TachibanaChiharu's manga / #dark(4)

Guys in HS and 4 yrs later. Mc, Taehwa, is a popular, good looking straight-A student who gets caught up by another guy who hangs out with a questionable crowd. Minjae is in the worst situation, his mom has cancer, he can't see her because his gramma's a bitch, his dad isn't allowed to see her either and is working elsewhere and drowning in debt. Minjae is picked up by chaebol Yohan who pays him and gets him Minjae to do whatever he wants, treats him like a dog. Minjae's only ray of hope is his growing obsession with the guy at school, Taehwa (mc), who seems to have it all. Minjae gets up the courage to talk to Taehwa, and keep pressing him, and they start hanging out. Taehwa has ideas about Minjae that aren't true and are based on rumor, he becomes interested in Minjae but doesn't have the power to pull him away from Yohan without then coming out burned. The two become crazy in love, but Yohan's a factor they just can't seem to jettison. Yohan's obsession with Minjae, who hates his guts more and more, eventually causes Yohan to break down and nearly destroy Minjae. This causes a rift between Minjae and Taehwa who are in love, and eventually Minjae leaves the whole situation behind him to live with his dad, try and pull himself back up without these people who've f'd up his life. Pretty good psychological drama about guys in high school. The plot is well-thought-out and executed well, but the story as a whole drags because the same plot points are rehashed from two different character's perspectives throughout the first 40 chapters. Also, a lot of cases it's hard to tell whose perspective you're in, and changes in perspective are not obvious. Furthermore, when the two leads reunite it just feels awkward rather than satisfying given the note they went out on in HS. It's a good one-time read, but not sure it's worth rereading (even though people obviously have).

HSers. Mc goes to fancy all-boys HS to get ahead but when he arrives he finds out he was tagged as the no 1 "bottom" in a school with a standardized system of pairing students off to practice gay sex. His partner is a 3rd year, the no 1 top in the school, but even so, he didn't sign up for this! (read the ppwk dumb-dumb). The 2nd volume is about the 2nd couple, no 2 bottom and top. This is an ok series that has somewhat of a rapey premise. This author has a hard time staying away from dubcon. The fingering that happens with the leads early on was a little dubcon, but the top steps off till the mc is ready beyond that so it's kinda fine. I don't like the stupid trope with random-guys-jump-bottom-and-top-swoops-in-valiantly. It's such a lame trope. So is the rival bottom being such a bad person that he would pay some guys to jump the mc even though no 1 top has already said to the rival that he's not interested in him. There are definitely some problems here. But the characters and plot were still engaging, so I can't knock it too much. It's worth a read, and the art is nice.