EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

A circle writing fan fiction of its own character. The Misfortune of Hana Otonashi came out of that strange gesture, and then outsold the book it came from.

The setting is a members-only maid café. While she takes the order, the maid rests herself against the customer's finger. The customer is a gentleman, so the finger does not move. What moves is the maid, once she can no longer hold still. That is the whole premise, and the body of the book is thirteen pages.

Pochitaro spends those thirteen pages on that single device. Count the acts and there is little that is extreme; what rises is only the temperature of waiting — a point readers arrive at again and again on their own. The line stays soft and adds no detail it does not need, following one thing only: an embarrassed face coming undone. That nothing sour is left afterwards is not an accident. The circle prints a rule on its own store page — nothing the girl genuinely hates will be drawn — and this booklet is that rule demonstrated.

The parent work, Zecchou Refle, is a doujinshi from the same circle. It gives 102 of its 119 pages to a single treatment session, and the following year it took first place in Weekly SPA!'s 2023 Kono Ero-Manga ga Sugoi! award. This book takes only the heroine out of it and was handed out at Comic Market 103 — a detour off a series that stayed doujin all the way through.

The detour sold more than the book it came from. That record is rarely written.