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The First Boy I Loved

miharu

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The First Boy I Loved

Novel

Read Ep.1

Episodes Details

4 episodes

miharu

This novel contains heavy themes.

Soren has learned to take up as little space as possible. He's an Indonesian-Chinese art scholarship student at a boys' high school in a Japanese coastal city. He's talented enough to earn his place, experienced enough to know that earning it doesn't mean belonging. He has his art club, his church choir, his family's warm and crowded house, and the ocean always visible at the end of the road.

Kairi transfers in from Osaka in November, which is the wrong time to transfer anywhere. He's carrying a secret that swallowed his old life whole: his family's careers, his sport, his sense of himself as someone worth knowing. He isn't looking for friendship. He isn't looking for anything except a way through the next day without falling apart.

What starts as a borrowed pen and shared lunches becomes something neither of them has words for yet. Something careful and frightening and, despite everything, worth reaching for.

Content Warnings: sexual abuse and grooming of a minor (off-page); PTSD including panic attacks and flashbacks; suicidal ideation and suicide attempts; racism and racial violence including property vandalism; bullying; immigration trauma; family trauma; references to juvenile detention; anxiety and therapy depictions.