okay so i’m going to be talking about the novel from a perspective of a long time korean manhwa/webnovel reader — this novel is (in my opinion) very well written. even if you don’t like the plot or the characters, the way the author describes certain events or the emotions/thoughts of characters is nicely done. because of this, i can’t help but feel just a smidge sympathetic toward the ML, who i agree is a terrible person who got what was coming to him (and honestly should have gone through more) and im sure others feel the same. that’s why when you just get point blank spoilers like “oh he’s horrible he did xyz” its so easy to be like “wtf who would read this? dropped!”, which is totally fine, but also there’s a lot of nuance being missed. of course, again i don’t mean to say the ML isn’t a piece of shit - he is! irredeemably so. but if you’re on the fence, i just wanna say you can still enjoy the rest of the story knowing this fact.
the ML is a classic “korean top” psychopath, where he doesn’t have emotions and don’t understand them. where i think the author does a good job is in how she shows the effect of being a psychopath on the ML — he knows he’s different and he gets shunned by his father, and he acts like he doesn’t care. but subconsciously, being treated like he’s inhumane and a monster terrifies him, so he does everything he can to prove that it’s okay, he doesn’t need these emotions, but he accomplishes this in malicious, unethical ways.
and he does horrible things! he allows taeshin to be gang raped and plays with the emotions of his ex fiancee, leading them both to kill themselves. he facilitates the rape of many people as well, where he allows for rich men to take sexual advantage of drugged/tied up individuals. he manipulates the people around him, and the emotion abuse the MC goes through is insidious. he gets the MC to a point of dependence where the MC is terrified the ML will leave him with lies and deception.
i believe the story does a great job up to this point. we see this twisted relationship and this cruel, calculating ML develop just as the ML wants. i personally think the story gets a little weaker when everything is revealed to the MC and he gets “revenge”. his initial attempts are clumsy and honestly kind of pathetic, which might have been the point but idk, i wasn’t really feeling it. ultimately the ML does go to jail, which i think is fitting, and as expected they do get together in the end (with complicated emotions, ofc). the finale didn’t really live up to my personal expectations, but overall i did have fun reading this novel.
also one thing that i thought was both fucked up and hilarious was there’s a part where one of the rich chabeols who are part of the ML’s secret sex dungeon club or whatever (lol) tries to piss the ML off by going like “i saw [MC] and he was super pretty i wanna have sex with him blah blah blah” and ML’s reaction is to forcibly kiss that guy and threaten to fuck him (which brings up another funny point where the ML pretends in front of these people that he has an std LOL)
