Sena Kaito is a 17 year old highschool student. He's popular with girls, and spends most of his days hanging out with friends or sleeping with his most recent girlfriend. His carefree days are stopped short when his father leaves Sena and his mother to live with and marry his new girlfriend, who's already pregnant with his child. Trying to find some release for his anger, Sena finds a welcome target when he accidentally meets his English teacher at his regular club's more or less secret gay night - but Anan isn't as easily intimidated as Sena thought. Soon he's fascinated by Anan's cool and stand-offish nature, and starts spending more time with him - which Anan allows when he learns about Sena's family's situation. One day, Sena realizes he's fallen in love with Anan, and promptly goes to seduce him. And the two of them start having an affair, despite being teacher and student and despite Anan being 10 years older. There's no way their story has a happy ending... is there?
Right. I am extremely conflicted about my rating, but I'm going to settle for three stars. If I weren't such a big fan of Nagira-sensei, I probably wouldn't have finished this - which would have been a pity, because the two stories at the end made me think about making it four stars after all. The thing is, this is a good novel and well written with a depth and reality to it that most other BL novels I've read (that aren't by Nagira-sensei) just don't have. But I really, really, really, REALLY don't like teacher and student stories. And I'm sorry to say that I didn't really like Sena much either, and am undecided about Anan.
What's interesting is that the novel is told entirely from Sena's POV - the seme. His youth and brashness is captured really well - while I may not have liked the subject or the characters as much as I would have liked, it's really well written. Because of the POV, I found it rather difficult to understand Anan, which made it hard for me to forgive him for sleeping with his student (which is a no-no, obviously) and a minor. Until the end, I failed to understand why he went along with Sena - he obviously wasn't in love with him at first, and that kinda makes it worse.
I loved the way the sex scenes were written - they were embedded really well into the plot, and always managed to reflect the characters' feelings extremely well. The very last sex scene especially was moving and breathtaking.
One thing I was glad about is that the affair wasn't discovered by the school or the parents or anything. I don't think I could have handled that kind of drama very well, and as the story went it also wouldn't have made sense.
Interestingly enough, even though I didn't like this as much as her other stuff, it made me love Nagira-sensei's works even more. Often I end up caught of in a wave of feelings, which make things like "plotting" or "character development" seem less important than they are. Objectively speaking, this deserves at least four stars. If you don't have a problem with student/teacher relationships, I recommend this. And okay, I'll give this four stars after all.
So với những quyển khác từng đọc của Yuu Nagira thì cốt truyện của quyển này đơn giản hơn hẳn. Phiền nhất là bản dịch lại kém nhất luôn, khiến cho chất lượng của tác phẩm bị kéo xuống theo.
Song thiết lập hình tượng cho nhân vật của cô vẫn có nét gì đó rất đặc trưng và thu hút. Thế nên vẫn có thể được được đến hết mà không quá khó chịu.
Không biết sao nhưng cuốn này khiến mình nhớ nhiều đến Mỹ Nhân của Konohara Nagise dù bút lực không bằng. Ai thích có thể tìm đọc thử nè.