Plot Summary

Content warning: This manga depicts scenes of homophobia, sexual assault, and abuse.

The story opens up in medias res with protagonist Yamashita Tooru staring dumbstruck at a handsome man loudly throwing a temper tantrum on the phone about someone being quite literally 20 seconds late in meeting up with him. As opposed to paying too much attention to the giant red flag that is this guy's shitty personality, Yamashita is practically dissociating over the fact that the guy in question is Hikaru, an adult entertainer known for his performances in gay porn.

Yamashita is a superfan of Hikaru and collector of all his videos and memorabilia. He's so enamored of the guy that he thinks about how much he can't wait to get home and jack off to Hikaru's videos even while he's at work. He mentions that going home to jerk it to Hikaru at night is the sole thing to which he looks forward in his life.

In the process of his inner monologue giving us the context we need to understand why he's staring at the hot guy, we learn a little about Yamashita as a character. Yamashita is a gay man who describes himself as having a gloomy personality and being socially inept. He's never been in a romantic relationship and is also a virgin (ugh, same).

A little later in the manga, we learn he was publicly bullied and humiliated in his youth for being gay—he confessed to a male classmate and was beat up and ostracized for doing so—which could explain his lack of confidence or fear when it comes to pursuing relationships with men in the real world.

Since his peers in school actively participated in his bullying, this also explains why he has difficulty socializing in general and has learned that it is easier to take abuse than it is to do much of anything about it. We are shown how poorly people tend to treat Yamashita in microcosm when a woman at his office bumps into him, accuses him of bumping into her, and then belittles him for mumbling.

Later that day, Yamashita prays to the gods to meet Hikaru before he dies, even if he has to use his whole lifetime's worth of luck. We snap back to the setting of the opening scene, since it appears the gods have decided to grant Yamashita his wish. Realizing that he can't lose the name of action, Yamashita calls out to Hikaru before he can walk off. After little to no introduction, he pulls a Tik Tok era Ke$ha and hits on Hikaru hard:

Hikaru is like sure, why not, and the two head to a nearby hotel. In the build up to penetrative sex (which most works in the genre consider real sex, and everything else foreplay 😑) Yamashita's thirst is unquenchable, which is initially why I fell in love with him as a character:

Ravage me however you'd like, please violate me as much as you want… as long as my partner is Hikaru, no matter what happens, I can take it.

Unfortunately, Hikaru throws a damper on these moments as he overly critiques Yamashita's sexual technique despite knowing he's a virgin and calls him ugly for exposing his ass as he preps himself. Sad! But things somehow get worse when penetration actually begins. Despite his bravado and the fact that he did prepare himself, Yamashita doesn't anticipate how painful anal sex would be and repeatedly calls out for Hikaru to stop. Not only does he not stop, but he tells Yamashita to call him by his name, which is Ryuichi. Surprised, Yamashita asks if he has been told to use Hikaru's given name, but the guy replies that it's not like [he] has a stage name or anything.

Yes, the Fates have indeed laughed: Hikaru is just some rando that looks like Yamashita's favorite porn star. In the mostly obscured and implied scenes that follow, Yamashita is forced to have sex with Ryuichi multiple times that evening and passes out repeatedly until he finds an opportunity to escape.

Yamashita goes to work the next day although he's in excruciating pain from the night before. His boss walks in to usher along the welcome train for a new employee… and I'm sure you can see where this is going. In previous expository scenes, readers learn that a manager in Yamashita's company has a son that has recently been hired seemingly through nepotism. Everyone in the office is rightfully pissy about it, but people (especially the OLs) change their tune when the guy walks in and is revealed to be hot. The new employee is Asazaki Ryuichi,^[1] the guy who assaulted Yamashita the night before.

For the next few chapters, Asazaki threatens to expose Yamashita's sexuality to the company and thereby coerces him into a sexual relationship, which usually results in being forced to give Asazaki blow jobs in an old storage room during work hours. Like their first night together, Asazaki cruelly criticizes his sexual performance, at least early on in the sexual extortion plot. Due to his tendencies to tolerate the abuse that comes his way, Yamashita accepts full responsibility for the situation, sees no real way out, and comforts himself with the fact that he still finds it preferable to his experiences being beaten and bullied while in school.

Yamashita begins to throw his romantic emotions into the mix after he tries to resume jacking off to Hikaru at home in the evenings. He finds that the Hikaru videos aren't doing much for him anymore and instead comes fantasizing about rough sex with Asazaki instead:

Asazaki starts to catch feelings for Yamashita, too, although we're shown this through him doing bare minimum shit, like getting Yamashita a binder off of a high shelf so he doesn't have to get a step stool. (Honestly, I got to give it to Nanami for the verisimilitude of the low-effort shit people who are attracted to men are sometimes forced to romanticize with the lazy ass dudes with nothing to offer walking around today.)

The turning point from sexual extortion to the most dubious of romances happens when our two heroes add kissing on the mouth to their sexual repertoire. After locking lips, Asazaki grows more considerate of Yamashita's likes and dislikes, and suggests that they move away from getting hot and heavy at work (where they're more likely to get caught anyway) and go to Yamashita's place since he lives nearby. Asazaki closes off the suggestion for a change in scenery with the least romantic date invite I've ever seen:

If you satisfy me, I'll take you out on the weekend, see a movie or something. Got it?

I swear to God this Ryuichi makes Asami Ryuichi look like the biggest lover boy on planet earth. Either way, this preposition sends Yamashita into a fit of giddiness:

Am I finally going to have a boyfriend? So this sort of thing can happen even for me! Ever since I graduated from high school, I always thought I would never fall for someone again. I'm happy; I'm so happy I feel like I'm going to die.

We fast forward to Friday evening with Asazaki and Yamashita in a convenience store buying beer, snacks, toiletries, and condoms in preparation for their sexy weekend together. While shopping, Asazaki runs into an old friend named Tamura and takes him outside to catch up while Yamashita checks out. Outside, Tamura remembers Yamashita from high school and relays his tragic backstory to Asazaki.

Tamura, amused that the socially mismatched Asazaki and Yamashita have developed a friendship, jokingly asks his friend if he became gay while he was in America. (Asazaki is recently returned to Japan at the start of the story.) Clearly panicked at having his relationship with another man discovered, Asazaki launches into a homophobic rant to deny the accusation, which Yamashita steps out of the store just in time to hear.

Incredibly hurt by this—let it be known that Asazaki calls gay men disgusting homos—Yamashita runs off and holes himself up in his apartment. He spends a good portion of the weekend crying and berating himself for [making] the same mistake again by falling in love.

Borrowing from the Asami Ryuichi and Christian Grey playbook, Asazaki shows up unannounced at Yamashita's door even though Yamashita never gave him the address, all in order to deliver a seriously half-assed apology. When he grows unable to withstand Asazaki's excuses and continued extortion, Yamashita steals my heart by finally letting Asazaki have it:

Don't look down on me! I hate people like you! Even if it's someone like me, I still get hurt! Even if I'm a perverted homosexual who enjoys watching gay porn, I can fall for someone and have hopes that person will fall in love with me, too! Or do I not even have that privilege?

Asazaki seems pretty remorseful after Yamashita speaks his truth, although he still resents the fact that Yamashita doesn't accept his apology. He talks about how he reacted poorly because it's his first time dating a man and he didn't know how to come out and admit that to an old friend. Yamashita is clearly shocked since they never said they were going out. As we can all recall, their sexual relationship was the result of intimidation, not affection or camaraderie.

Although Yamashita is actually the sane one to think that the two are sex friends at best, Asazaki starts freaking the fuck out that Yamashita didn't already know they were dating and accuses Yamashita of using him for his body. Essentially, his manipulative ass turns the conversation in an attempt to gloss over the fact that he is the one who has been compelling Yamashita to sleep with him instead of the other way around.

In a sad turn of events, Yamashita is awestruck that his feelings are reciprocated and both men admit their love to one another. Yamashita asks that Asazaki treat him more gently, Asazaki begrudgingly agrees, and he embarks on a round of ass eating before the two have make up sex. While every fiber of my being is trying to feel happy for Yamashita in these final scenes, the manga can't help but end on an incredibly depressing note:

But that's not all! In another great example of narrative whiplash, Asazaki is a shockingly good boyfriend in the extras, who does things like reigning in his angry outbursts for fear that Yamashita will break up with him. He's still sensitive over the Hikaru stuff and obsessively makes sure Yamashita doesn't do Hikaru fan shit, but overall he and Yamashita seem to have a good relationship. (Interestingly, the narration we get from Asazaki in the extras shows that he thinks of his relationship with Yamashita as a sort of marriage.)

This dynamic would have been much more welcome in the actual story, but I'm happy these extra chapters make it so I can feel even a little bit happy for my boy Yamashita.

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