As I read the first volume, I was surprised at how much of her story I related to, from dealing with folks badgering you about when you’re gonna start dating to feeling an intimate sense of satisfaction when watching or reading about fictional relationships you’ve gotten invested in. A page of helpful translation notes is provided by translator Emma Schumacker, although there seems to be an ongoing trend at Yen Press for not keeping fujoshi/fudanshi but instead using BL fan girl/BL fanboy etc. These two do indeed make a charming couple but I have so many questions about their futures that I hardly know where to start! I don’t usually quote from publisher’s blurbs, especially when the volume concerned hasn’t yet been published, but my feeling that we needed much more backstory in this volume is obviously going to be addressed in Volume 2 (due out January 2023). Moving from that starting point, this volume suggests that the series will be one filled with love and care.

There are, of course, plenty of fan theories about which characters read as ace, but as far as canonical content, we still have a ways to go. Who, we find out a few pages later, appearing almost like a ghost, has managed to read the whole book by the time his wife wakes up. A pair of friends, an ace/aro woman who only enjoys the concept of sex and love in her BL (boys' love) books and a gay man in love with his straight childhood friend, have a marriage of convenience and they're SO GOOD to each other. Through this bonus piece, Shirono expertly captures this snowballing event through the use of another well-placed background.But it’s a link that must break, a footnote that must be contained solely to a few documents that let the world know, when necessary, that I once was Mercedez Clewis: the only one of the name, as far as I know. There are also hints about Gakurouta’s grandmother toward the end of the volume so that will be interesting if they come to fruition. But as his childhood friend Sousuke arrives to offer his congratulations, she recognizes that she’s now party to and part of a one-sided real life BL relationship.

Unfortunately for Gakurouta, it's entirely one-sided since Sousuke is straight, and has had multiple girlfriends in the time they've known each other while Gakurouta remains silent about his own feelings. Such is the case for both Yuriko and Gakurouta, two individuals who are “unproductive” in a society where having children is expected, even if the marriage is one of practicality. Sure, Yuriko and Gakurouta’s marriage is a marriage of convenience between friends, but… does it matter less? It’s easy to say fitting in is overrated: it’s much harder to live out when one isn’t just nebulously “unique” but part of a group that is actively oppressed and put in danger when they stand out. I’ve been seduced by the thought of marriage—by the notion of fulfilling some higher purpose of being a good, productive citizen—but at thirty, I’ve no desire to actually do so, even if it was to get society off my back.

Meanwhile, Gakurouta harbors unrequited feelings for his heterosexual childhood friend Sousuke Kusama, who also happens to be the gardener for their estate. I think a lot of folks who wring their hands about The State Of Pokémon™ would be better off just realizing that they outgrew Pokémon and stop making that GAME FREAK's fault.

It’s my office-slash-bedroom, the sound of my aluminum crochet hook catching on yarn as I sit in front of Lake Whatcom, the tap-tap-tap of my feet as I dance in my shared apartment. I personaggi vengono praticamente presentati con le loro sessualità e sono stereotipi viventi (il personaggio gay innamorato da ben dieci anni dell’amico etero like? Romantic love for them exists between the pages of a manga or same-gender attraction to the gardener who happens to be your friend from way back when—not one another. I sit here now, penning this article that you’re reading, with an inch of hair, a prominent PCOS mustache above my lips, a septum piercing prominent in my Black nose, two tattoos on my collarbones, and a gorgeous unibrow as thick as every inch of my body. There is something of a break in my birth name and the name I chose: Mercedez Clewis is a name attached to trauma, to a lot of grief and pain and PTSD that I’m still untangling.She was someone who had trauma forced into her, had trauma visited upon her body—Mercedez Clewis was someone who weathered a lot, who came, who saw, who remembered and remembers within me.