#kanghan

How it's going:

Perth Tanapon as Kanghan in Dangerous Romance (2023)

On the surface, they're both enemies-to-friends-to-lovers stories, where one half is a loud, brash, emotionally illiterate idiot (who isn't as much of an idiot as he pretends to be) and the other half is a reserved, bitchy, intelligent person who starts pining first and keeps it to himself.

but that's about where the similarities end. Because Kang is not Pat. And I mean that both (affectionate) and (derogatory). Affectionately because Kang is his own person with his own characteristics, he's not just a copy of a different character. And Derogatorily because, well. Kang was a BULLY three episodes ago. Pat could be a dick, sure, Pat picked on Wai, absolutely, but Pat would never bully somebody below him. He picked on Wai because he figured it was fair game. Kang pretty much EXCLUSIVELY picked fights with people lower than him, people he thought as lesser. He exerted power over them. And just because he seems to have stopped doing that now doesn't mean that didn't happen, and it especially doesn't mean that Sailom has forgotten it. Because SAILOM WAS ONE OF HIS VICTIMS.

which brings me to my next point - Sailom is not Pran. Sailom isn't just a rival, he was BULLIED by Kang, and he might have forgiven him for that now that they're friends but he can't *forget it*. You see it in that scene where he flashes back to the bullying when Kang offers him a lift on the back of his bike. That power imbalance plays a large part in making their relationship speed up and then slow right back down in these last few episodes.

kang was wearing sailom’s shirt for going out with sailom’s friends

but then look at the shirt sailom’s wearing to go out with kang’s friends

sailom doesn’t own ANYTHING anywhere NEAR as nice as that shirt

"Let me ask you this. If I were to wake up tomorrow with no money, with absolutely nothing, would you still like me?"

"Read my lips carefully. I. Like. You"

And then Sailom says to study for him and Kang has no defense against that, no shield from that kind of request. All he has is a desperate need to please someone, a desperate urge to need to be good for someone else, a desperate itch to be told that he is good and to be told that he has to work for it.

All Kang wants, desperately, is a purpose.

And Sailom is giving him that. Sailom is giving him a place to direct his anger and his fear and his loneliness and his energy and it's into being better for him and that is all Kanghan wants more than anything.

To know that if he tries to better that someone will see that and love him for that. That someone holds him to expectations and goals and that his dreams are not just his own but ones that someone else thinks he can achieve and that he should be working towards them.

And you can already see him starting to care about Sailom more than the other people in his life. And you can see how possessive he's going to get because no one else tries to hold him to anything. Only Sailom. Only Sailom believes in Kang and his goals and his dreams and only Sailom genuinely helps him and genuinely listens to him.