If there are two persistent narratives that queer fiction is beholden to, they're coping with homophobia and coming out. Both are real and significant in fiction and real life, and they absolutely should be given space in these stories. But they don't need to be the only focus or lens through which we experience queer fiction, and Shoko Rakuta's Stay By My Side After the Rain understands that. Both are present in this series, including internalized homophobia. Instead of taking up the entire story, they're simply factors in the characters' lives, things that they deal with as they find a way to make their relationship work.

The couple in question is Kanade and Mashiro. Back in high school, the two became fast friends when Mashiro transferred from Tokyo, and Kanade, who had known he was gay for a long time, fell head over heels for the other boy. But between his father's expectations and his internalized homophobia, Kanade never said anything. He deliberately broke contact with everyone from high school after graduation. Eight years later, he's living in Tokyo, working for a cookbook publisher, and deeply unhappy in his personal life. He has never really fallen in love again and is the king of self-sabotage in relationships, burying his feelings and orientation under a blanket of lies. He's forced out from under the weight of his misery when he enters a café one day to find Mashiro. Mashiro is ecstatic to see Kanade again, and he pushes until Kanade agrees to meet up. When Kanade finally tells Mashiro his feelings, the other man is surprised but quickly comes back with, “I love you, too.” Kanade spends most of the first volume trying to let himself accept that Mashiro means romantic love; in volume two, they begin dating, and in volume three, (technically a sequel series Seven Seas is publishing under the same name) they move in together.

Each volume is full of quiet moments of intense significance. In volume one, a coworker pulls Kanade aside and grills him on his sexual orientation. The basis of this is that he lied to another female coworker, rebuffing her overtures by saying that he has a girlfriend. This woman is convinced that Kanade is gay after seeing him with Mashiro, and she not only interrogates him about it, she wants him to voluntarily out himself to make the other woman feel better. Kanade eventually voices the problem to his coworker, saying, “Unrequited crushes are a part of life. Why should I have to come out to someone I barely know just to make her feel better?” It's a simple statement, but one that resonates because he's right – it isn't necessary for him to out himself for someone else's benefit. It's Kanade's right to keep his sexual orientation to himself. We rarely see such scene in BL manga, which tends to take place in a predominantly male world or one where homophobia doesn't exist. Rakuta including this scene is important, especially because Kanade himself isn't comfortable yet with who he is. His words remind everyone that it's his battle to fight, and no one else's.

Volume three deals with Kanade coming out to his family. In volume two, Mashiro does. His relationship with his mother is the furthest thing from healthy, and the scene is more significant for the way he's learning to cope with her emotional (and possibly sexual) abuse. After his father died unexpectedly, his mother became intensely clingy and continued to stage stunts (“I'll throw myself off a bridge so you'll notice me”). Mashiro's grandmother has tried to alleviate the strain, and by volume three, there's a mention of “meds,” so we can assume that Grandma got her to a psychiatrist. Mashiro coming out is secondary to the sex scene when he and Kanade consummate their relationship for the first time. This is significant in several ways: Kanade is finally fully accepting himself and his sexuality, and Mashiro is overcoming his mother's unhealthy attachment and relationship style. This is shown as not just being about passion but about love as well. The men laugh, have fun with their inexperience and happiness, and listen to each other. It's so clearly about hearts as well as bodies coming together, and that's something that can get lost in sex scenes across fiction. It's a remarkably healthy depiction, and that in itself is heartwarming.

It also helps to lead directly to Kanade finally coming out to his parents. Again, this is handled remarkably well, and it isn't even fully the defining moment of volume three; that would be the two men learning to communicate about things like “chores” and “expectations” while living together. It's an important series of discussions and one that may feel very familiar to readers. Kanade and his father's biggest issue is that Kanade is not the person his father expected him to be. He's not going to have biological children. He's not going to be some woman's husband. He's not going to be his father's carbon copy, essentially, and more than him being gay, that's the problem his dad is having trouble swallowing. That's a very real, true, and pretty common issue. The guilt of not “living up” to what your parents envision for you is hard to swallow, and that's the root of Kanade's insecurities. Rakuta handles it well. It's one of the best coming-out scenes I've read in a BL manga.

Stay By My Side After the Rain is, in its first three volumes, a remarkably well-put-together story. While each volume is more or less self-contained, they all build together to form a picture of two people overcoming their hurdles and finding happiness together. It's a love story rather than a romance in the genre sense, and whether or not BL is your preference, it's a series worth discovering.