TW: suicide, self-harm, homophobia, bullying

This is not a bad drama if you are mindful of all of its trigger warnings and tags. One of my biggest issues with this series is the lack of trigger warnings despite the semi-explicit depiction of self-harm and a very clear implication of suicide.

But let's talk about the good first.

I highly enjoy the friendship and the scenes of them just enjoying each other's company is so lovely to watch. Not all interactions are romantically charged and I highly appreciated that they got the chance to develop a solid friendship first before any romance develops. There are also a lot of emotionally raw moments between the two main leads which were so enchanting to see on screen.

I also appreciate the first time-skip. Any relationship that they develop between them in that high school period would be nothing less than traumatizing for both of them. It is clear that TaeHyun is not ready for any sort of emotional attachment due to his past trauma, and it was clear that he was going to project all of his emotional insecurities unto DaYeol if they became a couple at that point. I appreciate that after the 2-year time-skip, he had enough reflection time that he recognized his own emotional misgivings and kind of just promised to do better. He was emotionally aware enough that he is not ready for a relationship at that point but he will work towards it. That in itself is a huge character development from his initial selfishness.

Now let's talk about things that could have been done better:

1. Trigger warnings, as I mentioned previously.
2. Second time skip was so unnecessary. I wanted to actually see the effort that TaeHyun put into improving himself and winning DaYeol over, but instead we got another lazy writing in the form of time skip. Maybe it's the lack of budget or whatever, but if that was the case, then they should have properly divided the amount of highschool screentime and college screentime.
3. First episode was extremely hard to watch due to how malicious Won Kyung and Tae Hyun are. It was not harmless jokes, they actually accused DaYeol of SA. It was also disturbing how the adults handled the supposedly SA situation - they actually did not take it seriously at all, and the nurse was shown to be more homophobic than actually caring about a student being supposedly SA'd.
4. No real consequence to homophobia. I know this happens in the real world too but I have anger issues and I was itching to punch some bitches in this series.
5. I can't see the physical attraction between the two leads. I am completely fine with the lack of kissing or physical intimacy - my favourite BL of all time is The Untamed. However, there is just no tension or any signs of physical attraction at all between these two male leads.

I don't think I can every bring myself to rewatch this ever again even though it had some real cute moments.