Have you ever thought someone looked like your former lover? What if it was someone younger? Or worse, a student? What if they appear naked to you?
‘A Naked Boy’ follows Jin-tae, a 45-year-old History teacher who has a very uncomfortable problem: a student resembles his ex-boyfriend, and not only that but he appears naked to his eyes and his eyes only.
It seems like everywhere Jin-tae looks, the boy is there, naked and unaware of Jin-tae’s predicament. On his way home, Jin-tae receives a call from someone whom Jin-tae happily updates about his day. He stays on the phone with that person until he arrives home. Once inside his house, Jin-tae starts organizing wedding invitations, revealing that he is about to get married soon. While putting invites in envelopes, he reaches for a book called “Illusion: You Are Not Crazy.” It turns out that this is not the only book he’s been reading to make sense of his supernatural situation. It leaves him sleepless which is how he ends up oversleeping at work.
Jin-tae opens his eyes to the naked boy waking him up at the faculty room which startles him. He immediately throws a blanket over the boy’s shoulders which confuses the boy. Jin-tae looks at him sheepishly before taking back the blanket and he is informed that he didn’t attend his class. Jin-tae says he hasn’t been sleeping well. Then, he instructs the boy to go back to class as a fellow teacher insinuates that he must’ve been sleeping from all the “fun” he’s been up to with his fiance. Jin-tae raises his voice that it’s not like that which earns the boy’s attention.
Later on, Jin-tae goes back to his hometown to visit his mother. Jin-tae helps around the house and at dinner, he gets asked why he didn’t bring his fiance with him. Jin-tae evades the question and continues eating. Outside, he smokes in silence in the dark and seems to be deep in thought about something.
Back in the city, Jin-tae arranges a meeting with the boy outside the school. When the boy arrives, Jin-tae smiles and calls him “Seok-joon’s son.” Jin-tae thanks the boy for coming to see him and the kid just smiles meekly at him. Jin-tae starts by introducing himself as Kim Jin-tae, not his teacher, but a man who is getting married soon. He says that he might not be as handsome or as good of a speaker as the boy’s father so it’s only his first time getting married at such an old age. Jin-tae confesses that before his marriage, he couldn’t see the boy’s father, but he did want to see the boy. The boy asks if Jin-tae’s close to his father and Jin-tae seems to take a moment to answer before replying that he likes Seok-joon a lot. He repeats that he liked him and is about to say more but he gets interrupted by the waitress asking for their order. Jin-tae asks what the boy wants to eat and stares at him softly. The staring goes on until they’re eating
like Jin-tae can’t believe his eyes as he looks at the boy who is not naked anymore.
