Shelter.
A place to be.
A roof.
A resting place.
A place to–what?

Shelter. What exactly is it? And why is it so hard to hold onto? Why is it so hard to define? Why is it so hard to understand?

Starring Lee Jae Bin as Lee Yoon Dae and Jang Woo Young as Cha Soo Hyuk, the Korean BL Gray Shelter is all about finding a haven amidst life’s storm, amidst domestic violence and emotional abuse. Yoon Dae is a domestic abuse victim who learned to avoid anger by becoming angry at himself and others, all while fearing being alone. Soo Hyuk is trying desperately to survive while supporting a family whose income is being sucked dry by his gambling-addict father.

And both are looking for the one thing neither has ever truly known.

Home.

Gray Shelter is a symbolic watch broken up into abrupt transitions and flashbacks and filmed in varying shades of bleakness. It feels like poetry. Each stanza is a testament to two men who have never seen the world through rose-colored glasses. Two men who have existed in shades of gray. Two men in desperate situations who find themselves drawn to each other for two very different reasons.

And yet it all comes back down to one thing: home.

Soo Hyuk is seeking a place to come back to. Yoon Dae is seeking a home in Soo Hyuk. And that’s where the two of them crash up against each other. Because of his father and the wandering life and financial struggle he’s been forced to live, Soo Hyuk values reliability, stability, and the mundane. Because of the emotional and physical abuse he grew up bearing, Yoon Dae longs for the one thing he’s never felt: affection.

Two different needs. The same desire to feel something other than hopelessness.

That’s Gray Shelter. It’s a poetic series in which it’s easier to run away than face what may fall apart, especially when the only thing you’ve ever known is falling apart.

One of the saddest things about Gray Shelter is all the unsaid yelling on screen. Both men are screaming into the abyss, into an empty room and an empty gray world, words that echo back at the viewer without ever being said out loud.

“I miss you!”
“I love you!”
“I need you!”

These are all replaced by silence, desperate stares, lashing out, and favors.

“Pretend to be asleep.”
“Are you listening?”

Soo Hyuk and Yoon Dae are two men trying desperately to hear each other inside the static of their lives, inside the shoes they use to express the love they are so afraid of admitting to, inside the money Soo Hyuk keeps trying to give because it’s all he’s ever known. I found myself touched by the ways they danced around each other.

Many viewers will find Yoon Dae harder to relate to; his need to be taken care of is a little too loud in his behavior. And yet, I understood him. The drinking, the outbursts, all of it attention-seeking behavior that pulls people toward him and pushes them away.

There comes a point when Yoon Dae’s behavior starts to make scary sense, when his actions start to feel like a test he’s making the people around him take. A test he’s desperate for someone to pass. Because, in truth, he longs for the same things Soo Hyuk does: reliability, stability, and the mundane. The only difference is that he wants to find that in a person rather than a place. He wants someone he can depend on. Someone he knows won’t hit him or expect too much but who also pushes him to expect more from himself. Love is a powerful motivator when the fear of grasping it is overcome.

But it’s also hard to hold onto. That’s why the ending of Gray Shelter is so poignant to me. We don’t know what Yoon Dae plans to tell Soo Hyuk. We don’t have any idea where they go from the kisses they shared and the desperate conversations. We simply have an “Are you listening?” and an “I’ll see you at 6.”

The ending takes us back to the beginning, to the question, “What is shelter?”

Shelter is different for everyone. From family to a house to self to gender to a person, shelter is a place to be and feel secure. It is a place that changes depending on who is seeking it. A place where we all scream the truths we can’t say out loud. A place where the walls and ceiling can hear us even if the people we want to say our words to aren’t there.

And that’s what Gray Shelter was for me: Four walls full of shouted words that keep reaching for the person who is meant to hear them but doesn’t always quite reach. Gray Shelter is a hug we’re desperate to feel but must fight to get to, which left a deep impression on me.

I wish there was more, a resolution to the echoed desperation, and that Soo Hyuk and Yoon Dae find the shelter they seek so desperately in each other.

And yet, there’s an odd lingering “I know how this feels” to the ending of Gray Shelter that strikes a chord and stays with you long after the credits end. I’m impressed at the extent of the desolation and longing Gray Shelter conveyed in only five episodes. And while the ending struck a chord in me, I would still be ecstatic to see their story continue.

For a series that takes the world and turns it into a four-walled room full of unspoken yells that echo back into the heart, check out Gray Shelter now on iQiyi. The actors lay it all bare on screen, and it shows.

Which is why I leave you with the three words that echo the loudest, “Are you listening?”

Rating- 4 out of 5