Thread by @lawofwebnovels, Here's a thread analyzing Jiho based on scenes from the manhwa because [...]

Here's a thread analyzing Jiho based on scenes from the manhwa because most people won't bother reading the novel. I'll still throw in some novel tidbits here and there to supplement the manhwa scenes though because honestly, Jiho kind of got robbed in the webtoon.

I'll also talk about Chunyoung quite a bit by extension because the author gets a lot of mileage out of him and Jiho as foils. The differences between them make their individual qualities stand out all the more.

Back to where it all began: middle school. Dani's first meeting with Jiho. She thought Jiho would have a fancier name (like "Biwol") to match his looks and status but she's surprised he has such an ordinary name.

The 지 (ji) in 지호 (Jiho) can have many meanings based on the Hanja (Chinese characters) it's derived from but one of the many Hanja associated with the reading is 地, which means "earth" or "ground."

For the record, I'm not saying that's the intended hanja used in Jiho's name, but it's an interesting tidbit when you line it up with Cheonyoung's name because the 천 (cheon) in 천영 (Cheonyoung) is the Hangul reading of the Hanja 天, which means "heaven; sky"

See the contrast? Heaven and earth. This would seem to imply the author always intended for them to be foils. For the record, the Japanese translation of the manhwa also maintains the contrasting naming convention from Korean.

Jiho's name in the JPN translation is Riku (陸), meaning "land," keeping the earth motif. Chunyoung's name, however, is localized as Kaito 海斗, where the "kai" 海 means "sea; ocean."

Instead of heaven and earth, the dichotomy becomes land and sea.

This might be derived from the three classical theatres of war: land, sea, and air (sometimes called sky), or 陸海空.

In any case, Jiho is earth (or land) in either example. Perhaps he's a more grounded and ordinary person than Dani knows...?

When Dani insists she goes to a different middle school, Jiho finally initiates a conversation with her. In the novel, Dani notes that Jiho looks like someone who has nothing to live for—as if he's dead inside—and that she never thought he'd talk to her. Wrong again, Dani.

(Side note: keep Dani's remark about Jiho seeming like he had nothing to live for in mind. This is important for much later in the story when we learn more about Jiho.)

Jiho surprises Dani and tries to help her find her middle school. He might be kinder than he looks—but his cold, factual response afterward dampens her hopes (and, possibly, her positive impression of him). He flinches when Dani looks at him in distress.

Despite the poker face, Jiho appears to be at a loss when it comes to comforting or consoling others. Considering his strict upbringing and the unimaginably high expectations thrust upon him, Jiho likely was not coddled or consoled much growing up. More on this in the future.

Moving on. Jiho stands up amidst their classmates chattering about the Four Heavenly Kings and for a moment, Dani believes she's found a fellow friend with practical sensibilities—someone who loses a piece of their soul every time they hear the phrase, just like her.

...Or not.

Dani quickly concludes that Jiho is perhaps the weirdest one of them all. Is he really, though? We'll look back at this scene in the future, but for now, the constant whiplash in Dani's assessment of Jiho is pure comedy. She knows one thing for sure: Jiho has a weird hair colour.

Forced to face her new reality, Dani eventually comes to the conclusion—based on her own intuition and familiarity with tropes—that Jiho is the male lead.

The cold, rich (sometimes CEO) jerk ML is a staple of shoujo manga and, especially, Asian dramas. But is that really Jiho?

Dani's convinced Jiho's the ML and this is where a lot of people start buying into the idea that he's destined to fall for Yeoryeong. Much in the same way Dani has rigid ideas of the plot and the characters' roles—that they can't fight the flow of their writing—

—readers are also guilty of being fixated on common tropes they see playing out in the story and using them as the basis for the conclusions they draw (i.e. the case of Jiho/Yeoryeong, and even Chunyoung/Dani). They bite hard on Dani's narration.

Speaking of Chunyoung, our first real impression of him comes when he asks Yeoryeong to help him with a crossword puzzle. He's somewhat oblivious to things that should be obvious.

Chunyoung is what I'd describe as tennen (天然).

However, that doesn't mean Chunyoung isn't insightful or observant. He notices Dani is avoiding Yeoryeong, but he doesn't say anything about it. We never really know Chunyoung's opinion of Dani during the time she avoided Yeoryeong.

On the contrary, we're clearly shown how Jiho views Dani during that time. I think this is a big part of why people get tripped up in regards to Jiho's feelings towards both Dani and Yeoryeong—he appears sympathetic to Yeoryeong and believes Dani is likely the one at fault.

Jiho is perceptive and very practical. He's able to assess what type of person Yeoryeong is in the short time he's known her. However, Dani's situation is—literally—out of this world, so he instead arrives at a more logical conclusion that Dani is to blame for their fights.

When Yeoryeong & Dani seemingly make up overnight, Jiho, who believes Dani was at fault, and thus believes Dani's attitude is too flippant, is annoyed by her behaviour and tries to confront her about it but Jooin stops him.

Jiho realizes the possible consequences and stops—he doesn't want to ruin the peace they have now even if he IS curious and even if he's irritated by the sudden 180 in Dani's behaviour.

It's clear that, at this point in time, Jiho doesn't have a very high opinion of Dani.

Jiho's hesitance is immediately followed by Chunyoung's bluntness. He asks the exact question Jiho was likely going to ask had Jooin not stopped him. The difference here is that Chunyoung seems to not have meant anything more by it. He asked without thinking.

Note how Jiho is clearly curious about the reason as well in the background.

It's a brief scene, but one of the earliest examples of how the author juxtaposes Jiho and Chunyoung in scenes to highlight their respective traits. They're perfect foils for one another.

In hindsight, the seeds had already been planted for Jiho being one of Dani's primary love interests. He was grouped together with Chunyoung as people Dani thought she'd never be close with. Ever.

Sweet, sweet irony.

While Chunyoung seems cold and rather disinterested, Jiho comes off as much more prickly.

(Aside: I just wanted to point out how Chunyoung's childhood friend Eunhyung treats him so well but Jiho's childhood friend Jooin often treats him like DIRT. It's a sign of how Jooin is comfortable dropping his mask in front of Jiho, but he's also harshest with Jiho regardless.)

Chunyoung was the one who approached Dani first and because of that, they became friends. This is the same in the case of Jooin and even Eunhyung, but Chunyoung stands out because he's usually quite apathetic about others whereas the other two are friendlier.

So we know Jooin and Eunhyung befriended Dani very quickly and, eventually, Chunyoung did as well.

...But we never find out how Jiho became friends with Dani. Going by the timeline thus far, Jiho would be the very last person in the group to befriend Dani.

It's a mystery that lingers in the background and gets forgotten because it never gets brought up, especially in the manhwa.

What exactly happened to change Jiho's opinion of Dani that led to them becoming friends?

Considering Dani's passiveness in the beginning and the recurring theme of the others approaching her rather than the other way around, something had to have changed on Jiho's end specifically. His opinion of Dani had to have changed first, paving the way to Jiho befriending her.

(Side note: the full story of how he befriends Dani is actually revealed in a side story/gaiden chapter in the web novel, but I do hope the webtoon gives it to us via flashback because there's a perfect moment for it to occur when we get Jiho's POV later on.)

A lot of webtoon-only readers wonder why Chunyoung isn't the ML when he gets so much prominence at the beginning while Jiho's just kind of not-really-in-the-background-but-also-not-getting-the-spotlight and hiding his feelings.

There are two explanations IMO:

1. Jiho has a reason within the story to hide his feelings, or at the very least, not act on them, but we don't find out why until much later.

In reverse harems, it's common to introduce the guy who's The One first to establish his importance. However, I think the reverse is also common: that the main guy gets his arc "last," so to speak, or at least much later.

Jiho is not hurting for screen time in the early parts of the story. He might not get the heavy spotlight, but he's always there and shown having smaller, quieter interactions with Dani. We also get his perspective more often than the others, especially in the novel.

But before we even get to the arc where Jiho gets to play the leading role, we get arcs where the other characters have more prominence: Chunyoung (& Dani); Ruda's introduction; Eunhyung's trauma; Yeoryeong's anticafe; Jooin's past...until we finally get to Jiho.

The retreat arc is one of the few times we learn something big about Jiho (his confession to Dani) but in all of those other arcs, Jiho is there consistently and plays a role in all of them even if he doesn't get the focus.

The story doesn't delve much into Jiho as a character until the party arc which is a crucial turning point in the story where Dani's mindset begins to change.

The story deliberately builds Jiho up gradually until he finally gets the spotlight.

2. Chunyoung is introduced first because The Confession he gave Dani in middle school was crucial to framing Dani's character at the beginning of the story. It's a moment that sticks with Dani and exacerbated her low self-esteem.

The "Confession."

Dani is a comforting presence to Chunyoung because she's just about the only girl aside from Yeoryeong that Chunyoung feels at ease talking to (however, he gets along better with Dani than Yeoryeong).

The "you're not like other girls so I feel comfortable around you" trope is common in shoujo series and is usually depicted as somewhat endearing, but here, it gets deconstructed as Dani sees the /other/ side of it.

Dani comes to the conclusion that it's not that Chunyoung was interested in her as a person which led to him befriending her, but that he saw her as someone who wouldn't put unnecessary expectations on him as a romantic partner.

The way The "Confession" was worded made Dani believe she didn't possess any likable or interesting qualities of her own. It exacerbated her low self-esteem and made her fortify the emotional walls she put up.

I can't help but think about Jiho's middle school confession to Dani in tandem with Chunyoung's but I'll discuss that further down the line.

In any case, that about wraps up the background info from their middle school days, so let's move on to the fun stuff after the time skip.

In the novel, the time skip fast forwards to the night before their middle school graduation trip (cf. the manhwa which skips straight to the morning of) where we get this text exchange between Jiho and Dani.

He tells Dani not to be late tomorrow.

She flips him off.

But the important thing to note is that Dani's impression of Jiho has changed from her initial assessment of him three years ago. She says he was "just" a jerk as they got closer, but it reads tongue-in-cheek, almost like an affectionate jab at a close friend.

In hindsight, this scene was such a significant moment for Jiho but he hid his feelings so well that a lot of people don't think anything of it when they first read it.

1. Jiho casually mentions that this isn't the first time he's been in Dani's room.

2. He makes an unreadable expression when Dani asks him if his remark meant she's as pretty as Yeoryeong. I wonder how Jiho would've answered if Dani hadn't kicked him out immediately after?

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