Engaging, interesting, and romantic in a non-traditional sense

This is my first drama review, and the reason why I decided to write one is because I would love to increase the rating of this show. Without any spoilers, this story spans years of uncovering a corrupt school system that benefits the rich and silences those who challenge the system. But it's also a love story, but not just romantic. I initially started watching it because of the noona-romance premise, but this is honestly not the best description of the love described in this show.

It's a love story about friendship between and among generations of educators, students, and mathematicians. It's a love story about minds that understand each other without ever having to physically interact to stimulate passion. There's no insta-love or insta-lust in this story. It's love in a really pure, innocent form.

I usually don't care about the politics in Korean dramas, and I typically avoid them and stray toward rom-coms. BUT, since the politics were interwoven so intimately with the main characters, you had to follow along with the politics to see how it would affect our MCs. So it didn't feel draggy (though I did skip many of the political conversations in the first 6 episodes,) But once the time jump occurred, following the politics became necessary to understand how our MCs would achieve justice for what was wronged. It was actually pretty interesting and I found myself skipping the political scenes less and less the more our MCs got involved. And by the end, I was cheering whenever something was uncovered.

This is not a traditional "romance" drama with lots of physically affectionate scenes. But this is a romance of minds, of understandings brought by healthy communication (by the end, at least), and of the idea of found family. Please give it a shot. I'm so glad I did.

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