May 2022. BL manga series about two guys who dated in high school and had a bad breakup, and find themselves in the same major and friend group when they start college and struggle to work out what they should be to one another now.

Overall I enjoyed the characters and the story. It was often playful and the changing dynamics with the characters was propelled by the ways they have and haven’t grown as people, and their continued doubts and immaturity as college freshmen.

However there was one scene in which one of the couple started to assault the other by initiating sex while the other was protesting, and while they thankfully stopped and it was very brief, it was too serious of a violation to not be given more weight in the aftermath of it. It was not a miscommunication or withdrawn consent but clearly and knowingly disregarding the other’s boundaries.
It was ultimately treated like a fight or other lesser conflict in which the party at fault apologized and they moved on. I would’ve wished it either wasn’t included or was treated as the larger issue it was.
It was also very out of character and didn’t reflect the dynamic of them in the rest of the book or whole series, which is two people who care for each other trying to figure out what their relationship should or can be.

So, I still recommend with the caveat of that one element being a huge problem, but as it is very brief you can basically just flip 1-2 pages and get past it.
If the same type of behavior occurred multiple times and/or in other volumes I would likely not recommend it, but it doesn’t happen again.

All 3 volumes available through Sac library system.

“Escape Journey” volume 1 by Ogeretsu Tanaka.