EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Stories about second chances usually concern themselves with what gets done differently in the past. What Seishun o Yarinaosu nara Kondo koso Suki datta Doukyuusei to Tsukiatte Zettai Yarimakuritai. attends to is what gets promised there.

On page one the protagonist is hit by a lorry. He opens his eyes in a classroom from his school years, and in front of him is the classmate he drifted away from without ever saying anything. This time he does not hesitate; he says it that same day.

Three settings follow: the house, the school, the evening they were meant to spend at the summer festival. All fifty-two pages rest on the assumption that next year, and the year after, they will still be together. For a story about going back, what these two talk about is the future. There is a point where readers brace for the plot to swerve, and it never does. The last page returns to the street corner where the lorry was. No accident happens, she is standing beside him, and there is a glint at her ring finger.

Reviews of this book tend to begin with the writer's own regret before they begin with the book. Readers bring their own school years to it and read it through those. Akadashi, the artist, lays down no weighty lines of dialogue and conveys the happiness through faces alone.

The circle red miso soup had mostly drawn partners separated in age. Putting two classmates squarely at the centre begins here, and on DLsite the book sold nearly twice what the previous best had. It exists on DLsite alone, and reaches forty-seventh in the hall on the figures of that one store. It stands tenth in the loli division and eleventh in pure love, with official editions in English, Chinese, Korean and three further languages.