Rereading this series I have a greater appreciation for Tanaka-sensei's storytelling abilities. I'm used to yaoi spoonfeeding information to us such that I don't expect to have to pay attention to the subtleties in the art and panels to the extent I might with other media. But I realize sensei actually does keep a lot of things more subtle and expects the reader to pay attention and deduce things on their own without being directly told. Like in Azami it's not shown directly that Kan is orally (and possibly further than that) sexually assaulted by his boss but it's very much implied. And here with 5.5 the extra with Yumi and Mayama it's not directly stated or shown, but based on context it's pretty obvious Yumi's mother hung herself right in their home and Yumi found her body (how fucking awful of her tbh, like at least have the decency to kill herself where her young son wouldn't be the one to find her and especially to do that after telling her son they weren't pitiful and that he would have to protect her, way to scar him for life). And it's not entirely clear what happened to his father, but it seems maybe he killed himself too, with the way they talk about him at the funeral. Those little scenes explain so much about Yumi's character and why he stayed with Kan-chan so long. And it makes me want another Yumi story, I think he still has a lot of issues that he needs to work out which are not really related to Kan at all.
Rereading this series I have a greater appreciation for Tanaka-sensei's storytelling abilities. I'm used to yaoi spoonfeeding information to us such that I don't expect to have to pay attention to the subtleties in the art and panels to the extent I might with other media. But I realize sensei actually does keep a lot of things more subtle and expects the reader to pay attention and deduce things on their own without being directly told. Like in Azami it's not shown directly that Kan is orally (and possibly further than that) sexually assaulted by his boss but it's very much implied. And here with 5.5 the extra with Yumi and Mayama it's not directly stated or shown, but based on context it's pretty obvious Yumi's mother hung herself right in their home and Yumi found her body (how fucking awful of her tbh, like at least have the decency to kill herself where her young son wouldn't be the one to find her and especially to do that after telling her son they weren't pitiful and that he would have to protect her, way to scar him for life). And it's not entirely clear what happened to his father, but it seems maybe he killed himself too, with the way they talk about him at the funeral. Those little scenes explain so much about Yumi's character and why he stayed with Kan-chan so long. And it makes me want another Yumi story, I think he still has a lot of issues that he needs to work out which are not really related to Kan at all.