I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #Flowers(5)

Kuraishi, a twice-divorced events manager, is a depressed and self-destructive alcoholic, until he is nurtured back by Izumi, the florist who has a supernatural ability to communicate with plants. The plants tell him Kuraishi is withered and rotten, and he needs some tough love to recover. Volume Two deals with the return from Europe of Chouno, a colleague with whom Kuraishi shared a strong connection in the past.

One night, Mizushima, an assistant at Nanami Florist, steals a single rare white bloom from an exotic flowering shrub in a stranger's garden. The next day, wracked with guilt, he prepares a bouquet as an apology for the owner, unaware that his activity was already caught on camera. Before he can present his gift, the shrub's owner, Fujisawa Morihiro, confronts him at the shop and ends up hiring him to create a floral arrangement for the entrance to his mansion. Mizushima is pleased by this turn of events, and drawn to the loneliness of this wealthy man, but a mysterious young woman approaches him and warns him that his life is in danger. Are her accusations against Fujisawa legitimate or figurative, and has she exaggerated Mizushima's peril? Mizushima feels impelled to ignore her advice, setting a new series of events into motion. An interesting story premise (so far) which escalates quickly.

Finally! A yaoi romance where the beloved, a florist named Haruto, asks his suitor, a half-Japanese restauranteur, Luka, why he is admired, since there appears to be no basis for this fascination; neither man having any cause to interact beyond the transaction of Luka buying flowers for his restaurant. We need to wait for the next installment to learn why, though.

D/s relationship with boss who treats the intern like a slave. I'm trying not to let my loathing for bosses like that affect my feelings about the rest of the story. The drawing style and occasional dose of hamster indicate that it's meant to be a lighthearted frolic. So we shall see.

A gay highschooler loses his best friend, a girl, when she starts dating another boy, so he tries to cope with his feelings of isolation and loneliness, never realizing they have been observed by the gay bookseller whose shop he and the girl always frequented. The story touches on themes such as the difference between an adult and a teenager, but it resolves them with a cutesy-wootsy presentation that doesn't really explore the boy's process of self-realization. Still, not a bad story. I definitely prefer cute over violent.