clearly in his original plan to escape with Pei's help the end goal was to also take down the president, who seemed to be the main actor behind the plot.

is the first couple seems they have s*x once as perfunctory heat relief and the other time as stress relief essentially when Zhang goes to kiss him, he pulls away or moves his mouth. Which is a huge blow to Zhang's self esteem and not really explained from Chen's POV (I think in one of the scenes it might had sentence mentioning this Chen enjoyed teasing him this way). X number of s*xual encounters when Chen I think has clarified his feelings at least in his mind (not Zhang's) for Zhang and the two are 'giving it a try' before having to separate for a time Zhang get the courage to 'don't run away from me' cuing Chen into the fact that he doesn't like it when Chen avoids kissing him again. Chen I think apologizes and kisses him, but he doesn't give an explanation at the time of 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings I just think you are cute to tease'. THEN, like after everything has been resolved and they are together officially there is a throw away line or two about Chen is working a to make know/feels it is okay to kiss him whenever and as much as he wants because unbeknownst to him his attempts to tease him by rejecting his kissing failed.

Zhang's gender and medical trauma

Zhang receiving a painful treatment to remove his memories of Chen in the past (it is noted that this failed). Presumably, he did this because he wanted to live his life as Alpha/go through with his engagement, but felt held back by his unrequited feelings,

Starting when he officially asked ZC to "try" their relationship out

For example, during ZC pregnancy, when ZC is about to give birth he experienced severe blood loss. When he awakens, CB is by his side and soon after CB directly just did vasectomy to himself in order to prevent the pregnancy to occur again and ZC in pain.

The ML was never playing around with the MC, but just needed some time to fall for him and learn how to be in a relationship, especially with a partner who had very low self-esteem.

Chen Boqiao has his own plans that slowly intersect and lead him in a different direction from Zhang Jue's plan...

Contrary to the sensitive readers' comments after each chapter, I didn't think the ML was scummy at all. He really doesn't owe the MC a thing for disrupting his own plans. Furthermore, he did treat the MC gently and with honor the whole time.

He had his impulsive moments, like the time in the love hotel, but ultimately he helped the MC through his heat, so it was the opposite of scummy for the him at the time to make it clear to the MC that he didn't have feelings for him yet.

The majority of the angst comes from the readers sympathizing strongly with the feelings of inferiority and humbleness within the MC. Which means this novel was super successful in expressing the love in this story.

it's not really made clear what made the MC fall so in love with ML. We didn't really get any backstory of MC and ML during their college days. That would have added depth to the MC's perspective of the ML and why he loves him so much. But man I love how gradually the ML fell in love with the MC. I can't even pinpoint the exact moment that happened lol. People are calling him mean but I understand where he is coming from. It's difficult for people who come from broken home's to accept romantic relationships easily. And I knw no matter how much Chen Boqiao loves Zhang Jue, it's always going to seem less infront of Zhang Jue. CB never asked for ZJ to go through any of the pain he went through and it is quite painful. I do believe CB was genuine later on and I came to like him as the story progressed.