I really enjoyed reading
Zankoku na ouse by Ioka Itsuki (one of my favorite authors) and illustrated by Sasaki Kumiko. This takes the tired old premise of the traumatized victim uke with a frozen heart who is "thawed" by an aggressive man and makes it work. I kept waiting for the author to betray her premise and make the uke start acting differently to make things more...passionate. But she didn't! I was so happy that she stayed the course and ran with it, even if it meant there wasn't the angst-fest we typically get when the types of things that happen in this book occur. XD
Ooba Makoto already has been promoted to a high position in the company he works at. He's married to the company president, he's good looking and works very hard. Seems like he has everything going for him, but of course it's all an illusion. Makoto has lived his life without feelings for years. He lives for his work. His marriage is a sham--he had initially married his wife because she'd become pregnant with some random man and needed legitimacy, but she'd miscarried and they never developed any kind of relationship at all. She had tons of affairs and ran around playing while he worked. One night he wakes up to find himself handcuffed to his bed and a man on top of him. The man introduces himself as Hadori Chiaki, a host in a Shinjuku club. He's having an affair with Makoto's wife.He'd been asked by her to find out if Makoto is gay. When they have sex it becomes obvious that Makoto had been used to being fucked.
Chiaki tries to blackmail Makoto with the threat that he'll report the truth to Makoto's wife to get Makoto to continue to sleep with him, but Makoto doesn't much care. It's only when Makoto thinks that things might become public and thus a problem for his wife and company (he doesn't much care about what happens to him) that he goes along with it. He tells Chiaki very dispassionately how he'd been raped by his cousin for years (or was it only a year or so?) until the cousin died in a car accident. After that he'd lost the ability to feel much beyond a vague sort of empathy, as well as less intimate feelings such as a sense of duty (to his company, for example).
Chiaki is confident and carefree, the very opposite of Makoto. He is aggressive, but very gentle with Makoto in bed after that first time. They continue to have sex, even after Makoto's wife finds out about them. She's desperate and angry because Chiaki, whom she had patronized heavily and spent serious money on, is avoiding her and fucking her husband instead. In revenge, she plasters pictures of the two of them at their respective workplaces. Makoto, who works at a very respectable company, had been preparing for his eventual departure after the first rape by Chiaki. He quickly and efficiently tenders his resignation as well as divorce papers to his father-in-law, the president, and then spends his last day at work handing his work off to his subordinates. He is surprised to find Chiaki waiting for him outside of the office. Turns out Chiaki had been fired as well--a gay (or bi) host is useless at a club catering to females. Chiaki gives Makoto a ride to Makoto's apartment (a very nice place provided by his soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law), where Makoto picks up the bag he'd prepared for when he might have to leave. He feels guilty about his wife, especially as he'd found out that day that she'd actually liked him and had pointed him out as the person she'd like to marry. He'd made no effort to get to know her, and she was too proud to try herself. But in the end what Makoto feels as he leaves the apartment is a feeling of relief. He was free of all obligations.
Chiaki tells Makoto that he'll go wherever Makoto goes. He's been bored with life for a long time, good at everything he did and able to sleep with anyone he wanted. But he's drawn to Makoto for some reason. Makoto decides that it might be enjoyable to travel with Chiaki and laughs.
They travel by car, with Chiaki spending the tons of money he'd made but hadn't bothered spending as a host. He buys Makoto clothing after getting tired of seeing Makoto in work-type slacks and shirts all the time (Makoto didn't own casual clothes as all he did was work). Chiaki had realized that Makoto wasn't used to kindness and gentleness by others, in and out of bed. After the first couple of times, he learned that the more gentle he was the more Makoto responded. Thus, he became more and more gentle in bed. He continues to be gentle with Makoto, figuring that some day Makoto will realize why he bothers to do things for Makoto.
Hm...I don't think the quick summary really did the story justice. ^^; It's hard to convey the dry yet deep relationship between Makoto and Chiaki. They're both rather dispassionate (okay, Makoto is *really* dispassionate for most of the novel besides during sex, and only becomes less so at the end) yet aren't boring or shallow. I love how neither much cared about having their sordid gay affair exposed to the world. There's a sweetness mixed in with the dry dispassion that was I found very appealing. I was so happy that Makoto really was more or less detached throughout, not having the utterly-cliched "breakdown" that these supposedly detached/supressed characters almost always have. The novel ends with him only becoming
slightly more human...
I rather like the art, it totally fit the feel of the story and the characters.
( cut for my favorite pic )![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tenshi no tsumeato by Takaoka Mizumi and illustrated by Nara Chiharu is melodrama that mostly doesn’t work because it’s too low-key, except at the very end. It’s about the son of a yakuza boss and a self-made man, an entrepreneur with several (or is it many?) restaurants and bars. They became friends in high school, didn’t see each other for 10 years, met again as adults, and now hang out...Sort of. Son of yakuza boss really wants to live a normal life but can’t, thanks to his family background. So he comes over to one of his friend’s establishments and grouses. There’s also the added complication that son of yakuza is in love with his friend. His friend knows it (and the son knows that his friend knows) but pretends not to (and the son pretends to not know that his friend knows but pretends not to).
The continuing adventures of our "doomed" lovers in the pretty reincarnation epic in 
Sasra (link to book 1 amazon japan listing 
