After a devastating personal loss, Kyungjoon wants nothing more than to drown his grief in the silence and safety of his houseplants. But Kyungjoon is also a cop, and it's a cop's job to go after criminals.

One day, hot pursuit of a suspect leads to Kyungjoon discovering signs of cult activity. Soon, the policeman is caught up in the machinations of monsters and demons, the worst of which is the demon king, Lord Cain, whose survival in this world depends on mana that can only be accessed through a “door.” Cain's door happens to be inside Kyungjoon, and these two will have to get up close and very personal to open it.

Dear. Door has story and art by Pluto. Lettering by Karis Page, Publang. Published by Seven Seas (November 4, 2025). Rated M.

Content Warning: dubious consent

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Dear. Door's first volume reminds me of Noblesse. That's not because it involves vampires or high schoolers, but rather because it makes precious little sense. Nominally the story is about a cop who somehow gets a demon attached to him (somewhat literally), but there's no real explanation given for why this happens or what any of it has to do with his tragic past. And if you want to know why Cain the demon needs a door to the human realm and how it relates to the fighting that's apparently going on in the demon realm? Good luck with that. Maybe it'll be in volume two.

It's a shame, because there are some good plot threads winding haphazardly through the book. Kyungjoon is coping with the sudden death of his fiancée an undisclosed amount of time ago and his best friend Jinyoung has been pining for him since they were both in high school and was about to try making a move before demons got in the way. Even the idea of demons using humans as doors to cross realms is interesting – creator Pluto means it in a very literal sense, as Cain pops out of Kyungjoon's body when he comes back to the human world. Even the tired old device of Cain needing to get energy from Kyungjoon via sex more or less works here, especially since it's not bodily fluids that power him, but the energy generated by an orgasm. So the story really is trying.

The problem is that we don't know why any of this is happening or is relevant. Sure, Kyungjoon's mourning, but what does that have to do with him being a door or Jinyoung's unrequited feelings for him? There are cultists in the small Korean town they work in, and those are probably related to the demons, but the idea gets dropped and picked up again like a distracted dog's ball. It's not enough to have a lot of good ideas in a story; they need to come together in a way that makes sense, and that's just not happening here. You can't just throw in some explicit sex scenes (all of dubious consent) and call it a day.

Pluto's art is fun and has a good sense of humor, but that's not quite enough to make me want to read more. This is a case of a few good ideas that don't quite come together properly. There're better explicit BL webtoons out there.