GLERTLESKLETCH's manga / #Bittersweet(4)

sad. bittersweet. I wish the the first story would continue.

This story was so beautiful and bittersweet. Big scary looking guy works at a convenience store. He doesn't think his life is worth anything and has thought about dying. While working at the convenience store register, two guys who are buying cigarettes get upset when the scary looking guy asks them to confirm their age. They take the fight outside into an alleyway. The scary guy is winning until one of the guys pulls out a knife and stabs him. When the scary looking guy is stabbed, he starts thinking about how he might as well die. He is on the brink of death and sees an angel, a boy with beautiful white wings who sits on the ground. He is then gone. When the scary looking guy is discharged from the hospital, he goes back home to his very small one room apartment and the angel boy is there. The guy lets the angel boy stay at his place until he gets his ability to fly back. The angel boy's wings are affected by people's emotions. When the guy is depressed, the angel boy feels it and feathers fall from his wings. Having the scary looking guy be happy would bring his wings back to health. The scary looking guy tries to find a new job since he was fired from his last one. People won't hire him because of his scary look. While living together they grow closer and learn more about themselves. The angel boy cant remember anything about himself. He doesn't know who he is or if he is really an angel. When the scary looking guy gets the angel boy a smartphone he looks up articles about the stabbing. He discovers that at the same time the scary looking guy was stabbed, his past self had jumped from the building and committed suicide. When the angel goes outside, he realises no one can see him. when the angel was alive, a popular guy in his class bullied him. Everyone noticed, but no one did anything about it. One day, at a party, the popular guy was drunk and tried to kiss the angel boy. He got mad when the angel boy called him a pervert . The popular guy put him into the open window and said jump. When the angel boy looked scared, he seemed like he was about to apologize or be nicer, but the boy sat in the open window and leaned too far back, falling to his death. After the popular boy died, people started blaming the angel boy for killing him, even the popular boy's parents, who came to the angel boy's father to say "why did our son die but yours is alive". This got to the angel boy and he commited suicide due to the way people treated him. There are times when the angel boy tries to fly, but he gets scared. They start to wonder why the angel boy is there on earth and why can only the scary looking guy can see him. One day when the angel boy tries to fly, the scary looking guy asks him to stay with him forever and the angel boy asks him to go out with him. They go out places together and they laugh and smile together. They are both happy. On a snowy day when they are expressing how much they mean to one another, they look happy and the angel boy says he feels like he could fly. When the scary looking guy turns around the angel boy is gone. He becomes sad again, really sad, and he wonders if this is his punishment for things he did in the past. He starts to wonder if he just imagined the angel boy, untill his sister comes over to his place and says "what a beautiful feather". The scary looking guy keeps the feather in a bottle that he wears around his neck. He goes to work at his sister's bar and his younger brother who he lost connection with sends him some rice and congratulates him on his new job. The scary looking guy looks at the angel's feather and thinks that life isn't so bad. In the extra, we see the angel boy call a wide and taller man by the name of the scary looking guy. They both have wings and they walk off together into the distance. The scary looking guy has lived for a long time and has passed away and is now reunited with the angel in heaven. I loved this story and it made me tear up. My favorite work by Harada for sure. Not as fucked up as the other ones, not very fucked up at all, just emotional.

This had a collection of short stories. The first one was about a guy who once saw a gay couple at the beach. They acted like they were in their own world. They didn't care that people could be watching. Then its the guy and his friends on the beach and he's dating a dark-haired tall guy in the group, but his friends don't know. The dark haired guy doesn't wanna hide anymore. The blonde guy recalls the gay couple he saw when he was young to his partner. He later agrees with his bf that he can tell people about them. The next story is I believe the same characters from the beach one but how they met. The blonde guy was seeing a man who wants to get married to a woman but still keep the blonde guy around. After he tells him, he stops seeing him. I think they are in college. The dark haired guy has a curry club and asks the blonde guy to join. The man the blonde guy was seeing shows up at his school and tries to get him to stay with him. The tall dark-haired guy sees and says something like "homos?" Before the man was holding his hand, but when the dark-haired guy made himself known, the man let go of his hand. When the dark-haired guy finds out that the blonde guy is gay, the blonde guy is surprised that he still wants to be around him. They hang out more and one day the blonde guy agrees to check out his curry club. Turns out the curry club is just the guys house, and him, and no one else. They go into his house and then the dark-haired guy calls the other guy dense and then he steals a kiss from the blonde guy. The dark haired guys says that he's been into him for awhile. That one was good. Then There's one about a guy who goes to see the guy he had a crush on ten years ago. He thinks that the world is going to end because the Mayan calendar is ending. He shows up at the guys house and explains this. This one was a lot more emotionally deep than the other ones. The guy talks about how its been so long and how he has someone, but he hasn't been able to get over the person that this guy once was, and that he's been searching, looking for parts of the version of him that he loved in him. The blonde guy who thinks the world is going to end seems to be growing on the dark-haired guy. The dark-haired guy asks the blonde guy to cut his hair. He makes it look like how it used to; the hair of the person he loved. He starts to cry, and the two of them kiss, and in the morning the dark haired guy finds a note from the blonde guy that says he went to work. There's no hint that they will meet again or that any real relationship has formed. Its as if the guy kissed the dark-haired guy's past self and was then able to move on. I don't even really recall what else there was and I just read this.