Chapter 38

I think Nanjoo seeing Mokyeon at his absolute worst, without any filters or deception, actually made him warm up to him. When Mokyeon says he’ll just die from embarrassment, Nanjoo responds with, “I guess I wasn’t completely wrong about you after all,” obviously referring to his belief that Mokyeon had been manipulating him. But I don’t think that line is purely negative. The fact that he says he “wasn’t completely wrong” also implies that he has been questioning whether his judgment of Mokyeon was entirely right in the first place. To me, that suggests he has been thinking a lot since the night before, especially about everything Mokyeon revealed while drunk, and perhaps beginning to reconsider the image he had built of him.
Nanjoo saying, “You don’t know me,” also made me wonder if there is some guilt or self-awareness on his side. For a long time, he seemed to judge Mokyeon largely through Sunhwa’s words and his own worst experiences with him. And obviously Mokyeon gave him plenty of reasons to distrust him—the threats, manipulation, and the way their sexual relationship began all reinforced that image. But at the same time, Nanjoo has also seen sides of Mokyeon that don’t completely fit the manipulative and sadistic image he had of him, like his genuinely cute and almost ordinary side in the burger chapter.
I think Nanjoo gradually realized that things were much more complicated than he wanted them to be. He started noticing that they actually have more in common than he initially thought, and somewhere along the way, he also started genuinely enjoying sleeping with Mokyeon. The fact that he couldn’t even get it up with Sunhwa anymore makes that conflict even more obvious to me. Maybe part of Nanjoo’s increasing anger toward Mokyeon came from not being able—or simply not wanting—to accept what his own reactions were telling him. If Mokyeon were nothing more than the deceitful, sadistic person Nanjoo had decided he was, everything would be much easier. But the more genuine sides of Mokyeon he saw, and the more his own attraction and feelings started contradicting that image, the harder it became to keep things that simple. Maybe that inner conflict is also part of why Mokyeon’s antics started making him even angrier.
I’m not trying to justify everything Mokyeon has done to Nanjoo, but considering the title and what we know about his childhood, I’ve always seen him as a deeply hurt child whose inner world never really healed. He was abandoned and grew up feeling like he was only chosen or valued because of his looks, so he built this narcissistic armor around himself as a form of self-protection. He learned to use the very thing people valued him for—his beauty, desirability, and ability to control how others perceived him—as a way to protect himself from being vulnerable again. Ironically, that armor became completely counterproductive when he finally fell genuinely in love with someone. The manipulation and control that once protected him are exactly what prevent him from forming the genuine connection he actually wants with Nanjoo.
That’s why his drunk, completely unguarded self feels so important to me. For once, Mokyeon couldn’t control how Nanjoo saw him. There was no carefully constructed image, no manipulation, no seduction—just Mokyeon exposing the parts of himself that he normally hides. Nanjoo finally saw the person underneath all that armor, and his facial reactions during Mokyeon’s painful confessions make me think something genuinely shifted. I actually do believe that Nanjoo has started to love Mokyeon, even if he hasn’t fully accepted or understood those feelings himself yet. But at the same time, I don’t think he has completely forgiven him for everything he has done, which creates yet another contradiction within Nanjoo. He can love Mokyeon and still resent him, still feel hurt by him, and still struggle to reconcile the person he is beginning to see with the person he believed Mokyeon to be. And I think that contradiction is exactly what makes their relationship so interesting to me.
Anyway, this turned into a ridiculously long rant because I love this manga way too much Every chapter gives me another tiny facial expression or line to overanalyze, and then somehow the chapter ends in what feels like five seconds. I NEED to know where all of this is going.