IT LOOKS LIKE THE MANHWA SNIPPED OUT ONE OF MY FAVOURITE BITS OF THE NOVEL… while they’re in the car Jungwoo pretends his hand went numb from gripping the steering wheel too hard so he asks Jiwon to hold hands & then laments that he should’ve asked Jiwon to meet at 8 instead of 8:30 so they could’ve held hands longer. it’s sooooooo so so cute this is so sad
Whhhaaaaatttt that is so cute (╯°Д °)╯
Where can we read it ? (づ￣ ³￣)づ
What?! Ugh now I need to know what else it’s missing from here! Can I ask where you read the novel? ˚✧₊⁎❝≀ˍ ❝⁎⁺˳✧༚
it can be found pretty easily by looking up ballboy tactics on novelupdates & then searching from there (or by just googling ‘ballboy tactics novel’)! ^^ i don’t feel comfortable sharing the link myself because of the translators’ policies, my apologies.
i do very much recommend reading it because, while the manhwa is cute, i do think it’s kind of a wooden adaptation so far & i don’t like how it snipped out my favourite little scene (nor do i like some of the tweaks it’s made like giving jiwon his baseball cap instead of the bucket hat he was wearing when he got spotted going to jungwoo’s, which covered more of his head & made him being mistaken as a girl a bit more plausible. or moving the number 17 scene from when jungwoo was sick to them being in the car). it also gives a lot more insight into jiwon’s perspective and just How negative and quick he is to give up, which are really crucial for understanding why he acts the way he does. so i def recommend reading it!
Do you remember roughly what chapter that is?
Chapter 4.2, close to the end. Same chapter as the 17 scene (which originally takes place when Jungwoo is sick, not at the car) =w= I have a tab with it open because I went back to reread it after I saw the manhwa cut it, so here’s the exact chapter lol
Thank you!!
have read the novel up to when they get together & the raws here is everything that happens between kyuho’s confession up to them getting together in a detailed bullet summary in case their situationship drives anyone else insane (since i saw people asking for spoilers but this is a lot so i didn’t want to dump it into a reply, i wanted the ability to spoiler tag it)
so for some detailed spoilers (this is very long as a lot happens).
- kyuho starts putting noticeable distance between the two of them in his efforts to get over yoongun, which very much upsets yoongun
- at one point kyuho gets drunk and tries to bust open yoongun’s door w/ a fire extinguisher when kang (his friend) is taking him back to his place bc kang & yoongun live in the same building and kyuho beelines for yoongun’s. yoongun intercepts, takes kyuho to his place to sleep, stares at him fondly, & thinks abt how he really wants to kiss him and laments how kyuho is trying to put between them (he still is not aware of his feelings atp. lol)
- kyuho freaks out when he wakes up and leaves during breakfast w/o eating it, continues to put distance between the two of them bc he decides that they can’t even maintain their friendship at this point due to his feelings. he pretty much begins ghosting yoongun entirely& later lies to him when asked why he’s avoiding him, saying that he fell for someone at work and doesn’t want to talk to him right now bc of it because it’s awkward for him.
— this proceeds to drive yoongun kind of insane as they had maintained the idea of their friendship being more important than any relationships they may end up in & he is Very Upset at thinking he means so little to kyuho that he can’t manage being around him even if he’s seemingly gotten over him
-Kyuho continues to dive headfirst into his journalism internship and the child abuse case he’s investigating. Yoongun downloads the dating app Kyuho used to use while brooding & proceeds to send him a message (he ends up sending like 99+ of them in total). Realises Kyuho has lied about liking someone else
- yoongun then asks sehyun, i think his name is? (the friend of his) to invite kyuho to a mixer sehyun(?) set up he can see him again, which pisses kyuho (still trying to avoid him) off a lot. Yoongun then spends part of the mixer flirting w/ and touching Kyuho when no one is looking. Kyuho leaves & Yoongun follows to ask why he lied abt liking someone else
-Kyuho tells him he doesn’t have the confidence to stand next to him as a friend & cries out of frustration and Yoongun then royally fucks it up by blurting out that he thinks Kyuho looks really pretty when he cries because his brain shuts down upon hearing how much Kyuho likes him
-Kyuho then punches Yoongun in the face, Yoongun keeps asking him to stay with him and spend time together because he’s still short circuiting over how much Kyuho likes him. Kyuho (understandably) interprets this as Yoongun ignoring his feelings and trying to proposition him just bc he wants to keep his FWB that badly, and tells him effectively to fuck off and cuts him off
-Yoongun keeps trying to get in contact w/ Kyuho to apologise for how badly he fucked up, showing up at his company to talk & sending him flowers with message cards because Kyuho blocked him. Tells Kyuho when given the chance to speak he wants to see him on the basis of spending the rest of their lives together (seeing and talking to each other daily, holding hands, kissing, sleeping w/ each other, etc)
-Kyuho once again tells Yoongun to fuck off bc he can’t believe him. Yoongun then confesses & says he wants them to live together and get married. Kyuho says again he can’t believe Yoongun as sincere after everything and says not to contact him again
-Kyuho gets fired from his internship for refusing to use some bad information his boss gave him. Runs into Yoongun while crying over it bc YG is still trying to reach out to him, apologises for snapping at him while crying and cuts him off once again by saying they’re too different to work out and that they can’t understand each other / that their values are too different and he’d always worry about being an irritant to YG because of it.
- Yoongun is very upset by this but then remembers the ‘you look pretty when crying’ comment he’d made and how he had completely ignored how upset Kyuho was at that time in favour of his own happiness towards him & accepts it / apologises for making Kyuho feel like he couldn’t be with him without feeling anxious
-School starts again. they are no longer in contact. Yoongun takes a leave of absence. Kyuho discovers the 99+ messages YG sent him on the dating app and (not realising it’s him) is very weirded out. Sends a message calling him a psycho lol
-Kyuho’s one female friend (Somin?) asks him to go drinking to vent abt her breakup. She’s got very close cropped hair bc she cut it to appeal to her ex and is wearing loose clothing (this detail is relevant)
-Yoongun, having received the message, thinks Kyuho is trying to find someone new on the dating app. He sees KH and Somin together heading to KH’s house and - thinking Somin is a man bc of her style - freaks the hell out thinking Kyuho really has gotten over him and is taking a new lover. Spam calls Kyuho, goes to his place, and threatens to bust into KH’s house with a fire extinguisher the way KH did for him when drunk.
-Kyuho lets him in as he’s very confused and Yoongun starts kissing him and Somin is there to witness it. Poor girl, baffled, leaves after YG falls asleep in Kyuho’s arms, having knocked himself out from relief upon realising nothing happened
-Yoongun gets a call and Kyuho recognises the number. It ends up being Kang (his friend), who’s been working with YG on a case he was investigating as a reporter
-KH and YG end up talking and YG tells him abt how he downloaded the app and how he wants to get back together
-Kyuho discovers the article YG was assisting Kang with was regarding the article / reporter fraud that got Kyuho fired during his internship (as he refused to accept / use bad information) & that Yoongun had approached Kang about this right after learning about Kyuho’s firing. Kang and Kyuho talk on the phone for a while about the situation
- Kyuho reflects upon everything & decides that, after hearing everything Yoongun did to help him after his firing, he can accept his confession as sincere now. the two talk everything over and get together
I NEEDED THIS TYSM
Oley i read half but I can't anymore cz I'm gonna marrinate it until the whole manga came out
NP! there’s a long way to go until they’re on the same page & get together so i thought this might help tide everyone over as this hell situationship slowly chugs along
haha you might be waiting a while, just to warn you in advance! the manhwa just hit the mixer section with its latest update & it updates on a ten day schedule, so there’s probably a good handful of months before the raws cover everything i bulleted (and then the tl will take some more time)…. you’re braver than i for being willing to wait it out & let it marinate i’m too impatient
Thank you for your hard work
Hello! Can you send the link of the novel here. I have been trying to find it but to no avail :(
It's nice to know that Kyuho really distance himself and have YG chase him real good.
sure! i don’t mind sharing the link in this case because i read the raws (and MTLed them using my browser’s translation function), i don’t think it has a translation https://booktoki468.com/novel?stx=%ED%8C%8C%ED%8A%B8%ED%83%80%EC%9E%84+%ED%8C%8C%ED%8A%B8%EB%84%88&book=%EC%99%84%EA%B2%B0%EC%86%8C%EC%84%A4 it’s certainly clunky, but i think the understanding of it gets across well enough even with the shoddy translation ╮(￣▽￣)╭
I feel like this might help provide some clarity re: why he acts the way he does b/c it’s probably not going to come up for a While (iirc it’s not until a good chunk way through the novel it comes up) and… well……… his anxiety + tendencies to self sabotage by overdoing it aren’t going away anytime soon and are. Quite Bad at times ^^;; abuse mention for this btw
tldr he was physically and emotionally abused by his first gymnastics coach, who would hit him when he didn’t get things right + created a dependence on him by initially telling jiwon like oh you’re my pride and joy oh you’re only one i have hopes for when he first took him on as a student. it got so bad that when another student caught wind of the situation & reported it to his parents, who called the authorities, jiwon was devastated his coach was being taken away from him. his tendencies to immediately give up and his constant anxiety + self sabotaging (ex. overshooting to sound homophobic to cover up his being gay) are a direct result from this.
like i said it doesn’t go away anytime soon and he’s honestly kind of lucky to have a partner like jungwoo who has the patience of a saint (despite his own nerves being very frayed by everything) and is willing to stand by him and work things through because his on-impulse self sabotage gets really Really bad sometimes, so i want to make it known like Hey Here’s The Context bc it will probably help with understanding him and the why he acts so anxiously going forward ╮(￣▽￣)╭
bro i meant to like im sorry, my thumb is too big
haha you’re fine! no worries
This! Plus Jiwon has social anxiety and can be overly defensive, too as seen in the manhwa. It's not that hard to understand him so I don't understand the hate he's getting for just saying that.
As someone who has severe anxiety and with trauma his reasoning makes sm sense to me so I wasn’t shocked he said such a thing. It’s more realistic to say than what people think.
And I find it very relatable which means it’s actually realistic!
thank you for the info! do you have a link to the novel?
Yeah as someone with a low self esteem and anxiety what you said is true. It's really hard to control what you say sometimes.
Yuo can zoom on the like (=・ω・=)
i’m so sorry, i don’t feel comfortable sharing it because of the TLer’s policies ^^;; you should be able to locate it easily enough by looking up ballboy tactics on novelupdates & navigating from there, though! i do recommend it, i liked the novel a lot more than i was expecting to. i think it showcases jiwon’s perspective (and the ups and downs of getting a look into his perception of things) quite well (better than the manhwa does so far imo because you get really, really into jiwon’s head and see his thought processes laid out), & jungwoo actually impressed me as a ML because of the effort he puts into trying to communicate things clearly a lot of the time.
it’s SOOO hard sometimes, self perception & history with mental illness and trauma really warps how you handle things! it doesn’t always justify actions, but it certainly explains them, and i think it’s really important to keep this in mind for characters jiwon because he has a LOT going on internally.
like he does fumble quite badly sometimes (there’s one moment in the novel that had me really thinking “wow, he’s lucky he has jungwoo because i don’t think many people would have tolerated that”) but i can’t help but look at him sympathetically because of the why he does it & i wanted to make sure more people were aware of that why
Yeah I think in Jiwon's case he needs professional help it doesn't show on the outside but he's pretty much in need not only of someone who understands him. Some people are ignorant and mental health awareness should be explained even in this site's comment section.
i really liked one side in room & the communication barriers it portrayed, so as soon as i recognised the art style of this one i felt my expectations for this story increase lol and so far it is meeting them! it’s kind of wild seeing people debating back and forth who’s truly at fault or who’s more to blame or whatever in the comments though because the answer is (as others have previously pointed out already) both of them. it’s both. the point is that they got to this point because they weren’t able to communicate their feelings effectively. one expected gestures & flowers and more time spent together, but he wasn’t able to express it verbally because he felt let down & so he started expecting his partner to read between the lines and began resenting their relationship when he didn’t, and the other seemed entirely content to just be together but his being content was easily misreadable as him losing interest. even though we only have one perspective and a relatively unreliable narrator through it, they both have already-clear issues with how they’ve approached their relationship.
and that’s the point of the story! sometimes love isn’t enough and relationships require effort & meeting your partner in the middle, which these two kind of fumbled doing and need to relearn their approach if they want to be together. and i look forward to seeing them do it!
side note! i’ve noticed this plenty a time lol but i feel like whenever a story has even a tiny bit of conflict people always want to shove all the blame on one person lol and sometimes there is a clear aggressor but i feel like that’s such a boring (and often lacking) way to view conflict! oftentimes there isn’t actually a person who should be taking the brunt of the blame. things tend to most often pile up and snowball and even if someone did something to hurt someone else, it might have been caused by what the other person did, etc etc. life doesn’t always draw a line between Aggressor and Victim because so much of life’s conflict isn’t that severe or clearly defined so seeing people always try to box it up like that when reading something is a little funny to me.
for real relationships aren’t that simple where only one person is the “bad guy” and that should apply for fiction as well
you worded all my thoughts perfectly! this author knows how to write miscommunication in an angsty , not-forced-way because it's realistic. it has you taking sides because they intentionally leave beihind the pov of the ML. Even now, when they agree to be friends, there's hidden pain because they're not on the same wavelength! MC wants ML to be sad, he doesn't believe they can go back to being friends, while ML is just happy they're on talking terms again.
It makes me think author has been through the relationship ringer..... who hurt you Mitsuko san....
i don’t know what’s caused the sudden influx of comments lately but i’m glad so many people are discovering pittosporum! this is just. a story i can read again and again and again without getting tired of it, the author managed to create something very hard hitting & visceral in how it portrays their feelings and inner conflict. i’ve posted in these comments before talking about odajima’s self harming through sex but it really is portrayed in such a miserably apt way. like
the way odajima and yano are portrayed against each other is really good. odajima, who’s traumatised by his own attraction to men & keeps forcing himself to engage with women to “become normal” to the point his inner conflict makes him throw up, who so desperately wants to keep the boy he’s in love with away from him that he keeps going out of his way to attempt to sabotage their relationship and scare him off while constantly undermining his own efforts through being kind because the idea of yano hating him upsets him even if that’s his goal…. yano, whose issue isn’t his realisation that he’s attracted to men specifically (because he mentions that isn’t the issue for him + the scene in ch1 where it can be interpreted that it was seeing odajima, not the girl he was with, that caused his reaction & he didn’t realise, as well as his reactions in ch2/3 to odajima propositioning him in ch2 and playing it as a joke, suggest that he is very much attracted to men in general) but instead it’s the idea of actually being attracted to someone and dealing with love that freaks him out because this is something so entirely new for him, ESPECIALLY with how he gets roped into odajima’s own internal struggles because those are what create all of his own inner turmoil….
they’re both absolutely terrified to have feelings and are scaring themselves trying to navigate things & odajima is going out of his way to try and scare yano as well as self sabotage, and it’s a very well-told and well-portrayed mess with such a well-deserved happy ending for the both of them. happy and healing.
i really do wish this series got a timeskip volume because of their exchange with the whole “i won’t be able to accept it if you end things after high school” / “i didn’t come here with halfhearted feelings”. like i need a timeskip volume of them in college w odajima learning how to approach the world now that he’s in a new place free of his past burdens w/ yano at his side and i need them as adults discussing getting married or something. Anything. need to see their long-term happy end because they’ve fought so hard to achieve it
I'm glad I saw it's recommendation on TikTok, maybe you've read similar to their story. Can you recommend me some?
ohhh is that where all the recent attention is coming from? i don’t use tiktok so i had no idea. hmmmm…. hmmmmmmmmmmmm…….. i’m not sure if i can give any recommendations for this one, actually! there are stories i’ve definitely seen abt comphet causing relationship damage, and stories about playboys (which i am loath to describe odajima as even if it’s technically true just bc of the context of his fooling around) falling for one person, but i feel like pittosporum’s storytelling is so specific it’s kind of unique and that i can’t think of anything i’d really consider a similar read to rec. sorry ╥﹏╥
It's okay, I'm great full enough that you've replied. And yes, I believe that most of us recent readers found their story on tiktok
progress… it’s imminent… side note i’ve been wondering what an english equivalent to bbosong would be because of how cutesy a name it is and fluffkins makes Perfect sense. i understand everything now
said it in september and i’ll say it again in february i love stupid people and i love this one no matter how quality its storytelling actually is. seonwu is so funny actually. king of not communicating a single thing without realising he’s not communicating properly
Same
i’ve actively quit games before over data loss so i completely understand yeowoon’s frustration, it’s thee worst ╥﹏╥
a couple of novel fun facts about this incident also: 1. meowie’s only irl who plays illusion with him quit the game over this (idr if he mentions it in tgmnd but it is mentioned in love games) 2. sunset is like 16 years old. which makes this a lot funnier in a way, miserable as the situation is for other players. literal high schooler causing mass chaos to this degree
truly one of the best m/m manga out there they are couple goals communication goals etc etc i need the next volume asap. they mean everything to me & i have to say i really like that a story that is ultimately so heavily involved in sex relegates any of the actual explicit content to separate side publishings? the author does a very good job of being able to demonstrate their intimacy as a couple without needing to show it explicitly in the main volumes.
side note, i’m obsessed with that one author note that’s like “sorry i got so focused on beetles that i accidentally forgot jun was bisexual for a bit.” genuinely one of the funniest author’s notes ive ever seen i love it. i love this series
i was excited seeing a new chapter because this has so far been a fun read & i really like the art style, only for my heart to drop upon reading the warning at the start & my stomach to drop even further upon actually scrolling through it. that was horrific and quite frankly there’s no turnaround from here or redeeming jaeyi; this manhwa - in its sudden and sharp veering from a silly romantic comedy right into a story encouraging assault - has been ruined for me and i’m sure quite a few others based on the other comments left so far.
the entire scene could have just been cut out & just gone right into jaeyi throwing the money at mooyoung & cutting him off. it was deeply unnecessary and completely destroyed jaeyi as a character and ML. i don’t care how upset you are, forcing yourself on someone is not a justifiable response to anything. will not be following season 2 when it drops.
All of this! I cannot get it out of my head. Jaeyi saying ‘good, it’s meant to hurt’ during the assault was horrific. It just completely destroyed his character! I can’t understand how we’re supposed to enjoy this story after that. I won’t be reading anymore. Nothing can make up for this and I regret spending money on this story now.
I haven’t been able to get it out of my head either. Calling Mooyoung disgusting while raping him… JFC. I genuinely regret reading it so much. I buy this one on the official platform and it makes me sick to know I gave the author money for this.
All of this. It feels like a complete betrayal. I wish I could get a refund because this was not what I signed up for. At least reading through the comments and seeing everyone else equally upset about this is helping a little. We are united in our disbelief.
it’s exactly for this reason i read through mgg…. i test the waters w/ stories on like platforms like this & then move forward with purchasing officials if i end up liking smth enough. i’ve felt regret upon purchasing bc of the direction a story went in & didn’t want that to happen again, and that is. quite applicable here. i’m sorry you (and many others who purchased the officials) were given This in response to your wanting to support the author :(
I do usually do that with unfinished stories, especially yaoi (vs shounen ai,) but I guess it’s a testament to how insane this was that it never occurred to me in a million years that something like this would happen.