Ehhhh I feel like this is either gonna go nowhere or the most predictable route possible
I like the premise and the weird distance the two have for now, but after 9 chapters of nothing but buildup and tease, the eventual payoff had better be at least satisfactory. Maybe I'm being a bit impatient idk

I appreciate Miyagi's motive behind teasing Sendai, and that's the one thing that has been developed relatively the furthest, but it moreso drags things rather than intrigue me

The payoff is great, but very slow. What you're seeing with this arc is typical. There was a huge buildup, then all they accomplished was that they will still see each other despite them being in new classes and in a different year. The small achievements add up over time.

Real "A Love Yet To Bloom" pacing

I love "A Love Yet To Bloom"

I think this is the direction Igarashi always intended to take it. While this scene was definitely a dramatic escalation, it's not entirely out of nowhere. The art's always had this slightly unsettling atmosphere to it, and looking back this chapter is making a lot of callbacks Kasumi and Haruyo interactions. Kasumi exploding with rage when Haruyo ghosts her parallels Mizuki's reaction to Sayori telling her she's not moving in; and Kasumi telling Haruyo she wanted to punch her afterwards and says that she wanted her verbal abuse to hurt is sort of analogous to the cutting; the panel where Mizuki says she'll call the police and won't see Sayori anymore is 1:1 with the panel of Haruyo saying she won't touch Kasumi anymore; Sayori and Mizuki's expressions when Sayori says "then I can forgive you" is the exact same pair of expressions Haruyo and Kasumi have when Haruyo touches Kasumi's lips.

Not to mention there seems to be a recurring motif with Kasumi and hanging. (Bottom panel of ch3p21 where the window framing evokes Kasumi hanging; the light fixture shape and placement at top center panel of ch7p13, which are absent in the reverse shot; bottom panel of ch8p22 where she looks like she's hanging from the light fixture).

There's been some pretty ample foreshadowing that this story was going to go some pretty dark places from the start. This chapter doesn't feel so much like a tonal change as much as it does shifting gears.

I think there's a lot of somewhat dark parallels between Mizuki and Kasumi, between their somewhat listless lack of a place to exist prior to the Class S role play, and their willingness to sacrifice for their partner who's now given them some sort of meaning. The biggest divergence is we've seen Mizuki actively hurt her partner and lash out at them, but I get the feeling that Kasumi is far more likely to turn that inward and attempt to hurt herself.

I like to hope that when the time comes, Haruyo will be up to the task, but I get the feeling Kasumi is going to tread in some very dark places as the shadow of her friend's suicide looms over the story. For all the darkness, I do think that so far Haruyo's been shown as a beam of light innocently breaking away the darker elements, and I hope she's able to lift Kasumi out of whatever place she finds herself.

I think it would actually be really interesting if this explored more of an open relationship between Mai and Lily. Mai's obviously head over heels for Lily, and I'm sure the "flavor" of Mai is going to have something to do with a fated partner or whatever, but the culinary theming could be a neat analogy for Lily not being exclusive with Mai.

It almost feels like it may have become a sort of BDSM play for the two of them, which like... it might not be my thing but if they're consenting, who cares

BDSM play requires explicit (not implicit) consent and safety from major health hazards. These two things are ignored here.

Hence why I used the term "become". Obviously the first occasion depicted in the flashback was non-consensual and fucked up, but as was mentioned elsewhere in the thread such wounds can heal with relative ease, and given the presence of the scarring on Mizuki at the end, it could have developed into a more regular thing of scarification. Again, this is speculative, I may just be coping that their relationship isn't quite as toxic internally as it may first seem externally.

Since they both are into it...and they both seems weirdly okay with that...I would say it makes me feel less awful about it. I didn't want to read this or see this but I would say I prefer that than one sided abuse I guess...
My gf only think they both needs therapy.

It almost feels like it may have become a sort of BDSM play for the two of them, which like... it might not be my thing but if they're consenting, who cares

EDIT: I'm reminded of a line from Unbreakable Sugar Bowl, "There's nobody else in this world whose blood flows on my command, right?". From the outside it may seem like a weird, fucked up thing, but in the context of their relationship and the play they engage in it's actually incredibly romantic and, I might even argue, wholesome.

last edited at Sep 26, 2025 4:49PM

Ah, matching with your beloved is so nice, isn't it?

Wait so she’s killing these guys and getting away with it, how? Are her parents rich AF or smthn? How are these dudes not showing up on the news??

Anywaysss I hope she’s not gonna b fooling with other ppl while she’s dating Mai, cuz damn that’d be crazy

AND I bet Mai would b fine with it too, cuz she has no qualms with smooching a succubus who killed 3 guys

It's established in the story that draining life force doesn't kill people, it just leaves them feeling under the weather

Fine, maybe I will reread this series

That was cute, and a nice palette cleanser from the end of Volume 2. Still some sinister undertones, but it's nice to know the fluff isn't all gone

The entire "You just haven't found the right person yet" was a veryyy asexual-coded scene, for me (aroace myself, been told this countless times), so it was really unexpected in a pleasant way.
Ofc this is a Yuri manga, so the MC is probably not gonna end up being any type of ace, but I quite enjoyed the friend with the same reaction as her to dating lol

The Japan X Korea tag is so funny and lovely to look at everytime I see it, what a wholesome trend, I'm lookin forward to seeing how this story continues

I doubt it'll be full on aro/ace but we can always head canon as Demi and that's like... in the ballpark

Something tells me that Haneul is going to be a WHOLE PROBLEM. And I can't wait to watch.

Yeah I feel like she's overplaying how drunk she is. I'm sort of reminded of "A Predator Falls In Love For Real"

Huh, I was thinking of trying to get back into this series after dropping it early on. I really liked the original, but several of the early arcs were just "Yamada tries having some agency in her life and doing things without Kase, Kase gets mad in a weird, possessive way, Yamada does the thing anyway because she wants to be her own person, but Kase was actually right to be controlling and swoops into an event Yamada never told her the location of and saves her".

I guess it hasn't changed all that much, glad I went into the comments first

Damnit Husband McDudeface, you were so close to being a good beard.

I had originally been thinking he was a closeted gay man himself, and they'd end up in a Boston Marriage situation

This is still interesting, though

I personally don't mind the pace that this has been going, because it feels like it's maintained a steady pace. If anything it might be going up ever so slightly, but I enjoy seeing these two interact and slowly help one another become better people. Takamine helps bring Sakura out of her shell, all while Sakura helps Takamine chip away at the seeming mundanity of her life. I appreciate that the mangaka has put their focus not just on their romance, but on building a genuine connection between these two that one could realistically see as sprouting into romantic feelings.

She's a brick... HOUSE
She's mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out

Please more of this

These two are so cute together in the story and friendship events, I'm surprised it took this long to get art of them

I'm so glad this site has a robust and well-enforced tagging system to allow its users to avoid unwanted, uncomfortable, or potentially triggering content.

Shibasaki feels almost like a personification of society's general discomfort with BDSM, and I really like how Masano tries to respect her boundaries even while trying to tease out Shibasaki's inner Dom

Reading through the chapter again, I think the point that Sayori is trying to get across more is the importance of communication. Perhaps we'll see how Mizuki and her were able to actually work through things, how this moment was a sudden loss of composure for Mizuki, and how they worked it out. Maybe they didn't, though that brings into question the whole double date.

What I think is more important is that, despite all the secrets and the obvious intimacy between the two of them, there seems to be a mismatch in what the relationship means for them. We have Sayori's perspective: it was something special, something secret, something no one else had, and that put her above others. It gave her a sense of specialness or even superiority that let her feel like she wasn't just another face in a crowd. She obviously also likes (liked?) Mizuki romantically, but we also see that as she's considering her future she seems quite okay with letting go of this if it means she gets a new special feeling. The college Mizuki gets into is apparently nothing special, and as much as Sayori seems to want to appease her parents, she also openly states she hates the idea of going to some random, no name college, even if Mizuki is there and waiting for her. Sayori desperately wants to feel special, even if she struggles to take the steps for herself, and this overrides her feelings for Mizuki in a way that seems like she doesn't even really consider what Mizuki's feelings are.

And what do we really know about Mizuki's feelings? She obviously felt very strongly about the two of them's relationship. She went to a college she doesn't seem to enjoy, began renting a two-bedroom apartment by herself, all for a degree she's been shown to not be particularly skilled in, all for the sake of being able to be together with Sayori. Sayori brings up the fact that people talk about Mizuki behind her back, make fun of her, call her names. We don't know if she's outright bullied, but it certainly seems like her relationship with Sayori is the one thing in her life that brings her unmitigated joy. She probably enjoys making art, even if she isn't very good at it, but that brings dismissal and ridicule. Sayori accepts her, loves her, and brings her joy that no one else can take away.

Except Sayori can rip it away from her. To have the sole source of happiness, of joy, of acceptance in your life suddenly come to you and try and rip away that warmth, all so they can go somewhere else to feel special about getting into a "good college", after everything you've done? Everything you've sacrificed and committed to get to this point? Sayori herself said she liked the idea, even if we know that Sayori didn't really think it was realistic. The two of them have utterly failed to communicate just what this relationship means to them. Sayori oversold her investment in their relationship, and I can't exactly blame Mizuki for blowing up like this. I don't condone the methods, but I can understand the reasoning.

I think the important thing is that Kasumi needs to learn how to convey what she's feeling. She needs to open up more about her insecurities and seek reassurance from Haruyo. But, that's a difficult thing to do. Her friend's suicide is still hanging large, and we still know very few details about that, or about their relationship.

I do like how these things aren't entirely cleanly resolved. Haruyo doesn't just swoop in, get Kasumi to suddenly open up, and then solve all her worries. There's a realism to Kasumi's self-loathing and Haruyo's inability to dig into it and resolve it. When Kasumi starts being distant, Haruyo simply tries to brute force closing the gap with physicality, because she doesn't really know what else to do. She's only a middle schooler, for God's sake. There's an emotional immaturity to all the characters involved, and it feels very real, and on rereading Vol2, I think I really like it.

I'll certainly be much more aware, I didn't catch much of the darker implications in earlier chapters (aside from the suicide but that's not really an implication), but like others have said I think, or at least hope, this will be a story about breaking a cycle of tarnished relationships.

Igarashi's previous manga, Dominant, (untranslated) was a very dark romance with a few infamous scenes involving a hammer and a guitar. Now the box-cutter joins their ranks in Japanese fan memes. I'll cover Dominant more later when I translate Igarashi's crossover art for the two, but Japanese fans have been waiting for the other shoe to drop while Igarashi teased whether AriSaku would reach that level of crazy. Dominant was innocent too, until the twist ending of volume 1. And now we're here at the twist ending of volume 2.

Do you mind spoiling the twist in Dominant? I'm not fluent in japanese but am very very curious to know what I'm getting myself into with AriSaku LOL

Also, I'm kinda glad my "something ain't right" radar is never wrong - ever since the first chapter, I got the feeling this one would have more than it meets the eye (and knowing nothing about the author's previous work). It's something about the paneling and the drawing style that really evokes, not quite "horror", but a thriller of some sort, an unnerving feeling of a deep, dark lake which you cannot see what lurks beneath the surface.

Not sure if the ride is gonna be satisfying, but I'm here for more different yuri.

I would also appreciate this. I'd rather know to get off now than be smacked in the face with something I'd rather not read.

Well that certainly escalated.

Girl really needs to get some self-esteem and grow a spine. I was hoping she'd dump that abusive blondie but

Someone please get this girl some form of psychological help

^ given the lights it looks more like "ran off to find a secluded corner of the festival to have sex"