Subarashii Shitsuren | Nishida Higashi

Nishida Higashi, queen of the salaryman oneshot, collects five (and a half) stories here, about high-powered, overworked men and the high-powered, overworked men who love them. There’s a little variation with the third and fourth stories, which are set outside of the office, but the other three stories all star a chief and his secretary, but to very diverse ends.

I find the first and the fifth oneshot to be Nishida at her best and most bittersweet, which might be expected for a collection titled “marvelous heartbreak.” In the first, a man in love with his domineering section chief is suddenly forced to confront the impossibility of his love when he’s raped by an ex’s brother. In a bl trope reversal, the rape isn’t a catalyst for love, and the section chief’s family features heavily in the moral balance of the climax, which is tender and affirming even when it lets down its main character.

The same plot elements — a secretary in love with the president, a family, a dubiously consensual sex scene — come back for the last oneshot, but the conclusion is far sadder. Nishida’s plots are often about timing: bad timing that leads two characters to like each other in mismatched cycles, or coincidental timing that brings two people from completely different worlds together for life. In the fifth oneshot, though, the timing is uncharacteristically perfect, and the characters don’t have any misunderstandings about each other’s intentions or feelings, but it still ends marvelously, inescapably, in heartbreak.