Why did he get it?
Summary:
- Recent manga chapters explain why Itsuomi got a tattoo.
- He helped a kid from an undeveloped country to go to school.
- The boy died, and Itsuomi got a tattoo in memory of him.
A Sign of Affection (Yubisaki to Renren) is a romance shoujo manga written and illustrated by Suu Morishita. The 2024 anime adaptation of the series did really well, got a score of 8.26 on MyAnimeList and became one of the best anime of the Winter Season.
Since the adaptation became so popular, it naturally attracted more fans to the manga, which is currently ongoing. The manga is rather fresh, compared to many other series, since it started its serialization in 2019. There aren’t that many chapters and they come out once a month or even once in two months, so the events don’t transpire as fast as you might want them to.
Chapters 42-43 are called Itsuomi’s World Part I and Part II, and as you may understand, they give readers more perspective on the main male lead of the series.
Itsuomi’s Past Revealed
Itsuomi has always felt strongly about children from poor families, and he wanted to help them as much as he could. When he was younger, the image of hungry begging children with worn-out clothes shocked him.
That’s when Itsuomi decided to research the issue of children living in underdeveloped countries and that’s how he came across a blog of Kousei, who was active in the Philippines.
Itsuomi admired Kousei for what he was doing for children, giving them homes and providing them with educational opportunities. It impacted his own life and he vowed to help as many kids in need as he could.
It Started With a Pen Friend
Kousei wanted Itsuomi to go to the Philippines to volunteer, but Itsuomi was too young to do that, so he settled for making a pen friend instead, and this is how he started corresponding with a little Filipino boy named Soan.
They discussed various things such as dreams and experiences, and Soan thanked Itsuomi for his donations and providing an opportunity to go to school.
However, one day Soan disappears, and when Itsuomi asks Kousei about it, the man reveals that Soan has died. Itsuomi decides to keep the letters from the boy even though rereading them makes him cry.
This is how he decides to get a tattoo in memory of the night he made the decision to make Soan’s dream come true. The tattoo is a crescent moon and the Wind Rose of the compasses, and it’ll forever remind Itsuomi of the good deed he’s done and a pen friend that had so much impact on his life.