okay... first of all, spoilers ahead.

second of all, the romance tag needs to be removed from this. romance does not involve psychological torture, no matter how cute the girls torturing each other are.

now that that's out of the way... i... don't know how to score this. first of all, the story isn't complete (not that that's stopped me from reviewing before lol) but i also can't read this without having a pit in my stomach. it's not traditionally enjoyable in the slightest.

the best way i can describe this story is as a study in interpersonal implosion and self-destruction. my initial reaction was "wow... this is disgusting. it can't possibly get any worse." but... it does!

it has a strange way of drawing you in... the first few chapters take airi's perspective as she goes about her daily routine, talking to her friends about any random topics that crop up, and at the end of the chapter she meets up with her "friend", hina, to abuse her in an empty classroom.

i'm not sure there's any POINT that the author is trying to make with this narrative. they do a great job of imagining disgusting scenarios that are not outside of the realm of believability. it's just hard to read something where an innocent girl is getting abused by someone she loves and not be like "yikes...". i'm not even really sure i can provide meaningful insight about it. it all just seems so cruel.

however, outside of the torture scenes, it tries to create this narrative of airi and hina being normal kids, despite their proclivity for violence and desecration. they have scarily regular conversations with their friends between these "sessions" but, without fail, they end up back together and harming each other more and more.

there are side characters who contribute to the chaos, of course. the inciting incident is, essentially, a girl just as fucked up as the protagonists finding out what they get up to in private and ending up documenting their secret meetings for her own twisted purposes. there are background characters who bully hina just because they think she takes some sick pleasure out of being bullied (which... she DOES, just from airi specifically). another side character indulges in the drama around her just because she's bored with her own life, which is obviously the least fucked up out of all of these examples but is still clearly laying out an unhealthy way of thinking.

while i'm discussing the characters, i should say i disagree with much of the feedback i have seen of them and their "arcs"... abuse is bad no matter HOW you slice it. you can't argue that the abuse airi gives to hina early on is "less bad" than the abuse that hina ends up giving to airi. they're BOTH disgusting. but i think the characters are strong... they aren't just "normal" people who have a deep secret, they're so clearly unnatural in the way they relate to the world outside of their interpersonal relationships.

in a way, it's not a bad thing to display that abusers are just human beings... abusers obviously never show themselves off to BE abusers when you meet them. they can appear as any other "normal" person, or even as a cute girl like hina or airi. it's like a warning.

it only gets bad when you try to frame what they're doing as "okay" just because it's self-contained. yes, hina is okay with airi's abuse. yes, they find each other cute and say they love each other (actually, airi NEVER says she loves hina without being forced to and is, in fact, repulsed by hina's romantic advances, at least as far into the story as i've gotten). that doesn't mean that the relationship they have is one of a couple who trust each other and are just indulging in kinks. they never discuss these patterns of behavior. hina (and now, airi) never know what they're in for before they're in the situation in which they're receiving the abuse. they just. abuse each other. it's horrific to watch them act the way they act.

the art, however, is GORGEOUS. it's overall the best thing about the manga BY FAR. it obviously gets a bit grotesque during the scenes with the abuse and torture, but it does a good job of showing what it's showing and setting the tone of the story. it can be a sweet shoujo manga one minute and a deeply disturbing psychological drama the next.

overall, i cannot say i enjoyed it AT ALL and it isn't over yet so maybe my opinion will change (though i'm pretty undecided on it either way at this point) but it is... interesting, to say the least. like a 20 car collision on a highway is interesting.

tl;dr: you're better off not reading this one if you're sensitive to rape, emetophobia, general dark themes, or child nudity (it's all in there and it's not good. steer clear.)