Kei Shiraishi is a hair stylist (and also maybe a makeup artist? But they never really show that in the book — the back cover describes him as a “beautician,” but I never saw him doing anything but hair) who gets picked to cut the hair of a famous up and coming actor. Taiga Jinnouchi is super handsome and an amazing actor, but he gets deep into his characters and it’s stressful on his system. After Kei cuts Taiga’s hair, they have dinner together and then end up having sex. Kei explains to Taiga that he has a hard time trusting people and doesn’t want to be in a relationship because he’s had a bad time in the past. They decide to just be friends with benefits, but Taiga seems very into Kei and Kei has trouble figuring out if he really means it or if he’s just acting. Taiga also lives with a beautiful actress whom he’s friends with and who has a secret crush on him, which further triggers Kei’s fears around Taiga being serious.
There’s a lot going on here — panic around relationships, miscommunication, other people having crushes, a twist around their shared past, Kei’s low self-esteem, Taiga’s sense of himself and his acting — and I felt like their characterizations were uneven. They did stuff that didn’t quite make sense to me and the trope of miscommunication came into full play here, which as we all know drives me nuts. Taiga in particular was hard to read and seemed to do a bit of a 180 in terms of his tone (from cool and somewhat mysterious to very open and honest) at the end, although I can understand that his character arc is supposed to be about him opening up and finding himself more. It just seemed kind of abrupt and the circumstances were a bit far fetched for me. The overall tone was sweet and I did like the arc of the whole story. I also liked the art and thought it was expressive. The information about being a working actor and what it’s like being employed in that industry behind the scenes was interesting and had more detail than I usually see in BL. I liked it but it didn’t have that extra oomph to get it out of the three star zone for me.