Anata no Yoru ga  Aketera (あなたの夜が明けたら), translated on the cover as After Sunrise, Haru Harukawa Collection is a collection of shorts by, obviously Harukawa Haru. Some of these shorts have appeared in other collections, such as the Shakaijin Yuri anthology brought out in English here by Yen Press as Whenever Our Eyes Meet.

These stories are varied in tone, adult couples to a surprisingly poignant maid/mistress story, office stories and, inevitably a few high schoolers. A couple of the stories have some problematic age gaps, but whether you find that unpleasant or not is yours to decide. The stories themselves are not generally creepy. Sex is implied, or alluded to with tasteful nudes, rather than graphically depicted. But, like many of the kinds of stories I prefer, the emphasis is on emotional closeness, rather than physical relationship. And that is where I found the most problematic, content.

The first story is a classic modern fairytale. A woman who lost her husband hires a sex worker to sleep with. Not have sex…actually sleep. She cannot sleep alone. Now that she finds she can sleep this way, she has the sex worker fired from her agency, so she can…what? adopt her? own her? hire her?… full time. And because the client is so wealthy, she expects the sex worker to not work. What will she do with her days? she asks.  Whatever she wants, is the reply. My head is full of alarms and sirens throughout.  It’s fairy tale world, a sex worker and client fall in love live happily ever after. But…whatever she wants? Maybe she wants to be a sex worker, Ritsu. Did you never consider this?

A few of the stories had this “cool story, bro” quality, where if I told you the idea it would be fine, but when you dig down a bit, it is not so fine. Which made me like this book more than if it had just been one bland happy ending after another.

Ratings:

Art – variable, but mostly 8. You can tell the early stories.
Stories – 7
Characters – 7
Service – surprisingly little to none
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

Like an acquired taste, the stories had a complicated enough flavor to leave me with something to think about.