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在木之下家舉辦的和也&水原生日派對。代替遲到的水原登場的「暴風雨女孩」瑠夏在和也的家人面前拚命表現！慢慢把和也追到危險絕境！但是水原趕來到，狀況平靜下來──沒想到被逼急的瑠夏做出的行動，超越了「暫時女友」的範疇……！「暴風雨女孩」Ｘ「密室」＝○○？史上最大級的瑠夏旋風狂掃肆虐，緊張失控的第１１集！
194 pages, Paperback
First published August 16, 2019
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185 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
March 20, 2022
With Mizuhara at her ailing grandmother’s bedside, it’s time for Ruka to shine at Kazuya’s birthday party. Except there’s no situation that this story can’t make more awkward, especially when Mizuhara does show up and Ruka decides to really go for it.
There’s a lot of drama and a lot of pulled punches in this story, as the mangaka constantly cuts the legs out from under their own narrative in favour of stretching the premise further. I mean, it’s manga, it’s expected, but this is a little egregious.
The incredible awkwardness of the birthday party makes for a decent bit of drama, by and large, with Ruka trying her best to get what she’ll never have (sorry, Ruka, you weren’t the first girl in the story, so Manga Law says you lose) and her efforts getting thwarted when Mizuhara shows up.
Then there’s a lot more awkwardness over a wedding ring being gifted (I can certainly believe grandparents are this pushy) and Ruka goes for it in a very physical way that is the least chaste this story has been for a while.
Of course, Kazuya tries to come clean finally and is thwarted by a phone call from nowhere. Then Mizuhara tells him not to, ostensibly for her grandmother’s sake, but also because she’s developing Stockholm Synd… I mean, starting to fall for Kazuya.
On the one hand, this whole thing is a large waste of time as even Ruka calls herself off in light of the revelations that Mizuhara’s grandmother is in much rougher shape than expected and Kazuya is trying to untangle the mess he’s created just like he’s always been.
On the other, in that waste of time are some good, good moments. Non-consensual nature aside, Ruka being bold and desperate seems right for her. Kazuya trying to do the right thing, plot contrivances notwithstanding, is a nice turn. Even Kazuya’s grandmother has a very practical and rationale conversation with Mizuhara about the wedding ring.
So, not great, but not a total disaster. It isn’t particularly funny, minus a lot of love for a 70-year-old YouTuber, but if I’m engaged in the story and not gritting my teeth at the idiocy of the characters (more at the writer this time!) then that’s reasonably okay.
And look, I know Sumi can anchor her own spin-off and is probably somewhat popular, but her appearance here after all that high drama for goofy awkwardness does feel a little out of place. I recognize this is a whole new arc, but it’s not exactly the most graceful transition.
3 stars - you can play the dying grandmother card exactly once, Rent-A-Girlfriend, so tread lightly. I’m still not a huge fan of this, but I will admit that this is one volume where I did not go, ‘why am I still reading this?’ and that does count for something.
There’s a lot of drama and a lot of pulled punches in this story, as the mangaka constantly cuts the legs out from under their own narrative in favour of stretching the premise further. I mean, it’s manga, it’s expected, but this is a little egregious.
The incredible awkwardness of the birthday party makes for a decent bit of drama, by and large, with Ruka trying her best to get what she’ll never have (sorry, Ruka, you weren’t the first girl in the story, so Manga Law says you lose) and her efforts getting thwarted when Mizuhara shows up.
Then there’s a lot more awkwardness over a wedding ring being gifted (I can certainly believe grandparents are this pushy) and Ruka goes for it in a very physical way that is the least chaste this story has been for a while.
Of course, Kazuya tries to come clean finally and is thwarted by a phone call from nowhere. Then Mizuhara tells him not to, ostensibly for her grandmother’s sake, but also because she’s developing Stockholm Synd… I mean, starting to fall for Kazuya.
On the one hand, this whole thing is a large waste of time as even Ruka calls herself off in light of the revelations that Mizuhara’s grandmother is in much rougher shape than expected and Kazuya is trying to untangle the mess he’s created just like he’s always been.
On the other, in that waste of time are some good, good moments. Non-consensual nature aside, Ruka being bold and desperate seems right for her. Kazuya trying to do the right thing, plot contrivances notwithstanding, is a nice turn. Even Kazuya’s grandmother has a very practical and rationale conversation with Mizuhara about the wedding ring.
So, not great, but not a total disaster. It isn’t particularly funny, minus a lot of love for a 70-year-old YouTuber, but if I’m engaged in the story and not gritting my teeth at the idiocy of the characters (more at the writer this time!) then that’s reasonably okay.
And look, I know Sumi can anchor her own spin-off and is probably somewhat popular, but her appearance here after all that high drama for goofy awkwardness does feel a little out of place. I recognize this is a whole new arc, but it’s not exactly the most graceful transition.
3 stars - you can play the dying grandmother card exactly once, Rent-A-Girlfriend, so tread lightly. I’m still not a huge fan of this, but I will admit that this is one volume where I did not go, ‘why am I still reading this?’ and that does count for something.
November 2, 2020
Four stars, four and a half for this genre.
This is a loose review of volumes nine, ten and eleven. At this point in the series it feels late in the game, with the protagonists tying themselves into more and more daring and compromising situations. Volume nine and maybe part of ten were a bit of a bump on the road, though, with a sequence in particular I wasn’t entirely on board with due to how they messed with the progress so far.
At the end of the previous volume, the protagonist had taken a shy escort he met through his beloved (the main escort) in order not only to help her become less shy, but to get some ideas on what to gift the coprotagonist; they recently experienced a significant upset in their budding relationship because the protagonist’s actual girlfriend (who had blackmailed him into it) spent the night with him, and his beloved escort doesn’t quite believe they didn’t frick. In any case, the shy escort, burdened with the request of figuring out a gift, ends up dragging him from a mall to another mall, and up to that second mall’s roof. An acting troupe is performing a knockoff of the Power Rangers for a horde of children. The shy escort gets all happy. The protagonist suspects that the girl is actually deranged and that she had forgotten about their goal. However, he realizes that the pink Power Ranger is none other than his beloved escort (she’s mainly trying to become an actress). Awed by how many things she does to further her dream, he figures that she must be exhausted, so he buys her some pickled plums as a gift or something like that, because they are supposed to help you recover your strength. Don’t know how I feel about that, but when the girl receives the gift (he had left it on her balcony, which is next door; a bit of a breach of privacy), she’s pleased with his intention, and that’s what counts (?).
The protagonist and the escort attend the same college, but there she wears a Clark Kent-like disguise (mainly heavy glasses) that prevents the idiots around her from noticing that she’s actually the gorgeous escort that they’ve actually met before. They have a different set of friends, and the protagonist’s friends invite him to an outing with the guys only to end up in some drinking place with other girls. One of those other girls turns out to be the escort in disguise. They are troubled, as they risk the protagonist’s friends, who have met his “girlfriend” quite a few times, realizing that they are the same person. It could lead to her work as an escort being discovered, which could potentially ruin her social life and her acting career.
We got nice moments of confusion, like one of the protagonist’s best pals praising the protagonist’s absent “girlfriend” (the version of the escort they had met) as someone phenomenal, wasted on the protagonist, while the disguised escort sits there stone-faced. Everybody gets drunker and drunker except the protagonist and the escort, who want to remain rational. However, at one point someone proposes a drinking game I couldn’t properly understand. The point is that the escort was doing terribly at it, which would likely end up with her drunk out of her mind. The protagonist wants to prevent her from getting to that state, so he deliberately loses all rounds and gets drunk out of his mind himself. At the end of the night he can’t get home and keeps almost passing out. The disguised escort, concerned, helps him get home (which is also her home, as they live door to door). He urges her to get into her own apartment and leave him to sleep, but given that he can’t get to open his own door, she goes inside with him. He hunches over in the bathroom to vomit. She decides to stay with him, sitting on the floor, to make sure he’s not going to Jimi Hendrix himself. Although he wants to prevent the girl from witnessing the disgusting mess he’s about to make in the bathroom, she keeps patting him on the back as he vomits his guts out until he passes out.
Next comes a troubling scene featuring the protagonist’s meddlesome ex along with the protagonist’s actual girlfriend (who blackmailed him into it), who is even more meddlesome and controlling. He’s at work in some Karaoke place, which also serves as a place where one can rent a room to study or read or whatever for a time. He works with his girlfriend Ruka, because she wanted to spend more time with him. The ex was seen in the previous volumes approaching the protagonist’s best pal; I supposed she was going to reveal to the guy that the protagonist had been renting escorts, but she actually wanted to know where he worked. For some reason this ex thinks it’s a good idea to use that place as the one in which she’ll get some quiet to study. Maybe she just wants to be served by the protagonist, with whom she has a complicated relationship.
This ex became an interesting character. She began as a girl straight out of high school who clearly intended to use her generally good looks to validate her existence, and wanted to keep the protagonist, whom she had dumped, pining for her although she had no intentions of dating him again. She has a somewhat narcissistic personality profile. At this point of the story she looks like a grown woman, but very jaded. While in the past she could act like a beaming girl, in the present she always looks fed up with everything.
When Ruka witnesses the protagonist and the ex interacting, and the protagonist clearly hiding something, this Ruka girl goes nuts. She’s had enough of having to share her boyfriend with the escort he’s actually in love with, and she’s not going to lose also to an ex who wants to butt in his life again. She bursts into the room the ex had rented to study in and yells at her for an entire chapter, berating her for daring to deliberately come to her boyfriend’s place of work to make trouble, assuring her that he has no feelings for his ex whatsoever, and that they as a couple have a healthy sex life (lies) which completely fullfills him. The ex, who until that point had mostly engaged in passive-aggressive confrontations, just stares at the extraordinarily angry Ruka, stunned and horrified. In the end she makes a quiet exit. We follow her on the streets for a while, failing to understand what happened, where that sudden girlfriend came from, how come the protagonist is dating someone so crazy, and where in the picture does the other escort fit. The ex along the way had wanted to figure out whether the purse she noticed in the protagonist’s apartment back in the previous volumes belonged to the escort, and now she wonders if it actually belonged to this crazed girlfriend. Why she’s even bothering to figure these things out I’m not sure. She’s clearly incapable incapable of loving anyone, and maybe the fact that someone she had a relationship with, and who should have remained wanting to regain her love, just moved on and got better girls, is killing her (I unfortunately had serious issues with a narcissistic person for years just because I decided to stop hanging out with the person, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s her reason).
In one of those coincidences in this genre, as the ex was riding a train back home, none other than the escort enters in front of her. The escort doesn’t want to deal with her at all after she had to assure the ex that she wasn’t going to contact the protagonist, but the escort had come with the same purse that the ex had seen in the protagonist’s apartment. She realizes the obviousness that the protagonist has some sort of deeper relationship with this escort and that it endures to this day. The ex lets out a laugh of despair, and later on she goes as far as asking the confused escort to say honestly whether or not she’s kept meeting the protagonist. The escort lies.
I feel sorry for this ex person. She’s not evil, and she’s clearly incapable of being in a normal relationship. The one guy she had a connection with ended up dating a vastly hotter girl, and somehow became involved with another girl who is also cuter. Now he’s dating a new one out of the blue, a brat possibly still in high school and who yelled at her as if she were worthless. And whenever she tries to get a straight answer, she only gets lies. What a life.
The protagonist’s actual girlfriend, this half-crazy Ruka girl, is worried that her outburst at work has made the protagonist want to break up with her. Although it certainly hasn’t made him love her, he admits he’s kind of pleased that it will likely mean that the ex will stay out of his life; it’s a weight off his shoulders, as he no longer contemplates being involved in a relationship with that one. Meanwhile, though, in lonely nights the ex keeps trying to mess things up in his life: she has searched for the protagonist’s family members on the internet, only to come across his grandmother’s Twitter (the old woman has always been seen as very technologically active), where the grandmother is very pleased to showcase the hot girlfriend her useless grandson dates. The ex follows this grandmother and even contacts her wanting to establish some line of communication.
Now comes a sequence, a mini arc, that I wasn’t particularly on board with, and that seemed beyond the main characters at this point of the story. He has been looking back on his high school days at how he got rejected by girl after girl that he liked (he got rejected by the same one three times in a row). Given that he’s still renting the escort he’s in love with, and that he can make requests, he figures that he’ll ask to act in a sort of cosplay date with both dressing as high schoolers. He immediately regrets it, but the escort seems to have no issue with it. The day of the date she of course looks amazing, which makes the guy act extra awkward for the entire sequence. He should have matured a bit more by this point; he has been used to dealing with gorgeous girls for plenty of volumes already. In any case, they go to some amusement park in order to fulfill his idea of a dream date: eating churros, taking photos in one of those fancy Japanese photo booths, riding the ferris wheel, etc. Innocent Japanese stuff. Along the way they need to hide from the shy escort, who was browsing in some shops; I don’t quite recall why the main escort was so eager to hide from a coworker, but I suppose she needs to suspect that anybody is going to out her.
The point of this sequence seemed to be, beyond watching the escort in a high school uniform, that she’s being herself with the protagonist instead of acting, and also to reveal that she’s gotten another opportunity to move up in the acting world, as some other scout had noticed her during her play. The protagonist this time is mainly happy for her.
The following mini arc is a mess for the main characters. They get tied in ways that’ll just come to hurt them later on, and there are difficult choices to be made. The protagonist’s family wants to celebrate his birthday, but after the grandmother learns that he had failed to inform her that the escort’s birthday had come and gone (the grandmother believes the escort to be the guy’s actual girlfriend), she demands to invite the escort into a joint birthday party right that evening. The protagonist had just gone on his dream date with the escort the day before, so he feels beyond awkward asking her to come over to his parents’ no less, but to his surprise the girl isn’t that conflicted about it. However, she informs him that she was already going to visit her own grandmother, who had been hospitalized recently, but that she’ll try to attend an hour or so later.
When the protagonist’s actual girlfriend Ruka learns that her boyfriend is going to celebrate his birthday with his family and with the escort as if she were already part of the family, she’s beyond dismayed. The protagonist, who until recently had just been annoyed at the girl, begins to get the sense that he’s doing something awful. Although this girl blackmailed him into a trial relationship, she has genuinely attempted to be a good girlfriend and make him love her, but he knows he never will. She’s not doing it for shady reasons either; she has broken down before and declared how much she loved him (for some reason). He wants to move toward solving this situation to avoid ruining her heart, but although he’s not clear about it, he’s considering whether to abandon pursuing the escort, whom he truly loves but who will likely move away from him whenever her acting career takes off, and instead learn to love the girl who is there for him. Regarding the birthday party, we get the sense that Ruka, like she had done before, will simply appear at his parents’ to attempt to win their hearts and her place as the protagonist’s future wife.
Of course, when the moment comes for the guy to take a train to his parents’ place, his actual girlfriend is waiting for him all dolled up (she doesn’t know his parents’ address), and announces that it’s only right that they’ll go together. He has no choice but to go along with it, knowing that the evening is going to become a complete disaster. When they get there, the grandmother is disappointed that her beloved future granddaughter-in-law or whatever isn’t going to come until later (as the birthday decorations show, they intended to celebrate the escort’s birthday; they don’t give a shit about the protagonist). Ruka goes all out on her doting girlfriend mode, attempting to win the hearts of his parents and grandmother. It’s working so far, although they aren’t clear on why she’s even there to begin with. The protagonist is losing his mind: the girl isn’t unlikely to decide to reveal that she’s the actual girlfriend and that the other one is an escort who is just pretending.
Meanwhile, the escort’s grandmother isn’t doing well. The girl wants to stay for longer but has no way of informing the protagonist, as they implicitly decided to avoid linking their online profiles to avoid breaking their escort/client relationship.
Ruka has buttered the grandma up to the point that she offers the girl to come over whenever. Ruka suggests that she should be welcomed into the family for real. As she was declaring that she’s the only who loves the protagonist, he receives a call from the escort: she has decided to just breach that taboo and add him as a friend online. She wants to talk to the grandmother and apologize for not being there. When the protagonist later on learns that the escort’s grandmother isn’t doing well, he tells her not to worry and to just stay in the hospital. However, Ruka snatches the phone away from him and berates the escort for butting in their relationship, that she shouldn’t get so involved being just a girlfriend for hire.
[continues on the comments]
This is a loose review of volumes nine, ten and eleven. At this point in the series it feels late in the game, with the protagonists tying themselves into more and more daring and compromising situations. Volume nine and maybe part of ten were a bit of a bump on the road, though, with a sequence in particular I wasn’t entirely on board with due to how they messed with the progress so far.
At the end of the previous volume, the protagonist had taken a shy escort he met through his beloved (the main escort) in order not only to help her become less shy, but to get some ideas on what to gift the coprotagonist; they recently experienced a significant upset in their budding relationship because the protagonist’s actual girlfriend (who had blackmailed him into it) spent the night with him, and his beloved escort doesn’t quite believe they didn’t frick. In any case, the shy escort, burdened with the request of figuring out a gift, ends up dragging him from a mall to another mall, and up to that second mall’s roof. An acting troupe is performing a knockoff of the Power Rangers for a horde of children. The shy escort gets all happy. The protagonist suspects that the girl is actually deranged and that she had forgotten about their goal. However, he realizes that the pink Power Ranger is none other than his beloved escort (she’s mainly trying to become an actress). Awed by how many things she does to further her dream, he figures that she must be exhausted, so he buys her some pickled plums as a gift or something like that, because they are supposed to help you recover your strength. Don’t know how I feel about that, but when the girl receives the gift (he had left it on her balcony, which is next door; a bit of a breach of privacy), she’s pleased with his intention, and that’s what counts (?).
The protagonist and the escort attend the same college, but there she wears a Clark Kent-like disguise (mainly heavy glasses) that prevents the idiots around her from noticing that she’s actually the gorgeous escort that they’ve actually met before. They have a different set of friends, and the protagonist’s friends invite him to an outing with the guys only to end up in some drinking place with other girls. One of those other girls turns out to be the escort in disguise. They are troubled, as they risk the protagonist’s friends, who have met his “girlfriend” quite a few times, realizing that they are the same person. It could lead to her work as an escort being discovered, which could potentially ruin her social life and her acting career.
We got nice moments of confusion, like one of the protagonist’s best pals praising the protagonist’s absent “girlfriend” (the version of the escort they had met) as someone phenomenal, wasted on the protagonist, while the disguised escort sits there stone-faced. Everybody gets drunker and drunker except the protagonist and the escort, who want to remain rational. However, at one point someone proposes a drinking game I couldn’t properly understand. The point is that the escort was doing terribly at it, which would likely end up with her drunk out of her mind. The protagonist wants to prevent her from getting to that state, so he deliberately loses all rounds and gets drunk out of his mind himself. At the end of the night he can’t get home and keeps almost passing out. The disguised escort, concerned, helps him get home (which is also her home, as they live door to door). He urges her to get into her own apartment and leave him to sleep, but given that he can’t get to open his own door, she goes inside with him. He hunches over in the bathroom to vomit. She decides to stay with him, sitting on the floor, to make sure he’s not going to Jimi Hendrix himself. Although he wants to prevent the girl from witnessing the disgusting mess he’s about to make in the bathroom, she keeps patting him on the back as he vomits his guts out until he passes out.
Next comes a troubling scene featuring the protagonist’s meddlesome ex along with the protagonist’s actual girlfriend (who blackmailed him into it), who is even more meddlesome and controlling. He’s at work in some Karaoke place, which also serves as a place where one can rent a room to study or read or whatever for a time. He works with his girlfriend Ruka, because she wanted to spend more time with him. The ex was seen in the previous volumes approaching the protagonist’s best pal; I supposed she was going to reveal to the guy that the protagonist had been renting escorts, but she actually wanted to know where he worked. For some reason this ex thinks it’s a good idea to use that place as the one in which she’ll get some quiet to study. Maybe she just wants to be served by the protagonist, with whom she has a complicated relationship.
This ex became an interesting character. She began as a girl straight out of high school who clearly intended to use her generally good looks to validate her existence, and wanted to keep the protagonist, whom she had dumped, pining for her although she had no intentions of dating him again. She has a somewhat narcissistic personality profile. At this point of the story she looks like a grown woman, but very jaded. While in the past she could act like a beaming girl, in the present she always looks fed up with everything.
When Ruka witnesses the protagonist and the ex interacting, and the protagonist clearly hiding something, this Ruka girl goes nuts. She’s had enough of having to share her boyfriend with the escort he’s actually in love with, and she’s not going to lose also to an ex who wants to butt in his life again. She bursts into the room the ex had rented to study in and yells at her for an entire chapter, berating her for daring to deliberately come to her boyfriend’s place of work to make trouble, assuring her that he has no feelings for his ex whatsoever, and that they as a couple have a healthy sex life (lies) which completely fullfills him. The ex, who until that point had mostly engaged in passive-aggressive confrontations, just stares at the extraordinarily angry Ruka, stunned and horrified. In the end she makes a quiet exit. We follow her on the streets for a while, failing to understand what happened, where that sudden girlfriend came from, how come the protagonist is dating someone so crazy, and where in the picture does the other escort fit. The ex along the way had wanted to figure out whether the purse she noticed in the protagonist’s apartment back in the previous volumes belonged to the escort, and now she wonders if it actually belonged to this crazed girlfriend. Why she’s even bothering to figure these things out I’m not sure. She’s clearly incapable incapable of loving anyone, and maybe the fact that someone she had a relationship with, and who should have remained wanting to regain her love, just moved on and got better girls, is killing her (I unfortunately had serious issues with a narcissistic person for years just because I decided to stop hanging out with the person, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s her reason).
In one of those coincidences in this genre, as the ex was riding a train back home, none other than the escort enters in front of her. The escort doesn’t want to deal with her at all after she had to assure the ex that she wasn’t going to contact the protagonist, but the escort had come with the same purse that the ex had seen in the protagonist’s apartment. She realizes the obviousness that the protagonist has some sort of deeper relationship with this escort and that it endures to this day. The ex lets out a laugh of despair, and later on she goes as far as asking the confused escort to say honestly whether or not she’s kept meeting the protagonist. The escort lies.
I feel sorry for this ex person. She’s not evil, and she’s clearly incapable of being in a normal relationship. The one guy she had a connection with ended up dating a vastly hotter girl, and somehow became involved with another girl who is also cuter. Now he’s dating a new one out of the blue, a brat possibly still in high school and who yelled at her as if she were worthless. And whenever she tries to get a straight answer, she only gets lies. What a life.
The protagonist’s actual girlfriend, this half-crazy Ruka girl, is worried that her outburst at work has made the protagonist want to break up with her. Although it certainly hasn’t made him love her, he admits he’s kind of pleased that it will likely mean that the ex will stay out of his life; it’s a weight off his shoulders, as he no longer contemplates being involved in a relationship with that one. Meanwhile, though, in lonely nights the ex keeps trying to mess things up in his life: she has searched for the protagonist’s family members on the internet, only to come across his grandmother’s Twitter (the old woman has always been seen as very technologically active), where the grandmother is very pleased to showcase the hot girlfriend her useless grandson dates. The ex follows this grandmother and even contacts her wanting to establish some line of communication.
Now comes a sequence, a mini arc, that I wasn’t particularly on board with, and that seemed beyond the main characters at this point of the story. He has been looking back on his high school days at how he got rejected by girl after girl that he liked (he got rejected by the same one three times in a row). Given that he’s still renting the escort he’s in love with, and that he can make requests, he figures that he’ll ask to act in a sort of cosplay date with both dressing as high schoolers. He immediately regrets it, but the escort seems to have no issue with it. The day of the date she of course looks amazing, which makes the guy act extra awkward for the entire sequence. He should have matured a bit more by this point; he has been used to dealing with gorgeous girls for plenty of volumes already. In any case, they go to some amusement park in order to fulfill his idea of a dream date: eating churros, taking photos in one of those fancy Japanese photo booths, riding the ferris wheel, etc. Innocent Japanese stuff. Along the way they need to hide from the shy escort, who was browsing in some shops; I don’t quite recall why the main escort was so eager to hide from a coworker, but I suppose she needs to suspect that anybody is going to out her.
The point of this sequence seemed to be, beyond watching the escort in a high school uniform, that she’s being herself with the protagonist instead of acting, and also to reveal that she’s gotten another opportunity to move up in the acting world, as some other scout had noticed her during her play. The protagonist this time is mainly happy for her.
The following mini arc is a mess for the main characters. They get tied in ways that’ll just come to hurt them later on, and there are difficult choices to be made. The protagonist’s family wants to celebrate his birthday, but after the grandmother learns that he had failed to inform her that the escort’s birthday had come and gone (the grandmother believes the escort to be the guy’s actual girlfriend), she demands to invite the escort into a joint birthday party right that evening. The protagonist had just gone on his dream date with the escort the day before, so he feels beyond awkward asking her to come over to his parents’ no less, but to his surprise the girl isn’t that conflicted about it. However, she informs him that she was already going to visit her own grandmother, who had been hospitalized recently, but that she’ll try to attend an hour or so later.
When the protagonist’s actual girlfriend Ruka learns that her boyfriend is going to celebrate his birthday with his family and with the escort as if she were already part of the family, she’s beyond dismayed. The protagonist, who until recently had just been annoyed at the girl, begins to get the sense that he’s doing something awful. Although this girl blackmailed him into a trial relationship, she has genuinely attempted to be a good girlfriend and make him love her, but he knows he never will. She’s not doing it for shady reasons either; she has broken down before and declared how much she loved him (for some reason). He wants to move toward solving this situation to avoid ruining her heart, but although he’s not clear about it, he’s considering whether to abandon pursuing the escort, whom he truly loves but who will likely move away from him whenever her acting career takes off, and instead learn to love the girl who is there for him. Regarding the birthday party, we get the sense that Ruka, like she had done before, will simply appear at his parents’ to attempt to win their hearts and her place as the protagonist’s future wife.
Of course, when the moment comes for the guy to take a train to his parents’ place, his actual girlfriend is waiting for him all dolled up (she doesn’t know his parents’ address), and announces that it’s only right that they’ll go together. He has no choice but to go along with it, knowing that the evening is going to become a complete disaster. When they get there, the grandmother is disappointed that her beloved future granddaughter-in-law or whatever isn’t going to come until later (as the birthday decorations show, they intended to celebrate the escort’s birthday; they don’t give a shit about the protagonist). Ruka goes all out on her doting girlfriend mode, attempting to win the hearts of his parents and grandmother. It’s working so far, although they aren’t clear on why she’s even there to begin with. The protagonist is losing his mind: the girl isn’t unlikely to decide to reveal that she’s the actual girlfriend and that the other one is an escort who is just pretending.
Meanwhile, the escort’s grandmother isn’t doing well. The girl wants to stay for longer but has no way of informing the protagonist, as they implicitly decided to avoid linking their online profiles to avoid breaking their escort/client relationship.
Ruka has buttered the grandma up to the point that she offers the girl to come over whenever. Ruka suggests that she should be welcomed into the family for real. As she was declaring that she’s the only who loves the protagonist, he receives a call from the escort: she has decided to just breach that taboo and add him as a friend online. She wants to talk to the grandmother and apologize for not being there. When the protagonist later on learns that the escort’s grandmother isn’t doing well, he tells her not to worry and to just stay in the hospital. However, Ruka snatches the phone away from him and berates the escort for butting in their relationship, that she shouldn’t get so involved being just a girlfriend for hire.
[continues on the comments]
April 11, 2022
✧ 94/ 108
Finally caught up with all the physical releases before the release of the 12th volume later this week woohooooo
Finally caught up with all the physical releases before the release of the 12th volume later this week woohooooo
November 9, 2024
I....words are failing me.... I definitely enjoyed the last half of the volume, then the first half.
Ruka, Ruka, Ruka! I'm still in shock over what she pulled! Like, I'm sorry but that was not okay! It felt very childish and I know she was feeling threatened but, Kazuya either needs to break it off with her and say the trial run is over or actually give her chance and try to really date her.... not just string her along, while he keeps thinking/wanting Chizuru.... though now that I say that, I'm not sure Ruka would accept that... man, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes haha.
Chizuru showing up despite her Grandma being very ill, was so thoughtful (even though her Grandma didn't really give her a choice! But my heart definitely hurts for Chizuru because her Grandmother is all she has left for family :(
But I am thankful she has Kazuya, even though he can be a dumb dumb sometimes.... though most times his heart is in the right place.
Anywho, I could've cared less about Ruka and Kazuya's little date. Like what truce girlfriend? No offence but Chizuru is winning lol theres no competition!
BUT! Sumi and Kazuya's date! Ahhh! She's literally the cutest! It was so thoughtful and adorable! She was trying so hard! I just couldn't!
I'm excited to see the date continue in volume 12! :)
Ruka, Ruka, Ruka! I'm still in shock over what she pulled! Like, I'm sorry but that was not okay! It felt very childish and I know she was feeling threatened but, Kazuya either needs to break it off with her and say the trial run is over or actually give her chance and try to really date her.... not just string her along, while he keeps thinking/wanting Chizuru.... though now that I say that, I'm not sure Ruka would accept that... man, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes haha.
Chizuru showing up despite her Grandma being very ill, was so thoughtful (even though her Grandma didn't really give her a choice! But my heart definitely hurts for Chizuru because her Grandmother is all she has left for family :(
But I am thankful she has Kazuya, even though he can be a dumb dumb sometimes.... though most times his heart is in the right place.
Anywho, I could've cared less about Ruka and Kazuya's little date. Like what truce girlfriend? No offence but Chizuru is winning lol theres no competition!
BUT! Sumi and Kazuya's date! Ahhh! She's literally the cutest! It was so thoughtful and adorable! She was trying so hard! I just couldn't!
I'm excited to see the date continue in volume 12! :)
March 30, 2022
Better than book 10 by far, even if Ruka-chan is still around causing problems. At leas Mizuhara shows up to throw some wrenches in the works. Ruka isn't finished with Kazuya... but still doesn't manage to swing things her way.
Sumi is cute, but her social anxiety doesn't come off nearly as endearing as another manga's protagonist who _can't Communicate_. And yet somehow she got her own spin off manga? Ah well, at least it wasn't Mami or Ruka...
After more than 10 volumes, I would like to see a bit more development. The back and forth has worn out the welcome and Kazuya and Ichinose need to actually have some growth in their relationship.
Sumi is cute, but her social anxiety doesn't come off nearly as endearing as another manga's protagonist who _can't Communicate_. And yet somehow she got her own spin off manga? Ah well, at least it wasn't Mami or Ruka...
After more than 10 volumes, I would like to see a bit more development. The back and forth has worn out the welcome and Kazuya and Ichinose need to actually have some growth in their relationship.
July 9, 2022
Wow the first half of this volume was great, the last volume I wouldn't say I didn't like it cause I did but i felt it was starting to get very repetitive, and while this volume had those repetitive parts that I'm starting to get bored of the first half really dragged me back Into the series, hopefully the next one keeps me here!
July 9, 2021
This was the best volume in a while. The manga isn’t great, the whole thing is just coincidence after coincidence and all the characters are dumb. But that hospital stuff was intense and I love sumi.
June 11, 2024
The usual gimmick: the secret is about to be revealed, but something intervenes to interrupt it, and it's back to the way it was before. Ruka literally steals a kiss from Kazuya. Determined and brave girl
October 13, 2020
//谢谢Moe的借书分享！！
Cover：Sarashina Ruka 更科瑠夏
和也君の誕生日
瑠夏のkiss
小百合奶奶病重，但是千鹤酱不愿意告诉她奶奶和也的真相
Cover：Sarashina Ruka 更科瑠夏
和也君の誕生日
瑠夏のkiss
小百合奶奶病重，但是千鹤酱不愿意告诉她奶奶和也的真相
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 25, 2021
Refreshing to have a chapter with only positively intentions. Go this volume!!🥳🥳🥳
August 22, 2021
Of course it’s crazy biatches like Ruka that try to “win” a guy using sex.. *eye roll*
And I’m probably the only one, but Sumi bores me. I get bored reading about her dates….
And I’m probably the only one, but Sumi bores me. I get bored reading about her dates….
April 4, 2022
My last volume, I think. The art’s lovely as always, but the lead’s indecision is so grating that I can’t handle it anymore.
April 21, 2022
OH MY GOD THEY KISSED god damn I AM SO EXITED uGhHHHHH THIS is IS is WHY RUkA iS MY FAVORITE THEY KISSED UHHGHGHGHHH!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 10, 2022
Even more bravado in terms of story development than I’ve previously come to expect. This mangaka definitely sets the bar in terms of other author / illustrators I’ve come across.
March 27, 2023
I'm so going to miss them all when it's gone. Love love ❤️ them
January 31, 2024
I don't know who I ship, it's so difficult to choose!
August 26, 2025
3.5/5
January 9, 2026
Cerita tidak lagi berkutat di main karakter dan "kekasih", build up mengenai latar belakang keluarga membuatnya menjadi cerita yang sangat bagus
March 21, 2022
TW: SA
March 15, 2022
This was a solid entry. We have some great moments for Ruka. She is such a good character and I truly root for her everytime she is on the page. Then we have our usual back and forth drama. Our main character was finally ready to mature a bit and move forward and then we get another character deciding against it. Then Sumi gets a little time at the end. This volume did a good job getting things back on track and interesting.
March 21, 2023
Look, did Ruka technically commit assault? Yes. Is she technically dating Kazuya? Yes. Does it excuse her actions? Hell no, I’m mad at this girl!!!
I feel like Chizuru and Kazuya are so close to understanding each other really!!! And I know there’s a couple more volumes but really, they are incredible!
I feel like Chizuru and Kazuya are so close to understanding each other really!!! And I know there’s a couple more volumes but really, they are incredible!
October 20, 2021
That was a quick read! It is stress after stress after stress for Kazuya 😖. But this volume ended on a relaxing note, thank goodness...😄
April 3, 2022
This is the Ruka-chan that I remember loving~ ✊🏻😭😭 Please those chapters were so full of tension, uff
Sumi is cute but definitely not my type and I'm finding her date kind of boring...
Sumi is cute but definitely not my type and I'm finding her date kind of boring...
May 31, 2023
I’m not a fan of Ruka… but I’m hoping she gets a good character arc because I think she has potential.
Contains:
-Sexual Content
Contains:
-Sexual Content
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews