This is not a linear romance story. This is the story of an event (a teacher and a student getting together and falling in love), and how that event came to be, and how it impacts the future and the world around them. If you are looking for a strict romance story, then drop this drama. I can see from the comments that some girls with hearts in their eyes for the ML, watched this and took it as a romance. But it's clear that was not the intention of the creators. This is for people who are looking to appreciate a deliberately crafted piece of cinematic art.

Taken as a romance story, this was total crap. Taken as a piece of serious cinema, this was absolutely stunning.

(SPOILERS FROM HERE ON)

Art does not shy away from controversial subject matter, and neither does this drama. Some people have rated this based on the level of disgust it evoked in them. That is completely unjust. The drama depicts their relationship through the lens of realism. It doesn't ask you to condone it, or to judge it. It simply tells it's story.

We have an ML whose mother has transferred her romantic feelings for her late husband onto her own son (an only child), and buries herself in work and part-time romance with another man, to try to escape this truth and hide it from herself. The ML needs to get away from her claustrophobic feelings for him but is barely conscious of the unhealthiness of their dynamic, and doesn't really have enough self-awareness of the situation to rise above unconscious reactions. So he is an isolated, indifferent "bad boy".

We have an FL who is a walking identity crisis time-bomb waiting to happen. Her father is overbearing and strict, emotionally cold and distant, and withholds approval to get what he wants from his family. Her mother seems content with this, but she is not.... not at all. Her fiancee "needs her", but what he really needs is not her, it's the IDEA of her, he needs what she symbolizes to him: sex, stability, a sense of pride in being a man. He seems so unconcerned with her true feelings about the relationship, that he doesn't even realize that it's a bad sign that after 7 years of dating, she still can't cook for shit. Or that you shouldn't give your GF a halfassed proposal in your boxer shorts at 2am and toss a ring at her and call it all good. She didn't like that, and it was visible that she didn't like it. He paid no attention. At work, the FL is the bottom rung of the teacher totem pole, being only a 26 year old teacher. She's too young to be a respected teacher, and too old to be respectable as a single woman. There is seemingly nowhere where she fits in for who she is.... only her making herself fit in to be appreciated for what she is.

When these two people meet, they cannot resist what the other offers. ML is the opposite of every man she knows. He is sweet, considerate, listens to her, and sees he for who she really is. He encourages her to open herself up more, and discover what she really wants. FL bears an eerie resemblance to ML's mother, is everything his mother is, only FL is warm and emotionally available and gives him the kindness and balance he needs in his life. Needless to say, they fall HARD for eachother. Not only because of the love they share, and the attraction.... but also because each one is a manifestation of something the other yearns for deep in their wounded psyche.

And then..... the aftermath.

Because the relationship they have shakes every other relationship and interpersonal dynamic around them to it's core, the relationship itself becomes their vehicle to freedom (a theme that runs through the drama), and without it, they are trapped and utterly lost in their own lives, over which neither one has any degree of personal agency. But when they follow their hearts, the ways in which others have them trapped in codependency begin to crumble, and their unhealthy relationships with others start to topple. So they find that increasingly they cannot live without eachother. They don't want to live without eachother.

Yet their undertaking is enormous: He was an unsuspecting child, who suddenly becomes completely responsible for a grown woman who is emotionally stunted and avoidant. He is totally unprepared both logistically and emotionally. She was used to relying on everyone in her life, because most people treat her like a perpetual dependent, and now she has a 17 year old boy she has to protect and raise up into a man by herself... so she also is totally unprepared to be a provider and an anchor for someone. Since she is avoidant, she has to summon up a lot of willpower to keep her heart open to the ML no matter how afraid or upset she is. Both of them fail many times as they learn to bring out more of themselves for eachother They attempt to break up multiple times, until they finally come face to face with the fact that they NEED eachother or they'll die of sheer despair.

When they fall in love and run away together, everyone who was dependent on them to hold up their own psychological illusions begins to deteriorate and flail around. Should they stay apart to hold up their families? Or should they begin a new family, and let everyone who was misusing them falter and crash? On it's surface levels, it appears as though their love for eachother is killing eachother and those around them. But on deeper levels, their romance is the only thing keeping them - and therefore everyone who depends on them - alive.

The acting was on fire. The script was a thing of beauty.... there were many silences built into the script to give the directors and actors room to create genuine emotions and evocative scenes, and the grasp on human psychology was totally brilliant. (For example, when ML runs away with FL, he realizes out of the blue that he wants to visit his long-lost paternal uncle... because now he needs to grow into a man, and is desperately looking to any other man in his life or connection to his deceased father to give him some direction, or even just a hint of a direction... it's so poignant) The cinematography and use of visual symbolism were on point, and gave added meaning to the story. I do think the music and soundtrack was where everything kind of fell down. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as the other elements that went into this, it wasn't as thoughtful and elevated as it could have been.

It was painful, thrilling, moving, sentimental, passionate, and all in all a really great watch.