we dreamin' hard, we came so far

(tags by @melonisopod)

JAEHYUN: viral | studio choom

there’s a particular courage in walking away from the thing that built and shaped you and in being able to leave something so grand and safe to find something bigger than your current self. most people never do that. i am incredibly moved that he has chosen that journey: to leave the thing that made him, so he can become the person he know’s he was always meant to be.

his departure isn’t him just leaving, but it is him also modeling a kind of self-trust people hardly ever have. people often think courage is that cinematic moment where someone stands up and declares their new path to everyone, but, truthfully, it is often a quiet, fearful, and private decision where you turn it over in your head a million times and have a million conversations over the same topic over and over again with loved ones before you decide you’ll eventually have to loosen the grip on what’s defined you to find what’s waiting for you.

letting go of something big isn’t just courageous either, it’s painful, lonely, and disorienting, and i can only imagine what it feels like when the life you’re letting go of is what’s been the majority of your life AND career.

FINALLYYY.

i loved this. the firm resolve in his voice combined with a sense of urgency. after all those instances of diverting topics and hiding things and what not, here is finally a moment where he is being honest— truly honest, as he promises to tell her everything and asks her to wait for him.

this is also better than having haran find out everything all at once. she has been catching on to things since the past few episodes, and this confirms her suspicions that he was hiding stuff from her. so when she learns the truth about chan, it'll be more like pieces of a puzzle coming together rather than a full on explosion; it cushions the impact.

now, moving on to chan. it makes sense that he'd want to piece together his memories himself first before telling haran. but, the circumstances as they are, don't allow him that. he can't rely on his own memories because they're blocked and the one person who is linked to the accident won't tell him anything. according to him, even if he wants to be honest with haran, he needs to know the truth first, because how can he tell her about a past he himself can't fully remember? so he does what he can and promises her the one thing he is sure of— that he wants to be with her, and to be honest with her.

considering how scared he's been the whole time, this is a big leap for chan, similar to how haran taking up his offer at the end of episode 3 was a big leap for her. it's interesting how both episodes started off with them making a decision and ended with them making the opposite decision of that:

ep 3: began with haran rejecting the friendship offer and ended with her seeking out chan herself.

ep 9: began with chan lying through half-truths and ended with him confessing the truth about having lied.

chan #going-through-it in ep11 because the writers somehow thought it was a good idea to have everything blow up in the last couple of episodes