This heartfelt, emotional boys love drama with disability representation explores themes of grief and depression.

Ren Kisaki has lived his life alone, writing novels from his wheelchair. Suffocated by help and frustrated by his perceived helplessness, he repeatedly pushes others away to the point that his caregivers have all but given up on him. That is, until the day newbie caregiver Rintaro Maki arrives on his doorstep. 

The kind and perceptive Rintaro — who sees Ren for himself, not only his condition — offers a connection Ren had long thought himself incapable of. Pushing out of his comfort zone, Ren finally starts opening up… giving him the strength to courageously confront his past and pursue, for the first time, his own story.

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Content Warnings: VIOLENCE, TRAUMA, CHILD ABUSE, MENTAL HEALTH STRUGGLES, REFERENCES TO SELF-HARM AND GROOMING

This manga surprised me in a multitude of ways–it’s more than just a BL, but a mystery and redemptive story as well. I was at the edge of my seat reading this, but also, my emotions were pulled in a variety of different directions as I read Ren’s story–his troubled present, and even more troubling past.

Ren is a hard character to love. He is constantly angry, blowing up at his caregivers, making judgements of people, and he’s also bitter. But you can’t help but feel for him, given his horrific past.

Rintaro is the caregiver who seems to partially break the spell Ren has over himself. Although Ren still yells at Rintaro, Rintaro can take it, and he also shows signs of caring for Ren despite his temper and his disability. This starts to crack away at Ren’s hard demeanor.

But Ren still has outbursts, such as breaking a teacup, and at one point violently cutting his own hair off in the shower. Rintaro bursts in to stop him, and later Ren trusts Rintaro enough to ask him to fix his hair and cut it for him. Rintaro thinks Ren is beautiful, good-looking with either short or long hair.

Rintaro kind of figures out on his own that Ren is his favorite author, dropping hints that he likes his work. This softens Ren’s heart a little. Rintaro also asks Ren to go out with him on a weekend he’s off, and the two are genuinely enjoying each other’s company until they bump into Rintaro’s friends. Ren is a bit understandably upset as he’s kind of ignored, and he interrupts Rintaro’s conversation with his friends to announce he’s going to the bathroom. After that, Ren decides to no longer hang out with Rintaro, and shoots him down when he asks to hang out again. This hurts Rintaro’s feelings, especially when Ren asks to have him taken off the roster as his caregiver.

A lot of stuff happens in between all of this, so much that I can’t share it all here. But I want to take a moment to talk about Ren’s history. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Ren has written a novel that speaks to his past, and we get it in flashbacks from the point of view of his teacher, Shinichi Mihara.

Ren was bullied terribly as a child–physical and emotional abuse. His mother looks down on him, annoyed that her child is “the type to be bullied” and doesn’t help him at all. His father isn’t really a part of his life.

Mihara is just a temporary teacher filling in for someone on maternity leave, but he’s immediately drawn to Ren because he has physical wounds regularly, doesn’t engage in class, and is the victim of bullying. It takes a while to get Ren to warm up to him, but they connect over their love of the stars and reading.

At first you completely sympathize with Mihara as someone desperately trying to support a bullied, terrorized student with an awful home and school life. But Mihara focuses a little too much on Ren, giving him preferential treatment, and eventually inviting Ren to his house. It’s meant to be a safe haven for Ren, and it is, but teachers have to be careful with how close they get to their students. There is always a line in danger of being crossed.

Mihara confronts Ren’s parents about the bullying, and Ren’s mother drives him away, mentioning that she’ll report Mihara for inappropriate behavior with her son.

So far, like I said, you feel bad for Mihara, and he doesn’t seem like a bad guy. At first.

But there’s an even earlier flashback with a disturbing panel where Mihara is with Ren in the shower room, and Ren is naked from the waist down (censored) while Mihara is washing him. ALARM BELLS GOING OFF!! They never give context to this scene, and we don’t see what happened before or after it, but it immediately reveals this relationship to have a dark, unwholesome aspect to it.

Anyway, Ren’s life is full of tragedy. One day, Ren runs to Mihara saying he doesn’t want his mother to “become a bad person” and Mihara rushes to Ren’s house, where inside he finds Ren’s mother has stabbed his father to death. It’s not quite clear if it’s self-defense or Mihara’s own feelings, but he sustains a stab wound to his thigh, and ends up killing Ren’s mother. Ren and Mihara run away together, with their final memories of each other being under the stars before Mihara disappears and Ren is rescued by his uncle and the authorities. However, Ren runs away from them, desperate to find Mihara, and is struck by a car in the process. We are left to believe that this is how Ren lost the use of his legs…only, in an earlier scene in the present, Ren’s uncle suggests that the use of the wheelchair and leg injury might be psychological. We don’t hear anything about it after that, but it plants a seed in your mind.

Back to the present, Rintaro has read Ren’s most recent book, which has an interesting ending passage:

Let’s return to the promise that was never fulfilled.

I’ll be waiting for you on that day, in that place, nineteen years later.

Rintaro horrifies Ren by figuring out that the novel is his story.

And everyone is wondering about what that final passage could be about (strongly hinting that this is addressed to Mihara, who disappeared).

This is a jam-packed manga (354 pages!) and there’s so much more to talk about, but I’m going to stop here because I’ve revealed so much of the book already.

The BL is light in this volume, but you can tell it will build up to something bigger later. There is a ton of mystery to the story and you’re left asking a lot of questions, and the story pushes your emotions in all different directions. The art is particularly expressive when it comes to the facial expressions of the characters, especially Ren’s, who veers from anger to self-loathing and self-doubt to blushing at Rintaro’s words and actions.

The book ends on a cliffhanger and with some additional mysteries surrounding Rintaro and what seems to be a missing child with similar circumstances to Ren’s past.

This manga was nothing I ever could have expected, and it was so, so good. I’m giving it five stars and am eagerly awaiting Volume 2.

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Walking in Your Tracks Vol. 1 is currently available directly from the publisher in digital and print, or from a variety of online booksellers and physical bookstores.