I was a little bit disappointed by this one, so it's taken me a while to sit down and actually mark it as read/reviewed.
The beginning is great: I love Seon-woo's incredibly weird but intensely competent family, and I particularly adored Tae-moon's interactions with Seon-woo's parents. The balance between humor and genuine emotion is difficult to maintain, but all of these scenes do it so effectively.
Seon-woo is blunt and honest and, it turns out, wildly kinky, and Tae-moon is deeply confused by his consistently growing attraction to him. He's also thrown for an absolute loop by Seon-woo's parents, who not only clock the true nature of their relationship, but also start talking about marriage and acceptance. Tae-moon feels guilty about it - they're not officially dating, it's just a physical thing - and also completely overwhelmed by the idea of gaining a family that might actually love him.
He's also finally realizing that all of the assumptions he'd made about Seon-woo's abusive family and terrible childhood were just him projecting his own awful upbringing onto him. But at the same time, while he doesn't have a great relationship with his own father, Seon-woo is making him face the fact that he is incredibly privileged to have a rich, powerful father whose biggest issue right now is him trying to force Tae-moon into taking over his incredibly wealthy, powerful business.
Turns out Tae-moon's pride can take a break if leveraging his family name means protecting someone he loves...because he has fallen head over heels for Seon-woo without realizing it. Seon-woo had simply been waiting for him to catch up, not pushing him into anything he wasn't comfortable with, but being very open about his own interest in and attachment to Tae-moon.
That's one of the things I still like the most about this series: that Seon-woo isn't the slightest bit naive or oblivious. He's very astute, actually, but comes across as unfeeling or out of touch because even if he's able to pick up on other people's feelings, he doesn't consider it his business to interfere with them. His family raised him with deep acceptance and a whole lot of freedom, and he extends that to everyone he meets. Just in a way that rubs a lot of them the wrong way, because they don't understand him.
I also really appreciated that Seon-woo's parents weren't over-the-top unbelievable about their intense tolerance. Yes: they make a huge deal out of embracing Tae-moon as their "male daughter-in-law" and whole-heartedly support whatever their son wants out of this relationship. But when Tae-moon sends Seon-woo to the store, he gets a chance to hear their true feelings, which are more complex.
The acceptance and love is unwavering...but they tell Tae-moon that they are from an older generation that doesn't fully understand same-sex relationships, and are embedded in a community and culture that isn't too familiar with seeing those types of couples in action in real life. So what they're promising him is to do their absolute best to learn and to be there however the two of them need.
It's...lovely. Raw and honest and even more impactful because they recognize the complications but are determined to be there for their son - and their potential new son - no matter what.
Tae-moon's dad doesn't seem likely to ever be that kind of parent, but they are working on their relationship in their own way. His dad seems to genuinely want him to be a part of the family now, and to take on his part of the inheritance, which Tae-moon had been mostly rejecting out of a deep sense of pride and childhood betrayal. But it's kind of stupid to turn down wealth and power just because he's mad his dad treated him and his mom badly when he was younger.
The pacing at this point started feeling a bit too frantic for me: so much was happening with Seon-woo's job and Tae-moon's father that it got kind of muddy after a while. So many moving parts, with Seon-woo and Tae-moon putting elaborate plans together separately, then running into each other's plans and disrupting them, then encountering new workplace drama...
It got to be a bit too much for me. Hopefully that storyline gets smoothed out better in the next volume.
This one also had one of my least favorite kinks, which might've turned me off if it'd happened in an earlier volume when I hadn't gotten so invested in the characters. It was handled in a funny, true-to-them way, though, and I do find it weirdly sweet how overwhelmed Tae-moon is by Seon-woo's attempts to spice up their bedroom.