Volume 1 Description: The stunning new work from Akane Torikai, creator of Sensei's White Lies.
Ritsuko Kaji is a novelist who can no longer write. One day, her closest male friend from the past — Aoi — appears in her dreams and poses a question:
"Is this really the life you wanted?"
Awakened by a phone call, Ritsuko learns that Aoi has taken his own life.
Dreams that once shone bright, the reality of her marriage, the death of someone she cherished… A life defined by losses she had been turning...
I really enjoyed this one: I was looking for more realistic portraits of adult people living their lives in Japan, and I thought that this was a very refreshing read. It is adult people being sad, there is some Sally Rooney longing and nostalgia in this one, but I thought it was a pretty solid story all things considered. And the illustrations are beautiful, there are multiple panels with a full page illustration just letting you narrow in on the desperation of the characters!
It introduces a bunch of pretty useful vocabulary related to the ovulation, suicide, there's some sonkeigo in the mix, the wordbook is pretty specialized here, but it helped me learn a thing or two ^^