“Renai Tsuu” (Hada no Ue no Renai Jijou) by Nanao Bohra

“Renai Tsuu” is a chapter featuring a side character and his janitor lover from the anthology Hada no Ue no Renai Jijou, which mostly follows a ‘pudgy’ (I’m not sure the mangaka has ANY idea what that actually looks like, given that this so called overweight person is pictured above) middle-aged, middle school art instructor and his super-buff, younger salaryman lover.  Their entire story seems to be made up of ‘have you gained weight?’ / ‘I need to lose weight!’ drama, which… if there wasn’t smutty goodness in-between all of it, I would NOT recommend.

SPOILERS

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However, in Hada no Ue no Renai Jijou / Above Skin Love Story, the character who ends up with the janitor is actually buff salaryman’s bitchy bestie, Aoki. Aoki has a lot of terrible advice for his friend’s relationship, including that, if you’re going to have a middle-aged lover, you ought to at LEAST pick someone hot.

Turns out, in the chapters he features in, that’s because he has a very specific middle-aged man in mind.

One that his very handy with a squeegee.

Their meet-cute is fairly cute, in that Aoki stumbled down the stairs and the hottie janitor, Mizusawa, literally catches him up in his arms.

So, I mean, good start.

Though I do think it’s kind of hilarious that Mizusawa has NO IDEA why Aoki is following him around like a puppy, showing up at lunch hour, to eat together, etc. Probably, it takes him some time to figure this out because Aoki is actually fairly unromantic. Later, when they finally get together, Aoki can’t understand why Mizusawa is keeping the various little notes that he’s left him, though he finally at least comes to this realization:

I sort of liked these two, or rather, Mizusawa. He’s kind of a regular guy at the end of the day and he bottoms like a pro despite his size and general state of working guy muscle mass.

Because there are only two chapters, I can recommend this without hesitation. I found it separated from its anthology, so if you want to see the story from the salaryman and art school teacher’s POV, click on the anthology link first.

I may be done with janitors now? There are ACTUALLY a few left on the list, but I think we’re getting down to chapters in anthologies, so I may give them a pass.