Although Rysusuke appears very sweet natured, readers quickly realize that he harbours a dark secret. Lovesickness explores being a prisoner of guilt. Amidst this chaos, Rysusuke begins patrolling the intersections trying to stop the boy in black from telling fortunes. He turns friends against friends, leads a woman to kill her lover’s son and set herself ablaze, and culminates in the mass suicide of teenage girls. The young women quickly become obsessed with the boy in black: each wants to fulfil his twisted fortunes. One day a “beautiful boy dressed in all black clothing, with a pierced ear”, known as the boy in black, begins to maliciously tell the young women of the town bad fortunes. This is where an individual must stand at an intersection and wait for the first passerby to tell them their fortune. The town is ominous as the people within it are fanatics of “crossroad fortune-telling”. Lovesickness is the collection’s main story, which follows Rysusuke who returns to a town where he had once lived before. Lovesickness is one of Junji Ito’s lesser-known titles - Tomie and Uzamaki are the most famous - but Lovesickness certainly rivals them in terms of storytelling.
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