
It's so unappealing because the top is so unlikeable. And at this point it looks like the author is trying to paint jiheon in a good light, which is not working because he already gave an ick to most the readers. And maybe the author's making up all these sad backstory to justify jiheon's behaviour. But boi i don't give a fuck if you had to eat dry ass biscuits you don't drug your best friend for that sheesh And it feels like the author plans to make jiheon and wooju end up together, which is just shitty

No but fr what are professor Cha's intentions? We know he's smarter than jiheon, that's one thing. He knew wooju would recognise those pills, so i don't exactly think his intention was to drug wooju cuz for that he could use any other pill. And wooju got kidnapped when he was about 7-8 years old (I could be totally wrong lmao) and at that time professor cha would only be 16 or 17 years old. If that's true, I don't think professor is involved in the kidnapping. He's 33 and wooju's 25.
Is he a red flag? Yup. But one with an entirely different intention, like i don't think he's doing all this to get in wooju's pants.

For me, my theory is prof cha has a plan to make wooju forgot the incident but didnt want to tell jiheon just simply bcus the incident itself took time when his father wad elected. So if the case about the culprit reappeared, it would tarnish his family name. Whether he was the kidnapper or no, a 16 or 17 yo boy is able to kidnap a young kid, especially if the kid has a trust on them it'd make it easier to lure the kid into the trap. The matter of why only jiheon that first come and knowing where to save wooju was probably because the kidnapper is someone he knew and he somehows overheard or knew about the plan.
So its clear he's not fully human. And we still don't know what his motives are, like why tf is he even building this town in the first place? I don't think he's exactly evil or a saint, I think he's just... Taking care of a task that we don't know of yet?