Hot Gimmick, Vol. 11

Neighbors in Love!

In company-owned rabbit-hutch apartments live tenants who can't afford to live anywhere else, and the apartment complex in which high-school girl Hatsumi Narita lives is ruled over by the rumor mongering, self-righteous Mrs. Tachibana. Get on Tachibana's bad side, and life becomes hell. When Hatsumi has to buy a pregnancy test because her popular sister Akane is late, Mrs. Tachibana's son, Ryoki, who used to bully Hatsumi as a kid, promises not to tell the world about Hatsumi's secret only if she becomes his slave. Suddenly Azusa, Hatsumi's protector in their youth, reappears to save her again! He's moving back into the neighborhood! Despite the budding romance between Hatsumi and Azusa, Ryoki has control over her through the secret that could ruin the lives of everyone in Hatsumi's family, and he hasn't forgotten who his slave is!

It's official--Hatsumi and Ryoki are no longer a couple...kinda. To avoid seeing her bossy (and totally former) b-friend, Hatsumi agrees to hang out at hunky (and totally adopted) big bro Shinogu's place. Hatsumi's dad stops by to fill the kids in on the Machiavellian scheme he and Ryoki's father were embroiled in, but this only reinforces Shinogu's resolve to sever his familial ties to the Narita household--and to convince Hatsumi to see him as a man, not a big brother. Later, Azusa gets more than an earful from an extremely unapologetic Mr. Tachibana, and Ryoki all but hooks up with another lovely lady...kinda. All this and more in Miki Aihara's Hot Gimmick, one of the most talked-about shôjo manga in both America and Japan!