"Are we really friends? Or are we something else? Seohee and Eunho have known one another for 15 years, and they've always been each other's top priority. Their relationship blurs the line between friends, family, soulmates, and lovers. But one day, it comes to a tipping point when Seohee suddenly declares, ""Eunho, I can't do this anymore."""

Before It's Too Late has story by and art by Kion, based on the novel by Songju Yu. Translation and lettering by Lezhin. Published by Lezhin (September 22, 2025).

Bolts
Rating:

I'm gonna come out and say that this story would've been a million times less frustrating if it started at chapter three. The first two chapters of this story were me following a hyper obsessive, needy, and incredibly obsessive adult male named Eunho looking after his childhood friend Seohui like some kind of helicopter parent. In fact, you don't even think it's his best friend in the first chapter, you think Seohui his girlfriend because of how vague everything is kept. I later find out that Eunho is so obsessed with making sure that his childhood friend is properly taken care of that he goes to great and almost creepy lengths to make sure that she is OK. He acts like Seohui will die if the wind blows on her the wrong way, and the most entertaining part about this story is that everybody calls him out on this incredibly creepy and problematic behavior.

But then, after those first two chapters, the perspective changes and suddenly the story is from Seohui's perspective. Now it is suddenly a story about a girl who is depressed and self deprecating because she is so in love with that aforementioned helicopter parent best friend, and she is terrified over the prospect of confessing her feelings because she couldn't handle what would happen if he turned her down. That on paper is a much more interesting story to me, but there are two problems with that. One, the story makes it hard for me to want Seohui and Eunho to get together because I think the story has gone out of its way to establish that he has some deep-seeded insecurity issues that should probably be looked at first. The second problem is that the story plays out in a way where I'm just watching two incredibly emotionally codependent people trying to get together and I am spending a majority of these chapters yelling at my screen that they should not.

In these first dozen chapters, there is nothing that this story does that makes me think that these two should get together in any type of meaningful way. I'm not saying that they don't have chemistry, but the book shows its hand too quickly with what these two are dealing with and I don't think their issues are compatible with a healthy relationship. If the book wants to be about how unhealthy that relationship is and address the issues that they need to work through in order to have a stable, romantic connection, that would actually be amazing. Instead, the majority of the story is spent giving us inner monologues about how badly these two are yearning for each other, and the whole presentation is framed in a way where it feels like I'm supposed to be sympathetic towards them.

I'm supposed to feel bad when one accidentally friend zones the other. I'm supposed to feel the drama when a third-party gets involved to potentially ruin the dynamic. I don't feel anything except contempt for this couple and everything that they're going through. When you have a story that is trying to be romantic and emotionally invested and I'm spending a majority of that time begging the characters to go get some therapy, then I think you ended up writing a different story. If all of this is supposed to build up to something different, that would be one thing but personally, I think the story loses too much of my faith and its ability to do that in a meaningful way. Please skip this one unless you're looking to be heavily frustrated.