Kyoko is a young woman whose low esteem often manifests itself as suspicious behavior. So when she joins a company and is taken by a senior colleague to her first ever speed date party, she meets a manga editor, Yoshizaki, who doesn’t hold back in his harsh appraisal of her. Though mortified at first, Kyoko resolves that he is someone who can help her improve herself, and she proceeds to follow after him and boldly asks: “Would you go out with me?” No sooner does Kyoko embark on this mission of self-help when she is reunited with a former college senior classmate with whom she had once been infatuated. But he had been an awful man who had used her infatuation to hurt her. Kyoko seeks to overcome the trauma of past love in this compelling love triangle story by Kirin Tendo.

Ritsu Okazaki was abandoned by his mother when a child and has since scraped out a seedy life in the only place that will comfortably accept him: the underworld. But one fateful day, Ritsu incurs a serious-head injury during a scuffle, and is informed by a doctor that he could go at any moment. With time running out, he sets out to find his mother, Reiko Hyuga. What he finds, however, is a happy and wealthy woman who spends her time lavishing love on another son named Satoru. Ritsu is torn between feelings of jealous hatred and yearning for the love of his mother. That’s when he’s reunited with Rinka, a girl he’d helped before. But Rinka has long been in love with Satoru, a childhood friend, but she has kept those feelings to herself. A mother and two sons, a girl and two men: two love triangles that intersect and clash to produce a bittersweet love story.

Four people’s paths cross one winter by chance: two women and two men in their 30s, all whose dreams have gone sadly unfulfilled. Instead of swelling toward the peak of their lives, their lives all seem headed gently downhill. Despite being total strangers, they decide to share a house together in the wooded resort area of a Karuizawa. But “chance” also hides some pretty big secrets in this brand new adult-sized drama that will have you laughing at odd chemistry, biting your nails at unexpected turns, and even alarmed by some stark truths of the human condition.

College student and Economics major, Yuka Minami (19) suddenly learns of the freakish death of her friend, Ikumi, on whose corpse were found reams of 10,000-yen bills. The eyes of Yukichi Fukuzawa, the face on the 10,000-yen note, had all been darkened black. When the bodies of 5 more men and women around Ikumi turn up in the same manner, rumors spread of a “death cash” curse. Frantic over this rash of inexplicable deaths in her immediate surroundings, Yuka one day hits upon a certain “rule” she believes might combat the workings of these fatal deaths. Horror and suspense surround her in this visceral depiction of modern society’s biggest and most terrifying subject: money.