I’m still going. A great season finale tbh, a real culmination of the idea that Jihwae never actually did understand Seonwoo, with the way he thought the threat of s*icide (a dramatic, manipulative attempt to subdue him) was something that would work.
But Seonwoo has always maintained a lack of pity towards Jihwae. He felt sorry when he heard about his mum, but despite how close they got Seonwoo was always hyperaware of the class divide between the two. Jihwae assumed that he’d succeeded in emotionally manipulating Seonwoo when he opened up about his mother, but that was arrogant of him.
In my opinion, it comes down to this; he is rich, and in spite of the slums where his mother came from, was raised rich. That means he has a doughy, comfortable approach to wealth that is invisible to wealthy kids but obvious to poor ones. Seonwoo was never not thinking about money, or about his utilities or costs, and while Jihwae probably thought this would push Seonwoo into relying on him, the reality is that it likely added distance. People cannot be bought, and rare is the person willing to truly sell their autonomy for comfort.
This is the same mistake Jihwae’s father made, one made in a haze of wealthy permissibility and greed so intense that it drove his wife to s*icide, but didn’t stop him from enabling the same behaviour in his own son. Because those men don’t listen to what their partner wants, they assume they know best, and then they find themselves to be horribly, tragically wrong. A truly horrible destructive cycle, 10/10
Well said
This is incredibly well thought out. Thanks for taking the time to put this together (๑•ㅂ•)و✧
Wow talk about a train wreck. Very good read, dark themes aside. The author did a great job setting up these dominos and then driving a semi truck through them.
Nice to see a romantic horror where the male lead isn’t some kind of superpowered uber jigsaw with all the answers + is capable of making the kinds of obvious mistakes that happen when you try and control someone’s life and can’t empathise with them. Also cool to see a MC who has the capacity to recognise where his boundaries are despite the best efforts made to gaslight him, knows how to be suspicious and make obvious logical leaps. It puts them both on more even ground and that makes their conversations super interesting, especially when they realise they were never on the same page.