恋愛犯 〜LOVE HOLIC〜

by Yuu Nagira, 凪良 ゆう, サクラサクヤ (Illustrator)

季節が夏に向かうとある日、日永望は街中で高校時代のクラスメイト、勢田春人を偶然に見かけた。声をかけた瞬間、勢田は歩道橋から落下し、なんと記憶を失ってしまう。そんな勢田を日永は自分のマンションへ引き取るが、なぜか彼の過去を説明しようとしない。実は日永には、勢田をストーカーしたという過去があったのだ。歪んだ過去を封印したまま、2人の奇妙な同居生活が始まったのだが……!?　罪にも似た妄執は、果たして本当の愛となり得るのだろうか?

Genres: Japanese Literature

238 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 2008

About the author

Associated Names:
* 凪良 ゆう (Japanese)
* Yuu Nagira (English)
* นางิระ ยู (Thai)

Reviews

[Chai · Rating 3 out of 5]

i actually enjoyed this despite the rating. had me glued to my friggin sofa hoping for a delicious trainwreck and...... it didn't happen. convenient ending and in no way realistic. at the fuck all. i'm angry. so much nagira could do with this and she didn't. i'm so. naw. hell naw.

i love yandere. i love my stories with creepy ass stalkers crazy in their delusional love they force their love to happen, be it through stealing, kidnapping, torture, brainwashing, murdering, you name it. i love taboo shit. give me an incestual story, shotacon, batshit insane fetishes (minus scat, reading/seeing it makes me throw up), student/teacher, age difference, grotesque, i don't care. if it's fiction, bring it. so when i heard this book was "disturbing" i was like, count me the fuck in.

from 2nd year of high school, hinaga becomes obsessively in love with his classmate, seta. hinaga is cold, silent, and keeps to himself. if you try to strike a convo with him, he'll listen but brush you off like "bye". he doesn't give a fuck, he only cares about one thing, and that's playing the violin. he has no friends, no desire to become a pro violinist - to the disappointment of his prideful, lawyer father who proceeds to berate him and oscatrized him from the family - until one fateful day, when seta listened to him play the violin in an empty music room. seta is the complete opposite of hinaga, he's cheerful, always the center of a crowd of people, friendly, and a promising track runner on route to being scouted by multiple colleges. hinaga wasn't too keen in having an audience, but was curious to know who this person was. next day, he practically grabbed a girl and pointed at seta like "wHaT's HiS nAmE?" and soon after, seta apologized for the other day, bothering him when he was trying to play alone, and handed him a piece of candy as a peace offering. since then, hinaga watched seta from afar, thinking - more like obsessing about him, to the point of following him home and watching him from outside his home every single day. imaging seta inside, what's he's doing, looking up and seeing him through his bedroom window, etc. seta's family was suspicious asf about a stranger who keeps standing in front of their house, they called the police on him.

hinaga's logic is so skewed because he tells the police he doesn't know what he did wrong, he only stood in front of their place because he wanted to catch glimpses and be near someone he loves. he wasn't harming anyone. police be like wtf bro. seta was released after being harshly lectured but during his week-long suspension from school, rumors quickly spread and upon hinaga's return, he gets bullied for being a gay stalker. hinaga paid no mind to it, until the tides turn and seta started to get picked on. hinaga went ballistic and took a glass vase and smashed it to the bully's head (not wanting to use his hands for fear of harming them and not playing the violin), and kicked him over and over to the point of causing the bully to throw up and almost die. like, once hinaga came to his senses and stopped, the teachers rushed over to restrain him. the bully almost died, and hinaga's father had to settle the case in court with money in order to prevent any escalation and prevent hinaga from being sent to juvenile detention. in exchange however, his father had the family cut any ties with hinaga and had him move to live w/ his aunt in a different prefecture until he was old enough to live on his own.

fast forward to present times - 4 years later - and hinaga sees seta on his way to work. hinaga follows seta, curious as to why on earth seta would be doing in this city. hinaga still loves seta like nobody's business but fears he will harm him and his only regret from his past is that he felt he bothered seta with the stalking and almost killing the bully. just then seta is bumped by someone, causing him to lose his footing and fall, hitting his head. seta loses his memory and forgets everything, from his name to where he came from and of course, anything involving hinaga. while seta is being cared for in the hospital, hinaga takes the opportunity to steal anything identifying seta (ID, debit cards, point cards, phone) from his bag as well as cash (to prevent seta from going far) and tells the doctors and nurse he doesn't mind having seta over at his place while seta recovers and eventually regain his memories.

hinaga lies about ever knowing seta prior to present times, and continues to lie, hoping seta never regains his memory. seta's phone keeps ringing, his family desperately trying to get a hold of him, and hinaga ignores it after sending a single text to keep them at bay. meanwhile, seta puts on a brave face, but is in anguish inside, not knowing who he truly is and where he came from. hinaga plays creep, catering to seta's every needs and wants desperately for seta to just stay inside his apartment and just. be. there. however, seta doesn't play that game and goes out to find a part time job so he can help w/ expenses and not be cooped inside 24/7.

hinaga becomes super jealous and angry whenever he sees seta with other people. he eventually rapes seta, taking advantage of the fact seta was drunk and didn't have the energy to fend him off despite WANTING to :/

i was waiting for the trainwreck to happen when seta finally finds out the truth and hinaga is arrested OR hinaga escalated so bad he becomes a glorious yandere, wrecking seta so bad to the point of no return. however things ended so well, for the both of them, i'm shook :/ that's not real life. hinaga pretty much stole seta's identity and kept seta in the bloody dark for months while seta's family was looking for him just so he can be near him. no bruh, imma need more than a "happy ending". this needs a bad end, more than anything.

aside from the convenient ending, i overall liked it. i just wish nagira either made hinaga a perfectly decent human being without the stalker elements but keep his tactiturn, dark, blunt personality OR had him a completely insane batshit crazy yandere, confining seta in his apartment. i CAN believe seta having feelings for hinaga from their high school days, but the way this was handled in the end - hell no. not pleased.

i'm used to way more disturbing things, so this wasn't all too bad. it IS worth a read, especially since this is an older book from nagira (her 2nd published book out of the thousands she's written so far lol) and it's always fun to read older works from authors and see how much they developed as a writer over the years. but if you're like me, hoping for a delicious trainwreck, you're going to be vastly disappointed.

until the next time ~

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Undoubtedly my least favourite of Nagira Yuu's novels. It's her second published novel, and in her afterword she acknowledges it might be difficult to like for some people. Apart from the fact that I found it creepy and disturbing, there were also several plot holes and inconsistencies that made it impossible for me to enjoy it. The second star is mostly because it made me think about the narrative choices in BL, and because the art was really nice.

The novel is told entirely from the seme's POV. Hinaga is a very solitary young man - the only two things that have ever mattered in his life are his violin and Seta, a classmate from high school. To say that Hinaga has no idea how to normally express his feelings - in high school, he ended up stalking Seta, ultimately leading to Hinaga moving to another prefecture, and now, four years later, when Seta for some reason comes looking for him, he does something even worse: when Seta, surprised by Hinaga, falls down a flight of stairs and loses his memory, Hinaga pretends he doesn't know where he is, steals Seta's ID and credit cards and offers him to stay with him while he recovers. That alone qualifies him for being "the worst" in my book, but it gets even worse when after a while he rapes a drunk Seta. And afterwards manipulates him into coming back with him. And for some reasons, when, in the end Seta's memory makes a miraculous return, Seta has no problem forgiving Hinaga and being in a relationship with him.

In a way, I can see how in this novel she tries out things she ends up using in later novels. As twisted as Hinaga's thoughts are, it's not uninteresting to follow them. They're convincing - but they're the thoughts of a manipulative abuser and there is nothing romantic about them. If it all had wrapped up differently, I actually might have end up liking it. For example, it could have been interesting if Seta had been only pretending to lose his memory. This is a case where I definitely would have preferred an unhappy ending. And then there are the bits with Hinaga's grandfather which just aren't developed enough. I can see where she was trying to go with it (and with Seta and the staff of the restaurant he works at, and with Hinaga's coworkers), but it didn't come together as much as it did in her later novels.

The worst was the rape scene though. It made me realize how much I am willing to forgive the seme if I see him through the eyes of the uke, which also is disturbing in its own way. Seme POVs for the entire novel are pretty rare, and considering you usual seme's behaviour I should probably count myself lucky.

As for the plotholes, the biggest one is when Hinaga suddenly storms out of the hospital WITH SETA'S BAG to remove his ID and stuff from it and when he returns and they look in the bag and don't find anything nobody finds this suspicious at all.

I'll be honest, if this wasn't by Nagira Yuu I wouldn't have finished it. I'm glad none of her later novels I've read so far aren't like this. She has written several characters who did some pretty bad things, but none were as unforgivable as what Hinaga did - and he didn't change at all in the end, unlike some of the others. He also didn't have to pay for what he did. The fact that he suffered from the expectations and disappointment of his father doesn't excuse what he did at all.

Mostly I'm just glad I read this so late in my pursuit to read all of her work.