i’m sure we’ll get more clarifying exposition in the next chapters, but i tried to do some heavy lifting for the folks who are lost up until this point (this is very long). you really need to pay close attention to make sense of some things, and other things are left ambiguous on purpose i think.
so we have college students ikuse and kazami who—as it seems—talk properly for the first time that day in the cafeteria where kazami approaches ikuse about his nearsightedness.
they eat at a restaurant together. during their conversation there, it’s established that kazami has some talent in writing as even his restaurant/food reviews stand out to ikuse.
some time (days, weeks?) later, they find shelter from a rain shower at ikuse’s place where ikuse tells kazami about the author rishu suzuhara whose novels he likes so much that he takes notes about them in his little black notebook.
kazami and ikuse are shown to meet up occasionally, maybe even regularly, at ikuse’s place after this. they grow so close that kazami even talks on the phone to ikuse’s sister, telling her that they “look after each other.”
kazami then reads one of ikuse’s owned books and deduces from it that ikuse is into bdsm. their relationship progresses into a more intimate territory.
(honorary mention to the pretty bow kazami makes out of the blindfold. i only noticed that on my second read lol.)
the relationship comes to a halt when ikuse asks for kazami’s cock during one of their bdsm sessions. it’s unclear now why kazami refused sex at this point but i think, if we follow the usual yaoi misunderstanding trope, the implication is that he wanted something more romantic out of the relationship and assumed that ikuse simply needed him for pleasure. consequently, kazami distances himself from ikuse, perhaps because he didn’t want to get hurt.
on the other hand, ikuse is ashamed of himself and doesn’t understand why he asked kazami for sex that time. it’s clear he doesn’t understand his own feelings. confused, ashamed, and maybe frustrated by the radio silence from kazami, ikuse decides to lie about seeing someone else for his bdsm sessions. (for kazami, this must have driven home the idea of ikuse needing him just for pleasure even more.)
flash forward years to ikuse working at a book publisher. he’s rishu suzuhara’s editor now, which is the same author he’s been shown to admire since the start of chapter 1 (the one he took notes in his notebook for).
ikuse then meets kazami again after all those years. kazami is now an aspiring writer, and he’s about to become ikuse’s new project. ikuse reads kazami’s manuscript and proposes that they submit it to the newcomer’s award. ikuse is obviously on edge and keeping his distance in this meeting (judging from his speech and the way he goes to shake kazami’s hand with both of his hands so overly formally), but kazami immediately calls him out on it and brings up the past in the same sentence (“your attitude is cold, is it because you’re still seeing that person?”).
the flashback to ikuse’s father’s study is confusing in a sense that you can’t place the meaning of it. why is ikuse’s father brought up? why does his father matter? does his father matter? the picture isn’t complete yet. the puzzle pieces come together with upcoming flashbacks of his father’s study. for now, young ikuse is simply shown reading a book in his father’s study, mirrored by the panel of his older self sitting at a desk reading a manuscript. maybe it's meant to show how fascinated he’s been by words since a young age.
the next time we’re shown his father’s study is where it gets tricky. in the same room there’s young ikuse fallen asleep over a book, current ikuse tied to the window with rope, and a faceless person (wearing a wrist watch, carrying a manuscript) whose shoes are stepping on packed condoms. the faceless person is asking, “ikuse, you think i can become a novelist?”. all of the hints imply that the faceless person is kazami, and the writing, the fascination with words, the bondage, the unsolved misunderstanding from the past, tie it all together.
it becomes obvious that ikuse and suzuhara’s relationship runs deeper than one between an author and his editor, because instead of submitting kazami’s first novel to the newcomer’s award, ikuse sells its plot off to suzuhara as one of the “dreams” he’s been having. it’s implied in the way suzuhara immediately takes notes of the re-telling of said “dream” that the same thing or something similar may have happened before (?).
there are a few speculations as for why ikuse did this. personally i don’t think he was hypnotized by suzuhara; that seems a little too “fantastical” for this down to earth story. my sizzling hot take is that ikuse WANTED kazami to find out he slipped suzuhara the plot, and that he WANTED to be punished for it by kazami. alas, i think this might be too far fetched.
my less hot take is that ikuse didn’t want kazami to succeed so that he wouldn’t have anything to do with kazami anymore. this idea would tie in neatly with the scene of them discussing kazami not gettin into the newcomer’s award. in this scene, kazami has a new manuscript at the ready already, and ikuse obviously likes it. but at the same time, his inner monologue does not seem happy about it. i think on one hand ikuse, as someone who is fascinated by books/writing/words, is so taken with kazami’s writing (-> ghosts of young ikuse looking at the new manuscript), while on the other hand he’d rather forget about kazami (-> “no matter how many times i consign you to oblivion, you keep getting back up”) because he’s still hurt and disappointed about their fall-out back in college.
again some time later, kazami publishes his first novel while suzuhara’s plagiarised novel does big numbers on the market.
ikuse and kazami visit ibaraki. it’s supposed to be a “business trip” to gather materials for kazami, but it ends with them in their hotel room and kazami admitting to ikuse that he knows ikuse sold off his plot to suzuhara. he words it in a way that shows he was under the impression that suzuhara was the instigator (“a little coaxing by the author you admire”), and he’s clearly surprised when ikuse tells him that suzuhara had nothing to do with it, that HE was the one who slipped suzuhara the plot out of his own volition.
how this next bsdm session happens between ikuse and kazami is unclear. what’s certain is that it happens on the same night in the hotel they’re staying in ibaraki. i believe it’s either that ikuse asks kazami to punish him for what he’s done, or that kazami is the one who suggests it. maybe it was just convenient for the mangaka, or maybe kazami planned for something like this to happen, because he magically had all the props for a bdsm session with him. this is where kazami takes that video of ikuse “apologizing” to suzuhara.
suzuhara ends up with said video on his phone, presumably sent by kazami himself. he comes off as aloof when he says that he didn’t expect to become a plagiarist. due to this, the following bsdm session between suzuhara and ikuse, too, feels more like a punishment.
edit because i forgot about this: i think the “ending my career” thing can be interpreted a couple ways as well. the news about suzuhara unknowingly having plagiarized one of kazami’s (a younger person’s) stories may have been the final nail in the coffin for suzuhara self-worth as a writer. he did voice having self-doubts about how and what kind of audience he resonated with with his writing. seeing the video could also have been a wake up call for him because he saw the way ikuse reacted to the bdsm play with kazami (“i can’t tell if you’re apologizing or if you’re enjoying this”); maybe it was so fundamentally different to their sessions that suzuhara realized he could never give ikuse what kazami gives him during their sessions. in any case, i’m sure suzuhara one way or another realized that he a) had to give up ikuse and b) give up his writing career.
suzuhara comes clean about being “shizuka nanami” and that he sought out a bdsm relationship with ikuse because of ikuse’s liking to it. shizuka nanami is the author of the bdsm book “prayer of a moonflower”, which was a “profoundly memorable work” to ikuse. this is where the flashbacks and the importance to his father’s study finally begin to make sense: ikuse found “prayer of a moonflower” in his father’s book collection when he was young, and it’s seemingly what kicked off his fascination with books/writing/words seeing as he slept in his father’s study to read it.
essentially what i think suzuhara is telling ikuse at the end is, “for your pain to stop, you need to realize that you couldn't forgive kazami because you were hurt by his refusal to have sex; because you expected/wanted more from your relationship.”
and that’s about it until this point. we'll see what else is getting clarified in the next chapters.
i’m sure we’ll get more clarifying exposition in the next chapters, but i tried to do some heavy lifting for the folks who are lost up until this point (this is very long). you really need to pay close attention to make sense of some things, and other things are left ambiguous on purpose i think.
so we have college students ikuse and kazami who—as it seems—talk properly for the first time that day in the cafeteria where kazami approaches ikuse about his nearsightedness.
they eat at a restaurant together. during their conversation there, it’s established that kazami has some talent in writing as even his restaurant/food reviews stand out to ikuse.
some time (days, weeks?) later, they find shelter from a rain shower at ikuse’s place where ikuse tells kazami about the author rishu suzuhara whose novels he likes so much that he takes notes about them in his little black notebook.
kazami and ikuse are shown to meet up occasionally, maybe even regularly, at ikuse’s place after this. they grow so close that kazami even talks on the phone to ikuse’s sister, telling her that they “look after each other.”
kazami then reads one of ikuse’s owned books and deduces from it that ikuse is into bdsm. their relationship progresses into a more intimate territory.
(honorary mention to the pretty bow kazami makes out of the blindfold. i only noticed that on my second read lol.)
the relationship comes to a halt when ikuse asks for kazami’s cock during one of their bdsm sessions. it’s unclear now why kazami refused sex at this point but i think, if we follow the usual yaoi misunderstanding trope, the implication is that he wanted something more romantic out of the relationship and assumed that ikuse simply needed him for pleasure. consequently, kazami distances himself from ikuse, perhaps because he didn’t want to get hurt.
on the other hand, ikuse is ashamed of himself and doesn’t understand why he asked kazami for sex that time. it’s clear he doesn’t understand his own feelings. confused, ashamed, and maybe frustrated by the radio silence from kazami, ikuse decides to lie about seeing someone else for his bdsm sessions. (for kazami, this must have driven home the idea of ikuse needing him just for pleasure even more.)
flash forward years to ikuse working at a book publisher. he’s rishu suzuhara’s editor now, which is the same author he’s been shown to admire since the start of chapter 1 (the one he took notes in his notebook for).
ikuse then meets kazami again after all those years. kazami is now an aspiring writer, and he’s about to become ikuse’s new project. ikuse reads kazami’s manuscript and proposes that they submit it to the newcomer’s award. ikuse is obviously on edge and keeping his distance in this meeting (judging from his speech and the way he goes to shake kazami’s hand with both of his hands so overly formally), but kazami immediately calls him out on it and brings up the past in the same sentence (“your attitude is cold, is it because you’re still seeing that person?”).
the flashback to ikuse’s father’s study is confusing in a sense that you can’t place the meaning of it. why is ikuse’s father brought up? why does his father matter? does his father matter? the picture isn’t complete yet. the puzzle pieces come together with upcoming flashbacks of his father’s study. for now, young ikuse is simply shown reading a book in his father’s study, mirrored by the panel of his older self sitting at a desk reading a manuscript. maybe it's meant to show how fascinated he’s been by words since a young age.
the next time we’re shown his father’s study is where it gets tricky. in the same room there’s young ikuse fallen asleep over a book, current ikuse tied to the window with rope, and a faceless person (wearing a wrist watch, carrying a manuscript) whose shoes are stepping on packed condoms. the faceless person is asking, “ikuse, you think i can become a novelist?”. all of the hints imply that the faceless person is kazami, and the writing, the fascination with words, the bondage, the unsolved misunderstanding from the past, tie it all together.
it becomes obvious that ikuse and suzuhara’s relationship runs deeper than one between an author and his editor, because instead of submitting kazami’s first novel to the newcomer’s award, ikuse sells its plot off to suzuhara as one of the “dreams” he’s been having. it’s implied in the way suzuhara immediately takes notes of the re-telling of said “dream” that the same thing or something similar may have happened before (?).
there are a few speculations as for why ikuse did this. personally i don’t think he was hypnotized by suzuhara; that seems a little too “fantastical” for this down to earth story. my sizzling hot take is that ikuse WANTED kazami to find out he slipped suzuhara the plot, and that he WANTED to be punished for it by kazami. alas, i think this might be too far fetched.
my less hot take is that ikuse didn’t want kazami to succeed so that he wouldn’t have anything to do with kazami anymore. this idea would tie in neatly with the scene of them discussing kazami not gettin into the newcomer’s award. in this scene, kazami has a new manuscript at the ready already, and ikuse obviously likes it. but at the same time, his inner monologue does not seem happy about it. i think on one hand ikuse, as someone who is fascinated by books/writing/words, is so taken with kazami’s writing (-> ghosts of young ikuse looking at the new manuscript), while on the other hand he’d rather forget about kazami (-> “no matter how many times i consign you to oblivion, you keep getting back up”) because he’s still hurt and disappointed about their fall-out back in college.
again some time later, kazami publishes his first novel while suzuhara’s plagiarised novel does big numbers on the market.
ikuse and kazami visit ibaraki. it’s supposed to be a “business trip” to gather materials for kazami, but it ends with them in their hotel room and kazami admitting to ikuse that he knows ikuse sold off his plot to suzuhara. he words it in a way that shows he was under the impression that suzuhara was the instigator (“a little coaxing by the author you admire”), and he’s clearly surprised when ikuse tells him that suzuhara had nothing to do with it, that HE was the one who slipped suzuhara the plot out of his own volition.
how this next bsdm session happens between ikuse and kazami is unclear. what’s certain is that it happens on the same night in the hotel they’re staying in ibaraki. i believe it’s either that ikuse asks kazami to punish him for what he’s done, or that kazami is the one who suggests it. maybe it was just convenient for the mangaka, or maybe kazami planned for something like this to happen, because he magically had all the props for a bdsm session with him. this is where kazami takes that video of ikuse “apologizing” to suzuhara.
suzuhara ends up with said video on his phone, presumably sent by kazami himself. he comes off as aloof when he says that he didn’t expect to become a plagiarist. due to this, the following bsdm session between suzuhara and ikuse, too, feels more like a punishment.
edit because i forgot about this: i think the “ending my career” thing can be interpreted a couple ways as well. the news about suzuhara unknowingly having plagiarized one of kazami’s (a younger person’s) stories may have been the final nail in the coffin for suzuhara self-worth as a writer. he did voice having self-doubts about how and what kind of audience he resonated with with his writing. seeing the video could also have been a wake up call for him because he saw the way ikuse reacted to the bdsm play with kazami (“i can’t tell if you’re apologizing or if you’re enjoying this”); maybe it was so fundamentally different to their sessions that suzuhara realized he could never give ikuse what kazami gives him during their sessions. in any case, i’m sure suzuhara one way or another realized that he a) had to give up ikuse and b) give up his writing career.
suzuhara comes clean about being “shizuka nanami” and that he sought out a bdsm relationship with ikuse because of ikuse’s liking to it. shizuka nanami is the author of the bdsm book “prayer of a moonflower”, which was a “profoundly memorable work” to ikuse. this is where the flashbacks and the importance to his father’s study finally begin to make sense: ikuse found “prayer of a moonflower” in his father’s book collection when he was young, and it’s seemingly what kicked off his fascination with books/writing/words seeing as he slept in his father’s study to read it.
essentially what i think suzuhara is telling ikuse at the end is, “for your pain to stop, you need to realize that you couldn't forgive kazami because you were hurt by his refusal to have sex; because you expected/wanted more from your relationship.”
and that’s about it until this point. we'll see what else is getting clarified in the next chapters.