Yu will always be someone I want to protect. How would you feel if you were pushed to choose between your family and your partner? Yu grew up in a loving but traditional home. He’s now the head of the family the only son, taking care of his mother and grandmother.There’s this silent pressure to carry the bloodline, to one day marry and have kids, not because he wants to, but because it’s what’s expected of him. But maybe Yu doesn’t want that. Maybe he just wants to live quietly with Takamada, adopt a cat or a dog, and love freely in his own little world. So, though, could mean losing everything. The people in his hometown, the ones who watched him grow up, might turn on him. Customers might stop coming to his tofu shop, the one his father and grandfather built with their hands.That shop is all he has left of them. It’s not just work it’s memory, legacy, grief turned into routine.
So when Yu said “It’s just kinda embarrassing”, I don’t think he meant it literally. It was a shortcut, a softer word. Because being in love with a man and especially being the bottom in a society where masculinity is so rigid, is still something people look down on. Yu isn’t ashamed of who he loves.He’s terrified of what that love might cost him.
And the truth is, Takamada doesn’t have as much to lose. He doesn’t care what his parents think, his ties to them were already broken, he doesn’t have a family legacy to uphold or a community to answer to. Yu is his world. But Yu’s world… is much heavier. (Just my two cents.)
Yu will always be someone I want to protect.
How would you feel if you were pushed to choose between your family and your partner? Yu grew up in a loving but traditional home.
He’s now the head of the family the only son, taking care of his mother and grandmother.There’s this silent pressure to carry the bloodline, to one day marry and have kids, not because he wants to, but because it’s what’s expected of him.
But maybe Yu doesn’t want that. Maybe he just wants to live quietly with Takamada, adopt a cat or a dog, and love freely in his own little world.
So, though, could mean losing everything.
The people in his hometown, the ones who watched him grow up, might turn on him.
Customers might stop coming to his tofu shop, the one his father and grandfather built with their hands.That shop is all he has left of them.
It’s not just work it’s memory, legacy, grief turned into routine.
So when Yu said “It’s just kinda embarrassing”, I don’t think he meant it literally. It was a shortcut, a softer word.
Because being in love with a man and especially being the bottom in a society where masculinity is so rigid, is still something people look down on. Yu isn’t ashamed of who he loves.He’s terrified of what that love might cost him.
And the truth is, Takamada doesn’t have as much to lose.
He doesn’t care what his parents think, his ties to them were already broken, he doesn’t have a family legacy to uphold or a community to answer to.
Yu is his world.
But Yu’s world… is much heavier.
(Just my two cents.)