Best Suspense Manga of 2021

With a nasty attitude and something rotten in his soul, high school student Yu Seongbin has picked the weak Han Gyuhwan as his victim. As no one cares enough to put a stop to the violence Gyuhwan suffers, his mind festers with fantasies of standing up to his bully and the useless adults around him, picturing himself pulling out a shotgun to exterminate them all. When their class leaves for a trip, it quickly spirals into a living nightmare for Gyuhwan. Seongbin inevitably starts harassing him, but Gyuhwan finally finds the courage to resist him. However, his bravery is short-lived, and he escapes into the woods, with an enraged Seongbin close behind him. But after he falls off a cliff, Gyuhwan stumbles upon a strange shotgun and a box of 30 bullets that he, in his desperation and exhaustion, intends for his classmates and apathetic teacher. Back at the camp, the class' talent show turns sinister. Something unnatural creeps in from the shadows, and as people begin transforming into twisted, bloodthirsty monsters, it seems that only Gyuhwan's mysterious shotgun can truly finish them off.

Dying from cancer and unhappy with how she has lived, 37-year-old Kang Jiwon catches her husband of 10 years—Park Minhwan—in bed with her best friend Jeong Sumin. In the ensuing confrontation, Minhwan becomes enraged and injures his wife, unremorseful even in her last moments as he allows her to bleed out. Feeling betrayed from the injustice she has endured for years, Jiwon is somehow reincarnated as her youthful 27-year-old self, a decade before her fateful death at the hand of her husband. With feelings of resentment, vengeance, and rage, Jiwon uses the knowledge of her past life to set straight all the wrongs and misfortunes she suffered as a result of her cheating husband and fake best friend. She will stop at nothing to make their lives as miserable as possible. But between acts of revenge, there is the potential for Jiwon to meet a more worthy lover this time around.

Sighs of awe follow Eun Chaerin wherever she goes, as expected for the perfect protagonist of a run-of-the-mill romance novel. She was once the novel's reader in the real world, and now she has the opportunity to live it herself and have her storybook ending with the male lead, Yu Jeha. But everything goes south on the day Jeha is supposed to confess his feelings, for he turns into a disfigured zombie and bites Chaerin. Instead of dying, Chaerin is forced to relive the same day, trapped in the loop of a bizarre zombie outbreak, unable to save Jeha. She desperately clings to him, as he is the only person she can see—all the background characters appear as nothing more than dark silhouettes to her. After almost four hundred repetitions, something unprecedented happens: a formless classmate pulls Chaerin to safety, and she catches a glimpse of their true appearance before dying again. The possibility of unlocking and revealing the extra characters fills Chaerin with new vigor. If she forgets about saving Jeha and focuses on finding this unknown extra in her next regression, she may be able to reach her happy ending after all.

The story is set about one year after the ending to The Fable. Akira and Youko are forced to abort their latest mission due to the Covid-19 pandemic and return to Osaka to continue their quiet life as regular civilians, but the peace is not to last.

A routine call regarding a burglary at an empty mansion leads cocky young police detective Jin Saeki to a gruesome and shocking discovery. The corpses of 13 children, along with the presence of a strange symbol, spur a manhunt for Juzo Haikawa, the mysterious absentee owner of the house. So begins an investigation (and an obsession) that will take Jin all over Japan and into the darkest recesses of both the past and the human soul.

Beautiful and intelligent, Somyung Gil has tirelessly strived to fulfill her mother's vision of the perfect daughter. However, when her less-than-perfect younger brother is tragically found drowned in a river, doubts plague Somyung's heart. She begins to suspect that their mother might be responsible for the unspeakable act. From then on, her paramount goal becomes escaping her mother's grasp, while all her mother wants is for Somyung to experience the perfect life she herself was denied. Will Somyung ever truly find her freedom?

Baku Madarame, who is now the leader of the Kakerou Club, calls his referees for an interview. The first person he meets is the referee Hikoichi Yakou. And he tells him about the first time he ever witnessed a gamble...!

An alternate story where Subaru accepts the deal with Echidna.