Dirtaria
Twenty years ago, Yuki was violently banished from his family's estate for the crime of loving another man. Stripped of his inheritance and left to starve in the rapidly modernizing world of early 20th-century Japan, he survived. He fought his way up from the slums, built a life on his own terms, and became a respected sociology professor at the Imperial University. He locked the doors to his past and swore never to look back.
Until the past walked right into his lecture hall.
Eighteen-year-old Kihachi knows only two things about his eldest brother: he is a twisted disgrace, and he is gone. Following the devastating loss of their middle brother, Seiroku, to the brutal realities of the war, Kihachi is left to carry the suffocating, gilded cage of the family legacy entirely alone. Desperate for a breath of freedom, he flees the oppressive walls of the family estate for the university, seeking anonymity among the sea of black wool student uniforms.
Instead, he finds the ghost his parents tried to erase.
When the burdened, newly appointed heir and the disgraced outcast unexpectedly collide, the fragile worlds they have both meticulously constructed threaten to shatter. Bound by poisoned blood, twenty years of whispered lies, and the crushing, shared grief of the brother they both loved and lost, Yuki and Kihachi must navigate a tense emotional minefield.
They are strangers sharing a face. They are survivors of the same ruthless patriarch. And in a changing era where tradition clashes violently with modernity, they must decide if the ruins of their brotherhood can be rebuilt, or if the suffocating weight of their family's legacy will finally drag them both under.