Wtf did just happen...what are those...behind the curtain, I didn't understand, can someone please enlighten me?

hard to tell but abusive parents, i would guess, that her friend/gf killed for abusing their daughter. implied they wanted to do these things but parents wouldn't let her/abused her for going out, etc.

makes sense. i thought the blonde was being abused by the gf at first but i'm actually glad the parents were killed.

damn i always love murasakino's works

This little incident might cause them some small issues later down the line…

Fuuck, I did not quite expect that twist. I thought "oh yeah, the band aid and how she looked around almost scared, her GF is probably abusive", but nope. She's just, um, providing a radical solution to a problem.

That's what I thought when I saw her wipe away the blood. But this scenario is better for them I hope.

gives me You vibes

Very interesting. Parents or spouse? probably parents. I like it.

It's horrible when it has to come to a point like this. Murder is not justified either way, but I choose to believe it was not premeditated. Incidentally this reminds me of Higurashi where they spent an entire arc showing how incredibly hard it is to really get child protection services to stop abusive parents. Same thing in the anime Erased. It is a very common story in our world sadly.

This will obviously not work out. They will spent a large chunk of their life in jail/psychiatric supervision. They may even be torn apart by those forces. In such a short story you can already predict that they will go on their last summer vacation together and travel around until they eventually are caught and separated for a decade and then they reunite again as adults. At least the daughter will no longer be abused in those years.

Didn't expect any less from this author. I do consider this a happy ending, though, all things considered.

This will obviously not work out. They will spent a large chunk of their life in jail/psychiatric supervision. They may even be torn apart by those forces. In such a short story you can already predict that they will go on their last summer vacation together and travel around until they eventually are caught and separated for a decade and then they reunite again as adults. At least the daughter will no longer be abused in those years.

I understand setting the now orphan up in a foster home, but wouldn't this be considered a case of either 'self defence' or 'defence of others' or is the law different in Japan?

I really hope that's not the case.

This is quite fascinating as an exercise in storytelling (as Murasakino's works often are).

Dynasty's tags in particular predetermine the start of the reading by setting an ominous tone that wouldn't otherwise necessarily be the ruling assumption--the verbal text is quite normal and commonplace, with only the theme of disappointment about last year's failed beach trip striking a small negative note.

The visuals also seem benign to start--two girls who have been given a cleanup job that they don't seem to hate--with only the patch on the girl's face as a kind of troubling note (the ones on her arms and the bruises on her legs are easy to miss at first when you're mainly trying to follow the dialogue). Then at the bottom of the third page we see how many patches and bruises there are. At this point I wondered if the dark-haired girl might not be the abuser, and the other girl's responses were meant to placate her.

Then the dark stain on the top-left panel of the last page suggests a blood stain, but it still potentially could be something else. And finally the classic last-panel reveal (a mainstay of comics since their very inception), an image that rewrites the entire story from the beginning. The shower curtain divides the panel symmetrically, with the girls hugging on the right and the partially seen bodies in shadow on the left.

It's notable how much of the story has to be imagined by the reader based on the fragmentary clues on the pages--who the bodies are, how the girl got her injuries, how the bodies came to be in the state they are in, what's going to happen with the girls next.

And an exercise in storytelling and manipulating readers (in a good way) is what I believe this to be--it's certainly not a teen handbook on suggested solutions to domestic abuse.

(Although I was tempted to make a joke about "life hacks," so I'll stop now.)

I kinda foresee what was happening when they were cleaning up, it automatically reminds me of ride or die and adan. So much watching and reading dark lesbian mangas and films that I already know it's gonna be like this

Got any recommendations? I'd be interested to read/watch those stuff

What the F...

I didn’t get it at all at first, I just trusted that my favorite mangaka would have something real to say. Seeing the last panel I had a completely different interpretation from the ones above. My thought was that they were being held prisoner by some organization and what we were seeing was not the cleaning of a bathroom but the forced cleaning of an abattoir. The previous victims had been tossed to the side in preparation for the next batch whilst our protagonists are doing the capo work that keeps them from being the next set. The blond girl is in total denial and is about to crack. The dark haired girl is trying to give the other whatever hope and happiness she can. Sort of a love story in grief.

I thought it was gonna be sadder but I'm happy with this ending. Don't do bad things, kids. Unless it's yuri.

I didn’t get it at all at first... The dark haired girl is trying to give the other whatever hope and happiness she can. Sort of a love story in grief.

I had the same thoughts. Either that or the dark hair was the abuser and this was a case of Stockholm Syndrome and I'm glad I had my doubts. The ending was a slight twist and I wish there was a background story.

Damn, loved that plot twist!

I didn’t get it at all at first... The dark haired girl is trying to give the other whatever hope and happiness she can. Sort of a love story in grief.

I had the same thoughts. Either that or the dark hair was the abuser and this was a case of Stockholm Syndrome and I'm glad I had my doubts. The ending was a slight twist and I wish there was a background story.

Slight twist? Man, I'm not sure I want to know what you would consider a major twist.

I understand setting the now orphan up in a foster home, but wouldn't this be considered a case of either 'self defence' or 'defence of others' or is the law different in Japan?

I really hope that's not the case.

The Japanese tend to have extreme prejudice against murder. Unless you can convincingly prove that the killing happened in self-defense (through video evidence for example) you rarely even get a chance. While the very obvious signs of abuse are a good start, it doesn't help that they are getting rid of the evidence and are most likely about to run off.

There have been plenty of convictions regarding killing in the defense of others. It is seen as an excessively repulsive behaviour to cause such an uproar and "defy" the police authority. Compassion has no place in a "guilty until proven otherwise" 99% convictions court.

Naturally we do not have enough context to even be sure this was self-defense rather than premeditated murder, but I already made clear that I prefer to assume the former. If I was a police investigator, however, I would have to question whether they had to kill the mother who would hardly be able to fight back against two able teenagers with weapons. This very much could be interpreted as an act of revenge and a way to shut up the witness of the father's murder.

last edited at Nov 2, 2021 5:05AM

This story was really good. It had a dimension rarely seen in stories. The restrictions of her past and the freedom she can move towards really completes the story. The tags are so subtly implied, it fully vocalizes the plot, without being so explicit.

I didn’t get it at all at first, I just trusted that my favorite mangaka would have something real to say. Seeing the last panel I had a completely different interpretation from the ones above. My thought was that they were being held prisoner by some organization and what we were seeing was not the cleaning of a bathroom but the forced cleaning of an abattoir. The previous victims had been tossed to the side in preparation for the next batch whilst our protagonists are doing the capo work that keeps them from being the next set. The blond girl is in total denial and is about to crack. The dark haired girl is trying to give the other whatever hope and happiness she can. Sort of a love story in grief.

Hey that is also a valid reading of the story. We know very little about what actually happened. There's two girls in a tiled room with a shower and bathtub. They're scrubbing away bloodstains, eventually we see parts of at least two corpses in the bathtub. One of them has been badly abused. They talk about their plans for last summer that didn't work out, that they think they can pull off this year.

Of course, there is no mention of any shady organization, but there is also no mention of the corpses being related to either one of them nor are we told or shown how they died or what the role of our protagonists is.
It's all inferred from dialogue, art (body language, scenery) and prior experience with narrative media, the artist in particular and drawing parallels to the real world.

As such it seems less likely to me that it's a "killhouse cleanup girls" scenario compared to "we offed her abusive parents and are now cleaning up the mess" situation. I see no hard proof for either, though.

I didn’t get it at all at first, I just trusted that my favorite mangaka would have something real to say. Seeing the last panel I had a completely different interpretation from the ones above. My thought was that they were being held prisoner by some organization and what we were seeing was not the cleaning of a bathroom but the forced cleaning of an abattoir. The previous victims had been tossed to the side in preparation for the next batch whilst our protagonists are doing the capo work that keeps them from being the next set. The blond girl is in total denial and is about to crack. The dark haired girl is trying to give the other whatever hope and happiness she can. Sort of a love story in grief.

Hey that is also a valid reading of the story. We know very little about what actually happened. There's two girls in a tiled room with a shower and bathtub. They're scrubbing away bloodstains, eventually we see parts of at least two corpses in the bathtub. One of them has been badly abused. They talk about their plans for last summer that didn't work out, that they think they can pull off this year.

Of course, there is no mention of any shady organization, but there is also no mention of the corpses being related to either one of them nor are we told or shown how they died or what the role of our protagonists is.
It's all inferred from dialogue, art (body language, scenery) and prior experience with narrative media, the artist in particular and drawing parallels to the real world.

As such it seems less likely to me that it's a "killhouse cleanup girls" scenario compared to "we offed her abusive parents and are now cleaning up the mess" situation. I see no hard proof for either, though.

All quite correct--although in fact we don't even know for sure that those are bloodstains; they could be mold or some other kind of stain. And the relationship between the words and the images hypothetically could be what is called a "parallel" combination--two entirely separate narrative strands.

Failing a sequel containing more explicit evidence or some Word of God statement from the author, there can be no definitive answers, because, as you say, the story only coheres into a narrative whole through extensive inferences on the part of the readers, and the most likely inferences are fairly, although not entirely, obvious.

I think the drawing and framing of the bodies is particularly brilliant--clear enough to see what they are but so minimal that we can tell almost nothing about them except their presence.

Wtf did just happen...what are those...behind the curtain, I didn't understand, can someone please enlighten me?

hard to tell but abusive parents, i would guess, that her friend/gf killed for abusing their daughter. implied they wanted to do these things but parents wouldn't let her/abused her for going out, etc.

Ahhh, and there I was thinking it was some serial killer escapees girls, but this one makes more sense, thank you, now it all has came together!

I was thinking that they were still being held captive and these plans were all just hopes...

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!!1111
no yesterday no tomorrow
right now is a bliss
nuff said

As long as they don’t mess up like Jesse did using the bathtub

Wtf did just happen...what are those...behind the curtain, I didn't understand, can someone please enlighten me?

hard to tell but abusive parents, i would guess, that her friend/gf killed for abusing their daughter. implied they wanted to do these things but parents wouldn't let her/abused her for going out, etc.

I agree with the abusive parents interpretation and I think the abuse started way before and not just because she went out with the dark haired girl to see the sunflowers. Second page, bottom middle panel, light-haired girl is wearing long sleeves, the other girl isn't, and it's supposed to be summer, so I assume that's to hide the bruises and all signs of abuse.

I didn't see that coming at all... It was such an economically told story, with premium Murasakino flair. Like, this was condensed twisted beauty. I wish that the abattoir interpretation was more likely, and it's a fine headcanon, but abusive parents are more abundant than murder rooms so the setting is very likely the murder of abusive parents or guardians.

This is very likely this pair's last summer together.

These two will probably be caught by police investigating the missing parents after they are gone long enough. Both of the girls are now complicit and may never meet after that, even if they are minors and turn themselves in and receive shorter sentences within Japan's harsh judicial system. It's somehow touching that both are cleaning when the murders have been committed by only one of them. There is a slim chance they clean up evidence well enough that an investigation wouldn't catch them, or that local authorities assume that the parents are deadbeats who ran. So the girls have one summer together and then they have a high chance of being torn apart - though there is a slight chance they will be free for years or a lifetime.

If you liked this story I highly recommend Toumei Ningen no Hone (" The Bones of an Invisible Person "), a slow-paced girl's love about a highschooler who gained the ability to turn invisible at will, used it to kill her abusive father, and the unsolved murder weighs on her even though she's not at risk of being discovered and others around her might forgive her.