that said, i get the immediate reaction to the age gap/power imbalance. “is this grooming?” i mulled over that initial discomfort and read up on grooming, including legal/educational material on the subject. from what i gathered, i wouldn't necessarily call this grooming based on what we've been shown. there's no clear evidence that woojung deliberately cultivated jiho's attachment for a sexual purpose, which is generally central to the concept of sexual grooming. so it doesn't neatly fit that definition. and i say neatly because the author conveniently keeps the relationship within the legal boundary.
however, that doesn't make the dynamic any less uncomfortable, and just because something doesn't qualify as grooming doesn't make it any better. for me, it's the extreme age and power imbalance, woojung's guardian-like role, and the blurring of a familial/caretaking relationship into a sexual one.
woojung is essentially filling multiple roles for jiho: provider + protector + household authority + family + emotional attachment figure + eventual sexual and romantic partner (+ another one related to his work and connections but i dont want to spoil too much). even if those feelings weren't necessarily manufactured by woojung, they're developing within a relationship where he holds enormous power. because jiho is only 17 when this relationship is established, more responsibility falls on woojung to maintain that boundary. and imo, he barely did. he casually commented on jiho's physical attributes and remained passive as jiho's feelings became increasingly obvious. technically, he respected the legal boundary, but not crossing that line doesn't mean there wasn't already significant boundary-blurring happening around it.
the fact that jiho turned 18 only hours before they slept together makes that distinction especially thin to me. there's absolutely no way for significant mental or emotional healing/growth to have happened over those few hours (╥﹏╥) the circumstances that shaped his attachment didn't disappear just because he had a birthday.
anyway, you're free to go now ദദ◝ ⩊ ◜.ᐟ
i'm actually glad i gave this a chance. dropped it around ch 20 the first time because the pacing was too slow for me and the discomfort from jiho being a minor throughout that buildup didn't help. but before i tackle the elephant in the room, i want to give praise where it's due. looking at the story on its own terms, i ended up appreciating how well the characters were written given their individual circumstances. this is a story about two abused, traumatized people meeting at very different points in their lives. so naturally, they have different needs and an inherently skewed power dynamic. i enjoyed how the story portrayed how they're each able to fill gaps in each other's lives despite those differences, while also slowly confronting the limits of their own power, like woojung ultimately being blindsided by the choices jiho makes despite everything he's done for him or jiho's father still finding him despite the good choices he's been making since meeting woojung. i think the story does a good job of making both of them behave like products of their circumstances, with woojun not being 100% what we expect a responsible adult to be and jiho being at the very least young dumb and broke as an average teen.
most of the story is told from jiho's pov, so we get to see how his age, trauma and lack of emotional experience shape his thought process. his decisions were frustrating at some point, but they never feel out of character, and i really can't bring myself to hate him. it's also interesting that we experience woojung entirely through jiho's perspective, so he's just as unreadable to us as he is to jiho and we're naturally left rooting for jiho while expecting more from woojung as the adult in the relationship.
the art was also really pretty and only got better as the story went on. you can tell the artist put a lot of love into this work and these characters.