I’m not sure how much the mangaka intended for this to be a comedy, but despite the cover and title, that’s really what it is. Even better, it’s actually funny, and ended up being a pretty great read.
Moriya is a manager at a jewelry company named Hokuto, and his long search for the perfect model for his company’s new ad campaign ends when he spots teenager Ouno Itsuki on the street and begs him to model. Ouno is lazy, carefree, and not really interested in much of anything, and just kind of agrees because why not. The campaign goes well and as it goes on, Moriya becomes more and more obsessed with Ouno and spoils him with devotion, becoming a “slave” to his own feelings more than anything.
For most of the book, Ouno doesn’t seem to care one bit about Moriya, and he never actually asks Moriya for any of the attention he gets. He’s sort of lazy and hardly says anything the whole manga, and despite his modeling job consisting of just standing or sitting around getting his photo taken he is always tired. At one point Ouno mentions that “with all the time I’m spending modeling I don’t have time for sex” and Moriya just sort of volunteers to help him with that. The fact that Ouno never asks for any of this sort of upends the whole master-slave dynamic in the first place – he’s a pretty unwilling master honestly.
Soon, one of Moriya’s business rivals, Miyahigashi, steals Ouno away with a better contract much to Moriya’s chagrin…but this doesn’t stop him from being with Ouno outside of his new job, which drives Miyahigashi nuts and he tries to one-up Moriya by stealing Ouno’s heart by way of his asshole, of course. I didn’t like this part and Ouno proves himself to be too stupid to live, but I guess it’s not like we didn’t know this already.
The best part about this manga is the over-the-top antics of Moriya and Miyahigashi, who just splash these dramatic Ace Attorney poses onto every page while fighting and airing their angst over this lazy teen who doesn’t appear to give a fuck about either of them. Moriya’s boss then ends up transferring him to another office – will Moriya be able to get both his job and his lover back and get his happy ending?
There’s actually a decent amount of sex scenes in this book, even though you don’t see penis. The art is fine, sometimes good, but the sex scenes are amusingly tame compared to the wild emotional antics in the rest of the book.
There is a really forgettable side story in the back that I couldn’t really follow very well and wasn’t nearly as good at the main story, it’s some kind of high school pairing and one of the guys has anger issues and tonally it doesn’t fit with the main story at all.
Overall I’d recommend this one as it’s pretty fun cheese. It doesn’t take itself seriously and the two salaryman characters are funny with their exaggerated antics. I’m not sure if Miki Araya has anything else in English but I’ll check out more of her work if I can!
TL;DR Pretty fun BL comedy. Moriya is an overly dramatic and emotional salaryman who becomes obsessed with teenager Ouno he hires to model for his company and begins to tend to him with slavish devotion, despite Ouno’s complete indifference. When a business rival steals Ouno away he and Moriya both just splash Ace Attorney poses and over-the-top angst onto full-page panels over this lazy teenager who is too stupid to live, which ends up being pretty great. Surprisingly fun cheese with a lot of exaggerated emotion and even has a decent amount of sex