muse ✨'s manga / #team switch!!!(26)

This might be the most realistic story I've read, which means it's far from being the happiest even though it ends on a happy note. Prepare for your heart to be beaten over and over as you go through this. It's a story about how people hurt each other. Although they're in a relationship, when Kyou meets a young woman at work, he once again questions his decision to be with Imagase. The thing is, they're NOT bad for each other. They're a good fit. They live together easily. They're sexually compatible. The problem is that Kyou can't accept he's fallen in love with a man. He won't acknowledge his love at ALL, even though he's miserable for months after they break up a second time. Part of the issue is that Kyou has zero confidence and is a pushover - that's established in the prequel - so when Imagase would lament that they weren't good for each other, Kyou listened. When Imagase said he was just "playing" lovers, Kyou listened. Can they last? Yes, but they both have some maturing to do. This needs a sequel where we check in with them in a year or two. The real sign that Kyou has honestly embraced Imagase as his partner for life will be if they meet each other's families, since that was brought up several times. I loved this, but it was incredibly upsetting and I cried a lot, especially when Imagase was in the bed Kyou shared with his girlfriend and said, "You were mine. You were mine."

In which Iwaizumi and Oikawa are extremely happy sexually active team switch boyfriends.

A 17yo looking for his missing older brother comes to the city where he meets Joe, a hustler. Thus begins this strange, strange love story. This started out fade-to-black and ended up tastefully explicit, and while the love story between Joe and Otoji was a nicely developed slow-burn, the author threw so much unnecessary drama at them it got ridiculous. I'm not sorry I read this, but it's not something I would re-read.

Two boys who paint a nearly identical paining wish to meet one another and fall into gentle, first love. Featuring rare team!switch and older concepts regarding same-sex relationships, but very sweet.

Eh

Harada wrote a frightening story about a man traumatized by his own abuse, who then repeats it on a young boy who becomes infatuated with him. Years later, they reunite, and they're eventually officially together and stay together at the story's end. However, the man is abusing pills, and the now-college-student can't tell his parents who he's dating because it's the adult caught with him as a child. In the very last scene, the college student finds pills in his pocket and takes them while trying to convince himself the relationship isn't wrong. This is not a love story. It's not romance. This is going to disturb a lot of readers, and I don't think this was meant to be seen as beautiful or romantic - in fact, I know it's not, because the female avatar for the reader calls it out as disgusting repeatedly. It's deeply, deeply upsetting. But it was well told. I'm reminded of the movie "Normal" which also dealt with this subject. I've never been able to forget it.

After childhood friends who have been in love since middle school finally move in together, one starts an affair with someone from his outdoors club.

A young gay man meets a college student at a bookstore and they fall in love. The only thing about this that's kinda iffy is that the high school student is drawn to look VERY young, but he is in high school and the college student looks young as well. It's just the art style.

A DJ for Gin and Ei largely focused on a traumatic incident when Ei was 17 that has kept him from bottoming in any relationship.