vignette00's manga / #Family(44)

Frustrating, slow, and not particularly well drawn, this manga still sticks with me because of the wonderful characterization of its main characters, Toshi and Kyuu. Kyuu grows up through the three volume series, and his homesickness is particularly well written. The mangaka doesn't shy away from sketching out everyone's complicated cowardice, from Toshi who won't tell Kyuu his feelings, to Kyuu who is afraid of appearing two-faced, to Kyuu's brother, Sumi, who can't stop running away. This is a manga about how to care for other people and convey that caring, and the sweetness of the end is doubly rewarding because of how hard it was to come by.

What would have been a typical friends-becoming-lovers kind of story, with one boy desperate and the other desperately trying to hide the fact that he reciprocates, is thwarted by an unusual family circumstance. Similar to "Yagate Ao ni Naru" and "Into Your Heart Through the Door," except Hidaka Shouko allows the ending and path forward to remain ambiguous. There's this moment where one of the characters is pleading for something that's both cruel and kind to the other characters in the story, and I found myself drawing a breath that I was still holding at the very last page. And I guess that's mostly what this story is like -- a breath held, you waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the temporary, uneasy peace to splinter, and the cruel, but kind, promise that it may hold, instead, forever.