is a Japanese manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series written and illustrated by Cocoa Fujiwara

Cocoa Fujiwara

is a Japanese manga author and illustrator, born on April 28, 1983 in the Fukuoka Prefecture. She currently resides in Japan. Her debut was with a work called CALLING, which she made when she was only fifteen. She chose not to go to high school so that she could draw manga...

. It was first serialized in the shōnen

Shonen

The term refers to manga marketed to a male audience aged roughly 10 and up. The Kanji characters literally mean "few" and "year", respectively, where the characters generally mean "comic"...

 manga magazine Monthly Gangan Wing in June 2002, published by Square Enix

Square Enix

is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series...

. Currently, twelve volumes

Tankobon

, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series , though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...

 have been released in Japan. dear is set in the same world as Fujiwara's other work, Watashi no Ookami-san.

Summary

This story is about a girl named Chiruha who is a Lycanthrope, a mythical creature thought to have died out. She lives in the mountains alone in an abandoned hut with only a small television. Chiruha decides to leave her home and live with the humans. When there she discovers her childhood friend, Kisara. Kisara, though, has no memories of when he was friends with Chiruha. What he does remember is that he was supposedly cursed with immortality by a Lycanthrope. He believes Chiruha gave him immortality as curse and hates her for it, although this is not the case. Kisara was the adopted son of a rich nobleman and was being bullied when he was saved by Chiruha. They became friends, but after Chiruha was attacked by some villagers they both run away to live on their own. Two men who were sent to get Kisara and kill Chiruha accidentally hurt Kisara fatally. During that moment Chiruha unintentionally gave Kisara her immortality. When being used as a human sacrifice to drive away demons, Kisara remembers this and does not know what to feel since he can no longer hate her but can't go back to the past. He decides to just keep going forward and asks the captain if he could stop being the military's pawn.

After that it switches to characters from Watashi no Ookami-san. This is back to the past when Chiruha was using her powers. Both Subaru, the ex-demon lord, along with Komomo and General Purino (along with Kurenai and Carol) react to Chiruha's powers and go to find the source. Purino and Subaru all come on a mission to go to where Chiruha is. When they meet Chiruha doesn't know how to help them but wants to become friends.

Characters

Chiruha - Chiruha can be considered the main protagonist, since the story focuses on her in the beginning, but the story switches perspectives, so there are many main characters. Chiruha is (that we know so far) the last remaining lycanthrope. She looks exactly like a human, but every now and then her lycanthrope ears pop out. This hasn't happened often ever since she got to know everyone. Another difference is that she is supposed to possess great power, however, she has not displayed it yet, nor does she know how. When she was young she lived in a cabin in the mountains, having no connection to the world but a small t.v. At this time, she knew Kisara, and they were friends. One day while running away from home, they ran into a group of men who were trying to take Kisara. They ended up wounding him fatally, and Chiruha unintentionally gave him her immortality. Years later, Kisara seemingly out of her life, Chiruha summons her courage and joins the human world, walking to a nearby village. Here she meets Kisara, and starts living with him and becoming friends with police squad, and other demons who join them.

Kisara - Having forgotten the strange girl who lived in the mountains, Kisara grows up with the police force, knowing that he is immortal and remembering only that a lycanthrope cursed him with it. Over the years, he developed a hatred for the girl who changed his body. When Chiruha appears out of the blue, Kisara seems determined to gain her trust and then kill her, as revenge for the "curse". After attempting to kill her while she slept, his memories return and he realizes that she saved his life, and that she didn't even know what she had done. After this, Kisara slowly starts falling in love with her, while it seems that Chiruha only considers "Ki-chan" as a friend.