muse ✨'s manga / #feels like starlight(159)

Haru decides to confess to Rin, who grows frustrated by the lack of change in their relationship in the coming weeks, and thus they go on an aquarium date for Christmas. This is beautifully done and easily 2-3 times the length of many DJs. It focuses on the relationship build and culminates with intimacy, but as part of the relationship's growth and doesn't go into explicit detail. Easily the best Free! DJ I've read to date.

I'm so happy Free! fandom likes switching these two up. Anyway, this is about Nagisa finding one of his sister's magazines where you're prompted to list ten things you like about the person you love, and Rin's mind goes into overdrive with his love for Haru. Aw!

A young man believes his first love died years ago and harbors regret for the last thing he said. Now in high school, he meets a determined young man with memories of a first love that match what he recalls of the love he lost. This is fantastic.

A refreshing, sweet love story between a man who works the floor at a nightclub and a man who comes to the club nightly. Beautifully drawn, realistic, touching, happy.

Likens Rin to a cat that wanders freely before settling down. Sweet, very G-rated, takes place across a year. Made me all starry eyed at the end.

Aoi struggles to suppress his feelings for his best friend, a photographer he has known since childhood and who has been like an older brother to him.

Oosawa, a single father struggling to care for his young daughter, accepts the kindness of a customer when she falls ill. Yoshioka is a promiscuous man who is open about his interest in Oosawa, which he doesn't return. But the more time Oosawa and his daughter spend with him, the more things begin to feel like family. A slow-burn love story with a delightful child character and happy ending. I loved it.

A candy store owner and a doctor enter into a relationship with little drama (and what there is is understandable), lots of mutual affection, a slow and realistic emotional build, passable communication (they try), FABULOUS sex, frank discussions *about* sex, a refreshing and honest attitude about their future, and they even have friendly relationships with their exes. Also features the cutest little girl ever. Have I died? Is this Heaven? This story is set in the same universe as the one with the hot priest, who shows up in this a few times.

For a decade, a man has harbored a one-sided love for his older brother's friend, only to find they are neighbors. The final chapter is a oneshot: a writer goes to an oceanside retreat and is visited nightly by a boy who can walk on water.

Bloggers in love. This was fantastic, with realistic reactions to the evolution of their relationship, and no unnecessary drama. I'd love to see where they are in five years.