de Lune

Dear X is a story that slithers under your skin. It follows Baek Ah Jin — a girl born into violence, sculpted by cruelty, and sharpened into something terrifying. Her childhood is a collection of bruises: a father who hits, a mother drowning in liquor, a house where hope never dared show its face. Even when wealth entered her life, it came with chains — not gifts. She grew up as something to be sold, not someone to be loved. From this broken soil, she blooms into a woman who survives through ambition, manipulation, and an iron will to never lose. She doesn’t kill with her hands. She kills with guilt, with psychological traps, with carefully planted despair that makes people destroy themselves. Heo In-gang’s fate is the clearest example. Even monsters are born from broken mirrors. The high school arc is intoxicating — sharp, fresh, magnetic. But once adulthood comes, the story grows heavier, darker. There’s a discomfort in the air, the sense that every character is walking toward something irreversible.

Yoon Jun-seo becomes the first page of her tragedy. He watched Ah Jin being beaten by his mother and never forgave himself. His entire life becomes an offering to her — sacrifice disguised as devotion. Yet in the end he becomes the biggest hypocrite, carrying a false righteousness while standing on rotting ground.
And then there is Kim Jae-oh. If tragedy had a human shape, it would look like him. A boy who killed his father by accident, a man unloved by his family, drifting through life with only one unwavering truth: his quiet, loyal love for Ah Jin. But the cruelest truth is this — Jae-oh was never Ah Jin’s X. He was her O. The constant. The circle she always returned to. The one place where she didn’t need to lie. The moment she called him and heard no answer, something inside her cracked. She slid into the shower and cried — not because she lost a tool, but because she lost the only presence who always came when she called. Yet cruelty is stitched into her silence. When she has lunch with Moon Do-hyeok and he casually orders his subordinate to crush Jae-oh, she says nothing. Not a word, not even a breath of protest. That silence is sharper than any knife. And Jae-oh, foolish in love, accepts it. He is happy to be used by her, happy to be a stepping stone. A moth who believes the flame is warm.

Even the café owner is swallowed by her shadow. A gentle man who wanted to protect her, to be the one warm adult in her life. Instead, he ends up imprisoned for sins he didn’t commit, losing his future along with his dreams. When he returns and still speaks kindly to her, the tragedy stings even deeper. Heo In-gang’s arc is a softer heartbreak — a boy made of light, used for her ascent. Yet through him, we glimpse the rare tenderness buried inside her. Her love for his grandmother, her guilt, the way she takes the blame for the grandmother’s death — it’s one of the only moments where she feels like a wounded human instead of a carefully crafted monster. Then Moon Do-hyeok arrives — manipulation in human form, a predator in a tailored suit. He is the true final boss, the darkness that mirrors hers. Their marriage is a war disguised as a household. Jae-oh gives his life trying to protect her from Do-hyeok, but his sacrifice dissolves like smoke. Do-hyeok walks away untouched, while Jae-oh dies quietly, unfairly — as if the universe itself forgot him.

Some endings feel like justice crawling back to finish its work. Jun-seo’s mother receives a downfall so poetic it almost feels mythical. Being forced to erase her only child — watching him tear down his own childhood photos with cold finality — shatters her. Her fatal fall down the stairs is the last echo of all the cruelty she inflicted. As for Ah Jin, her collapse is inevitable. You cannot build a kingdom out of manipulation and expect it to stand. Watching her world crumble feels right, yet hollow — because the one who deserved peace the most, Jae-oh, never gets it.

But even when the writing stumbles, the acting never does. Kim Yoo-jung is breathtaking — she plays Ah Jin with a terrifying grace, turning every glance into a blade and every tear into a confession. Kim Young-dae and Kim Do-hoon match her intensity, anchoring the story with emotional weight. In the end, Dear X is not simply a drama. It’s a psychological labyrinth, a slow descent into a darkness that whispers, not screams. If you want a story that twists your thoughts, tests your morals, and leaves a shadow behind even after it ends, Dear X will haunt you long after the final scene fades.