Yaoi with low ratings and questionable tags. Just my cup of tea.

The story is daring with how the characters and story is presented. A cruel “romance” indeed. The MC is a bad guy, as are most of the people who appear around him. And by bad guy, I don’t mean the misunderstood loner bad boy commonly found in other romances. “Plundering neighbouring towns as his main livelihood, and scalping opium as a side job” is no euphemism. I think this makes for an interesting read, if not anything else.

The MC is amazingly cruel and vicious, with just a touch of straight-up crazy. The romance isn't anything soft and fluffy, and is planted pretty firmly in the territory of F**ked up. Truthfully, when it comes to romantic stories I'm not a huge fan of them, and I'm also not a big fan of the messed up sort, but there's something so wholly off kilter about this MC that makes me keep reading. It's like I want to see just how far off the deep end he'll go and how many people he'll end up dragging with him. Although this is a romance, it's the psychological aspects that end up interesting me.

Spoiler

Based on what's happened thus far, I'm not expecting a very good ending for the MC. If the MC ends up in a nice happy romance I might just pass out due to shock. So far, there have been several romantic interests, but nothing has gone nicely, and who will end up the final love interest is up in the air (who knows, maybe a new character will appear to take the position). Although nearly all of the characters are extremely brutal and viscous, I do feel like there is something oddly human about it (maybe it's the way that the MC just can't seem to find the right one, and the damage that war and unbridled violence can do to a person), which is interesting.

With the personalities and occupations of these characters (the MC is in the army, as are most of the other characters, hence war and violence) I figure the story will continue on a darker route, so if you aren't interested in those darker types of stories, or if you prefer your romance without the side of emotional abuse I would recommend trying something else. On the other hand, if you have an appreciation for the darker, more tragic and crazy psychological aspects this could be a pretty fun read.

If you are not okay with emotional abuse, physical violence, killing, torture, a crazy MC, yaoi (this is a BL story), or r*pe (this one's right there in the tags), then you will not like reading this story.

For this deliciously screwed up story I'll give it three stars. No more than three because I do feel that it gets a bit extreme on some occasions, and it sometimes reads more like a tragedy or psychological story than a romantic one. No fewer because I felt that these aspects were pretty well done despite that. Besides that, I've yet to read another romance story where the MC is involved in a realistically brutal war, (it makes sense why there aren't any though, haha), which is a unique point.

Read up to Ch 10 and randomly skipped to Ch 28 just to see if it got any better. I couldn't find anything likeable about the MC. It's a constant circle of petty cruelty, r*pe, death, and etc.