From Wikipedia:
Ai no Kusabi (間の楔, lit. "The Space Between") is a Japanese novel written by Rieko Yoshihara. Originally serialized in the yaoi magazine Shōsetsu June between December 1986 and October 1987, the story was collected into a hardbound novel that was released in Japan in 1990, and eventually expanded on and released in 6 paperback volumes.
Yesterday, I read an article by Elle Morie... Isn't it astonishing that a story written in 1987 is still collecting reviews and has Wikipedia webpages in 13 languages?
When I wrote rose x rikki, the similarities between ter fögi ische souhung and Ai no Kusabi impressed me. At the time, there was no translation of Ai no Kusabi into an European language. I had to use the unofficial translation of the dialogues from the first anime version.
The novel is written in a dark style...
Darkness as far as the eye could see.
Not a darkness so impenetrable that it crushed the senses with an unbearable claustrophobia, but a kind of looming shadow transparent enough to reveal the outlines of the surrounding environment.
Dead quiet.
Programmed for "all-season comfort," the air conditioner barely made a whisper. And yet the wafting air currents undulated like shimmering heat waves traversing the contours of the uneven dark. They were as a heavy, opaque mass of an ice floe descending into the depths.
And then came the faint rustling of sheets from the bed in the middle of the room. Shadows wavered back and forth, as if buoyed on the ripples of fevered heat swelling up from the deep well of silence. The shadows writhed left and right, suddenly stiffening in apparent rigidity. The occupant of the bed turned over and over, wide awake, vexed with a persistent insomnia.
Or perhaps by the visitation of bad dreams?
No, that was not it either. Not that he could not bed himself down, but that he could not raise himself up again.
His wrists were firmly bound together above his head, while his strained arms trembled slightly. He clenched his fists, suggesting an exasperated defiance of his confined state.
But he must free himself, no matter the cost. Though for one possessed of such an indomitable spirit, he did not seem to be struggling with any great frenzy of effort.
Perhaps he had given up the fight or had grown weary of resistance. His expression remained inscrutable, though now and then there spilled from his lips a low, moaning groan—the sound of a man reaching the limits of his perseverance.
He twisted his captive body to restrain what was bursting forth uncontrollable from within him, desperately clenching his teeth in order to resist it.
In such sounds were echoes of utter pathos. At the core of these utterances, a listener could almost catch the breathings of satiated sighs, permeated with deeply lascivious colors and scents.
Son—of—a—bitch! You—
The maledictions rose in his mouth, his breath shaking, his lips trembling, the mounting frenzy of his pounding pulse burning at his throat. As the repeated imprecations welled up and oozed away, he knew that doing so only ate away at his innards like a powerful poison. And yet the curses spilled out of him.
Goddamn fucking—!
Shedding tears without shame or honor, his eroded willpower and punished pride tossed to the wind, he scolded himself, biting his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood.