Really, I cannot praise this enough. It is heartbreakingly sad, and disturbingly realistic, in its portrayal of Jeremy as a young, naive victim, and Ian as a well-meaning but completely out-of-his-depth supporter.
People who complain that it is too angsty, too heavy, or that the actions of the characters were cowardly or nonsensical simply do not understand what it is like to be abused and completely powerless to stop it. It is actually quite insulting to suggest that Jeremy's behaviour is overly dramatically or irrational given the depth of the trauma he has, and I can only attribute such callousness to the sickening frequency with which "rape = love" is used as a plot device in yaoi manga, because in real life, abuse victims act like Jeremy. Not always, but a damn sight more often than the all-too-commonly-seen yaoi reaction of "You raped me, and I felt violated and ashamed, but now you told me you love me I understand and forgive you. Let's be together forever! And sure you can ostracise me from all my friends and family, because you love me." This is a serious manga, and such reactions should never be taken seriously. If this bothers you, don't read this manga.
Jeremy's downward spiral is very authentic. He is a young boy who has grown up with a suicidal mother pushing all her burdens onto a small child (think about it, she woke him up in the middle of the night when he was 10 years old to show him her slit wrists for Heaven's sake!). His father has died, so he alone became responsible for keeping his mother on track, even calling her Sandra to sound less like a son. When Greg comes along, he is dealing with all this and going through the generally painful teenage years. He is told "sleep with me or your mother will die", and when he refuses, Greg breaks up with his mother who promptly tries to kill herself again. So he does. This is just the first example of how Greg, ever so skilfully and slowly managed to box Jeremy into a corner until speaking out becomes impossible, finding help is unthinkable, and running away would be akin to murdering his own mother. Greg is very practised at exercising his domination and sadistic abuse over his victims in such a way that he holds their weakness and they feel compelled to keep silent.
On top of all this, he is in a new country, with a new school and new family, so he has absolutely no one to rely on, no one who knows him well enough to recognise the warning signs bar his mother, who is too screwed herself to actually be a good mother to her son and admit that the man she loves is abusing him. The new family around Jeremy isn't of help because how are they to know that he has become withdrawn when they only met him after the abuse started? Besides, Greg has managed to psychologically screw with everyone in the household in some way so they believe every word he says and follow him despite knowing how violent he can be. After everything he goes through Jeremy is shattered emotionally, and can only deal with the trauma by repeating it (a very common phenomenon actually). Cue Ian's clumsy attempts to heal wounds he cannot possibly understand after ripping them wider, and you have a very touching emotional manga.
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