The Boy and I Who Will Break Up in 100 Days (Novel)

The Boy and I Who Will Break Up in 100 Days (Japanese title 100日後に別れる僕と彼, Hyakunichigo ni Wakareru Boku to Kare) is a Japanese literary boys love novel by Asahara Naoto, published by KADOKAWA in 2023. More a piece of thoughtful queer fiction than a conventional romance, it became the author's final published work and is the basis for the 2026 MBS television drama of the same name.

The story follows Yuma Kasuga and Itsuki Hasegawa, a same sex couple who unexpectedly go viral after an interview about a partnership oath system for sexual minorities charms the internet. On the strength of that attention, a production company invites them to be the subject of a documentary chronicling one hundred days of their life together, and Yuma, who genuinely wants to broaden public understanding of gay relationships, agrees.

There is just one problem: by the time the cameras are ready to roll, Yuma and Itsuki have, in truth, already fallen apart. Yuma persuades Itsuki to keep up appearances, and the two agree to perform the role of a happy, loving couple on camera. The documentary's director, Kayano Shiho, knows nothing of this and sets out, with real conviction, to capture the two of them exactly as they are.

What follows is a quietly devastating study of love performed versus love felt. Yuma pushes himself to be the perfect partner, while Itsuki grows suffocated under the weight of those expectations, and across one hundred days the gap between the lie they are filming and the feelings they cannot quite bury becomes impossible to maintain. The title tells you where it ends, yet the novel is less about the breakup itself than about everything tangled up in it: those who film love, those who fake it, and those who cannot let it go.

Beyond the central romance, the book is admired for its clear eyed look at the realities LGBTQ+ people navigate, including the everyday microaggressions and the quiet distance between the acceptance a majority offers and the equality a minority actually asks for. Its structure mirrors its premise, unfolding day by day across the hundred day shoot before closing on a handful of tender, melancholy short pieces.

Asahara Naoto, who debuted in 2018 and was known for the work that became the drama Fujoshi, Ukkari Gay ni Koku., passed away in July 2023 at the age of thirty eight, not long after this novel was released. First published by KADOKAWA as a hardcover in 2023 and later as a Kadokawa Bunko paperback in 2025, it remains available in Japanese in print and as an e-book, and in 2026 it reached a wider audience through its drama adaptation.