Five high school classmates hold secrets close to their hearts—hidden talents, unspoken feelings, and buried pain. As they collide with each other on the path to growing up, they might jostle some of those secrets free. From Yoru Sumino, acclaimed author of I Want to Eat Your Pancreas and I Had That Same Dream Again comes a gentle, intriguing tale about love, life, and the things we leave unsaid.

I Have a Secret has a story by Yoru Sumino and art by Zui Nieki. English translation is done by Molly Lee and lettering by Viet Phuong Vu. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (May 5, 2026). Rated 13+.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Heck yes, this is a manga worth reading. I came into it fully ignorant of the what to expect from Yoru Sumino, and found myself binging this entire volume at the end of a busy day when I had already put in a lot of hours of reading and writing. I don't begrudge a moment of it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the characters here act and speak like teenagers, but they and their concerns and desires were wholly relatable. Their interactions with each other are all consistent with the personalities (and secret abilities) to which we are introduced and, ultimately, they are all likable. In a story so deeply bound by the minutiae of Japanese high school life, we finish this volume rooting for every single one of them to thrive and move up and out of the cocoon of adolescent emotions to become a beautiful human.

Each character is different enough that we can find at least one whose story resonates with us, personally. As the stories play out and we learn more and more about each character, their behavior takes on new depths. Above all this, the special abilities their each have are so…fascinating. These abilities impact how each student relates to the people around them in ways that we, as we read, are able to find analogies within our own experience. I might not be able to see a physical balance of people's emotions, but there were days that it seemed (seems even now) that I almost can.

I fully expect an anime adaptation of this series at some point, and fully expect it to be amazing. I Have a Secret is an extraordinary work about the extraordinary people in our extraordinary lives.