maladaptive daydreaming...you mean having fun?

oldest sibling. we know this. assumedly gave up the entirety of his teenage years to raise eun yu. dropped out of med school and got a job so she could pursue her dreams. his entire life revolves around her, the only times we see him smile in the show being when he is with her or thinking about her. she is pretty much his pride and joy, even though when we see her interact with him before the "apocalypse" she acts hostile towards him. ("you always used to bug me and cling to me when i didn't want you around") but he isnt even fazed, because he cares so much for her. when he makes the announcement to the tenants to come downstairs, its obviously spoken directly to her. hes begging her to be safe because shes literally his entire world. thankfully she survives all of the attacks in the green home, but its clear that if she didn't he would completely break. he'd have nothing left to live for without eun yu.

anyways about him as a leader. he clearly didnt INTEND to become that. he immediately jumped to fight the first monster while everyone else stood frozen in fear. eun hyuk, not even old enough to be out of college, the one to come up with a plan when no one else would because all he KNOWS is to protect. that is literally his only option. its so ingrained in his mind that he cant even fathom not moving to action to save as many people as possible. its in his blood.

his morals sort of remind me of the trolley problem. his focus is on preserving the greatest part of the whole, no matter who might die or get hurt to do that. like how he sends hyun-soo and yi-kyung out to retrieve supplies or turn on the electricity, because even if they died, their success would mean so much good for everyone that in his mind it would be worth it. and its not out of malice or hatred, even if it seems that way (mainly towards hyunsoo). because thats what he would do in their place. if he had been unable to die like hyunsoo was, or as strong and tactical as yikyung, he wouldve been right out there fighting like he sent them to do. he just knew they were more likely to succeed than he was. even if its not morally correct, its logical; at least when you look at the numbers. when sending hyunsoo to retrieve mr han, he doesnt care about saving the two children if it means having access to all of his skills that could possibly help save everyone. you can assume that he essentially only views people as what they can do for the group. i see a lot of people calling him morally gray, which i think is reasonable, but i do still think it comes from a good place- even if he does hurt a lot of people in the process.

being morally gray doesnt mean that he's violent, though. time after time you see someone hit him, or yell at him, or degrade him, or push him around, and time after time he just takes it. never once does he fight back. even when the gang holds a gun to his head, he doesnt cry or beg or scream for help. he stays stone-faced and frozen, the same as he always is, keeping a brave face for all of the others. when jin ok beats him and screams that he killed her daughter, he just lets her. yi-kyung throws him into walls like six times and he never does anything but quietly ask her to let go. i think its possible that he feels he deserves it. i mean, eun hyuk doesnt really seem to care about himself that much. he thinks of himself to be just as expendable as he thinks of everyone else, so his morals clearly dont come from a place of selfishness.

in fact, he is so incredibly UNselfish as a leader that he completely blocks out any sort of emotions that he experiences, putting his own needs and feelings aside to help the others. he knows that everything would fall apart without him being completely focused on the goal at all times. hes never shown taking a break for longer than just a few seconds to breathe, and even those are few and far between (from what i can remember, less than once an episode). i could be wrong, but the first time i think of him to be truly shaken is in episode four when he watches su-ung and min-ju die. he starts to panic, frantically pushing people out of the way and back, away from the danger, the only thing he knows to do. because theres nothing else he can do. he had to stand and watch his own faliure. he had to watch what comes of the people that he could not protect.

and when hes face-to-face with the monster that killed them, he doesnt move or run away, he just stays frozen, almost shell-shocked, knowing he could die at any moment. but he doesnt move. his eyes have the most emotion that hes shown in the series so far. it leaves him alive, with the blood of those he couldnt save sprayed across his face like a punishment for his faliure. (i love this shot, because it drips from his glasses looking like the tears that he can not cry.)

this is one of the only times that hes genuinely shaky. because what scares him is not the possibility of his own death- he is most scared when other people are facing death. like in episode nine when seon young is shot, he looks like hes holding back tears; but then later when they turn the gun to him, hes taking deep breaths, silent and still. he never once in the show fights for his own life. he only ever fights for others.

and then oh my god episode eight. dont even get me started on episode eight. when he has to deliver the killing blow and burn jaeheon to death- to do something so horrific to his friend who he cares for and respects so much. as i said earlier, again, here he just looks shell shocked. more so even than in episode four. you can see tears form in his eyes, and you can see him force them away.

when i first watched this show, i thought they were setting him up for a breakdown. he has so many moments where he just slightly shows the tiniest bit of fear or of sadness, but never tips over the edge, and i was confused when it never happened. but on my second rewatch i realized; when it comes to eun hyuk, whether a swallow, or a shaky breath, or the tiniest lip tremble- that is his breakdown. because hes so traumatized that if everything spilled out he would be too far gone. he could never recover from that. so his detachedness is a trauma response, his mind blocking everything hes been through out, because it has to, so that he doesnt fully break. (this is paralleled, i think, in season three when he actually IS completely emotionless. you really start to realize how much of his actions were actually motivated by his feelings early on.)

then- episode ten. when you can see him make the decision to leave the tunnel. he tells eun yu that hes leaving to bring hyunsoo back, and he smiles to her just a little bit, his voice just slightly more gentle than it usually is. and then when they see each other, he hears the ringing. but he ignores it. he doesnt see hyunsoo as a monster anymore. eunhyuk cares about him now- thats his friend, just like jaeheon had been, and sangwook, and so many others. and you start to have hope that maybe, maybe they can go back to eun yu together, and itll be okay, but just as you start to believe it hyunsoo shakes his head no and you remember how the show began.

but when he doesnt even try to stop hyunsoo from going out, you realize that was never what this is. hes not coming back. he has willingly gone out to kill himself.

all he wants as he dies is to think of his sister. he listens to her music and looks at their family picture. he loves her so much, she's his whole world, she's his everything. as long as him leaving is whats best for her, its going to be worth it.

and then as the building crumbles onto him, he smiles. and now that he's alone, with no one left to protect, he cries for the first and only time.