i'm eepy

in hand jumper, sayeon uses trust as a substitution for love.

sayeon lee has never experienced mutual unconditional love. no one truly knew her for who she was as the daughter of a criminal aberrant. the closest she ever got was jaeil, who died. her sister’s love is (arguably) unreciprocated. thus, she doesn’t acknowledge the love she feels for other people (like all her other emotions). sayeon is a utilitarian. trust is directly tied to her ability to manipulate, by extension, mission success. so, it is the only form of affection that she allows herself to have.

additionally, sayeon doesn’t trust people easily. she is a logical person who questions and criticizes everything. in the corps, blind faith could mean death. as a leader, trust is indicative of power and skill, both things sayeon aspires for. sayeon understands the weight trust carries in the aberrant corps, where the survival rate is minimal.

so, she searches for affection through the trust placed on her by other people.

this emphasis on trust is paralleled with love. when sayeon learns her teammates trust her, she starts smiling and blushing, which is a stereotypically romantic reaction. she searches and even craves for trust in the same way many people want affection. in missions, she tries to be as efficient and successful as possible to gain trust. she constantly wonders if characters like min and ryujin trust her. like love, trust needs to be earned. her journey towards gaining trust mirrors a journey towards genuine relationships, albeit a more twisted, complicated version.

but the most compelling parallel is that sayeon lee does not want characters to be forced to trust her. instead, she hopes they will trust her out of their own volition. as ryujin says: “you want me to choose you all on your own”. even absent the obvious romantic undertones, the treatment of trust as something that cannot be forced mirrors the nature of love. in the same way true love is mutual, sayeon wants trust to be real and reciprocated.

sayeon was capable of love at some point - we see that with sara and samin. however, at some point, both these people betrayed her trust. sara’s cruel and inhumane nature distanced herself from her daughter, and samin’s act of murder traumatized sayeon so severely that it pounded the message of “the world is better without people like you” into her.

that initial trauma caused by samin is why sayeon doesn’t love anything. her care for samin was, in her eyes, manipulated and then crushed. samin did what she did bc she knew sayeon loved her dearly.

it makes sense, then, why she values trust equally like love— those you love won’t betray you, yet love itself is what caused sayeon’s heart to be shattered as a child. she doesn’t trust samin, and so she can’t feel any love towards her, since again, those you love don’t betray you.

i also think, at a baseline, trust is an easier concept than love, at least to our dear protagonist. love takes many forms, causes irrational behavior, isn’t reliable. (re: samin). however, trust is black and white: you either trust someone or you don’t. and thus, trust can be calculated, planned for. people don’t do things for people they don’t trust. but if people do trust her, sayeon can account for their actions with 100% certainty.

I have been researching some of the legends Sleepy mentioned in her q&a again. She mentions the epic poem Nibelungenlied (though only in reference to the three nixies) so I thought I would research it. 

Everything she's ever done is out of guilt, constantly apologising for existing but also wanting to justify her existence. That's her duality. She desperately wants the people she cares about to be safe, to the point of obsession. She doesn't trust other people to be safe if she's not there, she doesn't believe she's worthy of being alive but she desperately wants to be told otherwise. That's why she's always proving herself, making herself irreplaceable, perfect. She literally keeps asking Ryujin if she hates her and rewinds the timeline when Ryujin says she doesn't BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE HER and she doesn't need anyone to see her be vulnerable.

She's a very traumatised child getting thrown into a literal dog eat dog world and trying to survive, keep her cellmates safe, while watching the system she desperately clung to as the absolute opposition to her sister's underworld (and thus as an "absolute good") prove itself to be just as corrupt if not more than the literal crime syndicates she swore she would never be a part of. She spent her entire life destroying herself inside and out because it was her only chance at escaping her sister and the criminal underworld she knew she was born from. And out of every career option she chose CRIMINAL PROSECUTOR.

in school, the rule was: get straight As and be a model student. in the aberrant corps, the rule is: gain the most points in the most vicious and utilitarian ways. sayeon says it herself during the capture the flag arc.

the way she phrases it as "AND Ryujin." the "and" being italicised. like that's the part that ESPECIALLY gets to her. the fact that he disrespects the lads is one thing, but him DARING to be rude to RYUJIN too? as if that crosses some sort of line in her mind? okay Sayeon. i see you