Twenty-year-old Ebato Aoi has hit rock bottom. Out of school since his early teens, unable to keep a job or a girlfriend, and scraping by on crash-for-cash scams, he's headed nowhere fast. Then he picks the wrong mark: the absurdly handsome CEO riding in an absurdly expensive car, Inami Takane. Given the choice between jail time and becoming Inami's fake boyfriend, Aoi takes the obvious option. But he soon realizes that serving time might have been easier to handle than playing boyfriend to a prickly, arrogant CEO...

Fraudulent Fiancés has a story by Shinobu Kuriki and art by Hiroi Takao. English translation is done by Rymane Tsouria. Published by J-Novel Club (October 27, 2026).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

We tend to think of Cinderella stories as being the strict purview of female leads, but there are, in fact, male versions of the character. Known as Askeladden or Ash-lad, these boy Cinderellas are more comparable to the miller's son in “Puss in Boots” in that they're generally regarded as useless but manage to come out on top and get the princess in the end. Aoi, the protagonist of Fraudulent Fiancés is one of them. The youngest son of a terrible (as in they abandoned him when he graduated from middle school) family, after missteps and bad luck ended up working for a “crash for cash” scheme. That means he jumped out in front of cars and then shook drivers down for compensation. All that comes to an end when he jumps in front of Takane Inami's vehicle…because Inami has just had a bad breakup and is in need of a pretty boy to make his ex jealous. It really does read like a modern Ash-lad story.

It's hard not to like Aoi. The poor kid (I say kid, but he's of age, as is stated several dozen times in the book) has had it rough to the point where he barely even knows what it means to be comfortable and happy. Inami may initially take him in as a revenge scheme, but even the wealthy scion who has never eaten in a chain ramen joint recognizes that no one ever helped Aoi. He and his secretary/best friend Sakou realize that Aoi is more than just a bad guy; he's someone who was simply never given a chance. As Aoi throws himself into making things work for what he thinks is his temporary boyfriend position, it becomes clear to everyone but himself that he's actually very smart and just needs to figure out how to work with his learning disabilities in order to succeed. Where Inami at first thinks he's just civilizing the younger man, he soon shifts into genuinely wanting him to succeed.

The problem here is that we don't get inside Inami's head at all, relying on his tsundere actions and Sakou's words to understand what he's thinking, and that's a bit of a mixed bag. While we can see Aoi's strengths as he settles in, Inami's more of a cipher, and that does take away from the romance at least a little. Even with that, though, it's a bit difficult to see the romance develop; it's clear that Aoi is becoming more confident and comfortable, but not necessarily that he's falling in love with Inami. That doesn't detract as much from the big romantic denouement as it might, which is a testament to both Kuriki's writing and Tsouria's translation.

If you're in the mood for a BL Cinderella story, this is a good one. It lacks interiority, but it's also consensual and really quite sweet, not to mention very readable with just enough spice (i.e. two sex scenes). I had a pleasant time reading it.