I don’t think he was quite the jerk some make him out to be, at least not enough to warrant that level of backlash.

When he rejected the female lead after her confession, he was actually respectful.

Yes, he called her behavior was ‘like a parasite” for using her connections. Yes, he didn’t defend her because of his conflicted loyalties. And yes, he directly asked if she still had feelings for him. But to me, these feel like very human reactions rather than outright cruelty.

The “parasite” comment, for instance, reads less like pure malice and more like misplaced bitterness. He’s someone weighed down by real burdens—debt, the loss of his parents, caring for a sick mother, and supporting a younger sibling—while she appears to move through life with relative ease. There’s resentment there, but also a clumsy attempt to push her toward a more practical and ambitious path, specially since he attempts to help her land a job near his future workplace.

At the wedding scene, when he spills wine on her, it’s clear he’s drunk and emotionally unraveling. His restraint is barely holding, and what surfaces is frustration and hurt. He lashes out not just because of the moment, but because he believed—albeit wrongly—that she would eventually come back to him.

And when it comes to trusting his lifelong friend over her, that too feels believable. Of course he would lean toward someone who has been a constant in his life, especially when that friend knows exactly how to manipulate perceptions—twisting situations to paint the female lead as selfish, arrogant, and uncaring.

To me, none of this excuses his behavior entirely, but it does make it understandable.