""Goldmund, will you come back?"" ---- Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund, 1930

This magna is about love and gender in puberty in, well, a Japanese high school setting. Yuki, a first-grade high school student, had to dress up as a girl for his sister once and fell in love with his crossdressed figure. Morii, a younger girl that always looks up to the Yuki that plays soccer in middle school likes him and always wants to grow up quicker so that she can be Yuki's girlfriend. Minamo, Yuki's friendless, sensitive, and booksmart classmate, fell in love with Yuki as well but things between these two are a bit more complicated since Minamo sometimes liked Ikeda, or the crossdressed Yuki. The story mainly revolved around the love triangle among these three characters.

The story of Yubisaki (fingertip in Japanese) Milk Tea is worth a read because at its heart it's not an ordinary love-triangle or love-n-gon/DA-graph story nor a novelty-seeking story about Japanese drag queens (watch/read Wandering Son instead). It's one of those stories that's worth to retell because it portrays a rather uncommon character, Yuki's psyche very well from start to end. Yuki is fascinated by Ikeda, just like his friend in the soccer team. Much like Goldmund, he liked girls too much (which made me wonder if his parent's divorce has anything to do with it.) The best evidence for this is that he quitted the soccer team to keep his figure. Deep down, he know that he has to grow up and the androgen in him is going to make him look like a man. He know that the perfect female figure is both lovely and cruel. When the winter comes, he gave in to his sexual drive and Morri finally defeated Ikeda (hopefully I'm not spoiling too much). When reading the last sex scene when Ikeda was gone, I cried. The beautiful art near the bottom of Yuki's heart and soul is lost in sex, much like the milk tea at one's finger, after tasting. Indeed, Ikeda moves me deeply and made my doubt if the author has a very close friend who crossdresses or it's a part of his personal history.

(if you've got patience/interest to read Narcissus and Goldmund, read it instead then consider reading this... well.)