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.
Close your eyes