I'm just glad the girls at the bar are telling her off, because dang, someone had to.

I've been reading somewhere else, I am glad it's here, but I still don't understand, is the MC older boss babe lady person not into sex but keeps doing it until she finds a good partner?

As far as I can tell it's more that she likes sex, even quite a lot, craves it (and, underneath, craves connection and stuff) but, for reasons which are as far as I've read over at Mangadex still only glancingly alluded to rather than actually explained, trusts nobody and maybe has some serious self-loathing. So she goes and has sex but allows nobody close for fear they'll betray her, are only after her for her money/status/whatnot.

Now it seems to me that the girl who is the other lead in this obviously and simply solves her problem, having had a crush on her since she was a little girl and the MC was like a beloved older sister to her, and so obviously having no ulterior motives and being one of the few people she can really clearly trust. Plus she's really hot. But it seems there's also a big self-loathing thing and maybe a trauma thing, so she's working hard not to realize happiness is trying to fall into her lap.

last edited at Jun 10, 2023 9:57PM

Yeah, that finale was about as sweet as it could get. Just what I needed, really.

Right. Hit her head. I must say I gotta hand it to the author for just head-on having the kid basically not remember. It's not mistaken identity or anything like that, she's just "Ahh, I was a kid, I'm sure I thought it was important at the time but that was a long time ago . . . something happened, I guess."
Really, manga writers never do that. In manga the childhood puppy-love romance is always by far the most important thing that happened in your life, remaining in your mind as though it were yesterday and changing your whole subsequent life course and, often, personality. So this is kind of refreshing even if I think it takes a world class ditz to forget THAT hard.

Hidden blush, huh? As in "Crouching useless, hidden blush"?

... but calling her a "social parasite" is really going too far.

She's going along with happily murdering people and that is going too far for you? ^^;

Even considering that, she really hasn't done anything that would qualify her as a parasite. (And honestly, there was exactly one person in that entire crowd who didn't deserve to be murdered and I'm rather glad she wasn't shown as one of Eri's victims either.)

Let's see if I can remember this odd little old poem which I cannot find on the interwebs:
"If we could climb the highest steeple
and look around at all the people
and shoot all those not wholly good
(as we, like noble shooters, should)
why, then there'd be an only worry:
Who would there be left to bury
us?"

Isn't Gay Marriage Legalized In Japan Now?

not exactly, the bar on gay marriage was deemed unconstitutional by a district judge but it's already the second time this happend. So it's not legalized as much as at least two judges have now said "you can't use the constitution to argue against legalizing gay marriage" which does put pressure on lawmakers but it hasn't actually changed the law.

The main opposition party is officially backing gay marriage legislation now, which adds a bit more momentum behind it as well. It does feel like Japan will get there at some point in the near-ish future.

Yeahhh . . . how often does the governing party ever change in Japan again?

When she's . . . hungry. Yeah. Or when she's thirsty, maybe.
So cute. I am the stereotypical commenter on a oneshot wanting more.

Indeed, all hail to the greatness Polyamory!

"You like . . . parrots?"

She’s not mute she just chooses not to speak

Eh, I think it's a mute point.

Haha, Ayaka’s gaydar

Yuri-goggling between the lines.

Anyone else getting NTR vibes from this? I can't go through that again.

Depends what you mean by "NTR". If you mean the original meaning, then no. If you mean the somewhat watered down meaning that emerged that basically came down to "cheating on someone when you're at least actually in a relationship with them", then no. If you mean the sense commonly used by readers of shounen fluff of "playing around despite the fact that you ought to be able to see that you're in a manga and that person there, since they're the main character, should be your one and only, even though they've never yet given you any indication of being interested" then it's already happened.

Like...I'm reading because I like seeing them interact with each other and watching the relationships grow, not to perv on them.

I would like to insist that those two motivations are not mutually exclusive.

The real Door of Truth was the girlfriend we made along the way.

Arg, beat me to it!

I've noticed this from other manga as well, but do japanese women have a choice in staying to work after they get married or are they discouraged? At the rate the world is getting in now, a single earner in a family household is not enough. Also, japan has a high divorce rate so this is crippling for the woman just in case.

The assumption is that someone getting married is also going to start having and raising kids, which is a reason for women to quit their full-time jobs. Whether those assumptions are true or not, it's the line of thinking that leads to women getting passed over for raises and promotions at these kinds of companies; "she's only going to be useful to us until she finds a man." This just adds another layer of pressure to Hiroko's work life...

It does seem to be the case that in Japan it's still more or less workable for a couple or even a family to exist on one salary--at least, one real "salaryman" salary, as earned by a male at a company. Full time service sector work (to the extent that that even exists), probably not so much. And chances are the average "OL" gets paid enough less because sexism that a single salary where it's the woman's salary would not be enough. But if it's a guy with a "respectable" job, then yeah. I think maybe some expenses, like housing, are cheaper in Japan than most other high wage places. I also notice that in manga even most people with pretty solid, respectable positions seem to commute by transit and often don't own a car, another expense off the list.

Basically, I have this feeling that at some point the Japanese establishment elites sat down and said "We want to keep the traditional family with bread-winning men and housewives in kitchens; what to we have to do to jig salary and expenses to keep the single-earner household viable?" and did that.

last edited at May 26, 2023 3:06PM

I don't like her. She's rude.

Flowerchild is great at making hot and steamy scenes while making captivating plots. Let's just hope this series doesn't go off the rails like detached relationship started doing in the latter half of its serialization.

Well, it might end up surprisingly wholesome. Consider, a character in a story like this kind of needs a trajectory. Now if you have a main character start out innocent, one direction you can go is towards loss of innocence, decadence, general bad stuff. But this main character is starting the story experienced and jaded, already a demimonde inhabitant who has given up on the whole concept of pair-bonded relationships and close emotional ties, although she has a certain rough ethical code. Anything she hasn't stooped to yet, she isn't going to--she knows about it and already turned it down years ago. She has nowhere to go except up, as it were--her trajectory would be towards acceptance of more normal emotional bonds, despite the vulnerability that goes with them.

last edited at May 22, 2023 12:18AM

Hm. Tags like "bullying" and "smoking" are making me hesitant. But it is good, is it?

It would be possible to be more satisfied with an ending than I am with this one, sure. But I liked it, it was nice.

Title aside, this relationship already rings a few alarm bells for me.

OK, this is ridiculous, but I think that Hiroko being a womanizer is not one of the problems. My suspicion is that she normally gets girls by hanging out in lesbian bars and other spaces where she knows whoever she's interacting with is gay and probably single and looking. So she's good at picking up people in situations where she already knows what she's dealing with and she doesn't have to deal with the person in other contexts. So she's got two social lives, with the "workplace and normal life" side normally totally sealed off from the "no-complications romance" side. If this is right, she not only has no gaydar (having never needed to develop it) but if anything actively avoids having it, because outside of gay scene hangouts she normally doesn't want to know.

Still ridiculous. Oh, so ridiculous. But not for the particular reason of her being supposedly a player.

Hey guys, just so you know, I was interested in this series a couple months ago and bought the raws up to volume 2 (volume 3 just released) and if you're annoyed by Hiroko's complete inability to understand the words "I'm in love with you," I suggest you either drop this now or wait for all the chapters to release so you can read it all in one shot, because it just gets so, so much worse.

Now I'm fascinated. I'm having a hard time conceiving of an inability to understand that's "much, much worse" than what we've already seen.

Besides, the thing about trains is that they have known destinations. They kinda are the worst getaway vehicles ...

Well, yeah, but we're talking Japanese high speed trains here. They're faster than anything else, so it doesn't matter if you know where they're going, you can't get there first. Even with a plane, when you add time at airports you only catch up if it's a pretty distant destination.

Such a sweet chapter. I liked a lot of the bits, but somehow I really loved the simple, straightforward ending. Through the chapter the pieces were coming together (and/or we were reminded of the pieces already there), and then she named the shape they made. No game playing. Lovely.

I can imagine at some point Hiroko asking how Ayaka is doing courting whatsisname, and Ayaka snapping and giving her either a brutal beatdown or a highly energetic sexual assault or both while shrieking "WHY. WON'T. YOU. GET. IIIIITT!!!!!"
No, that won't happen in the story, but it's a headcanon I'm becoming distressingly OK with.