hanayome wa kizoku no ai ni ubawareru

[insaneneko]

Hanayome wa kizoku no ai ni ubawareru by Tono Haruhi and illustrated by Kitahata Akeno is yet another of Tono-sensei's "Kizoku" series, two of which I have previously summarized (here and here). This is the author's attempt to respond to reader's requests for a sequel to the one where the uke and seme get married. Instead of a sequel she wrote a new story in which the uke cross-dresses and marries the seme. This is where I could insert a rant about how I don't have "bulletproof kinks" since I adore cross-dressing marriages of convenience a great deal but found this to utterly lack charm and interest...But I won't. XD;

The story started out promising, with a very reserved and obedient young uke who lives a modest but comfortable life with his mother provided by his father. Uke's mother was born to a good family but ended up his father's mistress. They spend the hottest part of the summer in a small villa they rent in Karuizawa (a resort area favored by the well-to-do) every year. One day the uke happens to look outside the window and sees a well-dressed gentleman walking along the street in front of the house. Their eyes meet. This happens again the next day. After that, the uke feels silly about thinking more about the incidents than warranted and ignores any sounds of a person walking outside. But when he's outside picking flowers they meet again. They stare at each other until the servant interrupts them. The uke goes back inside and the gentleman walks away. It's pretty damn obvious that isn't the last we'll see of the gentleman. The uke and his mother return to their house in Tokyo. Soon after they are visited by the uke's father, who proposes officially acknowledging the uke (which he had refused to do when uke was born, he already had three children by his wife) and bringing the uke into his household. The uke and his mother weakly protest (they are told they won't be allowed to see each other any more and they also kind of doubt his wife and children would appreciate the mistress's son entering their lives...), but they are reserved and obedient and the father isn't used to being refused...So uke moves to his father's residence. He isn't allowed out or to communicate with anyone outside. One day he is called upon by some guy he'd never heard of...Who turns out to be none other than the gentleman he'd locked eyes with three times in Karuizawa. He learns that the gentleman is the second son of some other noble family who has done very well for himself in business. He is being pushed to marry someone (lots of omiai proposals), so he had proposed to uke's father that in exchange for some financial assistance he would like uke to dress like a woman and pretend to be a person the gentleman (I'm just going to call him "seme" from now on, it's easier to type than "gentleman") has fallen in love with to his parents so that they can lay off on him. Uke is rather shocked by the whole thing, but as he is reserved and obedient he will do what he can to help his father. Besides, he'd been changed to a female when entered into the family register so technically his male self no longer existed. He lives with seme's widowed aunt and learns how to be a proper lady. Three months later he wows seme's and they give seme permission to marry uke. Uke thinks his role is done but turns out seme intends to actually marry him! They marry and uke lives a cloistered life in the large mansion with many servants the seme had bought with his own money. Uke is quite surprised when seme comes on to him, but obediently allows seme to have his body. I sort of lost interest and stopped reading really carefully at this point, but there's this whole storyline with uke getting blackmailed by some acquaintance who recognized him as his male self. Uke wants to not make any trouble for seme and tries to resolve things himself, but the seme ends up showing up and getting rid of blackmailing dude. This incident is the key to unlocking their true feelings for each other (the uke asks if he can do anything to make up for the troubles he's caused the seme, and the seme responds by asking him to love him back, even if that love is only a fraction of the seme's feelings for the uke--gee, seme, took you long enough to give uke any outward indication of your regard for him...). They have loving sex and presumably live happily ever after (though I wonder what kind of trouble they'll have when years pass and they have no children...).

I just found the entire story lacking. The first cross-dressing "marriage of convenience" story just worked for me so much better. The premise of that first story made much more sense, as well. Why the hell would seme in this story go out of his way to search out uke, pay off uke's father so that uke will become a woman and marry him? The uke never really wonders about the oddness of it all, but then the uke doesn't seem to think all that much. The seme was way too awkward, even for semes who are deeply in love but are completely incapable of showing it until some moment of crisis unlocks them from their rigid awkwardness. He was mostly the husband that bosses the wife around. There were some really sweet moments like when seme kisses uke the first several times (before they were officially engaged) as well as the way they first "met" (the uke dwelling on the brief encounters even though he tries not to), but the sex once they were married just seemed so...mechanical. *shrugs* In any case, the author wrote in the afterward that she's thinking about a tsundere bride who despite himself ends up falling in love with his husband...I might like to read that one--Better than the irritatingly bland passivity of this one...Though what I'd like to read is a cross-dressing marriage of convenience in which the "bride" is the seme. Is that too much to ask?

It's amazing how lame a lot of these BL novel titles sound when I try to translate them into English. Not that they aren't already lame in Japanese, but because many of them are passive it sounds a thousand times worse (stilted and purple prose-y) in English. :P




I think this was their first kiss?