I hate that he's terminally ill, it makes me sad. I'm hoping he gets treated and gets better somehow even though they said it's impossible. Rintaro is giving me hope that there's some sort of way to fix it.
I'm kinda worried this might end up bittersweet, with him dying and entrusting her to Rintaro or something...
Garam is in the wrong for just running away and trying to break up to protect Jaehyuk (from himself). Jaehyuk is in the wrong for cutting off everyone and everything around him.
You can see that it's getting concerning for Garam and that he blames himself. He thinks that he needs to break up with him or Jaehyuk is going to isolate himself and suffer for it.
Jaehyuk wanting to date in the open doesn't seem to be the real issue here, if it were then Jaehyuk offering to keep it secret just now would've been the fix. Instead Garam doubled down. Because the issue is Jaehyuk's mindset and approach to his connections in life.
I think it's going to take some growth on Jaehyuk's side before Garam comes back.
Key things he's done shitty:
- Junhan and Sanghyuk went out and got drunk, Sanghyuk passed out and Junhan went to take him home by driving his car, but hit somebody and ran away. Sanghyuk woke up and thought he was drunk driving and ran someone over. Junhan was building his career and didn't want the scandal so he let Sanghyuk think he did it. He justified it in his head by saying Sanghyuk's family is loaded, so they'll be able to handle it.
- Junhan was a bully in high school. His "bullying" of Habin is a grey area, I don't personally fault him for trying to bully him to get rid of his stalker, but his bullying of the innocent chubby kid that he made a target of the bully group was less justified.
Besides the above, he's just sort of an asshole to many people. That seems to be his real personality, he's always "playing nice" to everyone at school. He says that he learned from his childhood to be mean before others can be mean to him and he loses their love. So how he naturally acts is kinda mean as a defence/cope mechanism, how he presents is acted. The facade starts to crack as he's put under pressure by Habin and his father's reappearance and he snaps at Sanghyuk a few times.
Now going into all this:
His "friendship" with Sanghyuk is part of the act. He doesn't really care about him, this is made clear as early as Chapter 2, when the group seems confused on why Junhan hasn't contacted Sanghyuk despite the life event that just happened to him, the car accident. They tell him "he's your best friend" and he pretty casually thinks "Oh yeah, I forgot about him with everything going on". He doesn't seem to feel guilty. Junhan actually goes into this to say that it's always actually been Sanghyuk sticking to *him*. Sanghyuk kept pestering him to do the short film and the only reason he did it was for the benefits until it got him into the spotlight and he saw how much money he could earn off of his acting. But all he cares about is the money, he has no passion for acting, he doesn't want to learn about it or get better. He just wants to do what he's doing and get paid. He's even a bit annoyed having to keep pretending to care about acting. He doesn't want to have to deal with the acting group or practice.
So from his perspective he helped Sanghyuk with his short film, ended up being recognized for his talent and discovered a way he could make money and then Sanghyuk convinced him to go to acting school by promising a discount on tuition and an opportunity with someone he knows, which resulted in Junhan becoming an influencer at the woman's advice and landing much more opportunities from other clothing stores.
Junhan was in a position where he had nothing and had to accept whatever scraps he could get, so yes, he used Sanghyuk. That's their real relationship. Even as early as Ch 1 at the bar you see him envious of Sanghyuk's wealth when he sees the car. He's in a position where he has nothing and can't afford to care about other people's feelings.
What he did to Sanghyuk is pretty obviously black, not grey, but most people don't care about fucking over what, connection-wise, is essentially a stranger you don't care about. I feel like people are viewing this as "Junhan fucking over his best friend", but I think that would actually be worse. Though this is still bad enough even to a stranger. The fact that it's a rich stranger clearly also helps dull the care for what Sanghyuk's possibly going to go through when he decides to frame him.
Onto the bullying, he says in plain wording that he took to bullying because it was something he could control while he could do nothing about his father and his circumstances at the time. He had just had his savings stolen by his father and that made him nearly attack him in his sleep. Not a justification, but a reason, and the reason make him more sympathetic. For me that equates to not necessarily wanting his downfall. I'm fine with him having to own up to Sanghyuk that he's the one who crashed the car, but I feel like he's been through enough and deserves to keep what he worked for. I view that separately to that. He put Sanghyuk through a hard time and he should be held accountable, but I don't feel like that equates to that he should have his life ruined brutally. Which takes me to spoilers:
I've seen that he has his life completely ruined and ends up basically pathetic like his father... This is so sad to me. Like, after being abandoned by his mother and having to deal with his father, after he's managed to achieve some level of success via his own talent, now his "comeuppance"/"karma" is *that*? It's disappointing. I really liked Habin's "I'll always be there for you" approach to winning him over up to this point. I could also see some hope there, considering Junhan literally fucked him twice. It felt like maybe that sincerity was starting to get through. But apparently Habin ends up just exposing him and ruining his life to isolate him and then they live happily ever after with Junhan none the wiser that it was all orchestrated by Habin.
I'm going to be frank. The bullying of that kid was shitty, but it's in the past... He's even grown out of it, saying earlier in that he can't just punch Habin for the Stalking like he used to because "they were just kids at the time". Not that the guy would be in the wrong if he ever felt like holding Junhan accountable, I guess I'm just making the point that it hasn't come to that. Seems time moved on and so did everyone. To me the main thing here is definitely framing Sanghyuk, which I think he deserves to have to face, but maybe in a personal 1 on 1 where Sanghyuk decides what to do? Habin is just using the situation.
As far as his bullying of Habin, the only time where I feel he was in the wrong was when he was an asshole when Habin confessed to him. There was no history there and no knowledge of him being a stalker, he was mean for no reason calling him disgusting. After that is all a reasonable reaction to being hardcore stalked. He even kissed him while he was sleeping... He woke up being kissed in a closed off classroom by the guy he rejected.
I really just want his dad to like... Die. I don't care what happens to him seeing him showing up and tormenting him again like this. He's even going to his school, trying to extort 200 million out of him... He's disgusting. I hope he dies slowly in a fire and it depicts it.
Idk, I guess the ending I wanted was a happy one for everyone. One where Habin won him over with his (crazy) sincerity rather than manipulating him and ruining his life. I really liked how he was consistently telling him "I like you" and you could see it was having an effect of some kind. There was progress. I was starting to think maybe he would actually fall for him normally and get over the stalking and then the stalking would stop, but no...
Summary (of the 25 chapters so far):
Cheol (top) and Minyoung (bottom) are the couple. They both have very tragic pasts, Cheol was neglected and abused by his father and Minyoung is an orphan with problems connecting with people. Both are mentally fucked up because of this. Cheol full on age-regressing at one point. Minyoung noticed Cheol's silent abuse, Cheol noticed Minyoung's lack of connection with the people around him. They bonded over these hidden truths and eventually started dating. Minyoung became very protective of Cheol because he saw him being abused and saw the look on Cheol's face occasionally that gave it away. He made a vow to himself that he'd grow stronger to protect him because he couldn't at the time.
The whole crux of the story is that at some point back in high school, Minyoung outed Cheol to his father. We don't yet have the context as to why. This resulted in Cheol's father exploding on Cheol, Cheol breaking up with Minyoung to please his father, and then living a fake "straight" (he says "normal") life and marrying a woman.
The story starts later on in life, Cheol's wife has just divorced him after years of him living like a husk of a man, running away from his gay feelings for Minyoung. He's had a certified crash out. He fell into gambling, tanked a cafe business he'd been given, etc. His father ruined his life. Minyoung is back now that they're divorced. He'd been watching and waiting for the ruse to end.
Minyoung never gave up on him, he'd apparently been driven to the point of wanting to kill Cheol for abandoning him, but when he went to do it (yes, they're both crazy at points), he found out Cheol still loved him because he said Minyoung's name in his sleep. So he just sort of let Cheol do what he was going to do in this effort to please his dad, biding his time and building himself up to be able to get revenge for Cheol on his dad and younger brother. Cheol's father favored the younger brother because he had an inferiority complex towards his older brother and Cheol looks like his brother. It's Cheol's uncle that becomes his father when Cheol runs away from his father. Minyoung is back now because the fake life is over and now he can protect Cheol from his father and let him live as himself. But there's a lot of denial Cheol is working through throughout the story so far, that's what all the anger sex is about. He refuses to accept that he loves Minyoung still, but very, very unsuccessfully. He's getting there, the biggest step was him confronting his father and it left him age regressed for awhile. But that first step is huge.
Cheol's ex-wife gets that there's something going on that has absolutely just fucked Cheol and left him stagnant, but she doesn't know what. She tells him that he needs to stop being a coward and make a move for himself or he's going to be left by everyone he loves. That he needs to "grow up", and this is spot on, he's stuck in his childhood. This is what spurs Cheol to try and confront his dad. Cheol ends up beat up, so Minyoung goes and beats his dad's ass. Things are different now, they're not high schoolers anymore. Minyoung has just "come out" (not about being gay, about being in love with Cheol and that he's going to do anything to protect him) to Cheol's real father (the uncle) and now here we are. Side note: seems like Cheol's ex-wife might have a thing for Minyoung's secretary? They had a moment where they both looked stunned by each other.
At this point we're just waiting for the outing loose end to be tied up, which age-regressed Cheol hinted would be resolved if Minyoung would apologize. I'm sure that will come soon.
As I was reading, I kept having the thought that the intensity didn't match the happenings, like they were overreacting to things, but this is resolved once it starts going into the abusive father. The outing was so damning *because* he was outed to his abusive father. His father was just that bad. As was the extent of the psychological damage he'd already been subject to up to that point. The reason Minyoung makes crazy yandere faces all the time is because Cheol's past was just *that* tragic to him. It became his entire life's purpose to protect him. He's literally ride or die.
He was just mildly surprised and then got into it, went back for more of his own accord and then ended up asking him to date... He'd had a crush on him since high school... The whole "rape" starts with him having a wet dream about him and waking up with an erection after saying his name in his sleep...
If you keep reading you'll see how he reacts when someone is actually trying to rape him and he doesn't want it, the difference is pretty clear. When the other dude is actually attempting to rape him he fights him off until help arrives.
It's another case of the comments seeing him say "wait, stop" or something and immediately saying rape. Guys, people can be overwhelmed too, that doesn't make it rape. What makes it rape is whether or not the person themselves wants it... He was a virgin, he was just overwhelmed. That's like, the whole thing. He comes to terms with his feelings. But he did enjoy the sex and want more.
The story did a very good job at getting across the seme's lack of understanding/his emotional stunting from his bad upbringing. I got the vibe even before that was actually brought up as a plot point. He's just awkward at expressing himself and his jealousy, but he's entirely willing to listen and work on it.
It's not really "making excuses" when I'm pointing out the explicit story, but okay...
Also he's not a whore, he just got separated from the person he loves (not realizing that's what it was because of the aforementioned abusive childhood) and tried to get into relationships, but it never worked because they were never "the same". As in his feelings. There's mention that the last one looked very much like him, implying he had been trying to find someone like him. That's why when they have sex he says "I've been waiting for this for a long time".
Idk what the comments are about, it was a really satisfying ending in my opinion. I think people don't get that *they were in love the whole time*. He hurt her, but they're husband and wife, they're in love and he has a right to try to right his wrongs if she's willing to allow it. Plus so much of it was terrible misunderstandings in his intentions (because he sucked at expressing himself and also just had a terrible personality at first). My thought was that if so many people hadn't actively gotten in the way when she ran away, they would've made up. But I also understand Francis wanting to free her from Edric. He didn't realize Edric really loves her and Edric didn't know how to treat her right and took her for granted. This sort of needed to happen, but the amount of time she was gone is unfortunate because I think this could've all been sorted out much earlier if she hadn't been being lied to and Oz hadn't hidden the letter. Which again, I get is because she also thought he didn't care about her. Everyone around them thought he didn't care about her, which really just shows how badly the optics were. He really needed this wakeup call. Him watching her live her life happily in the village showed him what she wants and also highlighted even more what she'd been doing for him though.
Francis was a really nuanced character, I'm very satisfied with how he ended up, as platonic family with her and Jade. It was fitting. All he wanted was family, he realized he could have that even if she wasn't his wife. That's why he had the realization that she hadn't betrayed him. With her character development, I'm looking forward to seeing Rosaline and him work it out. Since he did love her.
It hasn't been said explicitly yet, but I think that what Edric did for her was allow her a leadership position where she no longer has to worry about which man she's attached to, and in the absence of that she's now just wanting love and looking back to Francis. She has some making up to do, since she treated him badly in their relationship even though they were childhood friends.
I can see what people mean about the pacing, I guess, since suddenly everyone is nice to her when she comes back, but I think it's explained by the story if you think about it. Everyone thought she *died*. Like, I was a little thrown off by the crown princess being nice to her all the sudden, till I realized it's not really "all the sudden", it's been three years, a funeral and the Duke being a suicidal mess for those three years. It's understandable for mood/opinion to have changed in light of these events and time having passed. The evil mother (Ada, I think?) is gone, so no more pressure on the staff/no more machinations in general since she was sort of responsible for like all aspects of Mellie's failed life as an aristocrat.
I'm satisfied with Edric's growth and the reveal of his feelings. I don't justify his behavior up till then, it was trash, but I'm happy for them that he'll spend the rest of his life making up for it.
The story was decent and I think the comments are a bit over the top about the threat letter. It was like less than a chapter of miscommunication because in the moment she was scared and wanted to protect Kassel so she tried to distance herself. She very quickly realized her mistake and told him everything next chapter and now everyone knows the truth and all that's left is to find the one who cursed her.











This is not a story, the sole purpose is rape fetish.
Also, rape fetish is an uncomfortable truth comments sectioners, there are a lot of people who literally play it out in bed, of course they like to get on here and read this. This is for a specific audience.