A charming tragic short story with twists and turns that keep you guessing. The gradual unraveling of the schemes and plots behind the prison had a good level of foreshadowing and tugs at your heartstrings. Pretty much all of the significant plot events happened before the story starts. There isn't a lot of heavy exposition, narration, or hand-holding, making this "show, don't tell".

MTL'd after the first chapter. Not sure why the 1* reviews exist, but... Be forewarned that the tags are accurate with mentions of su*cide, death, and violence cropping... more>> up later in the story—the MC is a pretty happy-go-lucky dude, however, so it doesn't get too emo. That said, he's also pretty withdrawn, suspicious, and smart.

There's no smut, but the shonen-ai romance elements aren't purely 1v1 (or at least, it's not what you might think at first). It's at the level that you can share this with your non-BL-reading friends. Light spoiler:

Spoiler

There are brief mentions of hand-holding and kissing with one character. Again, no smut.

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While I wouldn't strictly categorize this as a BE, it's definitely not a HE (for anyone). I thought it was appropriate ending, but won't spoil it since most of the fun is in the unveiling and seeing how various characters react. The characters all have sufficiently described backstory so that you can understand the motivations driving their actions. They come across as more or less complete beings, flaws and all.

As a sci-fi fan, this stands above most of the rest of the webnovels on NU. Without a lot of tedious exposition, there's a clear sense of the technology and politics that runs this world. That said, it's a very short story that focuses mostly on the interactions between MC, the prisoners, and the guards, so there isn't a lot of room for much else. <<less