First, OMG this was updated on my b-day and I think it's the most awesome present I could get.
Second, everyone is talking about Sangwoo, but I'm most fascinated with Bum. I was really surprised he rejected Sangwoo. He was silent for most of the chapter, but I feel he was talking the loudest. While he still shows he needs Sangwoo close when he calls out when he wakes up and goes downstairs, he is also starting to affirm himself which is a bit surprising. I'm really looking forward to see how Bum's character is going to further develop. The wild card in this story for me isn't Sangwoo it's Bum.
It's been clear to me for a while that Sangwoo loves Bum because he reminds him of his mother but not only because of that. Bum has shown Sangwoo unconditional love, something he's never had before. He still hasn't fully grasped that he's now attached to Bum and needs him. I don't think he's becoming more mentally unstable than he's been before, but rather that he's starting to have feelings he hasn't had before which are creating a lot of internal conflict.
I can't wait for the next installment to see where this is going to go. Sangwoo is pretty much a constant for me. I feel like he is going to have many ups and downs as he further realizes he now craves Bum's love and validation. I do wonder, however how these new feelings will affect his actions. I don't think he can kill Bum now. He's in too deep. But his memories of his mother will surely make him more unstable than he was before.
But, I really wonder what's brewing inside of Bum and how it will affect his relationship with Sangwoo. Is he realizing that Sangwoo needs him alive? Will Bum start using this against him, to manipulate him or will he remain subdued? Also, what will happen with the policeman? That last part is keeping me on edge and making me worry. Not that I don't want Sangwoo to get caught, don't get me wrong. I don't think Bum would or could take the blame for him either. If he gets caught what's going to happen to Bum? He's so deeply psychologically scarred that it scares me. I really wouldn't want him to commit suicide nor would I want him to go to jail or to start killing people himself out of his own volition. Though I could see him killing Sangwoo himself at some point or the policeman for that matter. Besides, I'm not sure if the policeman (I forgot his name) would not kill Sangwoo himself either.
The plot of this story is really intense and troubling but the psychological thriller it includes makes me want more. I dropped Warehouse cause it was just too much trauma without much character or plot development, but I'm still as hooked as ever on Killing Stalking. Koogi has done a fantastic job on creating a horror psychological thriller that kind of sits at the edge of the yaoi genre. Whew! I know this was a long post, but I've been holding all this stuff in for a while. I've tried to get people around me to read it, but to avail. If anyone reads this and wants to exchange about KS, I'm really down!!! XD
Like wtf. Who publishes stuff like this? This is disgusting. I hope they OD together. Thank fuck they can't have kids. I thought Yui and Mai were going to kill him in a really gore scene. Not down with this shit.
I agree. I actually enjoyed the story, but I was truly hoping for an ending where Kei dies. Pedophilia is one the things I hate the most in the world, so I was truly hoping for him to die.
I don't care about his past. His past is not an excuse for becoming a pedophile. The one thing I'm happy about is since he has Yui, he won't be targeting multiple kids. I understand the "age of consent" is 13 in Japan, but just because it's legal does not make it right.
The worst part is that the author makes it seem ok to do that if its love and compares it with homosexuality. Its NOT the same thing. An adult and a child and two men together are two veeeeeery different things.
When I started reading I almost dropped it, but then I thought there must be some kind of "killing stalking" or "warehouse" type of outcome at some point. Nope. Touching a child who doesn't have the capacity to tell wrong from right or desire from the need to please or hasn't any notion of what self respect and limits are, is a big no no for me. I totally agree with you - legal definitely doesn't make it right.
YES. I totally agree with you. Pedophilia and homosexuality are COMPLETELY different things. That part also made me extremely frustrated. How can it be love when one party systematically takes advantage of the other? Next thing you know rapists get away with it cause they raped with love?
mmm I think you got things wrong? At no point their relationship is portrayed as something positive or healthy. You can see that they both ended up pretty fucked up from this situation, and the fact that they started taking drugs suggest that their problems are not over, and worse stuff is gonna happen in the future for sure. Their current situation is just some temporary peace. Just because the characters refer to it as "love" doesn't mean we are supposed to take it that way. That's just what they think, and how they cope with their own traumas and mental hang ups.
Also I want to add that I'm not defending any of their actions, or think that what they are doing is right in any way. But I think that's the point of the story: to show a twisted relationship, and how both characters corrupted each other until they got in their current situation.
I don't think that the sum of their relationship is portrayed as being positive at all. But the fact that the characters do hold the rhetoric that what they are doing is okay because of love repulses me. While I do understand it all adds up and it's a story and that's how the author chose to depict their fall, I don't approve of the dialog and I think it's tasteless, especially the parallel made with homosexuality and patching everything up with the word "love". It's not that I don't understand, it's that I just don't like that part.
Ah I see. Personally I'm not bothered by those elements.
The fact that it's willing to handle such tasteless topics while at the same time being so brilliantly crafted is part of what makes it so fascinating to me.
You're right that their relationship isn't positive at all. The thing is though that this situation is supposed to be traumatizing, and you can see the effect it has had on Kei, to the point it also made him a pedophile. What makes it seem contradictory is the part that although Kei is negatively affected by this, he still tries to go meet his oji-san because apparently he loved him? Wouldn't he want to stay away from him? It's incomprehensible to me how this can be his coping mechanism.
What traumatized Kei wasn't his experience with Oji-san, it was the way his family and society treated him after it was found out. Of course as a child he wasn't able to tell that what Oji-san was doing was wrong, and, because of the way everything went down, he wasn't able to learn it, and in the end he tried to do the same with Yui.
Imagine being a child, doing something you think it's perfectly fine, and then have everyone found out about it and react the way his family did in the story. No one ever took the time to explain things to him properly, they just told him it was wrong and made him go through a living hell. He was never able to understand why it was wrong, he just did what he was told to avoid more punishment.
The "normal life" to him was absolute agony. It makes sense that he would long for the days when he was with his Oji-san because, in the end, that's when he was the happiest.
His way of coping is not going back to Oji-san, it's being with Yui, because Yui is the only person willing to accept him the way he is, since they both went through something very similar.
In the end the point of the story is showing how you can't just change people's minds by telling them that what they are doing is wrong, because they will never truly change in the end. They might be able to adapt temporarily, like Kei and Yui did, but after time they will just go back to the way they were, because they just acted normally out of fear of being rejected by society, not out of their own conviction.
Holy shit, amazing comment
But then I went and purchased chapters 6 to 13 on Leszhin and OMG. The relationship between the characters is so intriguing. After the end of Ch. 13 I'm really scared for Mokhwa, though.
Phew. I'm not one to cry much about my personal matters. But sometimes, I hear a song, watch a movie, or in this case, I read a manhwa that touches me deeply -so much I end up with silent tears streaming down my face.
The ending was simply perfect; it had such a delicate and touching romantic essence. Love displayed in such a pure and selfless manner but that you could easily overlook when caught up in the expectations you might have had for that moment. We might have come to expect grand, flashy, and desperate demonstrations of love as a mesure of the depth of one's feelings, so this demure but perfect display might fly under the radar.
Above anything, Go Jun wanted to care, protect, and cherish So Yeori. That last moment they shared when he could finally keep her out of harm's way and they could feel each others' physical presence couldn't have been more beautiful, in my opinion. Their embrace, while not a lewd or passionate show of affection, was honest, pure. It was a moment where almost all their body parts were connected, a connection they had never been able to share before. The silence and the shared words of gratitude showed that what was happening at that moment wasn't anything you could actually see or hear... it was a bittersweet instant where both of them felt. Those feelings were expertly displayed by the author.I felt the deep emotional connection they shared in that moment - the love, the gratitude, the sadness, the wonder, the warmth, their connection, their unsaid mutual promise they wouldn't forget or resent but would treasure what each had brought to the other - I felt it all and more.
Under my cold and rational outer shell lies the tender heart of a hopeless romantic who cherishes such subtle, but genuine, profound expressions of love. I would compare Jungsuh's work to the slow weaving of a finespun cotton decorated with such light embroidery that you might mistake for a run-of-the-mill high end fabric at a simple glance. Be still my beating heart.
*Wipes tears*