I honestly don’t think he loved him when he was a child. Maybe mesmerized is the right word. Or curious? But certainly he did not feel anything romantic nor sexual towards him. That comes later as he meets him as an adult. I feel like xinlu, since their first meeting underwater, was for him kind of like a grain of sand stuck in his head that he couldn’t get out for many years.

I’m a bit hesitant to ask this question but I have to, if yuri loved xinlu since he was 13/14, does that make yuri pedophile?