The story is set in Hikari City, Gunma Prefecture. Surrounded by mountains, second-year middle school student Kasuga Takao lives each day feeling a deep sense of suffocation and stagnation. What saves his heart is Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).
One evening, when Kasuga returns to his classroom to retrieve something he forgot, he finds the gym uniform of his admired classmate, Saeki Nanako, lying there. After looking around to make sure no one is nearby, Kasuga commits an impulsive mistake: he steals the uniform. However, the classroom was not empty. The entire incident was secretly witnessed by Nakamura Sawa, a problematic student in the class.
The next day, Nakamura approaches Kasuga with a certain “contract,” offering to keep his secret in exchange for compliance. Gradually falling under Nakamura’s control, Kasuga is tossed about by her perverse demands. As he is driven deeper into despair, his sense of identity begins to collapse.
Through an unexpected turn of events, Kasuga begins dating Saeki and finds himself tormented by the contradiction between his feelings of love and his sense of moral transgression. Torn between Nakamura and Saeki, Kasuga wavers. At a large local festival, Kasuga and Nakamura cause a major incident…
(Source: Japanese = TV Tokyo || Translation = MyDramaList)
~~ Adapted from the manga series "The Flowers of Evil" (惡の華) by Oshimi Shuzo (押見修造).
