Real-Time Fever follows Shizuka, a university student who livestreams as an anonymous cam model. He likes the attention of people seeing him and he has a crush on his favorite commenter, “Shiro.” One day he accidentally calls Shiro while he’s masturbating and saying his name, and it turns out that Shiro is actually a student at his school, Kurosaki. Kurosaki figures out that Shizuka is the anonymous cam model and blackmails him into doing a class group project together. If Shizuka wants his side work to remain a secret, then he has to do the project with Kurosaki. Then Kurosaki sexually harasses him until Shizuka falls in love with him somehow?
This includes the “we got caught in the rain so now I’m over at his house” trope that I’m especially iffy on here, because it feels like Kurosaki takes advantage of Shizuka up to a certain point in this book. I’ve been reading BL for a long time so I understand the shy uke who keeps saying no and the commanding seme, and that’s what’s happening here, but maybe I’m old enough now that I just didn’t buy the leap from Kurosaki teasing and groping and kissing Shizuka when Shizuka says he doesn’t like it to suddenly they’re in love. The relationship didn’t seem based on a lot. I did find all of the sex scenes to be good and it was a fast read. It’s not like I hated this; I actually found the later half of the book pretty sweet once their communication kicks in. I just wish they had talked earlier and that Kurosaki wasn’t quite so overbearing and blackmailing in the beginning. The art is fine, sometimes a bit overdone or wonky looking, but again, the sex scenes are very lovingly detailed and it’s solid overall. Sometimes you just read a decent enough book and then move along with your life and that’s how I felt here.
