Readers of BL manhwa and novels may recognize the name of the author of Punch Drunk Love: MOSCARETO is also the author of The New Recruit, another office romance. But the setting is the only thing these two stories have in common – where The New Recruit is heavily invested in its office life storyline and only gets to the sexy stuff later on, Punch Drunk Love is almost all smut, all the time. Seon-woo and Tae-moon's relationship is almost entirely based on sex for most of these two volumes, so if you're looking for something that puts the “without” in PWP, this is the series for you.

The nominal story revolves around the relationship between the two men, which is based on equal parts sex and miscommunications. Seon-woo is the least popular guy in the office, an accountant known for being an absolute stickler about finances and expense accounts with the personality of a brick. Where other, more lenient (or socially savvy) people wouldn't push a senior worker to correct such “mistakes” as using the company card at a strip club, Seon-woo is unrelenting, hounding the miscreant to the point where in volume two we learn that he's about to be transferred to a busywork position so that he stops causing intraoffice turmoil. But Seon-woo doesn't care: his job is to keep the ship sailing without financial problems, and he's going to do that job, no matter what. He's also been raised to believe two things unconditionally: to do the right thing and that he's a plain, boring individual just like everyone else.

There's actually something sort of nice about Seon-woo's total acceptance of the latter. It doesn't decrease his opinion of himself at all; it's just like the color of his hair to him, and because of that he feels like his kinks are also perfectly average. Those kinks are rough sex, and although he's never actually gotten to have any, he's entertained himself quite thoroughly with his collection of dildos and other sex toys. The only problem is that he hasn't figured out how to make it happen with a real live penis attached to another man – plus he believes the guy he's crushing on, Tae-moon, is straight.

But lo and behold, one day he discovers Tae-moon on a queer hookup app, and suddenly everything changes. Seon-woo believes he's propositioning Tae-moon for a one-night stand, but Tae-moon, who is dealing with the fallout of Seon-woo's latest financial crusade, mistakenly believes that he's being blackmailed into sex. This initial misunderstanding shapes their relationship for most of the books' page count, and most of the humor comes from them having two different conversations at all times without realizing it. Tae-moon, for his part, is both angry at Seon-woo and afraid that he's truly hurting the other man, while Seon-woo is just giddy the entire time, eventually wondering how to convey his love to Tae-moon. They don't actually start hearing each other until almost the end of volume two, and by that point there are still plenty of misunderstandings waiting in the wings, mostly on Tae-moon's part.

In the second volume, we learn that a lot of Tae-moon's misconceptions about Seon-woo come from his own life. He's the bastard child of a powerful conglomerate head, something he's known his entire life, and has come to resent in his adulthood. His father suddenly wants Tae-moon to bend the knee, but a son in his thirties has zero interest in toeing the family line all of a sudden. But more than that, Tae-moon filters Seon-woo through the lens of his own family experiences: when Seon-woo says that he's “average,” Tae-moon assumes his family sabotaged his self-esteem; when Seon-woo badly bungles his proposition, Tae-moon assumes he wants more than just sex because that's how people act. The reason it takes them so long to begin to actually connect is because Tae-moon really can't bring himself to trust that Seon-woo really is just as he appears to be: an awkward guy with abysmal taste in suits and a love of rough sex.

The suits are another key element of the story, a throwaway joke that keeps returning to demonstrate to Tae-moon that Seon-woo really is who he says he is. Seon-woo, having had limited social interactions in his life, just isn't very good at being A Normal Guy, and he repeatedly shows up to meet Tae-moon in staggeringly awful outfits – a crimson tux, a snakeskin suit. Tae-moon can't believe that anyone would wear such a thing, which triggers the need to help Seon-woo, much to both men's surprise. (Granted, Seon-woo is surprised because he doesn't see anything wrong with his clothes; at one point he's worried Tae-moon underdresses him.) For Tae-moon, it's the first sign that he cares about Seon-woo, even if he can't bring himself to acknowledge it for many pages to come.

The men's relationship isn't particularly healthy, nor is it traditionally romantic. They both come to it with a lot of baggage, even if Seon-woo isn't cognizant of his own, and it takes real effort on both their parts to connect on anything but a physical level. In fact, there's a decent argument to be made that these two volumes are strictly about the physical level, with a shift only really occurring in the closing pages of the second. So again, if you're looking for largely uncensored BL sex (the usual light stick penises are the only censorship) without omegaverse elements, this is a good place to find it.

Punch Drunk Love isn't the best Korean BL I've read, but it is among the most unapologetic. Its story takes its time to rear its head, but for total brain candy, it's hard to argue with. If you want a story, maybe look elsewhere (or to volume three, not due out until June of 2025), but for hot guys crawling all over each other, this fits the bill.