Story is too lazy

There are so many writing problems here that I really just couldn't get into this, although I did finish it. I'm not sure what comics editors do if they don't catch all the basic writing 101 problems that an author proposes and force the authors to fix them. Well, at least the art was nice.

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Jiho is never explicitly stated to be gay. He says Sunghyun is his "ideal man", but it's impossible to tell if that's with respect to someone who he wants to be someday (or wishes he was) vs someone who he wants to be in a romantic relationship with. His extremely frank, dismissive rejection of his best friend (for the second time) makes it seem like he's not really into dudes. But he accepts Sunghyun so easily later that I'm just not sure. There should be some stigma here, but dumb-dumb Jiho never has a single thought about it. The author should be more explicit about this, making it clear whether or not Jiho really understands what being in a gay relationship in a society like this means.

Sunghyun manipulates and sexually harasses/assaults (I'm not even sure) Jiho with the excuse that Jiho owes him, at the beginning of the story. Sunghyun later tells Jiho that he was just basically screwing with him in the beginning but that fell in love with him later, but where exactly did that happen? We never see it happen on screen, so it's impossible to believe. Did it happen between forcing Jiho, a virgin, to shove a dildo up his arse and the nipple toy? Or was it between the nipple toy and dinner? Just stating something and never showing it is not enough in a comic like this, especially one with such a questionable start to it.

Jiho also never has a moment where he transitions from trying to avoid running into the creepy pervert who keeps coming into the store to sexually assault him to actually liking Sunghyun. He definitely doesn't like it at the beginning. Then suddenly by the end he's just a blubbering drunk mess the instant he thinks Sunghyun is cheating on him. Why did his outlook on Sunghyun change? Because Sunghyun came clean about being the store owner, WHICH I am forced to point out was not because Sunghyun chose to tell him (argh) but because Jiho overheard his conversation with the manager and Sunghyun was forced to address it. Is it because Jiho realized that Sunghyun is both hot and loaded, making him a great catch?

Speaking of that, SungHyun is such a shoujo-manga wet-dream. Hot, ostensibly "nice" and "considerate" (if we ignore the initial sexual assaults), rich/loaded, somehow not in a relationship, etc. Meanwhile Jiho is basically a useless waste of space and contributes nothing to the relationship beyond being a fleshlight, which he rightfully points out at the end of the story himself even. This is very much a shoujo manga set up, and is tiresome to read about at this point.

Also pretty much every plot point was totally predictable. As soon as I saw glasses-guy, I was already grumbling to myself, "this better not be a twins plot; how lazy would that be?", and then it turned out to be a twins plot. Ugh. If you're gonna go with something like that, it has to be like that from the beginning and be the crux of the whole story. Just shoving it in off-handedly like this with no setup/foreshadowing is soooooooooo bad and lazy.

Jiho is also low-key a dick to his best friend. He knows, KNOWS, that his best friend is in love with him yet he forces him to help him constantly deal with his romantic woes without any thoughts of how Woojin might feel. This is really crappy. Woojin should really just cut off his relationship with Jiho so he can get over him and move onto someone else. It really isn't that noble to be hung-up on one person you can't have for your entire life, rather than finding someone else to be happy with. This nonsense romantic soul-mate junk is such a lie. A person can love any number of people in their lifetime, and should strive to make themselves happy, not trying to make someone else happy who never considers their feelings at all.

Anyway, as for the positives -- I liked how Sunghyun's brother had a totally different personality. I like that Sunghyun's brother, despite seeming very no-nonsense, cared enough about his brother to help resolve his romantic problems. I liked the art. I liked the store manager; she was a nice grounding element in the story filled with all these crazy gay boys and their melodrama. I liked Woojin, and felt like this seemed more like a prequel to an actual good story about Woojin eventually finding someone to love (although it never happened). I liked Sunghyun from the dinner-date and on, where he stopped being a creepy predator and started acting more like a decent person who was enamored with Jiho (I had to force myself to pretend the earlier sex pervert stuff didn't happen). I liked that Jiho is a college student and is actually shown to go to class at least once. I liked that at least one of the characters (Sunghyun) is shown to have a family, even if the main character never was.

But then again, most of this stuff is just basic competency. A story needs much more than this to be engaging and interesting. This comic could've used about 10-15 more chapters to: 1) foreshadow the twin brother properly, 2) show sunghyun actually coming to like jiho, 3) show jiho actually coming to like sunghyun, 4) show a little bit of jiho's childhood, with his family, and the initial confession (in HS?) from Woojin, 5) actually show a moment that addresses whether jiho considers himself gay or not. The plot still would've been pretty cliche, but at least the basics would've been covered.

Whether or not to read this? I don't think it's really worth reading, but some people seemed to get some enjoyment out of it, so I'd say this one is very YMMV. If you've read a lot of BL comics, you probably will find it very cliche. If you haven't, then you might get some enjoyment out of it since the cliche plot elements won't bog you down. Again, this one is very YMMV.