If he's surrounded by light colors, it would make his dark skin stand out even more. Not appear lighter
this
so
not really, the artist also improved her skills and has now a better knowledge of how illumination works, but the main reason of why Taekjoo looks like that is the color palette of the ambient (in this case cool tones), she's maintaining the same color palette Taekjoo has in season one (there're comparisons in tiktok and X if you wanna see them) and there's a clear difference between Taekjoo and Zhenya when they're together, Zhenya is almost paperwhite and Taekjoo is darker, even if he looks pale, it's because he's surrounded by cool tones, not because he's white now
people don't know a thing about color theory and how the illumination works lmao, Taekjoo looks pale bc they're in fuckin Russia, surrounded by snow and cool tones, Zhenya and him aren't the same damn color at all
and yeah, Taekjoo is looking weak bc they're adapting the novel so a lot of scenes didn't make it to the manhwa (pls also consider he isn't eating well bc he doesn't like russian food and he's not exercising or training), he fights A LOT but even if he tries, his strength is nothing compared to Zhenya's. Taekjoo is around 1.80m and Zhenyas is around 2m, in the manhwa the height difference is barely noticeable but irl is too much. Zhenya also has the strength of a monster, the guy is a fucking tank fr, Taekjoo CAN'T fight him unless Zhenya isn't trying at all :/ (in the novel, later on, Taekjoo drugged Zhenya only because he let him, not because he wasn’t strong enough to prevent it)