Kodomo no Hitomi by Konohara Narise

Kodomo no hitomi by Konohara Narise is a wonderfully fun book, different in tone from others I’ve read so far by this author. I didn’t even connect it to Konohara-sensei (I have this terrible tendency to NOT pay attention to authors of the books I read in general) until I saw it on a complete list of her works, it has such a different feel to it. It is about Kashiwabara Misaki, who lives very poorly in a material sense but incredibly richly in an emotional sense with his six year old son Joutarou. He had married and had a child young, but lost his wife suddenly only several years later. Though she was gone and the lingering effects of having borrowed money for her care really make it tough for him to make ends meet, he is happy. Then one day he finds that his older brother Hitoshi, who had been adopted by their paternal grandfather after the death of their parents, had been in an accident and had regressed to a six year old in mentality and in memory. Misaki hates his brother for being cold and horrible to him when he had tried to borrow money for his wife’s treatment, but ends up with Hitoshi dumped on him. Initially he is very cold to his brother, but comes to realize that Hitoshi now was no longer the adult that he had come to hate, but a helpless little boy in a big body. Hitoshi and Joutarou get along famously, and Misaki warms up to him. It...is a romance, and thus sounds really improbable and silly. Objectively, it undeniably is, but..it is still delightful to read (and when did improbable and silly ever stop a BL story anyhow?). Konohara-sensei does a wonderful job of making things flow naturally (well, as naturally as such an unnatural situation can be ^^;). I reread this quite a bit, just for the sweet family moments and the simplicity a childlike mentality can bring to a relationship. Combined with nice art, it makes for wonderful rereading material.

( the story )

( the pics )