Nomi x Shiba Vol. 3 is the payoff for what the first two books have been teasing since day one. The chase phase is over, the label is official, and the real challenge becomes living inside the choice they made.

Plot

The series starts at a boarding school dorm where Nomiya spends Vol. 1 trying to convince himself he’s not in love with Mikoshiba, despite the obvious gravitational pull. Vol. 2 turns that denial into momentum, picking up after a confession and pushing the story into a new, more physical permission-space that still feels emotionally risky for both of them.

Vol. 3 takes that momentum and locks it into place. Mikoshiba is officially Nomiya’s boyfriend, and the two get to keep rooming together through the end of school. The hook is wonderfully simple. Now that the person Nomiya has been orbiting is “in arm’s reach” and openly affectionate, Nomiya has to figure out how to handle intimacy without combusting the second the door closes.

That framing fits what you flagged about the volume leaning into deeper intimacy as vulnerability rather than spectacle. The book isn’t selling “will they or won’t they” anymore. It’s selling the more satisfying question of how they stay gentle with each other once the relationship becomes a daily reality.

Characters

Nomiya remains the focal point of this volume for his reflective moments throughout this collection of chapters. His whole arc is built around the gap between what he feels and what he can admit without panicking, and Vol. 3 sharpens that because he no longer has plausible deniability. He has a partner—and with that comes changes.

Mikoshiba’s role is sneakier than it looks at first glance. Yes, the series plays with his “killer cuteness” and how easily he can wreck Nomiya’s self-control. But the more interesting beat is that Mikoshiba is not written as a prize at the end of a chase. He’s present, responsive, and emotionally active. In a lot of BL, the moment a couple becomes official is where tension deflates. Here, becoming official creates new tension, because being chosen brings its own fears. It invites questions about meeting expectations, of whether you can keep being wanted once you stop being a secret, and if “unconventional” is merely a phase. Or, more importantly, if you can take steps together.

That’s also where the peer-world matters. When classmates begin to acknowledge what’s going on, it both validates the pairing and raises the stakes. In a dorm environment, privacy is a luxury, and the book’s premise about keeping things “PG enough not to bother the neighbors” is basically a character dilemma in disguise. But not out of shame, guilt, or fear—just a few of your traditional intimacy struggles in the real-world.

Art

Tohru Tagura’s visual style is built for intimacy that’s half-comedy, half-ache. It leans on crisp expressions and body language that’s easy to read even when the characters are lying to themselves (or even when they’re just shy about new experiences). That matters in a story where the funniest moments are often the most honest ones, like Nomiya basically short-circuiting because his life has suddenly become everything he wanted.

Vol. 3’s scenario is especially suited to that approach because the tension is spatial. They’re rooming together. They’re within reach. Because of that, the stress is inherently visual: a glance toward thin walls, a hand that almost goes too far, a pause that says more than dialogue. When a romance is this proximity-driven, the art has to sell microbeats. This series does.

Themes

Vol. 3 is essentially about consent as comfort. The earlier volumes build toward permission, while this one lives inside it. And that new shift forces both characters to practice a different kind of honesty.

There’s also a theme the synopsis signals plainly, even under the comedy. Wanting someone is easy. Managing yourself when you finally have them is harder. Nomiya’s willpower problem is funny on the surface, but it’s also about responsibility. He doesn’t want to reduce Mikoshiba to a fixation. He wants to be a good boyfriend, not just a desperate one.

And because this is a shared story with multiple lives in the mix, the outside world keeps brushing against the relationship. Neighbors, classmates, the shared space. It turns romance into something lived, not something sealed off in a fantasy bubble.

Verdict

Vol. 3 looks like the volume where Nomi x Shiba fully commits to what it does best. It’s steamy, yes, but the heat is tethered to character, not just escalation. Mikoshiba being officially Nomiya’s boyfriend gives the story a new baseline, then uses that baseline to explore vulnerability, restraint, and the quiet pressure of being seen.

If you’ve been waiting for the series to move past tension-as-denial and into tension-as-intimacy, this is the one that’s built to deliver.

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