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ystrike1 · 3 months

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To You Who Swallowed A Star - By ARI (8.5/10)

Being beautiful and special is great, but it's not enough. You need to work hard too, and establishing healthy boundaries is extra hard when you have to deal with controlling relatives. Our underdog protagonist is actually a modern princess, and the actual underdog is some random scruffy boy she takes in out of pity. It's toxic. It's wrong. The main couple only gets their happy end after alot of pain, gain and growth.

***Immediate warning here. Do not read this series if grooming is an issue for you at all. There is a five year age gap with the main couple. It is unavoidable. It is pretty bad. The older party takes responsibility, and she distances herself when she notices the relationship in question is getting toxic. "I didn’t groom him on purpose!!!!" is not an excuse in any way, and nothing remotely sensual happens in this webtoon between characters that are not legal adults.***

It begins with a messy divorce. A rich mommas boy starts to abuse his aging wife, even though there's a young daughter in the mix. The wife decides to step up and be a mom. She grows a backbone, and she leaves her sparkling mansion behind in the middle of the night with her only child. She vows to forgot all frivolity. She'll never marry again. She will support herself and her daughter will learn to do the same.

Romance and money are not to be trusted.

Jiu learns this lesson very early in life.

Her mother (left) reached out to a wealthy friend after she ran from her husband. Said friend is a CEO (right), who agreed to support her downtrodden friend and her daughter until they had enough money to live. This led to a strange cohabitation situation. Two women living together with their two children, who were automatically raised like siblings.

Rin is Jiu's best and only friend, and her first crush. Frankly, she's doomed. He's handsome, nice and he cares for her.

His jealous streak is his only issue.

He steals her things when she shows interest in hobbies that aren't him. Jiu kind of becomes a doormat. Her mother is a strict force in her life. Her mother wants her to be a career woman first. Everything else is secondary. Rin is her only solace, and he really doesn't seem all that bad.

He just gets jealous sometimes.

Jiu meets Hajun and Hayul after she moves out of Rin's mansion. Her mother makes her live in a tiny studio apartment, while she runs an unsuccessful restaurant business day and night. Jiu thinks it's a little unfair. Auntie and Rin are totally willing to take care of them!!!Auntie doesn't have a lot of real friends as a female CEO, and Rin misses her! He was used to seeing her every day!!! Boohoo!

Rin starts to resort to childish tactics, to force Jiu to pay attention to him. Now that he doesn't have access to her all the time he's frustrated. He does weird things to make her come when called.

Like a dog.

Jiu doesn't notice how weird Rin is.

You see, she meets two children. Yes, Hayul and Hajun are children. She is sixteen. They're not in high school. Hayul, the girl, gets extremely attached to her when she is shown a single scrap of kindness. Jiu gets suspicious and sadly she is right. The twins are both horribly neglected...and they live right near her apartment. Jiu makes rice for them, because nobody ever helped her when her father was beating her mother in that awful mansion. Hayul is 10 and Hajun is 11. It's a very tense situation. Jiu is actually injured by their abuser at one point. The grandmother in charge of caring for the twins is absent-minded, and she refuses to see that her son is a piece of trash.

Jiu....gets dragged in. It's too similar. It hurts. Her rich and powerful grandmother enabled her father. He was never punished for beating her mother, or neglecting his child.

Her.

Jiu continues to step in, until she's basically their mother at 16.

She even attends Hajun's high school entrance ceremony. She wants to give them what she didn’t have.

Things seem to be going great. Bomi the bully character becomes Jiu's first real female best friend. Bomi is realistic and grounded. She thinks Jiu's kind heart comes from a dark past. It's weird to watch a teenager care for a pair of preteens (especially when they're not related). As soon as Jiu turns eighteen Bomi tries to set boundaries. She starts calling Hayul amd Hajun "the high school students". She's not trying to be cruel. She just needs Jiu to focus, because they're business partners. Jiu and Bomi both want to be fashion designers. It's a crazy competitive field and nepotism is nuts in Korea. Jiu can't baby two teenagers at the same time.

Bomi really respects her and her kindness, but then Hayul and Hajun start demanding more of her time.

Time she should be spending on her portfolio, because she needs to get into a good college.

Oh yeah Rin is in the background too plotting to make her a happy stay at home housewife.

She's in love with him.

They start dating.

Bomi was a gentle warning.

Rin is a real reality check. He's not a friend. He's a boyfriend. He expects more of her time and love. He tells her to choose. The clingy twins or him? Her handsome and rich childhood crush. The choice seems so obvious.

Jiu throws herself into her "Newtube" fashion video hobby to distract herself from that hard choice.

Rin is the perfect boyfriend. He supports her career decision (as long as it ends in marriage with him). He likes her friends (as long as they're not male). He calls her beautiful and perfect and he doesn't think of her as lesser. Actually he thinks she's special. Not Like Other Girls, in fact. He treats her as such. He stops playing around with women as soon as she says yes, and he doesn’t falter.

(Would you really be comfortable dating a guy that treats women like greedy s****? Even if he treats you "differently"? It's a very hard question, and this webtoon asks it. Jiu even befriends a women who likes Rin, because she doesn't actually like Rin. Just his money. The woman warns Jiu. If she's looking for real love Rin's not the right guy, because he's just another demanding rich boy under his looks. Jiu doesn't listen.)

They stay a couple for a while, while Hajun learns what jealousy feels like.

Hajun puts on some makeup, and suddenly he's got the chance to be somebody. Jiu does his makeup for her channel, and it blows up. A company emails him.

They want him to appear on a rookie idol show.

Hajun initially isn't interested. Jiu pushes him. She wants him to be more independent. He has to find a dream. He can't just eat her rice forever. She's got a boyfriend. He can't be her priority forever. Jiu even gets a part time job so she can secretly pay for his singing lessons. She lies and says the studio is doing it.

She paves the path to his success. It kinda feels like she's trying to get rid of him sometimes. She wants to fix the damage she caused by spoiling him.

Hajun starts at rock bottom. He's got NO chance with his crush. First things first he's a teenager and she's in her twenties at this point.....but also....

Hajun has nothing but his pretty face.

He offers to work for Jiu's fashion company when it opens up, but that's just an excuse to cling to her, so she rejects him.

She's setting boundaries, because Bomi and her boyfriend are influencing her.

Hajun, at least, wants to become someone she is proud of. He can't sing. He can't dance, but he goes to every single lesson. He becomes a star because he never stops. He hates Rin. He hates himself for comparing himself to Rin. A rich boy with everything he wasn't born with...

He works himself to the bone, to escape from those feelings.

He gets there.

He wins the rookie idol talent show. He wins a huge cash prize. He can buy an apartment for his little sister, and that's only the beginning.

The spell breaks for Jiu.

She breaks up with Rin, when a concerned friend sends her a message. You see, Fashion College is expensive. Rin's mom was going to pay for it. Rin went behind her back to convince his mom to rescind her generous offer, so Rin could easily coerce Jiu into marriage.

Jiu completely snaps, and she notices how wrong her relationship with Hayul and Hajun is too. Especially when it comes to Hajun. Hayul is just obsessed because she never had a mom. Hajun....loves her. Or he admires her to an unhealthy extent. She notices that the boy she's been coddling like a princess is actually about to become a grown man.

She crushes his heart.

She berates him.

She insults him, and she runs away.

All because she wants him to pursue his own success. That's 100000x more important than clinging to her.

She knows it's the right thing to do.

The truth has so many awful layers.

Hajun ruined her relationship with Rin. He was always there. He interrupted their dates. He showed up at her house constantly during the idol show shooting. He actually got caught in a scandal, when he visited her in the middle of the night just to eat chicken. He was a negative force in her life, and she didn’t even notice because they get along so well. A good relationship can be a bad one if it ruins other parts of your life.

Hajun has been texting her daily for years. That made Rin uncomfortable, and it's partly why Rin became more demanding about marriage. He used Hajun's strange behavior to manipulate her.

It's all a mess!!!!

She decides to go to her grandmother.

Her grandmother says she can have a tuition loan, as long as she agrees to give it back. Also she must date a man the family approves of.

Jiu agrees. She was a princess all along. There's no use denying it because of the abuse she experienced. She accepts the terms to escape from both Rin and Hajun.

They both come back with a vengeance.

There's a five year time skip.

Jiu successfully cut Hajun out of her life....but not Hayul. Hayul is just needy. Her feelings were never romantic, so Jiu stayed in contact with her.

That was a huge mistake.

Hayul uses Jiu's precarious financial situation against her. Yup. Hajun is a rich idol now. Hayul says they have sooooo many extra rooms. Jiu has to pay her grandmother back. Her other choice is living in a moldy slum, so she says yes.

Hajun hides his love for her, so she won't leave him again.

They start living together, like a family, again.

Rin uses his status as a Rich Boy to get on the Eligible Bachelor list Jiu's horrible grandmother is cooking up. He makes said hag believe he's already dating Jiu, and then an arc of horror begins. Jiu is just trying to open her clothing store, but everywhere she turns there is yet another toxic relationship.

Hajun becomes bearable.

Rin does not.

Remember the grooming thing?????? Yeah. That.

Rin tries to use that to force her to marry him.

Yeah.

Jiu funded the beginning of Hajun's idol career, and he even lived with her for a while. I'm not kidding Rin actually considered releasing grooming accusation articles with pictures to the press.

Jiu tells him she will never love him.

He gives up finally because Jiu doesn't care if her life is ruined. She will never trust the man who tried to tear her career away from her.

Hajun wins her heart by being reasonably nice through all the weirdness. He is jealous of other men, but he never tells Jiu to shut up and stay in the kitchen.

Hajun lightens up a little, but you never forget that he's a bit loopy. Only loving one woman is rare enough...but the woman that was also your mom and financial backer????? Yikes. I'm very glad they waited 3 more years to get married, after they became a more normal couple.

#yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #webtoon #To You Who Swallowed A Star

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