I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #childhood friends(68)

Ultra-responsible college student with part-time job takes on the task of looking after his nephew while sis is away for 2 months. Meets up with old school chum/wanking partner at the grocery store while the kid is having a melt-down because he can't afford to buy the beef for stroganoff. Bing! Bang! Boom! They strike up an arrangement which basically means they all live together. A variation of the "locked together in a broom closet" fantasy. The only thing that's off about this story is that college student doesn't realize, somehow, that it's weird and not entirely innocent when your school chum gives you hand jobs.

Wolf in sheep's clothing story about a reunion between neighbours from childhood. Not sure what the theme is meant to be: needless cruelty? Disappointments? "How DARE you pity me?!?" Seems a bit excessive.

Formulaic "married couple" fic between two gay former lovers who reunite after a 10-year absence, which started after high school, only now, there's an orphaned kid tagged on to force them to grow up. These adults have such a difficult time being honest or, even, simply straightforward with each other, it's hard to imagine any agency giving them leave to raise a pet, let alone a child, but expedient plot device is expedient plot device. It starts to wear the patience a little thin after a while.

A self-proclaimed "hardcore BDSM" fetishist is courted by his puppy dog neighbour, who he watched grow up and is, therefore, not attracted to at all. But after a gripping confession, he decides to give Young Sprout a chance. The BDSM is vanilla and the D/s power dynamic is upside-down.

Besties, Ryuu and Hiroto, have the hots for each other but pretend to like girls instead until one of the girls seems to have a real chance of coming between them. The problem is that Ryuu tends to like getting his way a little too much. Fortunately, Hiroto is no pushover.

Natsuno and Ui used to be inseparable friends through school, though this ended at graduation when Ui made a heartfelt confession. Now, years later, after a breakup in which he lost everything, Natsuno is looking for a place to live and Ui has a huge apartment. Trouble is, Ui has lost all memory of him. At this stage, I don't know if I like Natsuno and admire him for his guts, or despise him for toying with Ui so heartlessly.

Childhood bullying.

Not Takagi Ryou's best stuff by any stretch. Multiple stories which fall a bit flat and dull for lack of adequate character development and subtlety. She seems to do better with fantasies.

Childhood friends Sumiyoshi and Shinomoto appear, from Sumiyoshi's somewhat blinkered perspective, to cruise together through life side by side, even while he goes through girlfriends like a box of tissues, until realization strikes along with the full consequences of being a feckless, callow and self-absorbed jerk. Then it's all about the changes. Slow-paced and authentic, this story doesn't flirt with any emotional or psychological danger zones, but it's not bad—just a bit dull, like housekeeping.

Kirirara is all-boy, but his mother entered him into a beauty contest as a youngster, which he won, so he has something to prove about being all-boy. It's just that when he's next to his neighbours, the cool brothers, especially Ken, he feels other things.