Firstly, the explanation as to why Lay helps Krystal in the first place – buying medicine and paying for her cab, then letting her live with him is a little bit unrealistic. At first it’s mentioned because of respect but it’s very hard to earn someone’s respect, highly unlikely within a matter of seconds. I don’t think respect allows you to be so generous, considering that all Lay’s ever wanted was to be left alone and by inviting Krystal to live with him, it isn’t exactly ‘being left alone’. Most people would see it as an invasion of privacy. While Krystal doesn’t complain and actually does a lot of the chores in his house, considering how he acts and how silent he is I doubt that he would be so open to letting someone come in and live with them. If he already liked her back then, then it’s also highly unlikely because it’s only over time that people start to like another. It doesn’t happen with a day or two. I get that Lay does this because he is reminded of his supposed first love, but later Lay is portrayed as having seen both sides to his ‘first love’ and therefore, he must’ve had a bad experience with her. So if he had a bad experience with her and that experience appears to still be etched in his brain, why would he help Krystal so readily when it contradicts with his past and personality? Maybe there’s another reason, but as of right now, I don’t know what that other reason might be.

Secondly, this is a bit of a minor character but I can’t help but feel as though she’s supposed to play a bigger role in this story. If not, then she does in the beginning. I don’t get why Jiyoung is suddenly friendly towards Krystal after having ignored her for however long it is that she’s ignored her before the story. I don’t really understand why she apologises and promises to help Krystal find a really cheap dorm so that she can live. She is initially mean and won’t defend Krystal against her other friends whenever they say nasty things about her. It’s either she’s really naïve and doesn’t really that her ‘lousy’ friends are insulting her other friend or it’s because she suddenly pities Krystal because she’s homeless and wants to help her and yet, she doesn’t help her when she is verbally insulted. A bit of a contradicting personality, don’t you think? I understand that people can change their perspective but based on what she does right now with dieting and talking about hot guys and all, it’s likely for her to enjoy the lifestyle that she used to have with her ‘friends’.

Thirdly, Krystal realises that she has feelings for Lay but we never really see that being explored further. We’ve moved from friends to something that is possibly more than just that because they are physically intimate with each other and then to something even more (Is that wedding bells we hear?). During the time when they progress to something more which is yet to be named but for argument’s sake is called, ‘before-they-become-girlfriend-and-boyfriend’ (they have just confessed), we understand that Lay has feelings for Krystal but we don’t know if she feels the same way. It was to be expected and yet, it was also very sudden that she was in a state of euphoria when he kissed her on the forehead because we don’t see those little changes happen to her as they start being physical intimate with each other.

Lastly, I would like to point that liking somebody and loving somebody are two very different things. Yes, we knew from the get-go that Lay liked Krystal, but Lay falling in love with her already? And Krystal is feeling the same? I know that this is how classical romance stories go but I think that there needs to be a bit of gradual progression towards that point. It seems a little rushed if you asked me. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t really mentioned a lot.

At the beginning it sounds very cliché because the main male character and the main female character are both at university and bump into each other. One of them, in this case the girl, rushes to class because she’s late (which is normally why the girl rushes off in the first place) while the other, in this case the guy, is shocked that the girl didn’t take their offer for help like most people, or more specifically girls, do. They are like this because they are never used to being ignored like that in their whole life because they’re either ridiculously rich or dashingly handsome. In most cases, it is both put together and Lay, in this story, makes no exception. It is only later Krystal realises that the guy she bumped into the hallway was actually hot and that she doesn’t know his name. Does this sound a little bit familiar? It should because it’s probably in every story out there. You could’ve had a different first meeting. Everyone sets it in a university and it’s always bumping into each other and then the male character is shocked that the girl doesn’t talk to him like normal girls do and the girl thinks that the guy is an absolute jerk. What you’ve changed about it is the last detail but the change is also a little bit cliché because Krystal finds herself a little bit attracted to Lay.

Also, fiancés and getting engaged is very commonly seen. It’s probably in every single story here on AFF. It’s like the twist for the story – they’re going to get married, and guess what? It’s not to each other. One of them is going to get married to a second lead and the main love story will be destroyed because the main character in the engagement is too honourable to go cheating on his wife and the female character doesn’t want to be a mistress on the side (I’m surprised that none of the male characters on AFF have actually thought up of that). The whole getting engaged plan has happened so many times, I don’t think it’s a twist anymore. If anything, it’s highly predictable. But what I don’t think I have ever seen before on AFF, apart from you, is the male character setting up his own engagement before he realises that he shouldn’t have because now he has found love and doesn’t want to get engaged anymore.

What I also must point out is that the characters are a little bit overused. In a typical AFF love story, there is always a girl who never really gets noticed (Krystal) and is poor and at the beginning, is living in below standard living arrangements because her family is in debt. There is always a guy (Lay) who is absolutely perfect in everything he does but he has a mysterious past and doesn’t want to tell anyone. There is also the other guy/girl (Kris) who comes in between the main leads’ relationship and has a romantic past with one of the characters and tries to destroy the possibilities of the chance of them ever getting together. There is a change because Lay has an odd personality because he’s got two different sides: Lay and Yixing. Even you’ve made Feng Sara have a really bad side to her (not really, but you’ve mentioned it), but that’s to be expected from the antagonist of a story. I can’t help but feel as though she has a much darker side to her than normal protagonists do. Is it just me or does it feel like all Chinese people have double personalities which contradict each other? Not really so in the case of Lay, but now I can’t help but feel as though Kris is going to have another side to him as well. Maybe he’ll be revealed as a mafia member or a gangster.

Anyway, while the main plot as a whole is a little bit common, there are twists because authors don’t normally focus on labelling and what their relationship is called between another character and how it is defined. Labelling the relationship or the lack of it is a recurring theme for your story and hence, the title Miss No Label. While in a love story like yours there are always mysteries and the discoveries that the characters make aren’t that surprising because we’ve seen it before, but it also is the last thing that readers would expect from your story. We were expecting all of the secrets to come from Lay because he’s the mysterious character here, but Krystal discovers a few things that she never knew before.

The plot itself is a bit borrowed but all plots are, but you’ve made it somehow original and something that is uniquely your own.

Grammar & Spelling: [16/25]

I know that I have already pointed this out in Flow but I need to point out here as well because this is the category it belongs to. It is so much easier for readers to lose themselves in the story and to prevent confusion if you use the same tense. Originally I thought that as you switched POV’s, you switched tenses as well. However as I read your story more I realised that that wasn’t the case. You jump from one tense to another, sometimes it’s in between paragraphs and sometimes, I really hate to say this, but you do this in the middle of a sentence as well. It’s like half of a sentence is in past tense and then you add a comma and the other half of the sentence is in present tense or vice versa.

Before Correction: Ironic as to what I have planned all those years, when I had already set foot of what used to be simply the object of my dreams, I started to feel the need to get away – to escape and go home.

After Correction (past tense): Ironic as to what I had planned all those years, when I had already set foot of what used to be simply the object of my dreams, I started to feel the need to get away – to escape and go home.

Just choose one and stick with it otherwise your story isn’t going to flow. It doesn’t matter which tense you choose but past tense is the easier tense to follow. For the most part though, you stick with past tense but somewhere present tense does slip in. I would recommend rereading your story out loud because trust me, the mistake I just pointed up there isn’t the only one.

What I am going to point out next was also briefly mentioned in Flow but it’s going to ‘fleshed out’ in this category because this is where it belongs. Sometimes the way you structure your sentence or the way you word how the characters are feeling or their actions, it prevents your stories from flowing because it doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes you change words such as ‘are’ and ‘have’ into present tense which makes the sentence not make sense. I recommend reading over your story and seeing where the mistakes are because there are a few. A sentence, in its most basic form, has to have a noun and a verb in order for it to be classified as a sentence. Sometimes you have words on their own and the one word by itself is a sentence. You do this a lot with the word, ‘There’. You could always include this word in the previous sentence or in the next one after adding a comma after the word. I understand that you’re emphasising the word by putting it in a sentence by itself but you can always make it into italics or make it bold.

You also have a tendency of using the wrong preposition such as:

Before Correction: I walked through heavy steps along the corridors of Sungkyunkwan University.

After Correction: I walked with heavy steps along the corridors of Sungkyunkwan University.

Because you technically can’t walk through heavy steps, you can only walk with heavy steps. This is just one example in your story but I recommend that you read your story out loud and you’ll easily find the errors because the sentence may sound a little ‘wrong’.

Now, let’s go to spelling. There are a few mistakes for spelling which are spotted in one of the places where you don’t want spelling mistakes. I have spotted some in your foreword, most of them are scattered in the chapters and there is even one on one of your posters. Some of the words that you misspell are probably just a typo but believe it or not, AFF has this function that allows us to check our spelling. It’s called a spell-check and it lists all the possible words that could be what you’re looking for. You should use that function: it’s there for a reason. This mistake is in your foreword.

Before Correction: To my dispair, I always arrive at the same answer.

After Correction: To my despair, I always arrive at the same answer.

This mistake is on one of your posters. It’s the poster that you use for even-numbered chapters, I believe. You should ask the designer for a re-do.

Before Correction: I never wanted a label so badly until there became you an me.

After Correction: I never wanted a label so badly until there became you and me.

For some chapters there are hardly any spellings mistakes, while in some there are plenty. The chapter that I think has the most spelling mistakes is Chapter 36. I recommend that you read Chapter 36 again or run that chapter through a spell-check because you’ll be surprised at how many mistakes there are.

Bonus points: [3/5]