chlorine's Manga

Stories where miscommunication is so deeply integral to the plot are generally stories I dislike. A lot. Eventually it always just gets to a point where you want to grab the characters by their shoulders and shake them as you scream, "Just fucking talk about it." Yet, somehow, I found myself really liking this. It doesn't suffer the same fate many other stories with this trope usually would and often do. I actually really liked this.

This story deals with two childhood friends, Shinwoo and Juho, who are so clearly into each other and yet are unsure of how the other feels and are both too afraid to make the first move and face the possibility of rejection. Deciding to test the waters and see if he can bait out a reaction, Juho decides to come out to Shinwoo and then lie that he has a boyfriend.

Most of the story is about Shinwoo seething in poorly concealed jealousy that somehow completely flies over Juho's head, and then the second half of the plot is about the man Juho is fake dating actually having a real boyfriend that Shinwoo catches him with, making him believe that he's caught Juho's boyfriend cheating on him and making him unsure about what the next move should be. It's so fucking stupid in such a good way. I loved it.

Honestly when I started reading this story I kind of expected this to end up being some pseudo-affair, which it wasn't—sadly. This is one of the rare times where I think the miscommunication could have and perhaps even should have been pushed further; with that said, though, I do think one of the reasons I actually liked this trope in this story was because this is just a shounen-ai. I definitely feel like the lack of any hard intimate moments in this story let there be more leeway for such extreme miscommunication, because there wasn't that extreme intimacy that just makes the situation frustrating.

Out of the two main characters, Juho was probably my favorite. The fact that he's the one who did the fake-relationship scheme is honestly kinda crazy. Shinwoo is quite abrasive, loud, rash, honestly almost irrational, and easy to rile up. While it makes him the perfect victim for such a scheme, it also makes him seem like someone who'd do it himself, especially in comparison to Juho—Juho is quiet, he's meek, and much more reserved, he seems kind of unsure of himself at times. Which makes him being the one to do all this honestly just . . . Am I insane to say cute? Like I thought it was cute! This other side to him that acts out of purely how strongly he wants Shinwoo is cute, it's adorable, I love it.

One thing I wish this story had was simply more chapters; while altogether it has forty chapters, which seems like a good number, the main story ends at chapter twenty-seven. It's not that it's not enough, since it's a pretty good story for what it is, it's just that I want more—specifically, more of their high school years. We got some flashbacks in the side stories, and honestly, their high school years seemed kinda more interesting than what was going on in the present time. It was just super cute. Also, mentioning the side stories, it was initially framed as being a "what if", what if they mustered up the courage to be honest during their school years, and it just wasn't followed through at all. It just ended up being a normal flashback. Kinda odd idk