muse ✨'s manga / #unrequited love(80)

Ten years after his confession was brushed off as a joke, Ichika is still in love with Shuu, who only sees him as a best friend. Shuu is constantly being dumped; the only constant relationship is with Ichika. He even envisions their families' future together. But after he sees Ichika go into a hotel with a man, Shuu begins to think differently about him. A nice take on the friends-to-lovers trope. A neat surprise was that Ichika had never had penetrative sex with anyone else, so they both had a first experience with each other.

Unrequited love between childhood friends. A playboy and the quiet boy at school who sweeps the courtyard.

A man who has cared for the children of his one-sided love is shocked when the oldest confesses he's in love with him. I didn't feel there was any coercion on the part of the MC, although this is underage, and the MC did care for his lover when he was younger. He wasn't attracted to him as a child, only after he'd grown up, so this doesn't bother me. It wasn't his child and also this is pretend. The second story though, about the middle-school brother and the older guy... no thanks.

After his then-boyfriend drives drunk and kills a woman on a bicycle, then flees the scene, Tooru--an artist--becomes unable to work with the guilt of the woman's child with bloody hands crying for his mother in the road. A few years later, he adopts the boy and vows to make up for what happened. As the boy grows up, he falls in love with Tooru and they eventually have a physical relationship, but Tooru is never willing to tie Katsuya down and never says what he feels or wants. It's frustrating because of that, and a little odd since they were technically adopted father and son, but they aren't related and spend long periods apart now that Katsuya is an adult. And I don't believe Tooru ever had any attraction toward Katsuya until he was older and starter pursuing him. A nice story but not really fulfilling to read.

I didn't expect the story to go this way and was pleasantly surprised! A guy has been in hopeless love with his childhood friend for years, only to finally confess to him. And it...actually goes well. Head's up: This is also the one with the girl in love with her brother. He gets a boyfriend, but she goes on about it for a while.