesn’t want. Later in the manga, Touko says “I hate myself” which is followed by “How can I be in love with someone who loves something I hate”. She doesn’t want Yuu to love her, who she hates herself. Yuu wants to change, to able to love her, while Touko hopes she doesn’t change. She is afraid. Reluctant that someone would love the person she hates. 

Petrified by the existence of the word “love”.