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I’m actually very happy with how accurately you summed up the situation of both the student and the teacher — far better than I did, I realise now! I definitely omitted some important points when describing what they are both going through.
And I’m glad you brought up Tsuiraku JK to Haijin Kyoshi, because I think that is a really interesting comparison. I haven’t watched it myself, but the fact that you can find essentially the same criticism there despite the story dealing with the characters’ vulnerabilities and boundaries really illustrates your point about how quickly people can reduce a complicated fictional relationship to one particular label.
I also really agree with what you said about depiction versus normalisation. I think that distinction gets lost surprisingly often. A story can depict something unhealthy, morally complicated or even unacceptable in real life without presenting it as something the audience should approve of or imitate. For me, that is exactly why it is worth looking at what the story is actually doing with the situation rather than stopping at “this would be wrong in real life.”
This actually connects to something else I’ve been thinking about lately: the current emphasis on representation in audiovisual media. I absolutely agree with the general idea that different kinds of people deserve to be represented, but I’m much less convinced by turning representation into a set of expectations or even requirements for individual works. I would much rather see artists make the project they genuinely want to make, and see specific experiences or groups get their own projects when that is what the creators actually want to explore, rather than having rules about how many Black characters, gay characters, disabled characters, etc. a project is supposed to contain.
For me, obligation is almost the opposite of what art should be. If an artist has a very specific vision, especially when they are making something primarily as art and self-expression rather than as a social example, I would rather let them follow that vision. If we want more representation, I would much rather support and fund projects that are genuinely built around those experiences than punish or penalise unrelated projects for not containing a particular percentage of them. And I find it especially strange when representation becomes tied to nominations or awards, because then something that should ideally be an additional value becomes almost an obligation.
In fact, I would prefer genuine, even imperfect or underrepresented representation over representation that exists because somebody was told they had to put it there. If a disabled actor is genuinely the right person for a role, for example, I would much rather see that person there because the creators wanted them there and their presence contributes something to the project, rather than because the production was fulfilling a quota. Good Omens came to mind. Having the actress in the cast can simply be part of the work itself, rather than something that needs to be treated as a checkbox.
And I think this goes back to the same problem of confusing art with a social example. Audiovisual works can absolutely influence how people think, but I don’t believe that makes every audiovisual work responsible for being a representation of how society should look. If something began primarily as art, I think it should be allowed to remain art — a way for someone to express a vision, explore an idea, imagine a world or simply tell a story. We have other kinds of projects specifically intended for representation, education and social messaging.
What bothers me most is that people often seem to take the interpretation they get from a fictional work and then push it back onto the work itself as though the work explicitly made that social statement. The fact that you depict rape, violence, bullying, an unhealthy relationship, or someone falling in love with a student does not automatically mean the work is saying that these things are good or normal. Sometimes the whole point of fiction is to examine something precisely because it is complicated, disturbing or difficult to understand. We try to understand these things partly so that we can recognise them and protect ourselves from them in real life — not because we want to reproduce them.
So I think representation can be wonderful when it genuinely belongs to the project, story or world. I just very strongly prefer it as an added value of art rather than an obligation imposed on artists. And I think that is another area where I would very deliberately separate real life from fiction.
Also, I have to admit, the lack of music is not something that has struck me most about Japanese series up to this point. I usually think more of the overproduced remakes when comparing different versions of a story, but now that you’ve pointed it out, I’m definitely going to notice this aspect more. There really is something interesting about letting the scene carry itself through the characters’ expressions, pauses and small movements rather than having the soundtrack constantly guide the viewer’s emotions.
Thank you very much for all the observations — you’ve actually given me several things to pay more attention to when watching J-BL from now on! 🖤💗
"If I don't do something now, I may never have another chance to help him."
The only way out is stay still, but little did he knows in the moment it leads both way - to resolution (he does not show disgust how many men would, and it is enough for the student, he leaves him be and does not proceed with self destruction) or to disaster (the student pursues further his desires, dragging the authority with him).
That is why it becomes so difficult for him to fight the student's advances.
And from the trailer, we can see that when things eventually cross a much bigger boundary and the kiss happens, the teacher does try to stop it.
I have also seen some pictures of them actually kissing each other, which I hadn't initially seen, so at this point I am mostly working with what we have seen so far and putting the later parts into brackets.
But even if the transition into mutual intimacy happens very quickly, the implication I am talking about still stands.
The fact that they eventually kiss each other does not erase the fact that the teacher initially tried to resist what was happening.
(+) THE STUDENT’s INNER WORLD
And this brings us back to the student.
From the outside, he is a troublesome troublemaker.
He is hated because of his social position.
He is hated because of what he can afford and what other students cannot.
He is hated for everything about him that seems to put him outside the expected order.
But almost everything that is obvious from the outside perspective is wrong when you look at him from the inside.
He is not nearly as confident as people think.
He is not secure in himself.
He is not simply the rich kid everyone assumes he is.
He is not some Casanova who can get whoever he wants whenever he wants.
He is honestly just looking for a little peace and quiet.
And, tragically for both of them, he finds it in his teacher.
That is where I think the underlying psychology becomes much more interesting than the simple labels people are throwing around.
There is this problematic age gap for some viewers, and there is psychology underneath it.
The student may be searching for a father figure he never had, but he is also at an age where he no longer needs a father as a father.
He needs an equal.
So subconsciously, he may be looking for something that resembles the safety and reliability he never had, while simultaneously wanting something completely different from a parental relationship.
Consciously, he knows he is dealing with an enormous amount of shit and does not really have the time or capacity for a relationship.
But subconsciously, he is trying to latch onto anything that can give him energy and meaning in a life that has become almost meaningless to him.
He desperately wants someone he can rely on.
Because it is exhausting to have to rely only on yourself.
And yes, there is a huge problem with the teacher allowing anything like that to develop.
But the interesting part is how the transition happens.
It begins with him trying to help.
And when he tries to help emotionally, he becomes part of it.
That is where the student's attachment can grow.
It is not necessarily about either of them being bad people.
It is about two vulnerable people interacting in an extremely bad situation.
(+) FICTION IS NOT REAL LIFE
And this is where I come back to the thing I actually wanted to talk about from the beginning.
Fiction is about symbolism, generalisation, associations, and underlying layers of human psychology and experience.
It can take a situation that would be terrible, dangerous, or unacceptable in real life and use it to explore something else.
That does not mean the real-life situation is suddenly good.
It means fiction and reality are not performing the same psychological function.
That distinction matters.
People can dislike the age gap.
People can dislike the teacher-student dynamic.
People can say that the characters are making dangerous choices.
All of that is fair.
Because by agreeing to kiss each other, they are putting both of themselves in danger, and that is probably not a healthy relationship dynamic.
But that is different from saying that the story is portraying them as predators.
I don't see that.
They are nice people in a terrible situation.
And you can still criticise their decisions without pretending that their feelings themselves are evidence of some predatory nature.
There is desperation here.
There is vulnerability.
There is loneliness.
There is an enormous imbalance of circumstances.
And those things are precisely what the story seems interested in exploring.
You can blame them for what they do.
But if you are emotionally engaging with the story, I don't think "blame" is even the most useful vocabulary.
They are not perfect.
They are not making healthy choices.
They are putting themselves at risk.
But they are not being written as monsters.
And calling the teacher a pedophile is just as laughable as calling the student a gerontophile.
They are 20 and 30.
That is roughly a ten-year age gap.
You may dislike a ten-year age gap. That is your right.
You may have a problem with them being a student and a teacher. That is also a completely understandable position (but then my question is: if the student were not a student, would your assessment of their entire dynamic really be this harsh? Because then the authority relationship would not exist).
And I genuinely wonder whether some of the people throwing stones have actually seen stories where the characters were deliberately written as predators.
Because I have.
I have seen series and movies where the teacher or the student was genuinely written in a predatory way.
That is not what I am seeing here.
Just because you label a genre or a premise a certain way and then try to make yourself disgusted by it does not automatically mean that you have correctly identified what the story is actually doing.
There are stories where the label genuinely fits.
But there are also stories where the entire point is something else.
And when you deliberately mislabel the latter, you are not analysing the story anymore.
You are spreading rumors about it.
And that brings me right back to the teacher's previous school.
The rumour about him destroyed his life.
He could not even take the exams necessary to become a proper teacher because of what had happened.
And whether that rumour was true or not, the consequences were real.
We (as intelligent beings) already know that what happened at that previous school was not what people claimed it was.
And now, tragically, it looks like the same mechanism may happen again.
The rumour exists.
The rumour becomes the story.
The person is judged according to the rumour.
His life is destroyed because of it.
He has to find another job somewhere else.
He psychologically cannot even think about certain things anymore.
And now, because life has this horrible tendency to slap you in exactly the direction you least expect, the thing everyone accused him of may actually become a possibility in his new school.
That is tragic.
It is not something that needs to be celebrated.
But it is also not something that becomes better understood by throwing not fitting labels at it.
It is a story about two people in an extraordinarily bad situation.
It is about vulnerability, loneliness, trust, attachment, reputation, rumours, power, and the ways people can become entangled with each other without ever initially intending to.
And I think that is much more interesting than reducing the entire thing to one label.
Those who still use real-life situations, age gaps, or teacher-student relationships as their excuse, reasons and arguments for why they don't watch series like these just don't get the point of this type of story.
I want to talk about everything that is already good about this series, and I also want to get into why I don't like people equating fiction with real life, especially when they blame fiction for taking direct inspiration from real human beings and real-life situations.
Psychologically, fiction serves a different purpose from real life. Fictional rape, fictional incest, fictional abuse, and other taboo topics can serve very different purposes from their real-life counterparts. I am going to cook this out of my brain as I go, so I don't have to keep trying to formulate exactly what I think about it every time. Take it with a grain of salt, but I know what I mean.
So, first things first.
(+) THE OLDER MALE LEAD
I really want to praise the older male lead. I think they have done a great, painful, and very diligent job portraying him.
He is obviously a very soft person at first sight, but everything we know about him supports that impression. Just take his story. He is a husband — or was a husband. He and his wife have separated. He is still trying to maintain a relationship with his mother and probably does not want to hurt her, so he and his ex-wife are pretending that they are still together. That requires an immense amount of cooperation between two people who were once very close, and I think that has been portrayed beautifully.
It also messes with our brains because we are not particularly used to seeing an adult male character in a BL series who has actually been married and is dealing with the consequences of having tried to live a conventional, traditional life.
Usually, if a male character in BL has a wife or a previous marriage, it is either treated as something dirty, as cheating, or simply not portrayed particularly well. This is, so far, one of the first portrayals I have seen of a man who genuinely tried to live that conventional kind of life and simply could not make it work for one reason or another.
Unfortunately, we do not yet know why the marriage broke down. I don't know whether the issue mentioned in the synopsis had anything to do with the destruction of their marriage. We don't know whether he has been gay since day one and that was ultimately what destroyed their relationship; whether she was more career-oriented; whether he was perceived as a loser and could not deal with that; whether she wanted to pursue a career; whether she found somebody more suitable for her; or something completely different.
The one thing we do know is that he is not the one who has another person in his life, so he probably was not the one who initiated the divorce because of another relationship.
And beyond the marriage, it is not even clear whether he is homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual. We literally do not know.
What we do know is that he is very obviously portrayed as trustworthy, reliable, and soft in nature.
Does that tell us anything about how sexually attractive he is? Yes, no, maybe. My first impression would be that no, but experience argues with that, so he might be potentially very attractive to other people.
And I think this is particularly interesting in the context of an age gap and a teacher-student relationship. We rarely get this type of “older” male lead: the supposed to be predator simply because he is older and occupies a position of authority - while keeping a persona of the reliable, responsible, emotionally soft person.
That is genuinely exciting to me because of how he is portrayed.
Of course, you can read his character differently. Character interpretation is subjective. He might still read as unreliable to someone else. But based on the direct indications we have been given, I don't see that character here.
I genuinely believe he is meant to be the good person in a bad set of life circumstances.
(+) THE ATMOSPHERE
The next thing I really want to praise is the atmosphere.
We have these very dark tones, the black and blue, the cold colours, and the overall darkness of the cinematography. It immediately tells you what kind of drama this is.
And the drama is genuinely dramatic. It deals with serious topics in a respectful undertone, which is not always the case.
For this genre, for this style, for this atmosphere, everything is extremely well attuned.
And I especially appreciate how they cut the music in situations where what is actually happening matters.
They don't constantly try to manipulate you with music. They don't show you one thing and then use the soundtrack to tell you that you are supposed to feel something completely different.
They leave the scene to speak for itself, and that makes the serious moments hit much harder.
The older I get, the more I appreciate that.
Surprisingly enough, I have even appreciated this in another BL series where one scene started without music whatsoever and was edited into the middle of a kiss.
Points to those of you who know which series I am talking about. I don't think I have ever stopped talking about how lovely that series is and how beautifully made it is. Those who know, know. Those who don't, you can ask me.
But this is another version of the same idea: silence can speak louder than music.
If you understand that the important part is the action itself and not the soundtrack telling the audience how to feel, you can create a much stronger scene.
You can start without music and then introduce it, and emotionally, that can have a similar effect. But if you cut the music completely and trust the scene to carry itself, then kudos. You know what you are doing.
(+) THE TWO COUPLES
Another thing I want to praise is that we have two couples here, and neither of these future couples is easy.
They are not simple relationships. They are complicated, and you can already see the underlying problems developing between them.
That makes them much more interesting to me than a relationship that exists simply because the story needs two people to fall in love.
(+) THE SCHOOL, BULLYING, AND DRUG-RELATED TOPICS
I also appreciate the way the series handles the bullying and the topics that are particularly relevant to Korean schools, including drugs.
Again, they match the tone and severity of the situation with the visual and audio presentation. They do not turn these things into some exaggerated spectacle. The seriousness of what is happening is reflected in how it is presented.
And then we have the other male lead.
(+) THE STUDENT IS NOT WHAT EVERYONE THINKS HE IS
He may look like a troublemaker, but he isn't really.
He is in a terrible situation, with terrible support from the people around him and from the authorities. He is being beaten. He is bruised. People want to remove him from school. They even go as far as trying to put him in prison.
And yet he keeps fighting.
This is another thing that is genuinely interesting to me because of my experience with BL series.
He is obviously already fascinated by the teacher. From the very beginning, you can see that the teacher caught his attention.
But he is not written in the way some authors write the pursuing character.
Some authors seem to think that the person who pursues has to be excessively brazen. He has to be daring, pushy, slick, constantly aware of what he is doing, and somehow almost predatory.
It is like the psychology gets completely switched around because that looks better on paper.
But here we have someone who is definitely portrayed as that kind of person from the outside perspective — and yet you watch him and realise that the people calling him that simply do not know him.
He is quiet.
He is brave, but not brave through bravado. He is brave in the sense that he genuinely keeps going despite everything happening to him.
He suffers a lot, and he has nowhere to hide, nowhere to heal, and nobody to confide in.
He does not want to rely on anyone.
The only person he can rely on is himself.
And that does not make him more audacious or more arrogant.
It makes him quieter.
So we have two people who are, in very different ways, extremely closed off. Both of them keep things to themselves. Both of them are carrying things they don't really know how to express.
And then they meet.
(+) THE TOILET SCENE / THEIR FIRST ENCOUNTER
The situation in which they meet is actually very clever.
The teacher is vomiting in a toilet because the person who is taking him to his new school and new job opportunity has asked him a question that was too close to an extremely sensitive subject: the rumour about him and the student at his previous school.
That question hits very close.
He comes out of the stall, washes himself, and puts his wedding ring down beside the basin. He knows rationally what is going on, but the stress is simply too much for his body to process.
Then the other male lead (= student) enters.
He has been beaten and wants somewhere to hide and recover, but now he notices this new person standing there.
He does not recognise him, so he knows he cannot be a teacher. But he is in the teachers' toilet, which means he is probably going to be a teacher.
Something in him immediately wakes up. He becomes aware of his surroundings.
They exchange a few words, fewer looks.
The teacher leaves his ring behind.
The student takes it.
And we are now at episode three, with the ring still not returned even though they have already encountered each other several times.
The interesting part is that the teacher knows who he met in that toilet. He can probably make an educated guess about who took the ring.
But he never asks for it.
We even see in the trailer that the student is going to examine the ring and it seems as though he wants to put it on his own finger.
Which is actually quite funny if you think about the symbolism literally, because the only other person who could realistically have that other ring is the teacher's wife, not the teacher himself.
So the intended implication is obviously, the connection between the student and the teacher, while the literal object technically connects the student to the teacher's wife.
And neither of them normally wears that ring anymore anyway.
(+) THE TEACHER DOES NOT BACK DOWN
Then we get the testing of the waters.
The student is portrayed as someone who, from the outside, appears irresponsible, rebellious, and unwilling to obey rules.
Even some of the teachers reinforce that impression. They know what family he comes from. They know he can afford not to attend school. They don't want trouble.
So they try to get this annoying new teacher — who is all justice and no practice, as far as they are concerned — out of the situation.
But he doesn't budge.
And that is extremely annoying to them.
They are willing to do genuinely wild things to a student who is younger than them, and it is honestly disgusting.
What I like about the teacher, though, is that he is not simply a "rules are rules" person.
His attitude is much closer to:
"Am I really the only person here who cares about this student?"
And he doesn't even need to ask that question.
Because even if he is the only one, he is still going to be the one person who cares.
He never wanted anything beyond that.
He never imagined anything beyond that.
He just wanted to be kind.
He just did not want this other person (the student) to think that he was completely alone in the world.
He also does not want him to believe that he can get away with anything simply because of who he is.
And that is exactly how the student begins to recognise that the teacher actually cares.
He might genuinely be the only person at that school who does.
(+) THE ROMANCE PART
And that is where the student's trust starts.
First comes trust.
Then, with trust, he starts noticing details and differences between them.
And with those details comes love.
Importantly, the love does not come from some supposedly "born rebellious" nature. Winning the ultimate authority’s attention. Conquering the system.
He does not want an illegal, hidden, twisted relationship.
The teacher does not want that either.
Neither of them is thinking, "Let's have a secret relationship because this is exciting."
Instead, what happens is much more psychological.
The student quickly realises that the teacher cares.
And because he is someone who has been deprived of reliable human connection, he starts breaking rules and inserting himself into the teacher's personal space very quickly.
(There is also this thing, the act of desperation coming from the student. He knows that his teacher is probably married, and he knows if he does not act fast, which is of course out of desperation, he's not gonna get a chance. So he cannot afford to think twice before he acts. His dreams are basically crushed before they even begin - the very first scene and the ring.)
But notice who is not doing the pursuing.
The teacher is not the one initiating it.
He is not the one approving the boundary shifts.
He is not the one creating those opportunities.
The student is.
And if you want to look at the psychology of that without immediately turning everyone into a monster, it is actually quite interesting.
If you have a student in that kind of situation — someone with a deeply troubled family life, someone being hunted and bullied at school, someone who has absolutely nobody he trusts — and you suddenly become the only person he trusts, pulling away from him is not necessarily experienced on a purely logical or professional level.
It is experienced on a human level.
You know that if you suddenly withdraw, he may simply close himself off again.
And situations like that can very easily lead to much worse outcomes.
So the teacher keeps trying to help.
And this is exactly where the boundary becomes complicated.
Because when you try to help someone emotionally, you are no longer completely outside the equation (situation) - you are part of it.
You are emotionally entangled in it.
And that opens a door for the other person to keep coming closer.
The teacher's mistake, if you want to call it that, is not that he consciously seeks intimacy.
It is that because he cares, he does not pull away quickly enough from the affectionate and intimate attention the student is seeking from him.
His hesitation is used against him, perhaps in the purest possible sense.
Not because either character consciously wants to hurt or manipulate the other.
But because human beings use each other subconsciously all the time.
That is how families work.
That is how friendships work.
That is how relationships between human beings work.
We affect one another, lean on one another, seek things from one another, and sometimes exploit vulnerabilities without consciously intending to.
And that is where the transition happens.
The teacher's vulnerability is shown too openly, the teacher is in touch with it.
He does not protect himself quickly enough.
And there is also that pressure of:
"If I don't do something now, I may never have another chance to help him."
The only way out is stay still, but little did he knows in the moment it leads both way - to resolution (he does not show disgust how many men would, and it is enough for the student, he leaves him be and does not proceed with self destruction) or to disaster (the student pursues further his desires, dragging the authority with him).
That is why it becomes so difficult for him to fight the student's advances.
And from the trailer, we can see that when things eventually cross a much bigger boundary and the kiss happens, the teacher does try to stop it.
I have also seen some pictures of them actually kissing each other, which I hadn't initially seen, so at this point I am mostly working with what we have seen so far and putting the later parts into brackets.
But even if the transition into mutual intimacy happens very quickly, the implication I am talking about still stands.
The fact that they eventually kiss each other does not erase the fact that the teacher initially tried to resist what was happening.
(+) THE STUDENT’s INNER WORLD
And this brings us back to the student.
From the outside, he is a troublesome troublemaker.
He is hated because of his social position.
He is hated because of what he can afford and what other students cannot.
He is hated for everything about him that seems to put him outside the expected order.
But almost everything that is obvious from the outside perspective is wrong when you look at him from the inside.
He is not nearly as confident as people think.
He is not secure in himself.
He is not simply the rich kid everyone assumes he is.
He is not some Casanova who can get whoever he wants whenever he wants.
He is honestly just looking for a little peace and quiet.
And, tragically for both of them, he finds it in his teacher.
That is where I think the underlying psychology becomes much more interesting than the simple labels people are throwing around.
There is this problematic age gap for some viewers, and there is psychology underneath it.
The student may be searching for a father figure he never had, but he is also at an age where he no longer needs a father as a father.
He needs an equal.
So subconsciously, he may be looking for something that resembles the safety and reliability he never had, while simultaneously wanting something completely different from a parental relationship.
Consciously, he knows he is dealing with an enormous amount of shit and does not really have the time or capacity for a relationship.
But subconsciously, he is trying to latch onto anything that can give him energy and meaning in a life that has become almost meaningless to him.
He desperately wants someone he can rely on.
Because it is exhausting to have to rely only on yourself.
And yes, there is a huge problem with the teacher allowing anything like that to develop.
But the interesting part is how the transition happens.
It begins with him trying to help.
And when he tries to help emotionally, he becomes part of it.
That is where the student's attachment can grow.
It is not necessarily about either of them being bad people.
It is about two vulnerable people interacting in an extremely bad situation.
(+) FICTION IS NOT REAL LIFE
And this is where I come back to the thing I actually wanted to talk about from the beginning.
Fiction is about symbolism, generalisation, associations, and underlying layers of human psychology and experience.
It can take a situation that would be terrible, dangerous, or unacceptable in real life and use it to explore something else.
That does not mean the real-life situation is suddenly good.
It means fiction and reality are not performing the same psychological function.
That distinction matters.
People can dislike the age gap.
People can dislike the teacher-student dynamic.
People can say that the characters are making dangerous choices.
All of that is fair.
Because by agreeing to kiss each other, they are putting both of themselves in danger, and that is probably not a healthy relationship dynamic.
But that is different from saying that the story is portraying them as predators.
I don't see that.
They are nice people in a terrible situation.
And you can still criticise their decisions without pretending that their feelings themselves are evidence of some predatory nature.
There is desperation here.
There is vulnerability.
There is loneliness.
There is an enormous imbalance of circumstances.
And those things are precisely what the story seems interested in exploring.
You can blame them for what they do.
But if you are emotionally engaging with the story, I don't think "blame" is even the most useful vocabulary.
They are not perfect.
They are not making healthy choices.
They are putting themselves at risk.
But they are not being written as monsters.
And calling the teacher a pedophile is just as laughable as calling the student a gerontophile.
They are 20 and 30.
That is roughly a ten-year age gap.
You may dislike a ten-year age gap. That is your right.
You may have a problem with them being a student and a teacher. That is also a completely understandable position (but then my question is: if the student were not a student, would your assessment of their entire dynamic really be this harsh? Because then the authority relationship would not exist).
And I genuinely wonder whether some of the people throwing stones have actually seen stories where the characters were deliberately written as predators.
Because I have.
I have seen series and movies where the teacher or the student was genuinely written in a predatory way.
That is not what I am seeing here.
Just because you label a genre or a premise a certain way and then try to make yourself disgusted by it does not automatically mean that you have correctly identified what the story is actually doing.
There are stories where the label genuinely fits.
But there are also stories where the entire point is something else.
And when you deliberately mislabel the latter, you are not analysing the story anymore.
You are spreading rumors about it.
And that brings me right back to the teacher's previous school.
The rumour about him destroyed his life.
He could not even take the exams necessary to become a proper teacher because of what had happened.
And whether that rumour was true or not, the consequences were real.
We (as intelligent beings) already know that what happened at that previous school was not what people claimed it was.
And now, tragically, it looks like the same mechanism may happen again.
The rumour exists.
The rumour becomes the story.
The person is judged according to the rumour.
His life is destroyed because of it.
He has to find another job somewhere else.
He psychologically cannot even think about certain things anymore.
And now, because life has this horrible tendency to slap you in exactly the direction you least expect, the thing everyone accused him of may actually become a possibility in his new school.
That is tragic.
It is not something that needs to be celebrated.
But it is also not something that becomes better understood by throwing not fitting labels at it.
It is a story about two people in an extraordinarily bad situation.
It is about vulnerability, loneliness, trust, attachment, reputation, rumours, power, and the ways people can become entangled with each other without ever initially intending to.
And I think that is much more interesting than reducing the entire thing to one label.
Those who still use real-life situations, age gaps, or teacher-student relationships as their excuse, reasons and arguments for why they don't watch series like these just don't get the point of this type of story.