The other stories in the book are at least a cut above this sort of stuff, even if the next story is only half a cut. In 'Fall' a rough'n tumble homicide cop hits on rent boy, then saves rent boy from rape by blowing the rapist's head off. ('He was resisting arrest.' Someone has been watching too many American movies.) Cop then rapes boy himself, assuming all those 'no stops' are just part of the act. Story ends on tender note with rentboy asking cop 'What's your name?'

'Interval and' has the structural complexity I associate with New Wave French films. ('Did they really meet last year at Marienbad?') After two readings and consultation with an equally puzzled Japanese friend, the story seems to be this. There's a boy, heir to an immense fortune after the deaths of his father and grandparents. The other disinherited relatives want him to renounce his inheritance and resort to having him kidnapped. Their first attempt is foiled by the boy's former highschool friend and lover, who looks like Hyouga from St Seiya and is currently working for a yakuza brother. The two have coffee and catch up on the past. They haven't met for five years since boy was the victim of a Fish In The Trap park rape, after which Hyouga vanished. Inspired by this remeeting, boy goes and asks yakuza brother what happened, and learns that Hyouga tracked down his assailants and sent them all to hospital. The two then have a happy reunion and terribly hot sex. Shortly thereafter boy is abducted again, successfully this time; but Hyouga has got one of his men to shadow him and shows up, white knight on a motorbike, to rescue his abused lover from his greedy relatives who've been trying to beak his will with a little attempted rape. Hyouga has had doubts about those deaths in the boy's family and goes off to ask his older brother to use his police connections (yes, yakuza have police connections: keeps the systems running smoothly when we all co-operate) to have them investigated. We leave older bro on the phone, confident that evil relatives will soon receive their comeuppance. Be warned that most of the interesting action happens off-stage in obscure word balloons.

There are a couple of other fluffy stories, one with an uke- seme switch: in Ashita no Kimi (You Tomorrow) the little infatuated jr high schooler has grown two inches in the last month and thinks this is a good enough reason for putting the moves on his university boy friend. Taller older guy can't resist. Asu mo Hiru mo... (Morning, Noon, Pillow and Night) has a little hommage to Patarillo: the dark older seme (a mere salaryman) comes home to find his bishounen boyfriend tricked out in silky lingerie and panting for some hot sex. This being alas a realistic story, salaryman falls into bed and asleep at once. This is really about the frustrations of trying to have anything like a life when you work for a Japanese firm. It's also partly a fantasy: salaryman takes ten days off consecutively at New Year's to go to boyfriend's parent's large house in the country to save his marriage. The fool brings his cell phone. You can guess what happens.

   My favorite of all these is 'Egao no Hitsuke' (Date with a Smiling Face) where one of those long silver-haired Japanese beauties is fleeing a fire in his apartment building and comes across what looks like a ten year old suffering smoke inhalation at the door of the boy's apartment. Boy tries to go back for his parents, asleep in the inside room, but flames gush out the doorway. Silverhair holds the weeping boy in his arms. A year later the two are living together and screwing like bunnies. (Boy is conveniently in high school, so this isn't shota-con, for those who worry about such things.) But as the first year anniversary of his parents' death approaches, boy tells his lover the affair has to end and won't say why, even in the face (if that's the noun I want) of some serious seme-like persuading. Cut to boy at his parents' grave, after the other relatives have left the first-year ceremony. Who should appear but Silverhair, seriously tidied up in suit and tie, with a proper job and the requisite bunch of flowers, all prepared to ask boy's parents' spirits for boy's hand in marriage. (Well, not quite, but close.) At any rate he's able to calm the boy's natural mixed feelings about the circumstances of their first meeting, and all is set for a happy future.

   The art style of this is nice enough if you like this art style, which I don't, much. Messy and confusing, like a lot of June-type stuff. The Japanese is about medium difficulty except when it's doing time warp tricks with unknown speakers as in Interval. But the collection has its moments. I'd keep it just for Silverhair, whose real name is a mundane Mita. Like Thompson or Collins. Another Shima character who's in the wrong kind of series: silverhaired men belong in shoujo fantasy. Actually, Mita has moments of looking like Shinohara's Facade- and Facade being as unstuck in time as he is, maybe that's who he is. Well, it's a thought at any rate.

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