{ Original Title: 우연과 필연사이 | Publisher: Lezhin | Audience: Mature }
Content Warning: The following post may contain mature subject matter not suitable for sensitive readers, including but not limited to, incest and physical violence. If you are uncomfortable with such material, do not continue reading.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
There are two topics that make me drop a story almost immediately:
- Misery for the sake of misery
- Incest
I hate when a never-ending trail of terrible things happen to a character, and it’s for no other reason than to illicit sympathy from the reader.
But it builds character!
Not everyone’s life is all sunshine and gumdrops!
It’s to showcase triumph over adversity!
Oh, really?
Can you really say that with a straight face when talking about Missing Love, Even if You Don’t Love Me, Pearl Boy or Painter of the Night????
Now, if you’re a regular reader of BL manhwa, chances are you recognize all of those titles. They’re fairly popular comics, and each of them even have incredible art. However, in each of those stories, the main character is constantly put through horrible situation after horrible situation, in my opinion, to make the reader pity the character. You want me to witness the main character hit the lowest of the lowest depths, so far down they can take a sample of the earth’s magma, just to build them up? Nah, you can keep it.
Call me a softie; I don’t care. It’s not my intention to avoid stories full of strife and just fill up on happily-ever-afters either. Webtoons, manga, anime, light novels… all of these fictional media are a means of escape for me, so if I come upon something that has endless physical violence, sexual assault, harassment, crime, psychotic or sadistic personalities… I stop reading to protect my own mental health. The real world is already shitty enough; I don’t need the fictional ones I read to be shitty too.
The second topic is incest. I’ll drop those stories so fast, it’d make your head spin. I even have a hard time reading stories where two characters who aren’t blood related but raised as siblings fall in love with each other. I get the whole forbidden love trope is a thing, but it’s just not for me.
So imagine my surprise when I continued reading Between Fate and Fortune even after learning about Dojun and Jinwoo’s relationship. I’ve thought about this for a while, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason why I can still read this comic without reflexively dropping it is because Dojun and Jinwoo know that their relationship isn’t normal and try to stop. In fact, Dojun has near crippling guilt over it. That was enough for me to push through and read the rest of the comic, and I’m glad I did because I ended up liking the story overall.
Season 1 Summary
Chae Dojun. He has it rough. His parents died tragically in a car accident that he can still vividly remember. He’s in love with a sunbae who’ll never return his feelings. He’s constantly working odd jobs to pay off debt on top of trying to finish his degree. His little brother, who loves him more than a brother, is a hothead who gets himself into sketchy situations. And his adoptive mother is dying.
The guy is tired.
After his unrequited crush tells him he’s moving overseas, Dojun runs into Heo Taeseok… well, more like Taeseok finds him crying behind his car. Dojun quickly apologizes, gives Taeseok some money to pay for any damage to his car and leaves. From there, the two keep running into each other and quite literally too. At the hospital, Dojun bumps into Taeseok and causes him to spill coffee all over himself. It results in a burn to his arm and despite Taeseok trying to pass it off as no big deal, Dojun doesn’t feel right about it so they exchange contact info, and he slips Taeseok cash for his dry-cleaning.
Twice now Dojun has given Taeseok money. Taeseok even jokes to himself that it must be Dojun’s habit. Not only that, he’s purchased snacks for the nurses taking care of his mother. For someone who is working himself sick to pay off debt, he’s seriously generous to a fault. I know some may say it’s because he hates owing people, but to me, Dojun has a strong moral compass and follows it, even if it’s to his detriment.
At university, Dojun attends a guest lecture, and guess who the lecturer is? A famous young author from America, Heo Taeseok. After the lecture, Dojun insists on compensating Taeseok because he can tell the burn is pretty nasty if the bandage on his arm is so large. So Taeseok tells him that if he really feels the need to pay him back, he can stop by his place by the end of the week. Dojun takes him up on the offer, and when Dojun arrives, the only thing Taeseok really wants him to do is just be in the same room with him as he works. Taeseok explains that he writes better when someone is around him, and so while Taeseok is typing away on his laptop, Dojun decides to do some of his course work.
Later, the two run into each other yet again at the hospital. Dojun and Taeseok are outside on a terrace talking, but when their topic turns to their mothers, it sets off a panic attack for Dojun. Taeseok, immediately able to recognize what’s happening, helps to calm Dojun down, but in one of those “you look pretty when you cry” kind of moments, Taeseok suddenly kisses Dojun, and Dojun punches him in the face in response.
While Taeseok and Dojun navigate the awkwardness between them, we get to see what Jinwoo’s up to. He’s been hired by someone named Lee Gitae to roleplay as his lover. Gitae’s been trying to break up with his boyfriend but the boyfriend keeps refusing. Even though Jinwoo had agreed to just sit there and let Gitae do all the talking, Jinwoo quickly loses his patience, especially after realizing how Gitae is covered in scratches but his boyfriend has nary a mark on him. He intervenes but ends up getting hurt after Gitae’s boyfriend pushes him. But the plan worked and Jinwoo gets his money.
Elsewhere, Taeseok stops by unannounced at Dojun’s place. Since Dojun wasn’t taking his calls or replying to his texts, Taeseok felt he had no other option than to show up in person. Now it’s Taeseok’s turn to insist on repaying Dojun for kissing him without his permission. They go out to dinner where Dojun ends up drinking too much. The two of them spend the night in the hotel, and the next morning, Dojun wakes up to the sight of Taeseok working away on his laptop. In his internal monologue, we learn just how much doubt Dojun harbors about his self-worth. He marvels at how successful Taeseok is at such a young age, and Dojun doesn’t understand how someone of Taeseok’s status could like someone like him.
The story shifts slightly to Jinwoo’s POV when we see a flashback of Jinwoo overhearing a conversation of Minwoo, the sunbae that Dojun has an unrequited crush on, telling someone over the phone that Dojun is “fun to play with.” Jinwoo confronts Minwoo and tells him to quit messing with Dojun’s feelings and to back off or else he’ll mess with Minwoo’s younger brother.
For the longest time, I had such a hard time understanding this scene. What was Jinwoo trying to do? Who was in the photos he was showing Minwoo? Then I realized: Jinwoo was threatening to approach Minwoo’s younger brother and show him the photos of him being overly affectionate with Dojun. Minwoo’s supposed to be straight. Like him with Dojun, wouldn’t Minwoo’s little brother want to know everything about what his big brother is up to and who he’s seeing?
I actually applaud Jinwoo for confronting Minwoo. I don’t approve of his methods, of course, but I approve of his intentions. Minwoo’s an asshole. Leading someone on whom you know has feelings for you just because it’s fun is such a shitty thing to do.
Jinwoo decides to visit his mom in the hospital and on his way there, who does he run into but none other than Taeseok? Jinwoo recognizes Taeseok as the guy Dojun brought home that one night, and he immediately goes on the offensive. When they get to their mothers’ hospital room, Jinwoo starts to get a little too handsy with Dojun in front of their mom, which upsets Dojun tremendously. When alone, Dojun calls Jinwoo out on his actions. How could he do that in front of their mom? Can’t he control himself? Instead of listening to him, Jinwoo dismisses his feelings as an overreaction, and his dismissal upsets Dojun more, triggering a panic attack.
Taeseok rescues Dojun and takes him back to his place. Dojun explains his relationship with Jinwoo to Taeseok. They’re not blood related, but they’re family. They crossed a line they shouldn’t have, and Dojun feels a lot of responsibility for not stopping it. Is Taeseok sure he likes someone like him? The two spend the night together, and the next day, Taeseok takes Dojun on a quick trip to go see the sea. After a nice dinner together, they walk along the shore and Dojun reveals more of his past to Taeseok. He tells Taeseok that he’s willing to give him the chance that he asked for, as long as Taeseok is willing to give Dojun the chance to return his feelings.
Discussion
My biggest gripe about this series is how similar the characters look. This issue isn’t unique to Between Fate and Fortune; in a lot of webcomics, characters have such minute differences between them, that they often look the same. Look at the four main characters of this comic and tell me they don’t look the same.
Anyway, I don’t know if this was done consciously or coincidentally, but the author eventually changed Jinwoo and Taeseok’s looks enough that they could easily be told apart. Taeseok started to wear his glasses in more scenes, and Jinwoo got that haircut during his roleplaying gig. But Dojun and Gitae… still look awfully the same.
Another thing that bothers me is Taeseok’s stubbornness and impulsively. When Dojun tells him that he’s fine figuring out his own way home, Taeseok insists on taking him home to the point he even follows Dojun down the block in his car. Then when they get to Dojun’s place, it’s clear Dojun doesn’t really want to show Taeseok his apartment, but he once again forces the matter and they go upstairs.
Not only that, there are other times where Dojun’s drawn the line that he doesn’t want to do something but Taeseok just goes for it anyway. Like in episode 20, Taeseok asks for permission to kiss Dojun, and even though Dojun agrees this time, Taeseok kisses him… but doesn’t stop. In episode 28, while they’re in bed together, Dojun says no to penetration and guess what Taeseok does anyway? I know I’m supposed to read those scenes as Taeseok being so into Dojun that he can’t control himself, but yeah, not really buying that excuse.
I like Taeseok. There’s still a lot of things I look forward to learning about him. I particularly want to know why he can’t focus if he’s by himself and what was the medication he took in episode 5. His cousin hinted that Taeseok has some kind of mental health condition, so I’m curious as to what it is. Anyway, he needs to stop with pushing Dojun past his boundaries. Broken boundaries is something Dojun already has to deal with when he’s with Jinwoo. Is that something Dojun’s going to have to endure with Taeseok too?
Did I mention Dojun is tired????
Anyway, you would think that with all my complaining, this would be a webtoon that I’d drop or put on hold but no. I can (surprisingly) get past the incestuous-ish relationship between Dojun and Jinwoo. I can get past Taeseok’s stubborness. I’ll stay because I really want to know how Taeseok and Dojun’s relationship will develop. I also want to see what kind of ending Jinwoo is going to get. So I’ll stick around and continue reading when the next season comes around. (Which actually started releasing on Lezhin just last week!!)
