beta
it’s still ongoing, so some things may change later but to me this story has been really disappointing so far. it started strong with its premise about casinos, a card dealer uke and a rich mysterious seme. but more than 40 chapters are spent developing the casino premise, showing the games hawon has with different people (namely taeha, where their own relationship gets an interesting start), even explaining the rules for different card games, and all that to just abandon it altogether the moment aeil decides he doesn’t want to gamble for some painting (which seemed to be a quite important plot point with some actual build up). all of a sudden, hawon’s card dealing job at taeha’s casino table is forgotten because now it’s revealed that hawon’s father is a mastermind and he collected some illegal and damning information about the kwon cousins and hawon is the key to obtain it. for the next 30 or so chapters it’s just circling back and forth to unveil the clues of hawon’s father’s master plan which is honestly so unnecessarily complicated. there are more and more new things revealed or added constantly and at the same time none of the previously introduced subplots are fully resolved. they’re just there for the reader to hopefully forget about because there’s no time to remember them in the overly complicated web of hawon’s father’s and kwon cousins’ shenanigans.
in the middle of all that, we also have hawon and taeha’s relationship which seems almost exactly the same in chapter 84 as in the chapter where they first met (so probably chapter 2 or 3). barely anything has changed over these 80 chapters, maybe besides the fact that hawon is a little less reluctant about the idea of sleeping with taeha (because he knows taeha will make him do that anyway), and that he’s a little sad at the notion that he probably can’t seduce taeha to ensure the latter paying off his debt whether he meets the requirements of their deal(s) or not.
and taeha is just one big mystery. at one point he says that he’ll pay off hawon’s debt after two years of hawon working for him and then later says that actually, he’ll pay off his debt after hawon gets this painting from aeil, but actually he doesn’t really want this painting, he just wants hawon to obtain the wikileaks information, but actually he doesn’t care about these wikileaks, he just doesn’t want aeil to get them and he just wants to keep hawon to himself. like just make up your mind bro. it really seems as if the author kept changing his motives and goals as they were writing the novel. i get it that he is meant to have some “insanity” in his genes, but come on. and he gets barely any development, too.
the sex scenes between them were also soooo boring. no buildup, no tension, no exploration of their dynamics or relationship, nothing. taeha just puts his dick in hawon’s holes while trying to be smug about it and calls it a day. and hawon just seems to be a different person while they fuck which is just so odd to me.
at first, i really liked hawon for his wits, cunningness, selfishness and calculating personality. but seeing him barely grow as a person and still not being able to realize at any point the shortcomings of his over analytical personality get stagnant really quickly. some of his narration also feels just… redundant. he’s over explaining the things that are happening and that the reader can see just fine with their own eyes. at first i thought it was just a quirk of his and the author was self-aware of it, but seeing him behaving in the same manner later in the story made me doubt it altogether.
overall, the story wanted to bite more than it could chew. too many things are going on, the sudden plot point with these wikileaks and hawon’s father masterplan is overcomplicated with too many loose threads still hanging in the air, and the dynamics between the main couple is just boring, which is sad to see considering how often we see them interacting with each other. i’m really disappointed because i thought i was getting a story about a casino card dealer and his rich smug client who’s clearly too interested in him. instead, it turned out to be some wannabe intricate story about the main character being the only key to a big mystery, where too many things are unnecessarily connected with each other, and the reasons for it are explained in a half-assed way at best. i’ve already spent too much time reading this story so i’m still planning to finish it, but i don’t expect it to get any better.