Title: Honey Lemon Soda Vol. 11
Author: Mayu Murata
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance
Publication Date: April 28, 2026
The Story
We finish out the camping trip, and after it ends, Ishimori begins to start spending more time with her new group of friends. It started when Ayu invited her out, then Tao and Moka overhear Ayu’s conversation, and they decide to make it a girls’ night out at Ayu’s place. They order some pizza, powder themselves up in Halloween makeup, and talk about their respective boyfriends and love lives. Miura comes to pick her up, and when he brings her home, they run into Ishimori’s father. He wants to speak with Miura alone, and when they do, he reveals a deep secret that he has been keeping from Ishimori!
Throughout the volume, Ishimori wrestles with wanting to be near Miura as much as possible. On another outing, she wanted to get dolled up for him, so the girls took her clothes shopping, but it turned into giving her a complete and total makeover. She wants to show Miura what she looks like, but she’s torn because she wants to respect his time… especially since she knows that he’s at work. Her will to see him wins out in the end, but when she goes to visit him at his job, she discovers that he quit a week ago, and his phone is turned off!
By chance, she ends up discovering where he works now, and while he explains things, he realizes he made too many moves too quickly and worries her. He apologized, but there were reasons for him to do so. Ishimori writes in a notebook about things she wants to know about Miura. When she presents it to him, he outright refuses to write anything in; however, he feels bad, so as a compromise, he agrees to answer one question every time they meet up. This continues until Ishimori points out a particular question that he keeps avoiding.
He thinks about it, then decides to answer it. What will the impact of his answer have on his relationship with her?
Characters
The biggest piece of development here was on Ishimori, although Miura had a big moment himself. With Ishimori, she realizes just how much she loves Miura, and that drives her to always want to be around him, but in typical Ishimori fashion, she becomes overly reserved and holds herself back, using “respect for his time” as a wall between herself and her desires. A lot of that has to do with the way Miura presents himself. He’s stuck in a holding pattern of being overly mysterious and cold, then apologizing for being overly mysterious and cold to make things right. It’s happened so much that one would think that Ishimori would know how to read him by now, but her wants and desires are clouding her judgment and making her only focus on what she wants.
That isn’t to say she’s being selfish. She’s still trying to figure out how to be a good girlfriend through everything, as well. Her constant worrying about Miura is a classic sign of that, but not being able to pull the trigger is also classic Ishimori, too. In the beginning, Ishimori had a confidence issue in herself. Dating Miura has broken that, and she has been a lot more outgoing lately; however, the confidence issue didn’t totally go away. Instead, it manifested itself in a new way where she’s not confident in her ability to be a proper girlfriend, but she’s trying to fix that… Miura’s coldness is the problem because she can’t read him one-hundred percent of the time.
The reason for that, though, is revealed in this volume. There is a secret that Miura has been keeping from Ishimori, and while I’ll leave it for you to discover, it’s quite significant, and it’s completely understandable why he didn’t want to tell Ishimori about it… especially with the way she had been acting as of late. He’s well aware that she wants to be closer to him, but he’s been keeping her at arm’s length for this very reason. He does eventually tell her, which makes you wonder if he will continue to keep her at a distance or allow her to grow closer.
Tao and Moka seem to be taking a more prominent role in the series now. It seems as if they are becoming regular friends of Ishimori, which is a stark reminder of how much she has changed as a character. There was even a random background character who noticed Ishimori at a restaurant and remarked how they remembered her as the girl crying in the street from junior high, and how she has no problem smiling now. No doubt that these two have played a bit of a role in that, and as long as they continue to be true friends with Ishimori, it will only help her character’s growth.
Final Thoughts
While the big focus here was on Ishimori trying to be a proper girlfriend, the drama over Miura’s secret certainly spiced things up. While the secret wasn’t something that could damage his reputation, it did invoke some emotions that made you feel sorry for him. It also answered a lot of questions about the way that he is, why he’s always so closed off and guarded, but as Ishimori’s friends noticed, while he puts walls up around others, he doesn’t do it with Ishimori, which says a lot about how much he thinks and cares about her.
Because of that, this turned into quite the heartwarming volume, and while it’s easy to sit back and wonder why he couldn’t just be open with her from the beginning, once you learn his secret, it’s like it’s easily forgivable. I felt Miura grew a lot as a character here, and that moment with Ishimori’s father was something I certainly didn’t see coming. Given how her father has been, it was quite shocking to read their conversation.
For some reason, it feels as if things are wrapping up soon, but when I went to check off my progress on AniList, I noticed that the series ended in Japan… and that we’re only a third of the way through! When I looked it up, it seems this series has a total of 31 volumes… and here we are on 11. Wow…
It’s super rare to see a couple get shipped in a romance series near the beginning and have the series last this long. Normally, I like to make predictions about how the series would wrap up, but with 20 volumes still to go, I have no idea what’s to come. I can say that we will probably see Ishimori and Miura’s relationship grow a bit more in the next volume, but there was something that was said in the narrative in this book that gives me a bad feeling. After one short discussion with a classmate, Ishimori wonders if this love would last forever. With 20 volumes still to come… that can’t be a good sign. I have a feeling this love won’t last forever… but I don’t think it will end, either. I smell a hiatus for their relationship, and I have a feeling it’s because Miura doesn’t learn his lesson and continues to remain closed of… and with Ishimori’s growth as a character, I can see him doing something selfish that upsets her so much that she’s the one who initiates the break-up, thus causing Miura to seriously reflect and figure thins out before getting back together.
Just a hunch, and maybe I’m reading too much into things, but it seems like the seeds were planted in this volume for that plot point in the future. There’s certainly plenty of time for it to happen. Plus, if you’re telling me we’re just going to get 20 more volumes of them being a couple… things are going to get old and stale fast… especially if I have “end of series” vibes this early.
We’ll see!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press.
