光が死んだ夏 1

The story is set in a rural village, and is about Yoshiki, a high schooler, whose childhood best friend got lost in the mountains and returned, but somehow changed.

I loved the story a lot, it's very emotional and makes you think a lot about humanity. I think the characters had very interesting relationships, and also the side characters were more than just background noise (e.g. Kurebayashi-san, Asako). Of course the relationship of Yoshiki and Hikaru plays a major role, and here also I liked

Cosmic horror BL?

This was billed to me initially as "cosmic horror BL", and while I agree that some elements of that are true, I would like to note in particular to anyone interested in that "cosmic horror" part that, to me at least, this series has so far been less Lovecraft and more Fatal Frame-ish. There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree with me, but I definitely would have preferred having my expectations re-aligned when I first started reading.

Anyway, the premise

Language-wise, I would say this isn't great for learning unless your focus is Kansai-ben. It took a while to get used to, but Kansai-ben does follow the same logical patterns as standard Japanese. The language is quite casual.

Story-wise, this was a really interesting start. I like that you know from the very beginning that something is strange and off. I can definitely feel Yoshiki's anxieties and fears as I read. I anticipated that there would be a cliffhanger at the end but I didn't know jus