Beatrice

Rain is so childish and self absorbed with a bad attitude and all the more ridiculous when his best friend was gassing him up about his looks in a way that didn't make any sense until learning that outside of the show, the actor is actually half Korean. He's indeed really slow on the uptake as Payu as well as his own friends tell him, which makes him so initially frustrating to watch. Rain not understanding the signals could be chalked up to his inexperience, especially only just freshly discovering that he's also bisexual like Payu, but all his other actions are ridiculous and really as a result of his unable to accept his own attraction to Payu. Payu for his part is into this annoying freshman, because for some reason it's cute, but he also tries to mentor Rain as an architecture department alumni that just graduated the year before, which is lucky for Rain. Once their relationships kicks in, Rain shapes up a bit, even learning to care about someone other than himself and becomes more easier to watch. The rich people bathrooms with the large exposed windows is always weird, but a bath while it rains outside looks looks so cozy outside of the what the characters are doing. The nc scenes are daring comparatively to other shows, but surprisingly tasteful and mostly works because thes actors for Payu and Rain have no awkwardness about it. They have good commitment and team work to actually convey the character's connection and even character development through the intimacy. I do appreciate the other displays of affections are also straightforwardly presented without the annoying romance slow motion and music effects. Both the couples have some questionable moments at the start of the relationship with the older guy's actions, but compared to the other bl adaptations from the same author, this is has way more consent involved.

The story feels grinded to a halt when it suddenly shifts to the second couple as the main story. It's not that Sky's story isn't interesting, but the pacing takes a big hit to suddenly literally play the exact same scenes of Rain and Payu again for some reason along with the new Sky POV. The reveal of Sky's bad relationship past and then the misunderstanding is also dragged out for too long. Payu and Rain pretty much disappears from the story aside from occasionally showing up as a sounding board for Sky and Pai respectively, which is a shame because Payu is the most interesting character with a unique personality in the whole show and therefore his relationship with Rain is the most interesting. The second couple is not well acted enough to take on the amount of screen time that is demanded of them for their storyline as well. I did like that one scene of Sky lying through his teeth to hurt Pai enough that Pai has tears streaming down his face. Psychologically, Sky's story is pretty tragic, even his initial one night stand with Pai is partially because of his lack of self esteem from his trauma conflicting and overlapping with his desires combined with the flirting and the threat that Pai's request in exchange for leaving the illegal event is. The resolution doesn't feel really complete like any justice was to be had for Sky who was sexually and mentally assaulted and abused by his ex once again. I'm glad Sky got some kind of catharsis though.

It's such a disjointed feeling that the series just wrapped on on Sky and Pai like Payu and Rain was just tertiary characters the whole time rather than the main characters. It seems to be two different books adapted at the same time and the script definitely should have just intertwined them instead of telling them one at a time for better pacing. It feels like such a waste of Payu's character who has the potential for more story there was in the show.