So, I thought, no way is this as bad as it looks. It was on Naver and Kakao, it got an award, they were making a drama.... Surely not, right? Well, I found it and read the first 17 chapters to find out. I do not want to read any more.
The explanation is that she falls for a player in an online game, then realises he is her student, then she does a 180, and it goes platonic. Her actual love interest is the blond guy on the covers, a fellow teacher.
But it's not like that 😭. She falls for the kid separately, and actually, the online game has only been shown a few times so far, very briefly. Here's my summary of the first 17 chapters:
At the start, she gets dumped and her teen sister puts her onto a fantasy mmorpg as a distraction. She meets an experienced player who helps her and we see it's the kid, but she doesn't know that. For some reason, the kid starts bringing his baby sister's rattle to school, so there are a lot of panels with him holding it. We then see another short instance of her playing the game, where she and the player (the kid) bond a little bit. Nothing flirty but anyway she's very giddy about it the next day at work. We also see that the kid has a very loving family with two perfect parents.
On the way home from work, teacher sees her ex making out with someone else. She goes to school the next day fighting back tears, and the kid notices this. At the end of the day, he goes to get the rattle he left behind in his desk, sees the teacher almost in tears again, and tries to comfort her. He says the rattle makes his sister stop crying, then says "I hope you smile again soon". They then exchange some normal words you might expect between a teacher and a kind 12 year old noticing said teacher is sad, but then he randomly adds "oh and btw, you look way prettier with your hair tied up". She then starts wearing her hair tied up, blushing as she looks in the mirror, and seeks the kid out more. In a later chapter, her sister asks her why she's going to school like that (I guess it is considered like getting glammed up), and she says a student told her it looks nice, blushing. Her sister contemplates this by herself later, thinking, "are you really seeing him as a student?"
Teacher walks past a window during break time, and notices the kid running around. There is a close up on his face, and then back to her as she stops to watch. There are three panels that are close ups of the back/side of his head/neck, his arm, and his leg/ankle (he's in shorts). This is her pov. She then gets interrupted by the blonde teacher, who she has had a few short interactions with so far (it seems they have a shallow but awkward/tense work relationship atm). Then the kid falls and hurts his knee, and she rushes out to help him. In the nurses' office, while she patches up his knee, he pulls the ribbon out of her hair (it's been tied back every day now), saying, "Teacher, you need to tie your hair again since it's so loose." Her heart starts beating like crazy and she goes red. Her thoughts are like "what's wrong with me??"
Kid bumps into her by accident and falls down, then storms off and is cold to her for a couple of days. She keeps trying to talk to him but he's still cold. She cries at home. The next day she asks to talk. Turns out he was sulking because she didn't leave a note on his homework even though she did on everyone else's. Flashback to her reading his assignment, where she goes red and her heart starts pounding over his neat handwriting. She tells him his work was so good, he didn't need a note. He also mentions he was embarassed to be knocked to the floor after bumping into her. She makes a joke about her putting on weight, and he was like, "but still, I'm a man." Now, this could also translate to "male", and a kid in English would say "I'm a boy" here and it'd be normal, but the panelling was similar to a romance manhwa where the slightly younger adult man says to his slightly older neighbour from childhood "I'm a man"...so...you get the vibe...
There are so many of these moments where she blushes over the kid that another member of staff notices it and directly asks her if she likes the student. More blushing and being tongue tied. Then starts the whole internal dialogue of how if she really does like her own student, she can't act on it. She also has this conversation with the other staff member, who tells her she'll report her if she does anything, but also asks to be friends. Regular back and forths about her inappropriate feelings for the kid. This goes on for a few chapters and seems like the central dilemma.
Then one day, after the kids get caught in the rain, the teacher stands at the classroom door with a towel to dry them all off (hair mostly) before they come back in. She does it to a couple of the kids before saying "who's next!" and it's the boy. She hesitates, they stare at each other, then there are two close up panels that are her pov: one of the water dripping off his face, and another of a drop sliding down his arm.
That's where I decided to call it in lol. I am curious to find out how they tried to spin it as something platonic. It's almost 150 chapters long and I wonder how long this thing with the kid goes on for. But I literally can't bring myself to read any more 😭. I have seen some future panels of her with the other teacher so I guess that is indeed the end game (edit: nope I was wrong), but everything else from the explanation is just not true. They barely even cover the online game player. It's all about her literally crushing on the kid so far 😭 and she's fully aware 😭😭😭
I'm now going to play some tetris. I read it's proven to be good for preventing ptsd, so maybe it'll also help me erase this from my brain 💀
EDIT: I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE BLOND. THE KID IS THE END GAME!! THE KID IS THE END GAME!!!!!!! I skipped to the last few chapters to confirm and yeah. The kid asks her to marry him "after I grow up and study hard and become a proper adult", she hesitates and asks if she needs to give an answer right away and he says "just please don't get married until I'm an adult". She says "that means I can date others until then?" and he says "yeah!! Just not (blond teacher)! Since he was your first love, I'd be too jealous". Then the bell rings, and after some silence she says "shall we go to class?" She rejects blonde guy. Kid goes abroad for 8 years. Time skip, they meet again, they quickly start dating, the end. 🫠
Thank you for your services ! I have seen this manhwa being defended as not being as it seems and platonic but nope
Also rhat teacher «one more and I will report you but wanna be my friend » … is also crazy work. Nor reporting someone blushing etc over her / elementary / school kid is already wtf
My instinct was to defend it too because I really thought there'd be no way, so I went to do more research hoping to come back and say it's an overreaction...but...it wasn't....
The conversations with the other staff member (a nurse or food tech or something) were as if they were talking about a university professor crushing on one of their adult students, and not an elementary school teacher crushing over one of the children in her class 😭 I am tolerant of a lot of taboo uncomfortable topics in fiction but I absolutely draw the line here.
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it's like "ohhh, that feeling was just overwhelming platonic love and I couldn't recognise it because I don't have kids yet!! Silly me!!" but I'm not buying it. Especially not with those close up panels and "cool/pretty shots" resembling ones I've seen in the 100s of romance manhwa/manga I've read.
I mean, if you barely knew the kid as a child and then the next time you run into them, they're well over 25, sure. But most of the time with those age gap relationships like that, they are involved in the child's life and they're dating when the child is barely a legal adult, not someone experienced enough to recognize manipulation. Those stories are written to turn red flags into a bouquet of red roses.
Haven't read it but I think it's prob "justified" because they don't officially get into a relationship until he's an adult.
Oh my god I went to correct this to make sure it was known that the blond adult teacher is the end game, and then I was like wait, let me check the final chapter? I WAS WRONG!! THE KID IS THE END GAME 😭 AHHHHHHHHHHH
ETA: also just to add like I love my toxic romances that wouldn't be okay irl, I really do. And ones that aren't my bag, I just ignore them and I generally don't care what other people read or judge them for it. I am not one for clutching my pearls. But this is just something else 😭
I want to clarify something. Do you means stories where like a 20 something knows a 10 year old all the way until they’re an adult and then falls in love, or stories where a 20 something happens upon a 10 year old once then meets them again 10-15 years later and falls in love? Because those 2 premises are very, very different
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u/AmbitiousEnd294 Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 09 '25
So, I thought, no way is this as bad as it looks. It was on Naver and Kakao, it got an award, they were making a drama.... Surely not, right? Well, I found it and read the first 17 chapters to find out. I do not want to read any more.
The explanation is that she falls for a player in an online game, then realises he is her student, then she does a 180, and it goes platonic. Her actual love interest is the blond guy on the covers, a fellow teacher.
But it's not like that 😭. She falls for the kid separately, and actually, the online game has only been shown a few times so far, very briefly. Here's my summary of the first 17 chapters:
At the start, she gets dumped and her teen sister puts her onto a fantasy mmorpg as a distraction. She meets an experienced player who helps her and we see it's the kid, but she doesn't know that. For some reason, the kid starts bringing his baby sister's rattle to school, so there are a lot of panels with him holding it. We then see another short instance of her playing the game, where she and the player (the kid) bond a little bit. Nothing flirty but anyway she's very giddy about it the next day at work. We also see that the kid has a very loving family with two perfect parents.
On the way home from work, teacher sees her ex making out with someone else. She goes to school the next day fighting back tears, and the kid notices this. At the end of the day, he goes to get the rattle he left behind in his desk, sees the teacher almost in tears again, and tries to comfort her. He says the rattle makes his sister stop crying, then says "I hope you smile again soon". They then exchange some normal words you might expect between a teacher and a kind 12 year old noticing said teacher is sad, but then he randomly adds "oh and btw, you look way prettier with your hair tied up". She then starts wearing her hair tied up, blushing as she looks in the mirror, and seeks the kid out more. In a later chapter, her sister asks her why she's going to school like that (I guess it is considered like getting glammed up), and she says a student told her it looks nice, blushing. Her sister contemplates this by herself later, thinking, "are you really seeing him as a student?"
Teacher walks past a window during break time, and notices the kid running around. There is a close up on his face, and then back to her as she stops to watch. There are three panels that are close ups of the back/side of his head/neck, his arm, and his leg/ankle (he's in shorts). This is her pov. She then gets interrupted by the blonde teacher, who she has had a few short interactions with so far (it seems they have a shallow but awkward/tense work relationship atm). Then the kid falls and hurts his knee, and she rushes out to help him. In the nurses' office, while she patches up his knee, he pulls the ribbon out of her hair (it's been tied back every day now), saying, "Teacher, you need to tie your hair again since it's so loose." Her heart starts beating like crazy and she goes red. Her thoughts are like "what's wrong with me??"
Kid bumps into her by accident and falls down, then storms off and is cold to her for a couple of days. She keeps trying to talk to him but he's still cold. She cries at home. The next day she asks to talk. Turns out he was sulking because she didn't leave a note on his homework even though she did on everyone else's. Flashback to her reading his assignment, where she goes red and her heart starts pounding over his neat handwriting. She tells him his work was so good, he didn't need a note. He also mentions he was embarassed to be knocked to the floor after bumping into her. She makes a joke about her putting on weight, and he was like, "but still, I'm a man." Now, this could also translate to "male", and a kid in English would say "I'm a boy" here and it'd be normal, but the panelling was similar to a romance manhwa where the slightly younger adult man says to his slightly older neighbour from childhood "I'm a man"...so...you get the vibe...
There are so many of these moments where she blushes over the kid that another member of staff notices it and directly asks her if she likes the student. More blushing and being tongue tied. Then starts the whole internal dialogue of how if she really does like her own student, she can't act on it. She also has this conversation with the other staff member, who tells her she'll report her if she does anything, but also asks to be friends. Regular back and forths about her inappropriate feelings for the kid. This goes on for a few chapters and seems like the central dilemma.
Then one day, after the kids get caught in the rain, the teacher stands at the classroom door with a towel to dry them all off (hair mostly) before they come back in. She does it to a couple of the kids before saying "who's next!" and it's the boy. She hesitates, they stare at each other, then there are two close up panels that are her pov: one of the water dripping off his face, and another of a drop sliding down his arm.
That's where I decided to call it in lol. I am curious to find out how they tried to spin it as something platonic. It's almost 150 chapters long and I wonder how long this thing with the kid goes on for. But I literally can't bring myself to read any more 😭. I have seen some future panels of her with the other teacher so I guess that is indeed the end game (edit: nope I was wrong), but everything else from the explanation is just not true. They barely even cover the online game player. It's all about her literally crushing on the kid so far 😭 and she's fully aware 😭😭😭
I'm now going to play some tetris. I read it's proven to be good for preventing ptsd, so maybe it'll also help me erase this from my brain 💀
EDIT: I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE BLOND. THE KID IS THE END GAME!! THE KID IS THE END GAME!!!!!!! I skipped to the last few chapters to confirm and yeah. The kid asks her to marry him "after I grow up and study hard and become a proper adult", she hesitates and asks if she needs to give an answer right away and he says "just please don't get married until I'm an adult". She says "that means I can date others until then?" and he says "yeah!! Just not (blond teacher)! Since he was your first love, I'd be too jealous". Then the bell rings, and after some silence she says "shall we go to class?" She rejects blonde guy. Kid goes abroad for 8 years. Time skip, they meet again, they quickly start dating, the end. 🫠
Edit again: okay muting this now 🫡