I don't even know where to start honestly. Generally speaking, I love dark m/m and always have, but this was an incoherent soap opera mess from start to finish. None of the character 'growth' was believable, Shouto comes across as a spoiled child who gets exactly what he wants all the time, and manages to avoid jail because Riku actually has a conscience (which is used systematically against him by every single character, literally no one in this story actually cares for Riku as a person in a genuine way).

There were moments where this story looked like it might be good, but the scenes were too short and never fleshed out enough, and so it just never got there. A lot of the time I was only giving it one star for the artwork, which is *very* good. But this artist needs another storyteller or scriptwriter, or someone to look over the writing, or to just learn more about genuine character growth. This story has a very flimsy plot, so all you really have is the characterisation, except you don't really have that either. It's a standard Stockholm syndrome story, with about 28 chapters of 'I hate this' and 3 chapters of 'actually I love it really but you have zero reason to believe me.'

I've read hundreds of manga / manwha / m/m published romances and m/m fanfics that all deal with themes like this (forced sexual slavery, repeated kidnapping, noncon-to-lovers, etc.) and all do a far more competent job with the story element. Like I get that this is meant to be pulpy, it's a quick-read story with no substance, but for me it loses the chance to be enjoyable because what little substance it does have doesn't do justice to any of the characters. Whenever it started to develop a plot, it was done in a few pages, left hanging, or given a slap on ending. I don't regret reading it because it honestly took no time at all to read, but I can find meatier m/m with these themes out there, which is far more believable, and I'm going to enjoy rereading some of those now. ( )