eishin's manga / #Mafia(2)

The first few chapters made it seem as if this story will go to the direction of a stereotypical toxic omegaverse story but with the roles reversed because it's the alpha that's getting coerced this time. However, it suddenly makes an unexpected turn and instead show us this morally gray character along with one of the best green flag alpha I've ever seen from my experience of consuming BL media. Jaein made me feel a bit of an ick especially during scenes where he'd force Taeyoon to do sexual activities. But I never actually hated him because the creator kept showing signs of humanity in him. Even just earlier on we could see how he's not actually sick in the head as opposed to his first introduction to us readers. The phasing of being slowly eased into his back story felt just right and it made the whole revelation more gut retching than I imagined. I'm surprised about the whole miscarriage ordeal. I feel like I've never scene that as a source of conflict before. It's pretty interesting to see how the creator portrayed Jaein's character as he tries to process his grief. In my perspective, that feeling of betrayal from the person he loved and trusted the most, as well as the loss of his one and only family (since his parents are gone) was the root cause of his trauma. Then the fact that he would never be the same person he was before all these things happened, along with the despair of never being able to have family again because he can't get pregnant anymore.It's no wonder he pushes people away and lash out on them as a defense mechanism, so that he won't ever experience that betrayal again. Now, let's talk about Taeyoon. This man has trauma that he's carrying too, but he still turned out better than most alpha's out there. What I like about him besides being a green flag, is the fact that despite being confused about his own feelings, he's still able to think rationally and see signs of Jaein asking for help. Due to this, Jaein was able to feel safe with him and let him inside his heart even if it meant the risk of getting hurt again. Can't believe we had to suffer through him getting hurt because of the stupid ex, honestly. Not the most perfect story, but this couple grew on me a lot the more I saw their development. They also showed us a bit of babybump so that's nice! Hopefully we get more of the pregnancy domestic bliss and the baby during side stories ^^

This is one of those guilty-pleasure reads. My moral compass is nagging me in the back of my mind about all the red flags in this story, but at the same time because of how the narrative is shown to us readers, (i.e., a very comical and lighthearted vibe) it's easy to just gloss over it as nothing out of the sorts. We might even be able to argue that whatever transpired here isn't as bad as most other BLs out there (the bar is in hell ik). Ignoring the questionable elements though, Mongryong and Jeha's relationship is pretty cute. Mongryong is probably the most chaotic uke out there and I say this with a lot of love for him, a top-tier power bottom fr. There was some SA and dub-con earlier on in the story but later on everything was consensual. The ending did feel a bit abrupt, I guess the creators were going to a more open-ended route, but a bit of domestic bliss would've been nice after all the crazyness. Overall though, it was a pretty nice read with good art and interesting plot.