Rereading the story, a lot of pieces make much more sense. Jiwon's behavior particularly. ...

Rereading the story, a lot of pieces make much more sense. Jiwon's behavior particularly. After rejection from both his parents and being crushed by the first person he fell in love with. He sought to reject any notion of love as false, and became a shallow and ruthless individual.

I can see glimmers of what made DG so fascinating to him, DG's initial innocence of asking for nothing except a hug was what did it I think. Jiwon finally got the type of recognition and affection he craved, even though his demeanor went unchanged for the greater 1st half of the story. He continued to be rotten to him, probably in part because he was afraid of the feelings he's unaccustomed to. He deludes himself repeatedly into believing it's nothing except for lust, and only until he finally went too far, and DG all but gave up, did he sit down and contemplate what those feelings he had actually meant.

I give Mingwa a lot of credit. This is probably one of my favorite BL's to date. I don't particularly condone the extremes Jiwon went, but it makes for a compelling story, and I particularly love that she continued the ark after they get together, to give Jiwon an opportunity to redeem himself a bit. You can tell how much Jiwon dotes over DG now. It's a 180, sure, but he seems overly aware now just how precious a person DG is (and just how horrible he was to him) and appears to want to go through extensive lengths to repent for his initial behavior.