My experience reading this ...

this is gonna be a little vent-ish and LONG, feel free to scroll over my comment if you don't feel like listening to a man in his 20s talk about body struggles...


I finished this story today, I can't put into words how much this story has affected me on a personal level,, I think the most notable thing for me was the character's physiques, yes. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I genuinely have never found a character that reminds me so much of myself until this day

the main character, ha kyung, isn't typically feminine looking or twink-ish as other BL uke's are, but as I've read the chapters of his past when he acted as ji-young, I noticed that the author continuously made sure to show shots of his hands, the hands that were scarred and 'ragged' and quite frankly, a reminder that he is a man on the inside.

I was born a male, but due to my illness, my body ended up on the thinner side, which resulted in alot of comments regarding me having a rather 'feminine' body. as a kid and a teenager, people around me would joke about it and it annoyed me immensely, but I could understand that it wasn't comments to insult me but trying to be playful, I knew them, and yet I couldn't help but resent anyone who said that about me, my body felt foreign to me and the only part of me that I saw as manly, was in fact my hands. I don't believe that I have an ounce of negative masculinity in me, I'm a gay man in a relationship that I'm happy with, I didn't hate my body because it was feminine, I hated myself for finding this body of mine unbearable, because my mum often said that 'it would've been better if I was born a girl if I was going to end up with a body as weak as this', my hands, as weak as they are, were the only piece of me that didn't feel girly, because they were also full of scars and raggedness as I used to do alot of tasks and get injured while doing so, and so my hands were the thing I stared at whenever I returned to my room after receiving the usual comments

I tried to love my body for what it is, but frankly, hating yourself for it was way easier and so one thing led after the other and I kind of fell into a really bad mental state, not entirely because of my body, but I'd say that *it* was the first domino piece to fall. I was miserable and I remember vividly only looking at my hands for hours in my bed, I was only able to love the rest of me when a friend of mine noticed it and helped me get over it and reassured me any time I felt the heavy weight of people's gaze on me. that friend of mine is now my partner, the person I most cherish in my world, if it wasn't for him, I would have never looked at my body positively, I wouldn't have chosen to grow my hair, knowing that people will mistake me for a girl at times for it, because he's the person who will look at the full me, not just my hands, not just my body, he saw every part of me and still decided to treat me as an individual, not a body to label.

so yes. I think this story and the way the author portrayed ha-kyung's past was beautiful, it was very touching to me, even if it's not the exact same, it still helped me remember how much I've become without realizing it, seeing ha-kyung's battered hands comforted me much more than I would like to admit, to the point that my eyes were teary when I first saw it, and they still get watery when I see any photo of them...

I applaud the author and respect them so much, if I have the chance to support them with my money I will jump for it, I will look if there's physical copies for this story, I need it to remind myself how far I've come. 10/10 of story