“I'd like to buy your time—for two hundred thousand yen a month.” For Sakata, the winter of his junior year brings nothing but loss. His mother is dead, his useless father is gone, and each day nearly costs him everything he has left. Then a young man named Nishikawa approaches him with an offer—and generous pay that could give his mother a proper funeral. However, the deal comes with several bizarre conditions that Sakata must meet: go to school every day, get into the same university as Nishikawa, and lastly, act like his friend until the end of their contract. As their bond deepens, the two boys starved for love must face the question neither dared to ask: Can a friendship built entirely on money turn into something real?

Buying You on the Day You Were to Die has story by Shiki Naritō. English translation is done by Aleksandra Jankowska. Published by J-Novel Club (December 22, 2025).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

As a general rule, I don't enjoy books that make me cry. There's enough of that in real life; why would I want to get a sinus headache from my escapism as well? Still, there are times when I'll admit that it's worth it – I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on The Book Thief, for example. But Buying You on the Day You Were to Die has an edge of emotional manipulation that sours the reading experience for me. It's designed to explicitly tug on your heartstrings with careful calculated plot points to either lull you into a false sense of security or to point out the ways that your dreams of a happy ending won't come to fruition. It's a book that wants you to cry rather than one that just had to be told that way.

It's also remarkably glum, even for a tragedy. Protagonist Sakata is already in the worst possible place when the story's inciting incident occurs: his mother has died of heart disease, his father abandoned them when she was hospitalized, and he's working nights at a construction site to pay for his mom's funeral and hospital bills instead of going to school. That's when Kadzuki approaches him – the other boy offers to buy his friendship for five years, promising incredible pay if Sakata will graduate high school and attend the same college as him. Because he's been planning his own death, Sakata isn't sure he wants to agree, but he does anyway, if only because he'll be able to pay off his mother's bills more quickly.

If you're wondering why there's a five-year time limit on Kadzuki's offer, well, you can probably guess from the context clues here alone. But it's also fairly evident within the text itself, although the author doesn't get really heavy-handed until close to the end. But Kadzuki's fate is only the means to the end in terms of what the point of the novel is, and that is fairly well done. Sakata had completely given up on having a future when Kadzuki found him. He didn't see the point. This (and Kadzuki's idyllic family life) is juxtaposed with Sakata's school friend Toyota, who also has a tough row to hoe – except that Toyota has a younger sister to worry about. In Sakata's mind, it's Toyota's sister that saves him from despair, because protecting her and getting her away from their abusive father motivates him to move forward. Sakata only has himself.

Kadzuki also has a sibling, an older sister, and two loving parents, but that doesn't change his fate. There's a real sense that he could be crying, “It's not fair!” to the heavens, but he doesn't. He finds a way to make things worthwhile, and that's the lesson Sakata has to learn. You can have everything and still end up with nothing. You can have nothing and find a way to move forward. Life is what you make of it.

I didn't hate this book, but I also really didn't enjoy it. It's well-enough written and translated, and the point is decently made. I'm just not sure it was worth the sinus headache.