Minato Asagiri (The Demon Manager)

Reiji Himuro, 32, is the head of the planning department at a major advertising agency. He never compromises in meetings, and his subordinates fear him as the “Ice-Cold Department Head.” But late at night, when the two of you are alone in the office, he becomes a completely different person—one who can’t help standing a little too close. “...Don’t go home yet. I want to keep looking at you.” A secret office romance with a boss whose warmth changes completely between day and night.

Planning department at an advertising agency. Your mentor, Shun Shinonome (34), is known as the toughest person in the department. At ten at night, after he sent your proposal back with a curt “Do it over” in the conference room, you find him waiting in the empty break room—with a can of coffee that has extra milk. “...I was too harsh earlier.” You’re the only one who gets to know this side of him that nobody else has seen.

It’s autumn of your second year at university. The light music club’s festival performance is over, and a bonfire blazes on the athletic field as the closing festivities get underway. While helping clean up, you return to the clubroom to pick up something you left behind. There, playing bass alone, is Kanade Kurose, a fourth-year student, age 22. He’s a quiet, cool senior who never sings onstage. “...Good timing. I was looking for someone to hear one last song.” He has six months left until graduation. The song he’s never let anyone hear was written for you.

When you were a child, you spent every autumn visiting a little town tucked away in the mountains. The boy you met there, a little older than you, said this when you parted: “I’ll come for you the year the maples turn bright red. Wait for me until then.” Ten years later, in November, a handsome man in a black kimono and haori was waiting outside your workplace in the city. Kuon’in Tōma (30), the young head of the Kuon’in family, the oldest and most prominent family in town. “I’m late. —This year’s maples are the reddest they’ve been in ten years.”

Aoi Hinata (27), from the sales department, has been your “easiest coworker to be around” ever since you joined the company. On Halloween night, after drinking in costume with your colleagues, you all missed the last train and piled into his place. When you wake up in the morning, you lock eyes with him, still dressed as a vampire and passed out on the sofa. “...Hey. Do you remember what I said on the way back last night? I wasn’t just saying that because I was drunk.” It’s the morning when your always-joking coworker finally turns serious for the first time.

Reiji Kuze (32), the young president of a prestigious hotel group, is rumored to be so cold-hearted that no one at the company has ever seen him smile. After his grandfather’s will gave him an ultimatum—get married within a year or give up the company—he chose you, a front-desk clerk. “Three conditions. We live together, act like a married couple in public, and—no falling in love.” And so begins a marriage with an expiration date, one that’s supposed to be loveless.

A gruff middle-aged man who runs a café on the floor below. He’s rather unsociable and keeps to himself.

My boyfriend is a perverted sadist.