In Volume 1, we met Nobara whose quiet live is upended when the daughter of her late sister arrives on her doorstep. Lily is a quiet girl, but slowly, she becomes more comfortable with her aunt and her aunt’s boarder, Maya.

As Volume 2 of Lily Lily Rose opens, Lily is doing well – she’s talking more, she’s playing with local kids. Nobara, however, is not doing well at all. Haunted by her late sister’s death, we accompany Nobara as she mourns the relationships she and Yurika had…and the betrayal she felt at her sister moving on to a life without her.

Nobara starts to take her anger at Yurika out on Lily. Lily withdraws into her noverbal state and Maya stands between her and Nobara. Maya rebukes Nobara and points out that Lily is not a stand-in for her sister and should neither be treated like one, nor blamed for Yurika’s failures.

In the meantime, we learn that Lily was there when her mother killed herself. She and her father could only watch from the shore as Yurika drowned herself in the ocean.

Nobara apologizes to Lily and the girl graciously accepts, but established clearer boundaries between them. They need to need one another, but neither of them will be allowed to become dependent, now.

As we established in Volume 1, Noabara and Maya are not lovers, but there is a comfortable closeness about them that does feel like they are partners. When Nobara and Lily are estranged, it’s Maya who step in to parent Lily. Crossdresser Saotome comes by for tea and refers to  Maya as Nobara’s wife. Nobara is honestly confused by this, so Saotome says, “partner, then” and goes on to note what is obvious to all of us…that whatever they see their relationship as, it has morphed into a kind of family, whether Nobara likes it or not.

As the series end, we see that the three of them have indeed become a family and we’re assured that Lily and Nobara will both be able to move on and grow.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 8
LGBTQ – 4
Service – 1

Overall – 8

This was an uncommonly gentle and sweet story by a creator who often fills her Yuri stories with incest and violence. It felt like  throwback to her days of gentle school ghosts in Himitsu no Kaidan (Volume 1 and Volume 2). The end of the story was sweet and satisfying and I’m glad I was able to read it.