Kojima and Nakahara
Little Butterfly is a three-volume Boys' Love manga by Takanaga Hinako (who is also the author of Challengers, The Tyrant Falls in Love and Awkward Silence) about the relationship between reclusive student Nakahara and the cheerful - almost Keet Kojima. It was serialized from January to February 2004 and compiled into three volumes.Kojima sees Nakahara sitting in the rain one night, crying and alone and offers him his umbrella. The two end up in the same class years later and Kojima asks Nakahara to be in his group during a school trip. Nakahara begrudgingly accepts but disappears. Kojima finds him about to get onto a bus and chases him. Nakahara reveals that he has a horrible life at home and wants to cross the sea, like some butterflies he saw on the TV who flew over the sea for miles and flourished in a far-off land. They form a friendship but Nakahara grows attracted to Kojima, who struggles to cope with this.
This manga provides examples of:
- Age Lift: Nakahara and Kojima are middle school students, but the official English translation aged them up into high school students.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Shortly after Kojima and Nakahara become friends, Nakahara realizes that his feelings have grown into more than friendship. Kojima is a little weirded out, but allows him to remain friends on the condition he doesn't do anything "weird".
- Asleep in Class: Nakahara.
- Big "NO!": Happens the first few times Nakahara comes on to Kojima.
- Cool Uncle: Nakahara's only sane, loving family member.
- Determinator: It is revealed that Kojima has tried time and time again to become Nakahara's friend, but was always knocked back or not even noticed. Nakahara doesn't even remember all the times Kojima had tried to initiate a conversation before the school trip, but he persevered.
- Erotic Eating: While attempting to revise for his upcoming college exams, Kojima keeps getting distracted by his tutor biting his pen while thinking.
- First-Name Basis: Throughout the entirety of the manga, Nakahara and Kojima refer to each other by their last name, after graduating and looking at Nakahara's certificate, they see his last name is now "Sugisaki". So Kojima decides he should start calling him "Atsushi" to which Nakahara starts calling Kojima, "Yuki," which embarrasses him and insists he doesn't call him "Yuki" since his name didn't change. In the end, Nakahara refers to Kojima as "Yuki" for the remainder of the manga, also, Kojima only calls Nakahara "Atsushi" once, which was when the two are having sex, Nakahara prevents him from coming until he says his name, after doing so, Kojima cries and explains he's not used to calling him "Atsushi" yet.
- For Your Own Good: Nakahara's parents' excuse for putting so much pressure on him at such a young age.
- Generic Cuteness
- High School: As far as the English localization goes, the characters are in high school. (In the original version, however, they're in middle school.)
- If It's You, It's Okay: Kojima's attitude to Nakahara's attraction to him, although he still takes a little persuading.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Nakahara.
- Loners Are Freaks: Every class member except Kojima treats Nakahara like this.
- Luminescent Blush: Kojima is prone to this, and it even happens to the usually aloof Nakahara during his Anguished Declaration of Love.
- Odd Friendship: The main couple, at first - one is a reasonably popular, happy and energetic guy who is attracted by the mystery of the disaffected, moody loner in his class to try to become friends with him.
- Parental Neglect: Nakahara. After he failed an exam to get into an elementary school attached to a private junior high, Nakahara's mother had a breakdown and his father blamed him for it. His mother is no longer in a fit state to care for him and his father no longer cares.
- The Runaway: Nakahara right at the start of the first volume. He is revealed to have tried this many times before.
- Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Nakahara's one sexual encounter is treated like this by his classmates because Sex Is Cool, even though he himself did not particularly enjoy the experience and would rather just forget it.
- Nakahara's telling of the story makes it sound like rape. He wakes up breathless to find that the act's already started.
- Significant Name Shift: After Kojima and Nakahara have been dating for a while, Nakahara's last name changes after his escape from Abusive Parents. Kojima decides that he should call Nakahara by his given name despite Nakahara being okay with using his abusive family's name casually. Nakahara also agrees to call Kojima "Yuki" to show their closeness. Kojima ends up being too embarrassed to completely go through with it, but Nakahara is much more shameless.
- Troubled, but Cute: Nakahara definitely qualifies as this - his parents were abusive and he tried to run away from home several times when he was younger.
- Will They or Won't They?: They did.
