u/HertzManfried

This one should be a lot tamer than the last I sought out. It is an office romance that I scoured for online but because I can’t remember the name, I only found other office yuris (good news, though, office yuri is a mine I have not tapped and will soon do so).

Anyway, description time. Not good memory of main characters, I think one may have been blond and the other brunette (black hair) (no, not Ayaka is In Love with Hiroko, which IS peak tho). I’ll call them by placeholders: X & Y. They work at rival companies and met by literally bumping into each other at a park (either on way to work or on lunch break). After the collision, X recognizes Y is from a rival company while helping Y pick up her personal effect, while Y is clueless that X is a corporate rival and just sees a cute lady. (If it helps jog your memory, one of the characters was wearing a face mask). Anyway, Y is now seeking out X during every lunch break and that is how they usually meet. X is confused/cautious around Y because she doesn’t want corporate drama.

All the same, Y manages to keep having lunch/dinner with X. They also sleep at each other’s place a couple times. There should also be a brother character who sees the budding romance from a mile away and works to be a wingman.

My memory is clearly a little more spotty, but I’m hoping to come back to it.

So, I keep a list of manga I have read and enjoyed, under the chance that i want to re-read it. This post, which I hope fits this community’s guidelines, is to ask for help finding it, since my list of manga names has been corrupted and I have to retrace the ones I liked best.

(Disclaimer: This post is labeled NSFW because the sex scenes are ABUNDANT. And while that is absolutely an incentive for me to find it, I also really enjoyed the story. If you don’t do NSFW stuff, I get it.)

TL;DR of plot at the bottom

Manga’s descriptors: colored, long-strip, not a one-shot, at least 20 chapters

Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. There are two main characters, whose names I have forgotten. The first, who I will call X, is brown-haired woman (mid-to-late 20s?) wears glasses, has a possessive younger sister, and is living separately from family while studying for a doctorate (if not a doctorate, some form of study and research at a university). She is not a professor, but her senior position among the students and experience as an adult earning money from this institution leads to her serving as a research guide for younger students. (I believe the studies are medical/pre-med in nature). The other character, who I will call Y, is a college student living alone who does lesbian sex work (to protect herself from men) to pay for tuition in the same school as X. Them going to the same school is a coincidence, but X recognizes Y (a pre-med student under X) as the lesbian prostitute she hired to lose her virginity with and is now faced withe being the TA and senior of Y and her fellow students. Y does not want to broach the subject, keeping work and person lives (and personas) separate. Since Y won’t let X bring it up, X instead keeps paying to lay with Y, but they would also use the time to go on dates or just cuddle on certain days. This leads to the development of mutual romantic and sexual feelings.
If you want a description of personal motives/arc: X started off with curiosity, then an inexplicable crush on this fellow student leading this double life, before becoming love after using her semi-maternal, comforting habits (might not be the best way to say it, but it is a short way) to break down some of Y’s defenses and learn more about her. Y, ln the other hands, remains pretty uninterested and even annoyed/confused as to why X (a woman who had previously used her services to lose her V card and satisfy curiosity) is still perusing her as a lay and as a person. In all fairness, she doesn’t want to have these talks at school nor when she is at work where she pretends to be a different person, but X’s persistence and lack of judgement slowly leads to Y letting X in and they became a couple.

The possessive sister bit at the beginning was because, as always, there is a character who temporarily separates the couple. X’s sister is this manga’s staple “separator” who: A) wants her sister to herself (platonically, thank goodness), B) knew Y in the past and I think bullied her, and C) I believe blackmails Y’s status as a sex worker so that Y breaks up with X. She relents when she sees her sister, X, crying and stops obstructing the relationship.

I should say that the frequent sex scenes remain consensual, and the drama/angst of the romance comes from Y eventually become anxious that the relationship is physical only, so she becomes scared to stop acting like her persona because at least the pretext of “paid service” will keep them together longer while making that leap into the unknown of “romance” could break this little routine that has bonded them so far. (this is before the love was properly confessed).

There is, of course, a lot more little things I could divulge, but this should lay out the main plot quite thoroughly.

TL;DR Female senior college student/researcher living away from home (no family drama, just independent) loses her v-card to a lesbian sex worker, meets the same woman at school, and pursues her romantically. She courts both personas of the woman as a sex worker and as a student, waiting for Y to become comfortable enough to let her in. The story has an impressive balance of wholesome and explicit scenes that never seem to detract from the story.

P.S. This is just me talking about it now, there are times where the story is somewhat comical, because X definitely recognizes Y when she is a student. They have a “I know”, “I know you know”, “I know you know I know” type situation. It’s usually played for angst, but the story gave its fair due to how that “elephant in the room” dynamic affects regular interactions, such as when X tutors Y for better grades or offers guidance on Y’s research projects. Not to mention when they start dating, where Y, lacking the confidence of her persona, struggles to initiate or maintain the mood of a top/lead.