Hoshizora wo Mitsumeta Sono Ato de / After Staring at the Starry Sky by Kida Bisco

… And now back to our safe, little bishies.

I don’t even know what I was looking for when I stumbled across Hoshizora wo Mitsumeta Sono Ato de / After Staring at the Starry Sky. Probably smut, but, you know, sometimes you gotta settle for romance.

SPOILERS

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If you are someone who actually needs to use a wheelchair, I would not necessarily recommend reading this one. I suspect it would drive you crazy on a lot of levels, but also a big part of the romance seems to involve the astrophotographer, Tougo Amase, randomly picking up and carrying around, princess style, our protagonist, Subaru Miyazawa, without first getting consent or even with much warning.

I mean, I am able-bodied so I can’t really comment here about how inappropriate this seems, but I don’t even give a hug to someone before asking if it’s okay to touch them. I can not imagine just picking someone up and moving them around like furnature.

Technically, this is not the basis of the romance.

Subaru has been crushed out on Togo via his art for so long that his best lady friend, Akari, immediately hooks the two of them up as soon as there is an opportunity. And, then like the good wingman she is, Akari instantly finds other places to be. I think Akari was my favorite character, honestly? She’s also the one who brings the guys back together after they separate after the inevitable misunderstanding.

Look at that face. She knows what she’s doing!

At any rate, the feelings grow between the two guys after they start traveling together, particularly to Iriomote-Ishigaki National Dark Sky Park. There’s only a moderate amount of discussion about how difficult it might be to move around in this park in a wheelchair and it seems to be solved with Togo pushing. This is a fantasy, clearly, because we are also supposed to imagine that somehow these two young men slept chastely together in a tent.

It is not until the extra chapter at the end of the book that we discover that Subaru is only numb from the knees down… which begs a lot of questions all of a sudden, but also answers a bunch of others. I spent a lot of time, of course, comparing this to Perfect World, which I’d read some time ago, which also has a love interest in a wheelchair. Perfect World seems to be more willing to deal with some of the things people might rather not think about which might come up in a relationship with someone disabled in some way. But, then I thought… well, I mean, maybe someone out there just wants a nice, fantasy romance without the realism? Maybe I should shut up and let them have it?

There is no sex in this story. Just two pretty guys hanging out, liking each other. The art is nice enough. There’s one really lovely moment when Togo, who normally won’t take pictures of people, is moved to take one of Subaru. This moment returns to reunite the boys when they’re being stupid and apart.

Would I recommend it? I don’t know. It’s fine? It is licensed in English so you can always try pressuring your library into buying it, if you don’t (or can’t) spend the money yourself.