I'm not exaggerating when I say this is an instant classic.
Usually, I'm the type of person who prefers more lowkey, relationship-focused stories; I like it when the BL is driven by the relationship, rather than being plot-heavy. But this story pulled me in instantly, in a way that is so rare. Straight off the bat it had an incredibly interesting & gripping premise and it never let up, it never had my attention fading, if anything it actually managed to become more engaging as the story went on. I read this all in one sitting without a break.
The premise of the story, the thing that begins it all, is relatively simple; Doyoung made a reservation at a fancy hotel on Christmas Eve, to spend the night with and hopefully confess his feelings to his crush, Hyunjin. Once they get to the hotel, however, something strange happens; Hyungjin gets split into thirteen different versions of himself—and Doyoung needs to identify the real one, and "kill" the fakes.
That's a fucking amazing premise. Like, I don't care what anyone says. It's fucking great. It evokes so many different emotions both out of the characters but also reader. It's tense, and dramatic, while there's also this strong undercurrent of dread and paranoia. The characters can't trust each other, as every version of Hyungjin believes themselves to be the "real" version, and as a reader, you feel like you can't trust the story.
I found myself questioning everything and trying to outguess the story, to try and see if it's attempting to gaslight or mislead me. For example, early on in the story the host, a supernatural man with a large rose for a head, reveals to one of the Hyungjin's—who we come to call Light Blue—that he's the real Hyungjin. And instantly I doubted it. I did not believe the host whatsoever when he told Light Blue that. But then later in the story, the host backtracks, and tells Light Blue he lied and he's actually a fake . . . And at that point, I second-guessed it, I started realizing the host is pulling these cruel mind games and that just because he calls one of them fake, it does not mean they are. It was like when the characters got toyed with, so did I as the reader, and I loved it. The story was just so incredibly immersive.
When it comes to the characters and their relationships, it's a bit hard for me to think of a way to really talk about it. It's pretty unconventional.
Hyunjin was really interesting to me. I think the unconventional way we come to know him, from the fact that we don't ever really know of him as a full person but rather the individual pieces of him, was a really unique but interesting way to understand him. Around the halfway point, perhaps a little bit before of a little bit after, I was able to pretty easily guess the mystery behind who the real Hyunjin was; that there is no singular Hyunjin, and that all thirteen Hyunjin's are an aspect to his personality. They all make up who he is and they're all equally "real." I think this really brought a deep understanding of him that you usually don't get from other BL characters. You saw aspects to him that he didn't even show Doyoung. He was insecure, selfish, prideful, shameful, kind, mean, scared, submissive, and just head over heels in love. I think his character and the themes of self-love and what it is to be loved by others were incredibly sweet.
I absolutely loved Doyoung. He was an incredibly sweet and emotional man, someone who was fiercely and unyieldingly loyal. Throughout the whole story he refuses to kill the Hyunjin's he believes to be fake, both because he doesn't want to run the risk of them ending up being the real Hyunjin but also because you just don't believe he can bring himself to do it. He's too in love with Hyunjin to ever get rid of him, regardless on whether or not the man is real. His loyalty and love bends his will too strongly for that. The climax of the story is him saying he accepts all of them, that every version of Hyunjin is the Hyunjin he loves and I just thought it was so insanely sweet.
I only have a few minor issues so I'll get them out of the way. The biggest one, and it's easily the one thing weighing this story down from five stars, is the ending. I didn't like it. I didn't like that it ended with Hyunjin not being able to remember anything. I just think he was truly the heart of the story, so him not actually being able to remember anything is a huge disservice to the overall story & him as a character. The second thing I disliked is simply just that some of the dialogue was corny. That's all.
To end this off, I just want to express how much I fucking adored the art. It was amazing. Honestly quite genuinely just beautiful. The characters looked great, the way so many scenes were drawn too was just phenomenal. It's a corny phase, which is ironic, but you can really feel the love put into the story.
Also, there's a lot of sexual tension in this story. And I don't know if it's intentional. I mean, there's one scene where the host is strangling a version of Hyunjin with rope and it's very . . . Charged. Like crazy. A lot of the scenes are incredibly thick with tension. I'm kind of surprised Hyunjin & Doyoung didn't fuck once. I kinda wish they did.
