beta
I would consider it less a romance story and more of a character study on Mr. Kim. It's about how he perceives the world around him, how he feels like an outsider not necessarily because he has felt heavily discriminated against (even though it happened occasionally) but because he chose to shut himself out of it before it could hurt him. The opportunities he has lost because he was too scared to take that first step.
How often do we do that in our own lives? Omegaverse was just the medium chosen to tell this story, but I think it's wonderfully relatable, even with that fantastical element added.
Seeing Mr. Kim tearing down the walls he built and opening up his heart to experience new feelings was beautiful to see, and also inspiring in a way.
As other people have said, I like the more sober take on these omegaverse-type relationships. This is a great subversion of the genre. The second couple would probably be the protagonists in another story. But here we're presented with the very real consequences of "violence in the name of passion is justified" mindset. "Then your love is harmful to me". That's such an important message to send, specially when most media glorifies this type of behaviour. Love doesn't mean anything if there isn't mutual respect between two people. Yes, there's an open ending, and a very real possibility of them getting back together, but I'm sure Mr. Lee will never let himself get trapped like that again. He may forgive him, but he'll never forget.
Overall, it was a very refreshing read, and a great spin on the omegaverse genre. I highly reccomend it to everyone.
PS.: My God at one point I truly thought we were going to go the best friend route, but the author managed to do something even more interesting than that. I love seeing great platonic relationships. And this one was juicy, let me tell you that.