#absr

Like there's a million other ideas he could've picked up, so much he could've changed after returning to the past. he could've focused only on his strength and suppressed everyone he considered to be enemies with just that. he could've won against his brother much much easily if he wanted to. he could've avoided so much if he simply decided to not care.

but no. he returns and he goes on a hunt with the man he had never looked in the eye before. he looks and looks and looks into the warm gaze of the one who had lost her life for him once. he spends time over meals and drinks and thinks and smiles. he goes to a random tavern owner and decides to make him one of his people. he argues and banters and smiles and laughs with the man he considered an enemy before. he tries and tires and lets himself rest, and he tries again.

and he watches his father. and he keeps watching his father.

Now if we put aside the angst for this, or the fact that he really really undermines how harrowingly lonely he is, there's this part of him that understands his own faults, and his own feelings. he rests when he's tired. he acknowledges that he skips it if something else demands his attention. he realises that revenge is something that'll always occupy a part of his mind, and that he loses sleep over it often. he understands. he reassures himself it's alright.

Mugeuk lives the life he's leading now due to the many lives he had seen during his wandering past, but i think, rather than those people helping him understand how people are, it made him understand how he was—at his best, and at his most vulnerable.

i truly believe that the reason he can understand others so well is because he understands himself first. He knows what he feels about a particular topic, he knows what could have led to that, he knows how proceeding further could make him feel. He's so ridiculously self-aware that it's both a flaw and genuinely one of the best aspects of his personality.

and that is also why i think he doesn't dwell on his past much (or why there isn't much angst in the novel for his part). Mugeuk understands to some extent that he can't change his past, or the way it shaped him, so his conclusion is to not dwell on it.

It's such a unique difference from how mcs usually are, either avoidant or oblivious, but at the same time, it's not exactly an asset either. I mean, just how many times have we seen someone else mention that he looks lonely? Or tired? And how he's almost surprised at that, as if aware of it all along, yet still ignoring the same? How tiring must it be to understand what he feels, yet not have any time or support to help himself for it?

There was this part in the manhwa:

It's not explained in detail here, but in the novel, what he thought was,

'Father, it's okay if i look for it. Not a moment passes without Hwa Moogi in my mind. I can't sleep even when I lie down. I often jump up and run to the training grounds, haunted by visions of being killed by Hwa Moogi again.'

And like. mind you that was actually the first time in the novel that Mugeuk mentioned struggling alone so clearly. and of course, he had been aware of it all along.

The thing is, the realisation that he's aware and just accepting of it makes it a lot more sad. Idk how else to put it. It's not at all an exaggeration to say that he's lonely, because man. having such a past while being so honestly self aware sounds like a nightmare. It only seems so mild because that is how he puts it, that is how he wants it to be.