Johnjohn

Like imagine we’re reading from Juheon’s perspective, he’s been betrayed by both his mum and aunt in love before so he already has major trust issues. Dohu comes around and keeps pestering Juheon, then Juheon chooses to open himself up one more time to love before realising that Dohu has been using him for book inspiration this whole time. Maybe Juheon should have tried to hear Dohu out more but mind you unlike us as the reader Juheon can’t see dohu’s thoughts in nice little thought bubbles and Dohu’s obv not the most expressive. When they break up Dohu doesn’t even cry or anything (because Dohu takes a longer time to process his feelings) and since Juheon’s already been traumatised by his mum and aunt, he’ll assume it’s a pattern and that he’s just being used in love again.

Juheon also shortly after being heavily affected by his breakup gets threatened by his aunt. Breaking down again, he goes to look for Dohu which to him would’ve just seemed unresponsive because again, unlike us, Dohu seems unresponsive when he’s hugging him and crying and obviously he doesn’t see that Dohu eventually chasing after him.

And then flash forward to now, Juheon has the right to think Dohu got the job because of him because mind you Dohu had showed up multiple times at juheon’s agency before and got dragged to the police because of it (mentioned on ch. 69). But Juheon just tries to pretend not to know Dohu because they’ve broken up bro!! And not on really amicable terms either… why would he suddenly cling to Dohu again and beg for them to get back together? Realistically, Juheon’s not going to know how to properly process those feelings because he himself is very emotionally unstable due to his abandonment trauma.

I see many commenters bashing Juheon for telling Dohu to leave his job but I still think this is reasonable because Juheon would just’ve just continued to pretend he didn’t know Dohu and they would’ve probably kept to a professional relationship if it weren’t for Dohu provoking Juheon into facing him with that hot water thing. Juheon also only said hurtful things to Dohu more of as a reactionary thing just so that Dohu could leave him alone because again, Juheon is very traumatised and would rather push away Dohu then let himself be vulnerable and get hurt again.

Juheon also wouldn’t trust Dohu saying that he likes him and would question whether Dohu is being genuine because Juheon can’t read minds and with Dohu being as expressionless as he is, it would be extra difficult to tell. Additionally, his aunt also kinda those the same thing when she wants Juheon to play a good grandson for his grandfather so this distrust is reasonable.

Istg if this was another BL where Juheon was the pov we were reading from and the bottom, Dohu would be labeled as the red flag cold, pushy top who stalks Juheon. Not that I’m saying Dohu is bad either, I can probably write another essay arguing for Dohu as well lmao. Baseline is neither of them are in the complete wrong and neither of them deserves to grovel to get the other back in the stereotypical yaoi chasing arc. They’re both flawed, the circumstances just put them in a rough position and we just have to see how they can not only heal their relationship but also past traumas with each other.

I think we just expect too much out of Juheon because in an ideal love Juheon would be the exceptional one to understand Dohu even without Dohu really saying anything but it just don’t work like that sometimes.

After the time skip is seems Jong woo is taller than Chang deok since our boy is quite a bit taller than his friend now (in chap. 21) who’s supposed to be 181cm and Chang deok is 185cm ლ(´ڡ`ლ)