Nezumi no Hatsukoi

Nezumi has never known what it means to be loved. Taken in by the yakuza as a child, she was raised not as a daughter but as a weapon—trained to kill without hesitation, taught that affection was a luxury she could never afford. Her world is one of shadows, blood, and silent obedience, where the warmth of ordinary life exists only as something distant and forever out of reach. That world is upended when she meets Ao, a thoroughly ordinary young man with no ties to the underworld and no idea of the darkness buried in her past. Where Nezumi has known only violence, Ao offers her something entirely new: kindness without conditions. Slowly, tentatively, the two fall in love, and Nezumi dares to imagine a different life for herself. She moves in with him, and for the first time, the girl raised as an assassin begins to taste the simple happiness of an everyday existence. But Nezumi's past is not so easily escaped. Lurking just beyond the walls of their quiet home, the merciless hand of the criminal world reaches ever closer, threatening to shatter the fragile peace that the two lovers have only just begun to build.