#ily commentary

I think you guys know me well enough to know we're diving right into the Nessa and Rand backstory. I love you Shinae but we'll swoop back around to you, there's very important things at hand right now!

Like many, Rand and Nessa's history is something I'd been anticipating for quite a while now. I'd come to this thought that they must've had a relationship when they were younger and Rand was in uni and then Rand realized he had bigger dreams than this and left in pursuit of those dreams when it became apparent they wanted different things in life and that his career was more important than relationships and he didn't want to be tied down but BOY WAS I SO WRONG HUH!!!!!

I will admit that Quimchee shared an image on Patreon which had me and my friends already convinced that they'd been married and I am stressed to realize we were, in fact, correct about that aflkjafkajffajfaj (again go join Patreon if you can, we get really fun content!)

The thing that really strikes me about Nessa and Rand - and I think we all kind of figured this all along but now have this confirmed in an even worse way than expected - is that they are the epitome of "sometimes love just isn't enough". Except I'd always thought it was "love just isn't enough" in the way that Rand would move on, not Rand would keep stringing poor Nessa along and she would keep believing in him and them and hoping this time it will be different. And I think, worse, it demonstrates how much he loved her? That he held on to her for so long and dragged her through so much pain because he just would not let go, even when he should have realized he was always going to put his career first.

And look, I'm not going to demonize Rand for putting his career first. I won't admonish him for valuing his career and security because we see between Nana and Rand two very different types of orphan experiences. Nana sought out her family, sought out to make her own family and tried to hold on to them (and lost them in doing so). Rand, however, focused on financial security rather than familial security. He wanted the kind of security that provides for you and gives you a sense of power. Comfort in knowing you never need be left for want or destitution. His refusal to let Nessa stay with him in England when he was suffering says so much about how important this value was to him. Nessa has lived a life in the country of, presumably, making ends meet (Nana describes her being able to visit Rand as "scraping together the funds to afford a train ticket") and it's not something she feels ashamed of. But Rand spent his life in the orphanage, from which he aged out of never having been adopted and taken in by a family, left with nothing and wanting for everything, and it makes sense why he personally would never want to be the reason Nessa lived that way, would want only to be able to provide for her.

But it's an indication they weren't ready to be married - and this is partly on Nana, who I feel rushed to get them married as she was so worried about them "committing sins". I'm not blaming her, I'm just saying. They were not ready to be married - Rand wasn't ready to settle down yet.

I'd also like to point out how painful it must've been for Nana to learn that Rand wanted to settle down with Nessa in England of all places. Yeah he doesn't have the history, but WOOF.

But anyway, it was so clear that Rand wasn't ready to settle down, but he did anyway, because he loved Nessa and he wanted his career and he was convinced he could do them both - that a little patience would be rewarded in the end. And he wasn't entirely wrong, except I think his Oxford bestie, Kouichi Hirahara, was a trap. But we'll get there. I want to focus on Nessa's pain a little bit before we ruminate on Rand's mistakes and the trap he fell into.

The audible gasp that I gasped when it was revealed Nessa was so stressed she was having fertility issues and kept having miscarriages - that reveal absolutely devastated me! That she struggled so much to conceive and start their family and when it finally happened, it was after he came to her with deception, when he was married to someone else already had a family with somebody else, and he asked her to abort it. He knew what she struggled and asked her to abort it!!!!!!

Now I am fully acknowledging that I think Rand knew what he was doing when he made that request. He'd been married to Yui for years at this point and the family knew about Nessa to some degree because Kouichi was Rand's bestie at some point, had met Nessa, had gone to a tea ceremony together, were on friendly terms. And, again, we're taking the Mukoyoshi Theory to be truth at this point, Rand knew the dangers of having a child that wasn't with Yui, one that could be viewed as a threat by Yui. He didn't ask Nessa to abort because he wanted nothing to do with her and a child - he asked her to abort out of protection for what would befall the child and even possibly Nessa, I believe. I think it must've hurt Rand to ask, too. I don't think he was as cruel and cold as we're led to believe.

Something very important to remember about this entire flashback is that this is a 100% biased flashback from someone who admittedly hates Rand and this is going to color everything about how Nana describes the relationship, the way things played out, etc. etc. SHE sees Rand as this unsympathetic man who didn't care nearly as much about Nessa as he did about his career and that colors our perception of him as we read, and therefore how we process new information. We internalize what it means for Nessa to have struggled with keeping a pregnancy to be asked by her former lover who now has a new family to ask her to abort the ONLY viable pregnancy she's ever had and we assume that it means he was cold and cruel and uncaring, but we have to be highly critical of these types of recollections. She is recalling someone else's relationship from her own biased perspective. None of this is firsthand accounts from Rand or Nessa.

And to that matter, one of the most devastating things about Nessa, which I think makes her such an interesting character, is that we are NEVER going to truly know, because we don't have her point of view. Unless there exists some kind of diary that has been preserved by someone somehow, we'll never be able to be in her head. We only get to see her in the very biased recollections of others, be they incredibly idealized versions of her or distorted nightmares of her. I think even Rand, who has well-preserved memories of the day he met her after her post-abortion, will have distorted recollections of her, warped by his love and his tremendous guilt and shame.

Nol remembers his mother in such a way that he believes the tea poisoned her and completely altered her personality, even though it seems much more likely that Nessa, at the VERY least, since Rand left her, but probably since they married/the miscarriages, has struggled with some form of depression and maybe even anxiety? We'll never know Nessa TRULY because no one was in her head. No one saw the parts of her that she hid, the parts of her that she tucked away to perform for others, to be the version of them they expected to see, to hide the difficult aspects of herself, etc.

Nana exemplifies this when Shinae returns from the bathroom to ask for her phone back - found breaking down sobbing over the overwhelming grief and pain of being confronted with these mementos of her daughter who she never properly got to grieve. Nana who never gets to show this side of herself because she's always busy being a strong pillar for Nol and never has room in her life to grieve for the daughter she lost, the daughter she pushed away, the daughter she left to the wolves, because she needs to be strong for Nol. Nol himself exemplifies this - none of his friends knew what he was dealing with while he wore his Yeonggi mask. Maybe it's something he'll figure out one day himself - that what he witnessed with his mother was likely exacerbated by whatever drugs she was on, in the way that "this drug can create worsening depression and or suicidal ideation, please let your doctor know about worsening depression" but what he witnessed was just as much a part of her as the version of her he remembers?

And this is what's so interesting about Nessa in people's memories. Look at Nana's memories and Rand's memory of her. So often we don't see her eyes and the times we do are usually strong emotions - the kinds of things that are emblazoned in your memory. But it feels so symbolic of them remembering Nessa, but not remembering her in her entirety. Especially for Nana and Rand, it feels like they don't remember her face in full because of the guilt and regret of how they've hurt her, the ways they've lost her. Nana left her daughter alone and vulnerable when she needed her the most, and by being left alone, she died without her ever knowing. It's also been such a long time since she last saw her, details fading and falling from memory, blurred away by her regret and shame ;~; But I think it also represents that Nana remembers Nessa as she remembers her, but not as she was. And this is typical of all of us, but something I feel is so especially true of parents. Parents latch on to their children at a certain point in their lives, and sometimes it becomes difficult to accept when their children have grown and become their own person and developed their own ideas. Nana remembers Nessa as humble, salt of the earth, etc. but how do we know that Nessa's values never shifted as she experienced more of life? How do we know she had other values that Nana ignored because they didn't align with her own beliefs?

Nessa is such a fascinating character to me in this way. She haunts the narrative, but we'll never really know her. We'll always be trying to piece her together through everyone else's memories, and through the things that are unsaid, or what they may not remember or didn't see.

But to get back to the actual episode, Nessa's resilience was truly impressive but also.... I wish she'd had the strength to walk away. A lot of reactions to this episode I see have a lot to do with blaming Rand and screaming about him, but it needs to be pointed out that Nessa kept going back. Nessa kept giving him chances. Nessa always believed he'd changed. I'm not saying this to blame her at all - I'm saying this as a reminder that it takes two to tango and in this relationship, Nessa, like Rand, continued to hold on even when it was clearly not working.

And I think this is why things culminate in Rand married to Yui.

Hear me out.

Isn't it pretty interesting that Rand meets a Hirahara in Oxford and they become friends. Kouichi even invests in his company, helps him get things started. Later, Kouichi buys Rand's firm and offers him an executive position at Hirahara Corp.? And Kousuke recalls that Rand never really liked being in Japan. Isn't this all really interesting?

And more to that fact, Kouichi follows the same naming convention as the Hirhara heirs. Koutara. Kousuke. So who is Kouichi? Where does he fit in....? It would make sense for him to not be an heir with the naming convention, would it? He hasto have been a son of Koutaro's, brother to Yui and Hansuke's mom !!!!!!!!!!!

And another interesting detail. Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn was named for important people in Rand's life - but Kouichi, best friend who helped Rand start his firm, bought it, and got him an executive position at his family's company, is not one of those names. That implies he must not have been all that important to Rand in the end, despite everything he did.

We ALSO know we've never heard of Kouichi - he's not mentioned anywhere, never in any articles, never in anyone's conversations. How was it Rand who became the temporary chairman of the board after Youngchul's sexual assault allegations caught up to him if Kouichi was an heir and would have had experience? In the two years from Kouichi buying Rand's company to Rand marrying Yui, what happened? And what happened to Kouichi?

And HOW did Rand end up married to Yui, as opposed to, yknow, Nessa (who he was ACTUALLY married to!!!!!!!!)

OF COURSE I HAVE THOUGHTS!!!!!

So we have a loose timeline here.

Rand sells his company. He goes to Japan to interview because he needs to secure his position before he can begin his paperwork to settle in.

He's supposed to start Nessa once he has his position and has filed his paperwork so she can join him.

Presumably he begins his position as CFO in Japan.

(Rand never liked visiting Japan. He must have experienced something in Japan that has ruined it for him.)

Youngchul is removed from his position as chairman of the board due to sexual assault allegations. (Someone is noted to have stepped in when Youngchul was trying to drag a girl to his room at a post-conference party, and there's also said to be several witnesses during the business conference earlier that day. Rand easily could have been one of or both of these witnesses. I think it's significant if he was someone who rescued a woman from Youngchul, in fact.)

Notably, at this time, Rand has been seen publicly with Yui

At some point after, Rand is married to Yui, legally adopted into the family as head of household/manager of the company via Mukoyoshi Law

Nessa returns home from England under the impression that Rand "couldn't wait for" her and married someone younger, from the big name fancy big money company

I think it's really interesting that Kouichi invested in Rand's company because this screams SNAKE to me. Who else do we know who has been trying to.... invest in people to potentially cash in on at a later time...? This has been Yui's entire deal with Shinae and it feels very interesting to see this show up with Kouichi.

The thing is, it seems like a good thing at this point. We saw that Rand's portfolio holdings were 68+ million, thanks in part to the acquisition! That sounds like a really good deal for him! But what were the stipulations of that acquisition in the first place? Esp with it leading Rand to Hirahara Corp and all of the Hirahara-Kim corruption, the seedy underbelly of their executives.

There's also some interesting dialogue in Kousuke's claw machine memory when he's visiting Japan.

Rand gives Kousuke a talk about want vs need (clearly something he's learned in his life about his career vs Nessa) but what Yui says feels even MORE interesting in light of this episode.

"Though he does have a point with these claw machines. If you don't play it right, you lose a lot of money before you get your prize. Something you could say your father is all too familiar with..."

I am CONVINCED that Kouichi investing in Rand was a long-term bide his time set up. Invest in this penniless man with so much potential and then cash in on him when he's done all the work. Rand is said to have acquired several big-name clients (who he still worked with once he was part of Hirahara Corp) which means once the company was acquired, that was money going to the Hiraharas now. All his hard work, paid off Kouichi's investment. But Yui says you lose a lot of money before you get your prize. So what does that mean?

Was he cheated in the acquisition? Was he given an unfair deal? Something that sounded promising but was, in fact, not that fair or good in the end? It sure seems like it, right? For Kouichi to be a person who is apparently not important to Rand, despite being his best friend once and investing in him, it feels like he must've been a person who Rand felt revealed his true colors and was no longer worth his loyalty. And the fact that Rand never did enjoy Japan in Kousuke's memories? This is probably tied heavily to realizing how very corrupt the company he'd joined was - and that if he left, he lost so much. His contacts, the money he'd be making from them, he'd have to start everything all over again. Sunk cost fallacy.

And we know that when Rand became temporary chairman of the board (and he remains chairman to this day), there was a controversy about Rand being seen with Yui outside of the company. What kind of relationship did they have? Was Yui someone who Rand had helped out when Youngchul was being a creep? Did she play into the "victim" role to take advantage of Rand and his position?

Recall that Rand praises Shinae's character and tells her to be careful of who she trusts because there's a lot of people who would want to take advantage of her good character - as though he, too, has experienced this kind of thing. As though his own good, honorable character was taken advantage of - and it led him into a trap.

And if there was a controversy, Hirahara Corp would want to clean it up immediately because they're already dealing with a sexual assault controversy they need to clear up which is affecting their image.

So what if there was some kind of blackmailing happening? Because isn't it so convenient that there's a controversy about the new chairman being seen with the daughter of the founder of Hirahara Corp and then.... he's married to her? Could he have been backed into this via some kind of blackmail? Losing Youngchul, causing a new controversy, maybe something in their contract, idk. Could Nessa have been at risk? Was it more that Rand realized this was a place he didn't want Nessa involved that he couldn't safely bring her here, that she'd be in danger around these people? Was there a subtle implied threat?

I know people think Rand threw Nessa away but I don't think that's it. I think he had to do something to protect her and he knew she would never leave him otherwise. That she would never understand anything he tried to explain, would want to be with him regardless, would expose herself to harm for him. Is that why he married Yui? To break things off with Nessa in a means to save for her? Was there any kind of push, shoving him in a corner, or was it just a decision he made? The implications of the controversy make me think there was something more than just making the choice.

Again, we have to remember this is a very biased recollection that does not favor Rand, and definitely does not know what happened where Nessa and Nana were not involved. Even things like Nana asserting that she knew Nessa's inability to carry a pregnancy bothered him and affected their relationship - that it created a fervor that he'd be willing to do anything about - is probably not true, or the way she thought it was. She hated this man for the way he hurt her daughter, and she only sees him through this lens of her hatred, her own hurt.

I think Rand was more than Nana knew him to be - or was willing to accept him to be. And that makes perfect sense! There's so much we still don't know, we can't just follow Nana's accusations and accept that Rand just. Gave Nessa up for a younger wife, for a family of money, for his own sheer greed.

So one of the questions that remains, of course, is: if Kouichi was an heir, how did we end up with Yui and Rand the Yoshi? Especially given how quickly this timeline seems to have gone. And where IS Kouichi?

I think the first obvious guess is that Kouichi is dead. No one ever mentions him, he hasn't been seen, and there would never be a need to utilize Mukoyoshi Law if there was a male heir to manage the company. This is a sort of last resort, no other options left kind of deal. So it stands to reason that perhaps Kouichi met an.... untimely demise. I think the other option is that he was left in some manner incapacitated, but this one is harder for me to get my head around. Yui being behind the stroke the former CFO had works better because he was an older man more likely TO be incapacitated by a stroke, but a younger man might not necessarily be taken down by that, so what good would a medically induced stroke be? And if that were the case, people might still talk about him? I'm not sure.

Obviously, I think if he died, Yui was behind it, because that's the character she possesses - she has clawed her way towards her goal and hasn't let anyone or anything stand in the way of it. We know she had to go through her sister(s) to push them out of the company in any means (we've seen Hansuke's career held hostage in what was likely Yui coercing her sister to step down/remove her involvement from the family). But imagine if she had to also go through a brother - someone who would be granted what she'd never be allowed, simply because HE was born male, unlike her, he'd be given everything she dreamt of. But because she was a woman, she would only be pushed into other directions, never into the company.

Yui possesses a loathing of the patriarchy and men in particular despite how closely she works with them, largely in part because the most worthless man will be granted things she won't via the patriarchy, where she's been oppressed by it, denied the same opportunities, even if her skills far outrank the men's. Imagine if she had to go through a brother who was instantly granted what she dreamt of - who represented everything she couldn't have, given so freely and easily. Who didn't have to fight and claw.

Could Kouichi have been the first blood on Yui's hands?

Because again, there's too many coincidences here. Rand is wed quickly to Yui, who earns the status of chairwoman via her marriage to Rand, the chairman - something she'd not have been able to do without marrying him. Yui seen publicly with Rand causing a controversy when he was named chairman feels like it's so pre-meditated - what if she played that victim role, took advantage of Rand's good character, found opportunities to be seen with him in public so that people would talk. The new CFO and the daughter of the founder are seen together often, what could this mean? Force the hand of her father. All while taking out her brother?

Worse, what if Rand was somehow involved in this, and it went in a direction he didn't expect? Yui and Rand teamed up together against Kouichi, the man who wronged Rand, someone who Yui could spin stories about having wronged her, too. Rand willing to work with her to bring him down, maybe make him pay.... and then he paid in a way Rand never expected? idk that part's a little dramatic but I DO think Yui is involved with what happened to Kouichi and I DO think her involvement with Rand was part of a bigger plan.

The most wild reveal to me, really, is that Rand had been trapped so long by the Hiraharas - that he's been a rat for so long, that Kouichi had his claws in him long before Yui ever did. That the Hiraharas truly are a web that he could never escape and every trap he walked into, he should have seen coming.

Poor Shinae, tbh, having to deal with this trauma dump lol. Like, don't get me wrong. Nana has never had the room to grieve and it clearly wasn't her intention to dump this all on Shinae. She didn't turn away Shinae, thinking she could remain strong, but the letters broke her. The photo broke her. Talking about the things she never properly grieved destroyed her and opened a dam and everything came out and here's this teenage girl who is going through her own crisis, saddled with her own abandonment issues, learning all about Nol's past, the stories about his family that even he doesn't know. Things Nana had never spoken about until she shattered now.

That's heavy. And she's been saddled with the kind of knowledge that will be horrible to accidentally slip up, as is foreshadowed with the lack of eyes talking about never telling Nol about the abortion. You know that's going to come up one day, maybe while they're arguing, maybe something that casually slips because she's forgotten this isn't something he knows, and it's going to shake him to the core - reinforce that he was never meant to be, that he defied everything by existing even after he was aborted, and that life continues to punish him for it, and likely feed into his anti-hero arc.

But more than that, Shinae is just going through it. She came to Nana looking for answers, and it ended with a lot of trauma dumping and more questions than she had before. Mind you, I think if Shinae were to sit down and parse through some things, it would help her create a better understanding - and maybe she could try to connect some loose ends, like Nol's dislike for tea being tied to his mother's death and his intense fear of Yui, but given her slower processing and the way she tends to miss these bigger picture items, I'm not sure if that's a connection she can see just yet. I'd like to hope it is, but I worry that everything else she's learned might overwhelm her and make it difficult to put things together.

This feels especially reinforced in her surveillance of Nol's room, and the way she missed details that were kind of there in the open - her hat, for one thing, the make up, which she might've been able to connect to him doing her make up at the formal. She comes away feeling like she doesn't know him at all, that she knows even less of him now (especially seeing his marks and his nearly perfect score on his entrance exam), but there's little signs sitting right there that she doesn't pick up on because she doesn't know what she's looking for. She's looking for something and expecting it will just stand out to her, that the pieces of the puzzle will come together, but there's little details that I think could have helped her tie back to their early friendship that she blatantly missed. Again, this makes sense, because she doesn't know what she's looking for and she's hoping to see a sign, but in doing so, she misses obvious keys.

I don't know how she's supposed to get any sleep after this, though lmao. If she was already unable to sleep before, this is NOT going to help the insomnia lmao my poor girl ;~; Nana's tea isn't even going to be of use because Nana has led me to believe that's caffeinated.

I do think all of this new information will be interesting in seeing how Shinae and Nol's interactions go in the future. She now knows so much more about his own past, about his own parents' history than even he does, and it becomes more difficult to not slip up and accidentally say something the longer that knowledge sits with you, because at some point you begin to forget "oh yeah he doesn't know this". None of this knowledge even provides any comfort - it just further makes it seem like Rand never wanted Nol nor anything to do with him and worse, paints him in a light that he abandoned Nessa when we, as readers, can conclude there's something more, we don't have enough details to know why Rand made that decision.

Like I said, where do I even begin? Do I want to dig into this in order the ep follows? It's probably best to go that way, even though that's not where I want to dive into, because I think we're given a lot of important stuff in 260 that would be so easy for me to brush over if I don't! There's a lot being set up that I think is going to really play into who Shinae becomes in the future, and how her inevitable rift with her father will play out.

Learning Nana's backstory is something I've been SO hungry for and I wasn't sure when or how we'd get it. All along I had this fear that Nessa's father might've been a scumbag, someone who knocked up Nana and fled town or something like that, and this was partly why Nana was so adamant in trying to prevent Nessa from having such an experience. I'm relieved that's not the case, though. While it still plays out tragically, and Nessa never gets to even meet her father, it's not so scummy as I imagined; he died fighting for something they both believed in, for trying to make a better world for them. Even if they weren't successful at it at the time, there are so many ways a man can leave a woman single raising a baby than that.

Actually, I wish we could delve more into Nana's time with the IRA. I'm highkey really fascinated by the involvement with the Irish Troubles and that this was something Quimchee chose to incorporate and build into Nana's core personality and identity; that she was a fighter her whole life, too, in so many different ways. To be honest, Nana and Rand have such similar backgrounds, but have led such wildly different lives. Where Rand searched for security in a monetary form, Nana sought it through family connections - and they both ended up losing sight of those dreams at different points in their lives.

We now know Nana to be someone with a strong mindset, one who has made the mistake of believing she knows best and pushing that on people, and in different ways, she still holds to that strong mindset - where Nol is unable to convince her of what he knows, because she is so affected by her own experiences. I often talk about how Nol is so deep in his own pain he doesn't always notice others' pain - and this is a similar scenario for Nana.

She knows all too well what it's like to be entirely on your own with a child to raise, no one to rely on or give you help, no one to turn to, and no reprieve. She knows all too well what it's like to lose yourself in that - the loss of self in motherhood when your own identity blurs and disappears out of your grasp - and how people sink into dark places with dark thoughts and dark wishes. Because it's such a lived experience, she can imagine Nessa in that very same place - in a foreign country no less, with allegedly no contact with Rand, even! - trying to make it, and to her it makes sense what happened: Nessa lost herself and she couldn't dig back out of that dark place, she didn't find comfort, until she sought it out elsewhere.

I don't fault Nana for not believing Nol, because the way he describes losing Nessa is exactly in line with what she knows, and easy to look at a young kid and think he's searching for a reason, something that changes the outcome. She thinks he finds it easier to blame the tea, to call it poisoning, than to have to face and admit that his mother was so depressed, so broken, she took her life in the end, because what does that mean of him, what does that say of his place in her life? I understand why Nana doesn't entertain the notion.

It doesn't help, too, that Nana doesn't understand why Nol refuses to take his meds. From context of the flashback and what else we've seen in the webtoon - from the very beginning, Nol has been suspicious of meds and would rather not take them; he didn't want the cold meds when Shinae thought he was getting sick; he's suspicious of any kind of pill if he doesn't know what it is or from where it comes; there's his fear of hospitals and especially Hirahara-related hospitals, extreme panic and need to escape when he wakes up in two different hospitals (and once relaxing only when he learns he's not in a Hirahara hospital + Shinae grounds him) - that his experience in the hospital was bad. And because we only know this through Nana, we can only guess how bad. All kinds of different meds to try to calm him down - meds that maybe made him feel like he wasn't in control, doctors who perhaps mistreated him, or used his therapy and anger management sessions to twist him and make him feel worse.

We know from what the staff says that they already thought him a troubled kid prone to outbursts and panic attacks, so I can only imagine what happened in the hospital - because what was causing those outbursts? What were they saying or doing or giving him? They mentioned his "paranoia". Think about this: Nol discovers his mom is dead and he goes straight to the Hiraharas - to Kousuke - who treats him like scum. Perhaps Kousuke doesn't even believe him, perhaps Nol talks about the poison that killed his mom and Kousuke calls it lies. And he ends up locked away, labeled violent and unstable, paranoid. No one believes him.

He loses his mom and no one even believes him.

He even tells Nana he can't say anymore because it will get him locked back up - the paranoia follows him out. Whatever happened in there reinforced (or created) his belief that he is a monster never meant to exist, a monster who didn't try hard enough to save his mother - who perhaps hurt her (arguments, conflicts, etc), and who believes no one will ever believe him.

And unfortunately Nana reinforces this in her inability to believe him, too.

Frankly, I think they both are right myself, and I've long had this thought. It's always been my suspicion that Nessa was drugged something which played upon thoughts and feelings which already existed - that in the situation that found them in the United States of Asia she found herself in a dark place, full of feelings of guilt and regret, and honestly, I feel still that this is true.

Nana is right. Nessa probably was struggling on some level. Alone with her young son in a foreign country and she can't even meet up with Rand, they're there so Nol can spend time with his father and they can never even get together, and they're living undocumented, keeping to themselves. She's probably so alone. She has no other family. Maybe young Nol starts acting out, gets angry and bitter. She uprooted them and took him to this place where his father is never available for him, where they keep meeting Kousuke who makes him feel worse and keeps destroying his name. He argues with her, they fight, she feels guilty and has so much regret because this was a bad move, this was a mistake, now her son is unhappy and lonely and still he hasn't met his father.

And maybe she's given tea that is drugged, that exacerbates these dark feelings that already exist. Is she given tea that's been laced? Does she meet with someone who gives her drugged tea at every meet up?

Nol sees the changes, the things Nessa tried to hide from him, but they're getting worse, the drugs are exacerbating it, making it stronger and harder to hide. And the more they effect her mood, her personality, the more it affects their relationship? And the guilt grows and the meds awaken little voices in her head she shouldn't listen to.

I genuinely think it's possible. I don't think it's something Nessa would ever have acted on had she not been drugged, and she likely could have pulled herself out of in another life. But in this life she was drugged.

It's still possible that the meds just unraveled her and someone else finished the job, but something about the idea of it being a little bit of what both of them believe hurts and feels so likely - a darkness that she could have quelled if it hadn't been preyed upon.

I actually have a LOT of thoughts about the entire timeline regarding this - how things tie into Rand and Yui's separation and how this was very certainly Yui taking control and reminding Rand he will never be able to outsmart her, but I'll save THAT for a whole separate post, because we haven't even finished with this one!

Before I move on to Nol, though, I'd like to say I think it's very pointed and significant that Nana is having these conversations with Shinae. It's heavily foreshadowed that Shinae is going to have some kind of rift with her father - that they'll be separated by something; she'll choose a boy over him, her lifestyle will take her elsewhere, his choices to keep secrets and not open up will drive her away and destroy her trust, etc. etc - and part of being able to foil Nessa and Nana is knowing how things went wrong. It's knowing Nana as a woman who has many regrets, both about trying to force her own beliefs on someone else and expecting them to adhere to and live to those standards, as well as having so much pride she never made an effort to seek her out. Knowing Nana as a woman who is so alone by her own hand, who has lost so many people (as Shinae has), who laments those losses even if some are her own cause, I think will weigh on Shinae in the future, and help her reconnect with Simhan before things are too late one day. It probably won't happen immediately of course; the anger and righteousness will have to run its course. But there will come a day when she realizes she just misses her father and instead of doing like Nana or Nessa and holding on to her pride she (or he!) will reach out and rather than stand their ground, they will let each other back in.

It's important for Shinae to see the ramifications of those rash, hardheaded actions. Shinae, too, is rash and hardheaded. She acts first, thinks later, and is very passionate in what she believes in, much like we see of Nana and can infer of Nessa. But having an intimate experience with someone who has had that similar experience, carried those regrets, and worse, seen the loss that came of not being there for each other.... I think it will stick with her and influence her when the time comes.

I think, even without telling us what happened in the hospital, we've got enough insight now about Nol to have some ideas about how these events have shaped him, though. His unwillingness to open up to people, because who will believe him anyway, and how his continued belief in what happened and being labeled as paranoid, fueling this fear that if he does continue to talk about it, he'll get thrown back into the hospital. This deeply internalized belief that he's a monster, that he caused it, leaves us to wonder a lot, still. Was this a belief born in the hospital, of the kinds of "therapy" he went through? At one point, we see Nol crying that he didn't try hard enough to stop her and that's why this is his fault, but the conversation he had on his birthday with Shinae about harming the cow from which the hamburger beef came haunts me. It makes me wonder a LOT about the state of Nessa's personality changing - if it led to them arguing and fighting, and that took further toll on her stress, her mental health, a reliance on tea that "calmed" her or something? Did the thoughts simply spiral and lead him to think that simply for not acting, he mistreated her, he was a monster for existing and complicating her life, for wanting to know his father and leading them to live here in secret, for getting them involved with this family, and for leading to her death? I'm still really curious about how he arrived at this line of thinking and I can't help but think it's a combination both of fighting with Nessa AND whatever happened in the hospital.

I'm also INCREDIBLY curious about medications because we know he comes out of the hospital on Xanax but we have to wonder what ELSE they might've had him on in there - although to be fair, Xanax on its own seems like it could have been (and was) a nightmare. Nana clocks immediately that Nol is "off", that this isn't a normal, well-medicated boy despite having never met him prior, just based on his listlessness. We also see even leaving the hospital, he already has eyebags from lack of sleep. I think it might be a combo of both being medicated and what might have happened while he was medicated that has him so against the meds, so fearful of them. Not liking how they change his personality, not liking how he feels like he has no control, not liking how they affect him, and maybe things done while he's medicated that he can't easily prevent? To be clear, I'm not suggesting sexual assault or anything like that, but we are not above imagining Nol was abused in the hospital, mistreated, etc. Drugged out on Xanax with someone telling you what a horrible person you are and you can't fight them off or something like that?

And again, the way the meds affect him. Nol knows who he was before he was medicated. He knows the change the drugs have caused, to make him so listless, so compliant, maybe like a little zombie. And he loathes it so much he's willing to go cold-turkey off Xanax and endure the withdrawal with nothing to assist him.

I was looking this up because, first off, I didn't know it by its generic name and secondly I realized I never knew a lot about Xanax except jokes about giving it to really high-strung, anxious people. Like, how did I never connect that it's a benzo? Even though, hello: Kousuke ?????? But more than that, I never realized how addictive it is?

We can safely assume Nol was probably taking the Xanax for 6 months or more, just knowing he was in the hospital for almost 2 years and cited as having panic attacks - which, let's be real, were probably a result of losing his mother and being institutionalized in the same breadth of time.

For him to go cold-turkey off this med was absolutely bonkers when you think about it. The depiction of him enduring his withdrawal post-release, as well as whatever nightmares haunt him, the trauma plaguing him, the entire experience of living with a stranger in a new place having been released from hell with no certainty that she's even truly your grandmother (gone through a hell so intense he can't trust that she wasn't brought in to continue the act ;~;). AUGH.

We see young Nol experiencing a lot of these withdrawal symptoms, too - the panic attacks, the tremors, the sleep problems, loss of appetite, general discomfort, (presumed hypersensitivity to light or sound when we see him in the dark, but also note to touch when we've seen how Nol has responded to people trying to touch him), possibly abnormal sensations, maybe even psychosis just based on the panel of him in his blankets in bed. (This latter part is a supposition but it's worth considering! I'm not saying I for sure think he experienced that, but knowing his mental state I don't want to discount it, either.)

More importantly is that between 10-25% of chronic users - as we assume Nol was - experience symptoms like new or worsening anxiety and depression, and we've known Nol to be haunted by this. We cannot forget that when Dieter had met Nol, there was a period of absence in which Nol "went to try to see his mother" that was assume was an attempted suicide. I'm not saying this is entirely the fault of the meds because clearly in Nol's case we have a more complex situation of someone who is in a stressful situation, has lost his mother, has had a whole upheaval of his life, no one believes him, and he's been on benzos during a particularly traumatic experience, but it's safe to consider their contribution to this attempt, I think. Chances are, Nol may have still ended up in this place, but we'll never know how bad it actually might have been had he not had such traumatic experiences and endured this withdrawal the way he did.

This also felt significant to me. In a way, it's like they made this poor kid worse. Rebound symptoms more severe than they were before the drug was initiated, resulting in worse anxiety and/or panic attacks? Essentially, what we know is that Nol's detoxing period and even the years to follow were absolute HELL for him. Nana even noted that while things started to improve once she started to introduce more healthy lifestyles and give him outlets, there were still signs of relapses. Still signs of struggle. It paints such a vivid picture of how the Nol we've come to know now came to be - and makes it even more alarming the way he goes from this to the Yeonggi mask.

I have so much respect and admiration for Nana throughout this all, though; it can't be easy, to just take sudden guardianship of this kid you didn't even know existed and he is, frankly, troubled. You're ill-prepared for how to deal with him, you don't know how to help him, he's suffering and you can't do anything to make it better. (The fact that Nol even, at one point, apologizes, says he wishes he could get better sooner hurt SO MUCH ;~;) That she understands how terrified of that place he was, that she never forces his meds on him, that she seeks out answers no one can give, that she decides to do everything she can to help him ;~; In a way, Nol really is repentance for Nana - her way of making up for where she failed Nessa, her way of ensuring that she doesn't abandon another one of her flesh and blood. And it was good she did, because obviously Nol needed that assistance.

He was just SO broken. And I'm sure he was broken enough by what he experienced pre-hospital, but I fear he's broken, too, by what happened in the hospital, too, and it's no wonder no one is able to get through to him. No one is able to penetrate the walls around him.

It also seems like his insomnia never went away and plagues him even now - we've seen many an occasion of Nol's sleepless nights that stem from coming out of the hospital (sitting up late at night "watching his favorite show" when in reality he can't sleep and is just filling the silence with something, anything, to try to dull the silence to interrupt his own thoughts).

His self-loathing SO intense, SO deep he can't bear his own image, destroys multiple mirrors from seeing his own reflection. Is it because he resembles Nessa? Is it because he can't stand himself so much that his own visage fills him with such violent anger? Both? ;~; Such a broken kid. Even now it continues!!!!

Something I do love about this sad era, though, is seeing how much of an influence Nana had on him. How all of these habits that Nol clings to like a safety line are things she introduced - from the healthy eating to bulking him up so that he would never appear "weak" to others, to running as an outlet, the punching bag - and it makes sense why he holds to them so strongly. These are his lifelines. If he strays from them, maybe he fears he cannot control himself, that it will all come back.

But also ;~; the way it was Nana who taught him make up. That one really got to me. Here I'd thought it was Alyssa but instead it was Nana who taught him to hide his eyebags ;~; I'm tender I can't handle any of this ;A;

And when finally he trusted her enough to approach her WITH those requests. To cut his hair. To hide his eyebags. His body language leading here is SO devastating - always shrinking in on himself, holding himself, withdrawing until he's as small as he can be, the hunched shoulders. It's so visible when he doesn't feel comfortable yet, when he doesn't feel safe, vs the conversation they have when he lays on the couch beside her reading the Alchemist, looking a little more relaxed.

AND THE REVEAL ;A; THAT NESSA ;A; CALLING HIM ;A; HER LITTLE TIGER ;A; WAS A HANDMEDOWN FROM NANA DOING SO TO HER ;A; OH I CAN'T FUCKING HANDLE IT ;A; I won't go on a spiral about Nessa missing her mother as she gave birth all alone but listen ;~; and Nol's reaction to be called something by this woman who he doesn't really know, that his own mother used to call him, something he hasn't been called in so long now. PEAK DEVASTATION I CAN'T HANDLE IT.

We also get the barest clue about Yeonggi, which makes me continue to think that Yeonggi was someone in the facility who, unlike the others, tried to help him. "The name gave him comfort in darkness." Possibly a name he stole off of someone else who comforted him and tried to make him feel better throughout the nightmare ordeal. I like to hope it was an employee who tried to quietly help him as much they could. I think it's still possible they could have been another patient, too, but I just feel like a part of the faculty makes the most sense to me right now?

Nana has equipped Shinae with so much knowledge to better understand Nol - all the stuff he's kept to himself, that he's never dared speak to her. And while it still doesn't explain him in the way she seeks, I think it explains it enough for her to begin to understand. She revealed her story to him in hopes that it would make him understand that she would never hold anything against him, that she understands we are all dealt different hands in life, and maybe with Nana's insight, now she can begin to understand why Nol was never going to open that up. That it wasn't her, that it's not a lack of trying - that he's so much more broken than she ever knew. That she mostly knows Yeonggi, and Nol is such an unknown entity to her, full of secrets and darkness he himself fears.

And knowing his fear of Yui, I think maybe she'll at least try to make some connections about what happened in the mental health hospital and Yui.

When Nana suggested she write letters to Nol (it didn't miss me that Shinae IMMEDIATELY jumped to LOVE letters - GIRL we all see right through you LMAOOOOOOOO of course that would be your first thought you mooney ol crushy wushy obsessed thing), Shinae doesn't seem convinced that it will do any good - that Nol will just ignore them and won't read that. And that may well be the case. But I hope one of her takeaways from what Nana has told her is that what Nol needs - what convincing could look like to him - is persistence and effort. We also know Nol tends to fold when it comes to Shinae and if she keeps writing him letters, even if it's just to talk about the mundane, to keep him up with what's going on, it could convince him. That she means it that she cares. That she's trying.

I don't know that she'd be able to feel comfortable talking about her feelings. Sometimes things are easier written than spoken, so maybe if she began to send letters more regularly, she could do that - if only talking about how much she misses him and wishes she were able to see him and wants to know that he's okay and wishes he wouldn't keep to himself and would open up or something. I think for Nol, persistence is important. More than that, not giving up is important, too.

Someone in our server pointed out that Shinae's fixation on the lack of photos in her own life could maybe lead her to take photos to send to Nol in lieu of being comfortable with writing letters herself - ways to keep him included on her life, a reason to take photos and someone with whom to share them, and I agree that would be really lovely to see! I think she could, over time, learn to open up via writing and use both, and that this could be convincing to Nol - emulating the contents of the Bible, something clearly so intimate and full of love, in her own way. ;~;

Ugh this makes me all the more excited to see what actually transpires when he's released from jail lmao but I STILL WANNA SEE HIM IN JAIL, TOO. I'm just eager for EVERYTHING tbh, let's be very real here.

The photo Shinae is going to show Nana has me curious because I had forgotten that the photo from the Bible hasn't actually been shown yet, so I was really hopeful she had something to show Nana that was Nessa and Nana related, tbh. But given that it's a photo Shinae has on her phone, I'm guessing she took a picture using her phone of the photo and the webtoon reveal will be next week, on Shinae's phone. I still want something of Nessa and Nana but I'm just a sucker for the tragic Lochlainn women like that, hahaha.

I'm also REALLY wary of Nana clutching her chest in pain like that. It makes me wonder if she's hiding something from Nol or not ;A; Trying to say it's a result of caffeine... ma'am I am NOT that dumb. Actual heartache over her daughter and the idea that she and Rand never even MET - that all this time she was living here alone and it was all for naught, that her death was in vain, that kicking her out was in vain, that at least she could have raised her grandson together with her daughter and never left her in such a space of isolate ;~; I know we've got heavy death flags on Rand and we've been anticipating Nana's death, too, but I'm really worried about which one of them will go first. Esp with Nol refusing to see anyone - including Nana - in jail ;~; If he refuses to see her and she passes before he gets out, his self-loathing will increase tenfold, but I wonder, too, if he would hold Kousuke and/or Yui accountable for that rage, since the reason he even plead guilty in the first place was to get away from them, to escape Yui and her reach.

Nol's anti-hero arc is already beginning to unfold and I think jail will really reinforce it as he makes his connections and that time shapes him, but.... I think the possibility of losing Nana when he's refusing to see her in jail could absolutely begin his "villain arc" if you will...

I didn't do a good job with my reread at the end and I keep forgetting that the whole "Nol turning himself in" precedes Shinae's bonkers processing dream, because somewhere in the back of my mind, I was half-convinced Shinae would be getting biscuits with Nana - which I think was just a leftover hope from waaaaaaaay back when that ep dropped in the first place? I really need to go back and finish rereading everything from the Christmas party arc - I've left off at 219, so I'm not too far off! But these are also the eps I've re-read the least so they're the ones not as cemented in my mind, clearly lol. ANYWAY.

Shinae's inability to sleep feels both like a double-whammy of the effects of her most recent head trauma combined with the intense stress she's going through - the way she's centering Nol's situation and her fear of losing him, above all else going on in her life. The insomnia has been a recurring theme since her fall, but I think it's worth noting that stress obviously seems to amplify things, and we see her in this state of restlessness (she wants to do something, feels she MUST do something anything or else risk losing Nol) despite how tired she is but unable to sleep. That is insomnia for me - your brain is just WIRED despite how weary you are, your eyes ache, you yearn for sleep, but there's restless energy or a too active brain that just won't allow it. To be fair, she probably would have had this bout of insomnia regardless, but I think it's worth noting that this seems to be an after-effect of her fall at the formal.

Recall that she's never gone for that follow up appointment she was supposed to make.

The Nessa letter she reads about Nol paints such a beautiful picture of what he was like - something that coincides with what we knew of Nol when he first met Kousuke even - and it makes knowing how he's ended up hurt all the more. Once upon a time he was this rambunctious kid who with all this pent up energy who wanted to explore everything and befriend everyone, a fearless sweetheart who saw the world through such wholesome eyes.

And then the world crushed him.

There's also the way Nessa notes that he was once upon time just 1 kg!!!! fighting to survive. (In her curious cat updated answers, quimchee notes that children born prematurely have an increased of myopia, which we know Nol to have.) Between this and Nessa saying she had an abortion, it's easy to surmise that Nol was very likely the result of a failed abortion - not that she didn't get the abortion but that she did and it failed. Also of note is that abortions in Northern Ireland were not legalized until 2019. Those who wanted to get an abortion could get them in the UK after 1967, however, from how we saw the flashback with Nessa and Rand play out, Nessa did not travel to have hers. She instead would have had to illegally have her procedure performed. Often, these under cover procedures can fail, or even kill the pregnant person, for a myriad of reasons - not being able to perform them as well as one would in a clinic with proper access to necessary tools and medications; having to resort to unsafe methods; etc.

Nol, who was never supposed to exist, who was literally aborted out of existence, but persisted nonetheless, was born premature fighting for his life, just a frail little thing that no one even knew would survive. Wasn't supposed to survive. In a way, Nol has been fighting his whole life. He may have had that brief reprieve growing up with his good, happy memories with his mother, but even the moment he came into this world he was fighting his very existence. This poor kid has taken a beating from the moment he was conceived ;~;

I love how, of course, Shinae's take is "god he's always been a lil shit huh" holding the orange representing him to her dang mouth!!!!!! and thinking about the way he looked at her, about the dance before it was all ruined. And it doesn't miss me that the lines that stand out to her are "Chasing and chasing..." and "Until my heart gives out", which of course resonate so deeply with her given that is her current state - chasing and chasing and chasing until her heart gives out because nothing else will stop her. ;~;

(I, however, would like to point out the line "I swear this boy will be the death of me one day" which Rand has also said and is a large death flag for him. I'll get more into this line in my next post, however.)

I ALSO did not miss that Shinae is BLUSHING - pink blushing, not flustered but feeling full on embarrassed and maybe even hmm not quite ashamed but perhaps that's the closest thing about her crush. "Look at you, having FEELINGS. Look at you, getting MUSHY over this letter!"

Shinae's realization about her feelings may be dancing naked in front of her face but she's still not ready to acknowledge it or embrace those feelings, to accept the effect he has on her, even though it's now making itself so readily known. The blush is her now aware and trying (and failing) to escape and it god bless her this would ordinarily be such a cute stage if there wasn't so much riding on the line and if she didn't feel him slipping away between her fingers. The agony of realizing you've fallen for someone without even realizing it! coupled with the fear and feeling of him leaving forever must feel absolutely horrible.

(I also want to point out that this girl continues to write her whole literal schedule on her white board despite the whole break in debacle. I don't know if it's the upgraded locks and security lulling her into a false sense of security or just the fact that a result of Shinae's head trauma appears to be slower processing and therefore not always being aware of important details or remembering things. This isn't to say I think she forgot she was broken into of course, just that I think it's slipped her mind to be vigilant because of that false sense of security, perhaps? She's relaxing and she wasn't exactly hyper aware to start out with.)

There's something kind of funny that the first person Shinae thinks to call in order to transfer these letters to Nol is Kousuke, given everything she's witnessed, but I guess it makes sense when you know he's at least family and maybe he has some method lol but also baby girl we know better right now. I do, though, appreciate her worrying about him and wondering, although she is not prepared to find out how he's doing and how much worse it will eventually get. Of course he's not answering right now - I imagine this is taking place at the same time as Shinhye and Kousuke are conversing at his place - but it still makes me feel a deep ache, because we know Kousuke is slipping away and even if Shinhye were not there, he was not going to answer a call even if the phone wasn't turned off.

Being able to contact Nana, though!!!! I love that we're getting more Shinae and Nana and I've honestly been so looking forward to this! Their intros to each other were absolutely bonkers but getting to see them interact as people (and not a joke lol) and Shinae continue to learn how much she doesn't know, how much she's been left in the dark, and what Nana's personality is really like, is just so exciting to me! It's not even for the "oooh interacting with his faaaamilyyyyy" kind of reasons, though I guess it does stand to reason that Nana can tell her about the things Nol has kept hidden, that she doesn't have the same view as Kousuke, and isn't the same kind of outsider as Dieter.

But before we get to that, we cannot ignore the most painful part of the episode - Shinae and Simhan's conversation. UUUUGGGGHHHH.

The thing Simhan continues to not understand - and probably won't understand and will be the result of whatever rift comes to pull them apart of whatever conflict arises soon - is that Shinae wants to be a TEAM. She doesn't want more secrets, she doesn't want to be babied and protected, she wants to KNOW and be AWARE of what looms over them. And Simhan refuses to do this. Based on Shinae's assessments - they're all up to date on their bills, Simhan's refusal to talk to Shinae about her mother or reveal anything about her real nature - the debt looming over him must be connected to her. We've long-since theorized that part of their debts was Shinae's mother gambling debts - that they are tied to Simhan in whatever way. Did he take out a loan for her, did she do anything in his name, etc etc. It seems to be true, now, if this is something he won't tell her about and is keeping in the dark, while Shinae is aware of the situation with all their other bills.

This also seems very likely because even before they had medical debt, Simhan was always struggling with Shinae - he was always taking on extra shifts even before her fall; it was part of what made her feel so alone back then. This could have been that the move and the new neighborhood were costlier than prior, but it seems that he was always trying to pay down that debt. Then, he entered medical school and had to cover that out of pocket (he'd only be reimbursed once he completed and maintained a certain average) and he's spending their little remaining money on beer and he needs to keep picking up shifts to cover the costs and the cycle just feeds into itself. Then came the medical debt. It seems like he's been haunted by some debt even before everything came to a head, and now after everything else they've been through, it's become a bigger problem than it ever was before. :/

And of course he could TELL Shinae about this but he doesn't want her to contribute to his problem - even though this debt could land him in legal trouble - and he doesn't want to tell her about the debt because he refuses to tell her about her mother even though, again, it's all so necessary! Simhan tries so had to protect Shinae, but all his efforts to protect her do are make things worse. It drives them apart and puts him in bad positions. He's here talking about the future Mina is dreaming up for them (l o l @ Shinae thinking it's Simhan pushing for them moving in together like Mina isn't the one trying to rush things and he's the one going along with it) as if what's happening now won't derail it all.

And on top of that, he is once again dismissive of Shinae's feelings. From her vantage, there's no reason for him to work so much, esp during the holidays. She nearly lost him and has endured literal nightmares to save him, to help him out, to keep them afloat while he was half-dead. If everything is good with the bills, why is he toiling away when she wants to spend more time with him again?

I think the lack of savings funds could be a good argument, but willingly working a double to build up savings with no regard for your daughter's feelings feels.... idk. It makes sense but WE unfortunately know there's another debt that he's hiding from her and we also have the foresight to know this will not end well.

The worst part is that Shinae will never learn any of this from Simhan, but most likely from Yui, whose time as Isabele will glean a lot of useful information to use to ruin the father daughter relationship and further alienate Shinae and make her feel how very on her own she is. Subconsciously she knows the path she's on is a dead end. She's fighting her father to prove he'll be a team player, that he'll focus on the family. In a way, I think if something comes to harm, wouldn't she almost resent him? Because she endured so much to protect them, to save him, pulled all those hours at two jobs, entered a contract without even reading it out of desperation, ended up at a nightmare formal where she was supposed to be trafficked and instead had another fall another head trauma another night of trauma all for him to throw it away because he refuses to be honest with her and open up and treat her like a team ;~;

We know I've been anticipating the Shinae/Simhan fall out and listen guys I'm never gonna be ready, I can't take it I can't do it. I still always hope it will end with reconciliation, a foil to Nessa and Nana, but I still! Can't! Bear it! I don't want to endure it!!!!

There's some really interesting things re: Nana's expressions I'd like to point out in this ep. When Shinae first shows up at her place, the expression on her face resembles an old, blinding Yeonggi smile - I don't know much about Nana's masks and I really need to go comb episodes with her and figure them out. I don't know that eyes closed = lying strictly with her, though I do think it's very interesting where we see these instances. This one especially stands out to me because it very much IS a mask vs an outright lie - Shinae apologizing for coming so late and Nana telling her she's "happy to have her over any time", while wearing this Yeonggi expression and initially playing up the kindly sweet granny.

The other instance that stands out to me is after she assures Shinae that yes, Nol won't be letting her visit him in prison, "He's not letting me visit him either. He's allowing no one." This one especially stands out because it makes me wonder - is Nana lying and Nol will at least allow her to visit him? Is she choosing to give him the space she knows he wants? The emphasis on no one, which we've often known to be a stand in for Nol, but doesn't feel the case here. On the one hand I don't doubt that Nol would bar even Nana from visiting him, but the closed eyes make me wonder otherwise, if it's not so direct as that?

Tbh I find Nana a very interesting character who I think I understand but I'm still trying to internalize lol.

Like, seeing the home and how empty it is, how devoid of their personalities, makes a lot of sense. Nana being the kind of simple woman who would much prefer it they had a smaller, cozier place to live? That makes sense! But trying to understand what some of her closed eyes mean.... I'll have to go back to earlier episodes and see how they've been utilized!

Nana mentioning that they live here before they never wanted them living under the same roof is really interesting because when I read Kousuke's account of their pasts, I guess I interpreted it as there being a time when he did live with them, and had always wondered - did they have him in a guest house? To be fair, Kousuke made the timeline a little unclear lol.

One of my favorite things about this episode though is Nana's reaction to seeing Nessa's handwriting and letters that she knew nothing about ;~; I have so much ache for the Lochlainn women in my heart, so much ache for the relationship that never got to reconcile, the loss that can never be healed ;~; Nana's regret that will haunt her to the very last moments of her life, and what it feels to have cast away your child in such a way it ended up with them dying ;~; Ugh I can't. To see her handwriting again after all these years. That must be so emotional for her. Whether or not those letters make it to Nol (and I do hope they eventually do), I'm glad Nana got her chance to see them, too. I hope there's more in there that might reassure her about her daughter - though I guess no matter what, it can only deepn that ache, reopen that wound, to step for moments into her shoes to experience the parts of her life she never knew about, the parts she was never privy to.

;~; ;~; ;~; ;~;

I love all the major lore drops we've been getting, all the confirmations and the new info and the things we didn't think we'd be getting so soon re: Nol's past and esp Nessa and Rand's past, but I've been chomping at the bit to get back to Kousuke and Shinhye, esp given that's where we started out hiatus out at! And oh my GOD the waiting has been so worth it, this episode was SO delicious.

Kousuke is SO soggy, so sad and miserable, and I just want to bundle him up in a swaddle. I keep that man in my pocket forever. He's my adoptive son and I will try to fix everything ;____;

The state of pure misery he's in over finding out so much of Yui's love was a lie is just brutal. The way he states that he feels like he can't go on when asking Shinhye how she dealt with it and moved on, because the weight of this enlightenment is so heavy and crushing. Because what can you trust and believe when your very own mother, your loving mother was a lie and did nothing but manipulated you?

I love his entire conversation with Shinhye because while Kousuke is dealing with something grievously horrible, Shinhye is right. His suffering doesn't negate others. She, too, has never gotten to know a normal and affectionate family. She, too, suffered from the hands of an abusive, manipulative mother, who put her in harms way and used her. It was so important for Kousuke to have this conversation and know that no matter how alone he currently feels, he is not the first and only person in the world to go through this experience. He's not alone. And the most depressing part is how much he appreciated that conversation, how much it meant to him.

He may be pulling a Rand in wanting to pay someone off to keep their silence, but I think it was really telling that Kousuke asked how much she needed, noting the debts she's caught in, noting that she's still trying to break fully free of her mothers' hold and that it would likely require monetary assistance to do so. We know Kousuke so often throws his money around in a pompous, show off-y way, but this didn't feel like that. This felt like someone who found a kindred spirit and wanted to help them fully escape. It's a large deviation from the Kousuke who refused to help Shinae out as a monetary favor earlier in the webtoon, and while he's VERY inebriated and would likely not have made such an offer, his inebriation also lets us know that this is raw, vulnerable Kousuke without his guard up, shed of the role he's been trained to play.

We see this, too, in the way Kousuke wants to know Shinhye's name because it doesn't feel right to keep calling her Miss Housekeeper. They've made a connection, he feels a kindred spirit with her, how can he just keep calling her by her job when she deserves to be addressed by name? I genuinely love this side of Kousuke, even if we have to see him at his soggiest, most pathetic to see it. That there's a part of him that does care about people, that does know how to be good to people, under the hard armor and the reflexes drilled into him to loft himself above others and to keep people at arms' length.

Even his inebriated ability to admit how much he envies people with normal, loving families. We can get that sense of the many ways Shinae has appealed to him - Shinae with her remarkably good relationship with her father (in his eyes). Shinae who treats her father to simple treats because these are things they share - something he's never had with Rand and has only yearned for.

And speaking of her, my GOD I love the moment he addressed "her" when he denied her phone call, admitting he simply cannot talk to her, esp like this, that he needs to talk to her face to face to address the ways he treated her. My gut leans to sober Kousuke not having the resolve to have that conversation, but I'd love to be surprised by h him. It's harder for him to face Nol, but maybe facing Shinae and admitting that yes, he was trying to mold her and he knows it was wrong and that he sincerely apologizes for it could be easier. He definitely isn't proud of the way he emulated Yui fully.

I think it could be the start of an interesting relationship between the two, as well, to have this understanding out there. Again, with all the puzzle pieces that Shinae is collecting about Nol, for Kousuke to admit that he was trying to create an extension of himself in her (and it doesn't miss me that his eyes were closed when he said this, which means I think it's still not out the window that what else he was doing was seeking a do-over with Nol via Shinae, to do everything he thought he could have and should have with Nol) it might give her a better understanding of Kousuke and some insight into why Nol was never able to stand Kousuke and why they've never been able to get along. I don't think Kousuke would dare admit he found himself behaving like his mom because that opens a can of worms that he's not ready for, but I think genuinely for Shinae, a sincere apology is all she'd ask for.

But as much as I love soggy wet cat patheticest man in the world Kousuke, I ALSO LOVE so much that we got such a significant peek into Shinhye's past and the things that transpired since leaving Simhan and Shinae.

The reveal of her mother being so manipulative and abusive is, unfortunately, not a surprise and kind of what I was expecting, right down to Shinhye leaving her mother and probably having had to fend for herself for quite a while. Shinhye is 13 months older than Shinae, who is 17 yet, to turn 18 in April, which means Shinhye turns 19 in March. She's so young!!! All this while I thought she was at least 21 but no, she's SO young! And she's already saddled with debt from her mothers' mistakes (gambling, various ploys to get more money, get out of debt/shed her debt, etc). Shinhye notes that she used her (probably pushed her into situations to play a role to con people), neglected her (we even saw this when she still lived with Shinae and how Mom was never home to tuck the kids in), and "put her in dangerous situations".

This opens the door to a LOT of things. Dangerous situations could be so many things. Taking her to seedy places and leaving her on her own around creepy people while she goes and takes care of business. Making her go break into peoples' houses to go steal from them (she has to have learned to break and enter and sneak so well somewhere). It's even been suggested that she could have been "offered" to men in some way because she didn't seem very comfortable taking Kousuke's money. Honestly, there's so many dangerous situations she could have put her own daughter in, whether to garner money or because she herself was trying to get money/curry favors and her daughter just happened to... be there.

I do find her refusal to take Kousuke's money interesting, because while I understand her not wanting to do a money transfer (she doesn't want to give her name, it would be traceable, and while she probably took the coat and watch under the impression that he wouldn't notice those things missing as he has so many, if he did notice, she wanted to be untraceable and long gone), she still could have taken the cash and ran. I think she really did experience a moral dilemma of sorts - that she'd already taken what she did and taking more after making this connection felt gross. But I think we can't discount the possibility of taking money as being something that makes her feel uncomfortable, even if it would have aided her with her debts. And maybe that was part of it, too - as much as she wanted to take him up on the offer, she couldn't, because of the tracing. Idk. I like to think it could be both - the wanting to but the tracing as well as the guilt, feeling bad that this person opened up so fully to her, and she's robbing him in front of his eyes LMAO and didn't want to take more than she had that would be even more suspicious. I think it creates an interesting read into her.

Unfortunately I worry what will happen with Kousuke finding out she was stealing from him. I feel like he won't call the police because she said she's been struggling and he might actually empathize with this and understand she did what she did out of a struggle, but it could absolutely shatter his trust all over again. The person who made him feel less alone, who made him feel seen and validated was a thief and how much can he actually believe. How much of what she told him was real vs how much was to get his guard down? I really want to hope for the impossible he thinks that this is what she does to feel alive, to get by, but I worry more than anything he'll just feel worse. Betrayed, again. ;~;

It doesn't help that just moments before this, he knicked himself accidentally on his razor and her line about "what makes you feel alive" was set upon the panel of him dripping blood. I've always worried he'll cope with alcohol addiction and maybe drugs but I'm SO worried about the likelihood now of self-harm.

Also once again, shout out to Jayce, who may not be the father but is the father who STEPPED up because my GOD does that man care about Kousuke. His worry after the homeless man who received Kousuke's leftovers was found dead the next night (ate the leftovers, got knocked out so hard that frostbite got him and he never woke back up ;~;) and presumed to be because of alcohol, he thought immediately of Kousuke and went right back to his place to check on him, AND apprehended a thief, all while worried whether or not Kousuke was okay. I fear for Jayce's life all the time because I worry Yui is going to do something to him, esp now that he's keeping Kousuke's secrets but PLS do not harm that man. Kousuke needs him. His family needs him ;~;

Look I’m about to choke out 246 different posts but I’m going to do my best to try to keep this one on topic... but we know how I get so uhhhh. Brace yourselves lmao 

This episode is just CATNIP for me, and I know I keep saying that but forgive me, everything we’ve been getting in these arcs is jus tailor-made, it’s the stuff I feast on, it’s got me scurrying up walls like a lil lizard chewing on the rafters shrieking like a banshee. I am FED and I am addicted and I WANT MORE!!!!!!! 

Nana + Shinae is just unhinged chaos I was completely unprepared for and getting to see them play out more in this episode is a HOOT. I say this with affection, but I am SO GLAD she’s not MY grandma cos WOW I, too, would be so embarrassed. (Actually she reminds me a lot of my mom, pls understand the embarrassment I have endured at her hand!) Shinae and Nana bonding over their mutual dislike for Rand was SO funny - like oh shit wait you don’t like that old geezer OR that witch? Oh you have TASTE (also there’s a subtle little... dig if we want to call it that “Oh I like this one” [eyes]). All the while Nol just sits by watching with that EXPRESSION LMAO 

In fact, all of Nol’s expressions are SO funny and SO good! I cannot get over his deeply mortified blushing when Nana called the headband his “comfort headband” and pretty much aired that he was so upset that he was fiddling with it lmao LIKE COME ON (BUT ALSO HER INSINUATIONS? NANA U NASTY FREAK LMAOOOOOOO implying he’d done something unholy with it I SIMPLY CANNOT) His expression as he fucking!!! Throws!!!!! His blanket over her with his lil eye buggin out? PURE COMEDY I LOVE IT 

But obviously the meat and potatoes of this episode is the Shinae Nol confrontation - and the elephant in the room. Nol says so much while saying so little - the subtext is off the charts and it’s INSANE to me that they are just.... confessing between the lines lmao 

Let me get this out of the way, my favorite point to yell about: Nol cannot resist Shinae. He tries and he always fails. He is so weak in the face of her - and now he finally understands why. She doesn’t seem to realize it, but she manages to elicit truth out of him, she keeps him rooted to the spot. He’ll purposefully distance himself from her - angle away, sit away - but he still ends up angled in towards her, drawn in. She gets to him in a way that, as far as we can tell, no one else can. It’s what made it so difficult for him to actually part with her - why he stumbled and clutched her before he finally snipped the cord, why he had to block her and when she got around that (her message in his spam) he had to drown it out with alcohol. Her gravitational pull on him is so great and he is now aware of it. 

I think he did have every intention to talk to her. Maybe he wasn’t going to be as open as we hope. He seemed like he wanted to at least try to clear something up. But his tune completely changed after she brought up Dieter, after she made him realize that Dieter saw it all, that he knew what Nol knows. Ngl I find this simultaneously funny and frustrating because it DOES put them in such a precarious position and Shinae is just SO unaware of it yet!!!! 

Nol knows that when it’s just them, things cease to matter. It’s the way he phrases things - like how he talks about when they thought everyone was asleep, because it was that cloak of secrecy that allowed him to be so bold. It was the belief that the whole world was asleep and they were alone in their bubble, no thoughts, nothing else, acting on their whims. He knows he made a move on her, and he knows it was intentional, and it would never have happened if Dieter and Soushi were awake. But that’s the thing about when Nol is alone with Shinae - he seems to forget everything else. She disarms him and he acts on his whims. 

The range of his expression is so good here - going from guarded and cautious to the moment he’s putting the dots together and he closes his eyes and screws up his face. Nol isn’t an asshole - he knows what Dieter must be feeling, what it must be like to have witnessed that, to listen in on that. Shinae may not have processed how loaded it was, but Nol can see it easily from Dieter’s perspective. 

And here’s the thing about Dieter, too. He’s not a fool, he knows what he’s up against. I don’t mean it in that he’s competing with Nol, really, but we know he compares his relationship with Shinae to other peoples’ relationships with her. We’ve seen him voice his insecurity to Minhyuk - that he doesn’t have with her what Nol does. When he told Shinae she loves Nol, he obviously meant it as a friend, the way he does - but I still think he was voicing a fear that he already had in his heart. Like Nol, though, Dieter isn’t good at resisting Shinae, and he lets his hope build up when he knows better. Dieter knew he was playing with fire. 

That doesn’t make it hurt any less, though - to basically have it confirmed almost behind your back. Dieter can see it for what it was - not just the way Nol was acting, the way he looked at her, the way he literally put the moves on her lol but it was the way she received it, the way she flusters under his gaze. It was how she stayed at his side the whole time, how her concern for him outshines her need for sleep or food. 

Nol’s guilt is SO strong, it permeates this episode, but I think it’s also very much twisted with his fear. It’s easier to use the guilt, to frame around that, because in his mind he fucks things up all the time, he makes things worse, his existence creates more problems. I love that Shinae calls him out on the fact that it’s not his fault that his plan to get her and Dieter together didn’t work because it’s true. While he’s not wrong to some degree - pushing Dieter and Shinae to be friends does kind of prolong the pain, at the end of the day, they all make their choices. Dieter chose to collect those moments with Shinae knowing they were supposed to be strictly platonic, everything as friends. Shinae still chose to confide in him, to open up, to let him in. Just because Nol pushed the friendship it doesn’t mean they had no agency in the matter. 

But obviously the real issue is not that he pushed them, that it draws out the pain for Dieter. It’s that he did all of that and in the end, he was the one who hurt him the most. It wasn’t that Shinae didn’t reciprocate - it was that Nol has feelings, too. 

Now, I want to make a point here that I’m sure we’re all on the same page about. No one is really “at fault” here. It’s not like anyone has done anything wrong. Sure we can argue that Shinae has gotten Dieter’s hopes up unintentionally. Sure we can argue that liking someone your friend likes is bad. But human feelings are messy and don’t exist in a vacuum of good vs bad. The whole thing about dibs is so gross in general - it denies someone agency and instead rests on those who like them. Is Nol a bad friend for falling for someone his friend also likes? Is Shinae a bad person for falling for the friend of the guy who likes her? Obviously there are things that need to be cleared up - she needs to sort out her feelings for them, but the point remains. No one is at fault. 

But that doesn’t mean Nol won’t feel guilty, won’t feel like an asshole for finding a new way to hurt the people he cares about. 

I know this sounds crazy but I kind of lmao like the way he told Shinae she needs to go, that “You can’t be here alone with me any longer.” 

Nol has acknowledged his role in this. He acknowledges the way he deliberately hurt Dieter, even though it wasn’t his intention. And what’s more is what he’s not saying - the subtext. That she can’t be alone with him because they will continue to say and do things that will hurt Dieter, that will create more pain. Nol knows how easily Shinae can disarm him if he’s not vigilante. All it takes is her bringing him ease again, him falling back into that comfort, forgetting the rest of the world, acting on it again. 

There’s something that feels so urgent about it? Intense? That she NEEDS to go because he doesn’t have the willpower any more. That he’s trying REALLY HARD to be a good person, a good friend, but it’s so difficult. He says it every which way besides with words, and if you read between the lines he’s practically screaming it out loud. 

I actually think he’s handling it pretty well, even if it doesn’t clear things up for Shinae in the moment. He’s acting on Dieter’s behalf - but also on his own. And hers. Shinae needs to come to the conclusion he has and it’s not for him to tell her. Part of why it’s so easy for Shinae to let herself feel that way with Dieter is because she knows he likes her. He’s safe and comfortable. Had he never confessed would she think anything of the way he looks at her? Would she think anything of the comfort he brings her? But because she knows, it has affected her view. I don’t say that like it’s a bad thing, because we all respond to people based on how they feel about us, I think. But if Nol were to speak those words out loud, if he were to tell her “it’s because I like you!” how would it make her feel? Would it influence what she thinks about him? Surely it would! 

Nol is trying to get Shinae to come to the same realization he has, and more so, he’s trying to get her to be clear about her feelings. Do you like me or not? Do you act this way with everyone? He sees the way she gets flustered, he knows the effect he’s got on her. He’s probably sure she reciprocates those feelings and hasn’t figured it out yet - but there’s still a shadow of a doubt. There’s still the fact that maybe he’s reading into it, maybe he’s seeing something that isn’t there. Maybe she’s someone who cares about him and he’s misread it because he’s so desperate to matter to someone, anyone. 

Look we all know better, but we also know how doubts persist! 

There’s so much ANGST but it’s SO good! It’s not angst for the sake of angst, it’s not drawing something out just to make the story last. Nol’s expressions cause me PAIN, Shinae’s make me ACHE. He feels like a guilty asshole, he wants her to go, but he can’t even look at her and say it - he looks away, his mouth set in that way holding back all the things he believes he should not say. Honestly they are so good at hurting each other ;______; it hurts ME, too! 

But also, I get it. I’m with Nol here. How can he bear to look at her when he’s pushing her away again? How can he bear to look at her when it’s all his fault (according to him). He can’t even look at her when he tells her Dieter was awake the whole time. It’s such a loaded statement but unfortunately it doesn’t QUITE land because Shinae can’t quite grasp the significance. 

Actually this whole part is both so funny and so unbearable to me lmao because Nol is all but saying that Dieter oversaw them having a very non-platonic moment and she’s like i don’t get it why’s that a big deal LMAOOOOOO ;____; Nol is going THROUGH it okay! She keeps insisting that it meant nothing, that it’s just friends, what’s wrong with that. And Nol can’t come out and say the truth - that it looked romantic that it felt romantic, that he meant all of it and that’s why it’s so wrong. The whole time he’s trying to get her to understand WHY that hurts Dieter and she’s just hurting him at the same time LMAO OUCH 

I LOVE those panels where we can’t see their faces - where it’s Nol’s frustration and anguish that she doesn’t get it, that he’s trying, that he feels awful because of course those feelings are still there why wouldn’t they be. His frustration, the faint lines on Shinae’s face. 

Maybe it’s there at the back of her mind - something faint, something distant. Maybe for a moment she understands what Nol isn’t saying, the implications of what Dieter oversaw, overheard. But if it, she doesn’t acknowledge it at all. 

Nol’s hand over his face in frustration, that panel where we close in on his eye and Shinae says “You’re not intentionally trying to hurt him!” But... he is. Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt Dieter - but he IS intentionally doing things that hurt him. And he still wants to! That’s the thing, that’s why he needs her to go. It’s so easy to fall into that, to act on that, to forget Dieter exists and instead indulge a little. It may not be his intention to hurt Dieter, but it’s his intention to do things that WOULD hurt him, and she doesn’t get it. 

But GOD lmao the way she just starts to rub salt in the wound!!!!! “Whatever he thinks is just a misunderstanding. There’s NOTHING going on here!” 

In ILY universe, nothing is always Nol. There is Nol going on here. 

And look, I feel for him here, a LOT. This must be SO hard!!!! Not just the pushing her away, not just knowing he hurt Dieter, but having this whole conversation, her not getting it, her taking a moment that clearly meant SO MUCH to him and saying it meant nothing. Again, there’s so much that is LOADED when she says “We’re all friends here!” and he says that resolute “No”, his eyes hidden from us, his hands firm on the wheelchair. 

Shinae misconstrues it as no, we aren’t all friends, but what Nol means is that no it’s not just friends. It’s two different people who like her a lot. It’s knowing he acted on something that hurt his friend. That moment wasn’t platonic, wasn’t just friendship - not for him. Clearly she’s unready to see it, but he knows it. No. We’re not friends here - we are people who like you so very much. 

GOD, THE ANGST, THE ANGUISH. I AM SWINGING FROM THE RAFTERS I’M HOOTING. 

I LOVE the moment he says he can’t take this - he can’t keep having this conversation, can’t take being shut down like this, can’t handle her downplaying a significant moment. If she wants to tell herself it was nothing but to keep reiterating it to him? Unbearable! But also I LOVE that Shinae stands her group and puts her foot down, I love her calling him out because like I get it! I understand both of them. She’s had no time to process any of this, all she knows is she wants him to stop pushing her away, she wants him to stop boxing her out, she wants him to be OPEN. 

In a way, they are fighting for the same thing, but they keep obstructing each other. They want the same thing but they’re speaking in different languages. He WANTS her to see it - that it wasn’t a platonic moment, that he meant it that it matters that their fingerprints are all over it. He wants her to see what Dieter saw. She wants him to show himself, to open up, to stop hiding, to be vulnerable. They are trying SO HARD to get the same thing, but they just keep butting heads and getting in each others’ way. 

AND WHEN SHE TELLS NOL THAT SHE’S NOT NOT INTERESTED IN DATING DIETER? OH MY /GOD/ lmao alkjfkjafkjafkjafkjja alfjakfjj SHRIEKS 

Not ONLY has she basically downplayed this whole romantic moment, downplayed whatever is transpiring between them but she goes on to say SHE’S NOT NOT INTERESTED IN DIETER?! LMAOOOOOOOOO Again I reiterate no one is at fault here!!!!!! But lmaooooo the OUCHIES of this whole conversation! Isn’t it bad enough that she says it was nothing it doesn’t mean anything, and then she goes on to be like I mean i don’t totally NOT not like him idk..... LMAO 

He’s clearly frustrated both in trying to get her to understand what he isn’t voicing, but also because he seems like such a resolute person? Or at least, he tries to be. I assume it’s kind of like... he realized he likes her and that’s it. It’s not that he thinks he might like her, it’s not that he might have some feelings. He knows he’s all in, all feelings, all eyes on her. And she appears so wishy washy - flirting with him but doesn’t acknowledge it, unintentionally stringing Dieter along and igniting that hope. 

And the thing is she isn’t doing any of this maliciously. She’s tried to be clear with Dieter! It’s not her fault that he keeps getting his hopes up. She’s had no time to process her feelings for Nol, has had no experiences to compare any of this to. I love this conversation between them because it illuminates how little Shinae knows about feelings, about love, about romance. She hasn’t let anyone in in a long time, has guarded herself so tightly, and now that she has, how is she to understand the ways they affect her, what their significance means? 

It’s easy to see why she keeps trying to box her feelings about Nol into a box they don’t fit. Of course she cares, of course she worries, that’s what friends do. It’s not that she cares, though - it’s why. Does she care as a friend or does she care as something else? That’s what he’s trying to get her to answer - and I think he got close. But she needs to distance herself from the night, too. She needs to dwell on those feelings - and not just the intensity of trying to hang on to him, but the other feelings, too. The butterflies, the fluttering, the fluster, the way she can’t meet his gaze, the way she starts to fluster if he looks at her for too long. 

Someone said that Shinae is practically confessing to Nol and doesn’t even realize it and my god they’re right lmao. The way Shinae argues back that she knows Nol didn’t like it when she left after they danced, that she knows he was bummed, can you really throw all that away what we’ve been through, how effortless we are? lmao SHE REALLY JUST. Goes on saying it!!! AND SHE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE IT FOR WHAT IT WAS. 

(I mean she did a whole damn love soliloquy in front of Minhyuk for Nol so like. It’s been an all night thing lmao) 

Also it hurt when Nol admits that Dieter doesn’t have that with Shinae - not even as her friend. Even if she does not not want to date him, even if a part of her DOES like him - does it compare to what she feels about Nol? Does it compare to what he means to her? He can’t look her in the eye, and even as she tries to play it off, to say hey all friendships are different does it really matter SHE can’t meet his eye. 

Consciously Shinae may not be aware of it but on some level she must know. On some subconscious level, that ghost of a thought passes by, a faint wave of shame. She doesn’t share with Dieter what she shares with Nol. It’s true that there’s something there, but it’s something she’s avoiding, something she consciously cannot face yet. 

BUT LISTEN, MY GOD. NOL ASKING HER WHY SHE CARES /SCREAMS JUST SCREAMS ALJKFKJAFJKAFLJ AFJALJJAF AFJAKFJFA

He’s pushing!!!!!!!!!!!

I love that Nol is a ball of contradiction. He wants Shinae to acknowledge what he isn’t saying out loud, he wants her to realize that it means something to him, that there are feelings, that it’s not platonic, and he wants her to acknowledge so she understands why he’s pushing her away. But I think he also wants her to admit it herself. Confirm what he suspects. She fights SO hard but she can’t say why. She cares so much but she can’t elaborate. 

Convince me. 

LKJFKJAF LAJFKAJFA F /SCALES THE WALLS PARKOURS ACROSS ALL THE ROOFS IN THE NEIGHBORBOOD. 

He knows. HE KNOWS. Convince him he’s wrong. Convince him it’s not what he thinks. Convince her that her extent of care of need her desperate desire to keep hold of him to make him show himself to her to be vulnerable with him is platonic. Convince him. 

AND SHE CAN’T!!!!!!!!! 

Again, she averts her gaze! Again, she flusters and blushes. Again he disarms her just by looking at her and he takes advantage of the moment to finally kick her out. 

GOD WHAT AN EPISODE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I JUST WANNA BARK BARK BARK WOOOOF RLKJJKJ RRRRGGHHR RRRRHGHGHG LDKJC YIP YIP YIP 

IT’S SO GOOD. THE SUBTEXT, THE EXPRESSIONS, THE DANCE AROUND THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, THE ANGST, THE EMOTIONS. 

And no matter which standpoint you look at it from it’s just GOOD. 

Nol feels guilty, like an asshole, he has hurt his friend. But more than that - it’s how he knows he can’t be alone with her, how he knows he can’t stop himself any more from acting on what he wants. He needs to PHYSICALLY remove her because that’s how little resistance he has, because that’s how much she gets to him, how much she affects him. It’s the way it hurts to have this conversation - where if he says the words out loud it makes them real and it becomes a weight she has to carry. If he can make her reach the conclusion on her own, maybe it won’t be so bad. He won’t have to deal with the pain if she doesn’t reciprocate - if she comes to the right conclusion and keeps her distance. If he says them out loud and she has to turn him down? He can’t handle that he can’t bear it. But at the same time, every time she denies that their shared moment meant nothing, that the way he looked at her, the way he treated her (HOW HE TOUCHED HER?????) was just platonic to him???? HOW CAN HE BEAR TO ENDURE THAT CONVERSATION?! 

And it’s not that it means nothing - she just needs the space and time to process it, to really play out what happened. I think, too, on some level she IS subconsciously repressing it. Isn’t it scary? Especially because Nol is a person who comes and goes, who pushes her away and then shares these intense moments and then shoves her away again. What good is it to acknowledge what he means when she can barely keep a hold on him as a friend, when she can barely make him understand his significance. Nol and Dieter both are such good friends to her, people she can rely on, people who make her feel safe. Sure Nol may not make her feel secure all the time lmao but when it’s just them, when they’re lost in that little world, for the moment, he does. It’s scary, to think of losing any of that. All the relationships she’s ever been privy to have fallen apart. There’s no photos, no memories of her family as a whole unit. She’s seen what Rand and Yui look like. She’s got no experience of her own, and now that she has friends she loves so much, she’s too afraid to lose them. 

How can she begin to dissect what Nol means to her when it makes him feel more fleeting? How can she begin to understand what exists between them is romantic when she’s never really witnessed a healthy successful romance exist?

The thing that makes friends to lovers SUCH a good trope, and why I love it SO MUCH is the stakes, the risk vs the payout. What if you take that step and it all goes wrong? What if you mess it up and you lose someone who is SO important to you, someone who means so much? What if all goes wrong and you can’t put it back together and you make something beautiful all wrong by getting your fingerprints on it and chipping the corners? You start to fear even the possibility because sure it could go well - but if it goes bad you lose it ALL. Everything. 

But what is life if you don’t take some risks? Can you live with that regret, if you never take a chance, if you miss out on something you wanted? 

That’s the thing about Dieter, isn’t it? He knows the risks. He knows he’s playing with fire, knows he doesn’t quite have with Shinae what Nol does. But he still tries. He still lets his unwavering hope go, even if it hurts him. He can’t ever say he has any regrets because he’s given it his all. Sure, it hurt a LOT and it’s going to, until he gets over her and can find a way to move on, but at least he tried. At least he made the effort and can say that he did his best. 

It’s funny that Nol and Shinae stand in that place. She’s doing her best, she’s making an effort so she can’t regret not trying - but she just can’t see the full picture, can’t acknowledge WHY she’s fighting WHY she’s pushing. But Nol is the other part of it, the understanding, but also fear. It’s not just Dieter that stops him. If she continues to deny that it means anything, if she continues to say it was nothing.... that hurts. It’s bad enough to have feelings - but for the person you like to deny them? GOD. ;A; 

At this point there’s a lot of conversations that need to be had, and i think I’m looking forward to (hopefully?!) seeing Nol and Dieter talk it out. I think as much as Dieter is hurt, I can’t see him as the kind of person who would stand in the way of his friends happiness. If they make each other happy, who is he to tell Nol to back off or something? Shinae is a person with agency who can make her own choices and if she comes to a realization that she reciprocates Nol’s feelings well.... he can’t really stop her just because she doesn’t like him. He’s not an incel alkfkjafjaf lmao I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that would make him hate either of them. 

I’ve said it before but Dieter loves Nol, too, so he can understand why Shinae would fall for him. And likewise, as a person who likes Shinae, I’m sure he can understand how Nol would unintentionally fall. There’s a lot that’s happened between Nol and Shinae that Dieter doesn’t know about - the things that draw them together, that make them reach out to one and other. I think he can probably get that sense - there’s just SOMETHING ELSE there that isn’t with him and Shinae. 

I like to think Dieter might encourage Nol, or at the very least perhaps tell him to stop pushing people away. That one of these days he’ll push and she won’t come back and can he really live with that? While Dieter doesn’t know as much as Shinae, he at least seems to have the sense that there’s a profound depth to Nol, that there’s a lot of pain (as evidenced between him and Kousuke) and that his life hasn’t been as easy as Yeonggi made it look, so maybe he, too, will what it means for Nol to open up, to really truly fall for someone who feels the same as him. Who is he to deny their happiness, just because it makes him hurt? 

On the other hand, a part of me dreads Dieter and Shinae talking because WHEW BOY we know it’s going to hurt either way it goes. Will she deny her feelings about Nol, try to continue to write them off as friendship because it scares her, because she’s so afraid of losing him that she’s willing to swallow them down, because she doesn’t want it to get in the way? Even if she did, Dieter would see through it. I think now that he’s seen it, really seen it at play, he knows he can’t keep pretending. That’s why he’s distanced himself. If she were to try to play the card that it meant nothing wouldn’t he get more upset that she’s lying? God it just feels like a painful conversation ;___; And if she’s honest with him, if she sets him straight that she should have been clearer, that she hurt him, it just makes it hurt more AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH 

JUST AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

All that said, I love how good of a subversion of “why does my kokoro go dokidoki”. It’s not that Shinae is naïve - it’s that she’s inexperienced and scared. It’s that she hasn’t had the time to process, it’s that she has this mix of feelings that she’s had no time to sort them out and untangle them. For so long she held people at arm’s length and now her heart is too full! And because it’s subverting that trope, I don’t think we’ll see it drawn out for a terribly long time, and she’ll put on her big girl pants and try to make it right. Right now she’s afraid to rock the boat. She’s been hurt so many times by people, she doesn’t want to be the one who hurts others, she doesn’t want to be the one who inflicts pain. But I think when she realizes the truth, she’ll realize that trying to ignore it causes more pain, drawn out. That’s what Nol is getting at. That as long as she doesn’t definitively have feelings, it only hurts. It drags out Dieter’s pain every time he thinks there’s a chance. It drags out Nol’s pain, that she can’t sort out the feelings. 

I love so much that Shinae cares about peoples’ feelings - especially because in the beginning she so badly wanted to believe she doesn’t care if people think she’s a bitch. She’s so empathetic and caring! But at some point we have to realize that avoiding a problem only makes it worse. It’s so much better to be up front and get it out of the way. Dieter won’t be able to heal until the wound stops getting ripped open. He WILL be okay, he WILL get over. But it won’t happen until she makes things clear. 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 

WHAT AN EPISODE I LOVE THIS EPISODE AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH THERE IS SO MUCH GOOD IN HERE AND I FEEL LIKE I'M JUST GETTING EVERYTHING I WANT HANDED TO ME ON A SILVER PLATTER like quimchee PLS this feast you keep serving up is SO DECADANT!!!!!!

I wanted Girl Talk SO badly and OH MY GOD quimchee DELIVERED!!!!!! There's something SO satisfying about this talk, for what it reveals but also what it sets up. Shinae and Maya had a number of reasons to never be close to each other before, and now they have the opportunity to start over for REAL, and what a way to do it! Something I've always loved about Shinae is that she is not an "I'm not like other girls" character. She isn't dismissive of things that are feminine just because they're girly in nature - if anything, she's just never had the time/money/space/influence in her life to dig into them. Her best friend is a guy and she was never comfortable enough with Maya and Rika to explore these things. Starting over provides her that chance, the opportunity to take a chance on the things that scare her and I am SO excited for that, to see how it plays out!

Maya and Shinae's friendship is INCREDIBLY important to me, and Maya, the one who has so famously shipped Shinae with anyone in effort to get rid of her and not have to compete for her brother's attention, being the one to make her aware of her feelings is SO. FUNNY! TO ME!!!!!!

There's also something so incredibly funny about the fact that, yes, Shinae IS acting "out of character" because, for the first time in her life, she's behaving her age. She's being a moody teenager, complete with the sass and saying terrible (if not true) things (I audibly GASPED when she told Simhan he wasn't really around to raise her!). Of course no one else knows how to deal with this; Simhan has never had to deal with a moody teenager because Shinae has spent her entire life trying not to take up space, stuffing her feelings down, trying not to be a burden, trying to be good and not make waves, so now that she is doing the opposite, he's at a loss! Minhyuk, too, is at a similar loss, because this is nothing like the Shinae he knows! But Maya! Maya, a teenage girl herself who has doesn't repress her negative feelings as much? She knows. Oh she KNOWS.

There's something about that family meal that feels... bittersweet. I love the panel from the stair-view where Lil Buddy is sleeping and we can look down and see everyone gathering at the table to eat together - a proper family meal that Shinae never has, to announce big news. But the big news feels so foreboding with what we've seen, and the choice of words. Simhan admits shame at having failed three times now to get over his alcohol addiction and asserts that this will be the last attempt - because he intends it to be, because he has people who have his back, because he's trying to get help for real this time. Knowing what we do about Yui, though.... I can't help but be worried about the word use! And the previous imagery of the hanging chain over him at his neck? UGH, GOD.

We know Yui has overheard Simhan's plans to attend AA, and I really, REALLY hope Shinae does go with him to the first meeting, in case Yui is already showing up. I think the main fandom fear is that Yui would slip in and try to seduce him, try to get him to go back to drinking, maybe even go as far as to stage something to frame him for sexual assault, or you know, far worse, kill him. I... really don't want to go that route and I HOPE we aren't. It's bad enough Shinae has already lost her mom. I DON'T want her to lose her dad, as well. There's similar imagery/foreshadowing regarding Rand and a heart attack and despite what a bad father Rand's been, I don't want Nol to lose HIS father, either! Shinae has already struggled, and honestly this feels SO hopeful and having it dangled in front of us like this almost feels cruel, the what could have been, if Yui didn't get in the way. What I'm really hoping instead happens is, if Shinae DOES catch sight of Yui at the meeting, maybe she'd put 2 and 2 together and realize that Yui is trying to get Simhan in her clutches in order to corner Shinae, and instead of giving Yui the satisfaction and allowing her to harm someone important to her, Shinae might make an offer to "trade" herself.

As readers we already know Shinae is going to end up taking Yui's offer. Yui gets what Yui wants and she knows exactly how to do it, how to exploit peoples' weaknesses and corner them until they have nowhere left to run. She's already done this to Shinae! She doesn't have to do it again. So I think this is the best way for Shinae to end up taking up Yui's offer. Rand has already told her it's inevitable, she can do nothing to get out. And if it means people she cares about will be put in harms way, then she'll do the very thing she doesn't want to in order to save them.

I just... I don't want Simhan to die. I WANT Shinae to have her blended family unit. I know she's ultimately going to have to take Yui's offer and while this isn't ENTIRELY on her own terms, it's enough so that she can still feel in control, that she's making a choice, instead of being driven to it and losing everything she has left.

Something that comes up a lot with other readers is how Nol would feel if Shinae took Yui's offer, knowing how he feels about Alyssa doing it, but I think this current arc is about Nol starting to open up and talk to his friends, so that if Shinae DOES take this offer up this way, they can talk about it and he would understand how it's different than Alyssa's naive idolization of Yui, and how she was willing to do whatever Yui asked. Nol knows how Shinae feels about Yui, and more importantly, he knows how she hurts people and why Shinae would put herself in that position if it means saving her father.

I just UGGGHGHHHHHH I have FEELINGS about this, because for so long Shinae wanted her father and mother to get back together and when she grew old enough to know it was never going to happen she was just left to STRUGGLE. To feel like a burden at every turn! Adults made her feel like trash! People treated her like trash! They didn't have money and her father was spending what little they did on his addiction and she couldn't even guarantee when her next meal would be! The idea of her having a brother and a sister, a family unit who work together, who can get through things because they're not alone? ;~;

That Shinae, who is so emotionally overwhelmed already, started crying because of how happy it made her. PLEASE Simhan CAN'T die we can't go through that!!!!! It would be TOO cruel!!!! ;______;

But man, this episode was just a ROLLER COASTER of emotions! Shinae is just GOING through it. It's like she's fast tracking her way through puberty complete with every mood swing you would ever need. That she goes from happy tears about to eat to seeing Nol on tv watching Alyssa and acts like THAT?! SCREAMS

And on some level, it's almost funny - because Shinae has just learned that the relationship is fake, that Alyssa means nothing to Nol, that he resents her and her Yui idolatry. And yet

And yet

The JEALOUSY. The INSECURITY. It's not just that Nol is watching Alyssa - it's that he's looking at her like that, because we KNOW Shinae is very attracted to that aspect of him. She likes his "darker" side, she likes Nol. Now, again, as readers we know Nol isn't making that face because he feels anything about Alyssa. Frankly that's just... kinda his face being surrounded by all those people lmao but the way SHINAE sees it?

It's not limited to only that, either. Minhyuk there saying all those things about Alyssa - that she's got talent, the looks, she's famous now, what's she doing with someone like him. While it's not at all what Minhyuk means, it's like blow after blow, because it's true. Alyssa is a hot idol, anyone would kill to be her or be with her. She's famous. She has that body, she has those looks. What would someone with a girlfriend like that see in someone like Shinae? At the same time, too, Minhyuk is pointing out Nol's bad reputation, and how it would make those associated with him look.

But mostly, yes, it's the insecurity. It's seeing Nol and Alyssa at this Hirahara party in a world to which Shinae does not belong, because she is not part of this elite, uppercrust, socialite world. She is reminded viscerally that Nol has a girlfriend - a gorgeous, talented, famous girlfriend - and what he told her about his feelings towards Alyssa are long out of sight. Insecurity is such a gnawing beast, gnashing its teeth at her, pointing out every flaw, every aspect where she probably thinks she falls short.

Ngl, even if it sounds bad lmao I really like seeing this part of Shinae, because it's just one of those aspects of pining and yearning that I LOVE - mentally comparing yourself to someone with who you think you can't possibly measure up. Comparing yourself to someone you think outshines you. Even though the conscience thought isn't there in her head - how can he possibly look at me when he has that instead - it still fills her stomach like bile doesn't it? It's like she's walked face first into a glass door and doesn't realize WHAT the door represents, WHAT it means yet.

And GOD THE DELIGHTFUL GIRL TALK FINALLY ARRIVES!!!!!!

Just a couple notes: there are two different manga series in Maya's room, one called Relax! HE'S JUST A FRIEND, and the other IT ALL STARTS WITH REVENGE. Listen. LISTEN TO ME. You see what I'm seeing, right? You see what's cooking? ALFKKJAKFKAJFKAFJK SCREAMING!!!! Such POINTED names! And not only that, but the content of the spicy manga that Shinae saw? Believe me, that WILL be coming back. The smut is too pointed to NOT show up in Shinae's dreams lmao. That's not his knee SCREAMS

The funniest thing to me is that Maya gets SO MUCH MORE than she bargained for with Shinae. She just wants her to tell her what's going on but here's Shinae, just obtuse as hell, almost willfully belligerently obtuse, and she just keeps going on without GETTING IT.

Once again, I'm always in awe of how quimchee chooses to write this story, and the reveals, because they always go in directions I would have thought about. Girl Talk (for us) essentially beginning with Maya reminding her that she did, in fact, take issue with the fact that Shinae and Minhyuk were always together, and that it's a thing she's still working on, that something like those feelings doesn't just magically go away, even if she's ready to start over and be friends anew.

Maya telling Shinae, point blank, that it sounds like Nol likes her and is being mean so she doesn't find out? LOVE IT. Shinae popping out looking a little deranged to say "no he has a girlfriend" LOVE IT. LMAO Absolutely LOVE that panel.

Shinae has this really funny black and white view of relationships despite, again, Nol told her Alyssa means nothing, that relationship isn't real! He has a girlfriend only in that it's a title, and nothing more. Not that, you know, feelings work like that. Rand had a wife who likely meant nothing to him and he still fell in love with someone else. Feelings are complicated and if they were easier to control, would Nol have fallen for the same girl his best friend did? Would he have fallen for someone if he has a girlfriend?

Feelings are not that tidy, and neither are Shiae's.

(An aside, Maya's "Teehee! I love this part!" is SO meta. She speaks for us. She IS us!)

Maya is the only person who has really seen Shinae through all of this. She knew who Shinae was pre-Alyssa, who she was as a result of Alyssa, and she's been watching all the changes made since Nol entered her life. Simhan is always busy working and when he's not, he's blacked out from drinking. Minhyuk is a year ahead of them, so he wasn't there for Shinae's last year of middle school and has been in the U.S. this whole time. Maya alone has watched Shinae go from that bright, boisterous middle schooler to someone who "lets things go" and pretends nothing bothers her, pretend she doesn't care what people are saying or doing, pretend she's unaffected. Maya has watched her change not only opening up, but caring about things. And especially caring about these boys.

And that's what's important here. Shinae is so vexed, so bothered, SO UPSET that she cannot let it go. And she feels more strongly this way about one of them over the other.

My favorite part of this episode is when they're talking about their friends - how Maya describes Rika and it's so clear why they're best friends, how they get along and how they click, the ways they compliment each other. But I really loved Maya saying what makes her and Shinae friends. As much as it's true they weren't getting along before, it's not that Maya never cared. She DID - that's why it hurt so much! She wouldn't have tackled Kousuke if she DIDN'T care. But just seeing them have that discussion between each other? SOBBING Shinae admitting that she's afraid of all those girly things, not that she looks down on them, and how they pull her out of her shell. ;A;

All this time, Shinae has been trying to compare Nol to Minhyuk, because he is THE most important person in her life, her BEST friend. It's all she knows, and if Nol is just as important to her as Minhyuk, they must be comparable. But we know she's been trying to stuff him into a box he doesn't fit, because he ISN'T Minhyuk. He's not platonic, not simply friends. There's more.

It's EASY for her to talk about what she likes about Minhyuk because that's their relationship. It's easy, it's effortless, they clicked from the get go and he became very much like a brother to her (sidebar: I LOVE that frame of her with her head in his lap IT'S SO CUTE I LOOOOVE IT).

Likewise, Dieter is easy to talk about, too. Notably, the things she likes about him are the things she gets out of their relationship - he's comforting, he's secure. She literally says he's like a teddy bear. Something that doesn't get talked about a lot is that when it comes to Shinae and Dieter's relationship, she is take take take. She doesn't mean to, and it's partly because Dieter doesn't draw that boundary. He lets her take take take. But the needs Dieter fills as a friend all entail comforting her. She states that it's almost like Dieter understands her feelings better than she does because it's true. He knows the things she hasn't figured out and he sits there and lets her lean on him despite how much it hurts him. He's helping her and taking care of her but who is taking care of him? ;______;

And while Shinae thinks that she has nothing nice to say about Nol, because she's so focused on how bad he's making her feel, she can't help it....

ALL THE SCENES! FROM HER POINT OF VIEW! AS THEY BECOME FRIENDS! AS HE INSERTS HIMSELF INTO HER LIFE! AS HE GOES FROM A YELLOW CAUTION AS SHE WARMS UP TO HIM AS THE BACKGROUND TURNS RED. THE FORMAL AND HIS SHEEPISH EXPRESSION WHILE DOING HER MAKE UP, SUCH A CRITICAL MOMENT FOR THEM.

I WANT TO HOWL FOREVER ABOUT HOW FOUNDATIONAL THE KIM FORMAL WAS and how we've known it and it was always there but to see it confirmed and reinforced like that, that this was the night, the MOMENT those feelings began to shift, began to blur, how there was now something more to the friendship, that she was affected by him. That night was absolutely CRUCIAL and had it not ended the way it did, she would still have felt the way she did. It still lead to that honest heart to heart. And we know it was similar for Nol, that this was a night in which they tethered themselves to each other, the times he put his needs above anything else - even the ire of his father - and the times he reached to her, the way he felt seen in a place where normally he felt so invisible.

GOD the confirmation is just soooooo !!!!!!!!!!!! INSANE!!!!!!

AND THE BACKGROUND COLORS?! THAT GRADUAL CHANGE FROM CAUTION TO FEELINGS? To the bleak black where everything changed, where HE donned the blindfold but it blinded her, too. All of these feelings, so confused, so turbulent and uncertain.

He lifts her blindfold and we see her chest but it's just her lungs - her heart is there.

And she's SO FERAL! She feels SO STRONGLY! About Minhyuk or Maya or Dieter, she can talk about what she likes, what she feels, but when it's Nol it's just turbulence, it's just the STRONGEST emotions, it's RAGE, it's FERAL ENERGY.

"If you won't let me have you...."

AND EVERYONE WAS DEAD IN THE CHAT ALKFJAKFKAJFKJAFKJJAF LKAJFKAFKAF ALFJAKFJKAFJ LJAFKJAKF ALFKJAKFJ

LIKE SHE REALLY SAID THAT! WITH HER OWN MOUTH! OF HER OWN VOLITION. "IF YOU WON'T LET ME HAVE YOU"

SHE WANTS HIM SO BAD and she wants him to herself and she wants to see the parts of him that he hides she wants to see the things he doesn't want to share and she wants it ALL and she is SO feral about it!!!!!!!

The way she is BLUSHING and frustrated and if she can't have him, he can't have any of her things (as if that was ever a question)

But there's one thing he's taken that she can't get back. HEHEHEHEHEHE.

I LOVE the emphasis on Maya's expression at this part, how she's just SHOCKED, her eyes wide her brows high because WHO IS THIS IS THIS REALLY SHINAE? Because she KNOWS she KNOWS what Shinae doesn't want to know and it's SO CLEAR.

She's so defensive! It's RIGHT THERE in front of her face and she keeps turning a blind eye, refusing, because NO of couRSE NOT hwo could she LIKE him he has a girlfriend what kind of person is she to like someone who has a girlfriend to like someone who is so important to her to like someone to whom she's SO DRAWN. She accuses Maya of projecting because what can she really know, she only knows smutty manga - but it's funny because that's the thing isn't it? Maya at least has experienced that secondhand. Shinae is feeling things she can't even IDENTIFY, so much WANT.

I CAN'T believe she actually BIT MAYA LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

LIKE

NOL WAS THIS CLOSE TO BITING SHINAE AND HAD TO KICK HER OUT OF HIS ROOM BECAUSE HE COULD NOT BE ALONE WITH HER, HE ABSOLUTELY COULDN'T AND HE COULDN'T TELL HER WHY

AND SHINAE DOES THE SAME EXACT THING.

SHE BITES HER AND KICKS HER OUT OF THE ROOM.

GOD. LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO she's so funny wth ;_______;

It's so funny how Nol and Shinae respond to their feelings the same way lmao like, they each try to deny it, it can't be true, there's no way "I don't have time for this", kicking people out of rooms, fully feral (though I daresay Nol is holding himelf together better, but only barely) but here she is BITING her friend, kicking her out of her room, blushing at the realization that what Maya said is TRUE.

Also uhhh can't help but notice that she's finally able to go to sleep after she thinks she'll be going to see Nol. Knowing that Dieter will come by, she's finally able to pass out.

GIRL.

/GIRL/

Something else that is funny to me is that Minhyuk describes Shinae as "ornery" as if she was just being frisky or something LMAO going around fighting everyone and BITING MAYA LMAO.

And frankly, it's for the best that Dieter goes to see Nol alone. Firstly, Minhyuk describing how Shinae was acting just further solidifies what he saw, what he knows, why she's behaving that way. Can he really be alone with her right now, trying to be a dependable friend when all it does is hurts her? But also, it's for the best, because Nol and Dieter need to talk, and it's not just about Shinae, though that's part of it. Nol keeps pushing everyone away, including Shinae, and we all, including Dieter, know Nol is only going to continue doing so for his sake, and like, let's be real. That's not what Dieter wants. He doesn't want pity. He doesn't want people denying what they want. He doesn't need to be treated like a baby, and I hope he stands up for himself that way, and stands up for Shinae, and more importantly, I hope he calls out Nol on the kind of friend he's been.

Dieter is the one who knows the least about anything. He was there playing mediator without even knowing how Nol showed back up, Nol who blocked them and told them to stop contacting him, Nol who he was resigned to accepting had left.

Nol owes Dieter a LOT of explanations and I, for one, am SO EXCITED.

Honestly this conversation between Nana and Nol is much needed. Don’t get me wrong - Nol very well knows and understands the ramifications of not only developing, but acting on these feelings. It’s not that he is acting on them that is the problem as much as the fact that Shinae is unaware, the fact that he needs to have a talk with Dieter. It’s such a mess no matter how you look at it with no real easy way out, and that’s without even considering the circumstances right now. Acting on these feelings when he’s about to disappear from her life again (serving time). Did he even intend to talk to her about it? Did he even intend to try suss out her feelings, if it’s reciprocal or not? 

On the one hand he isn’t entirely wrong - there ISN’T a lot he can do at this stage. Like, yeah he can confess his feelings to Shinae, spell it out for her why Dieter is so hurt why he’s acting like that, but tit would unfairly influence her own feelings that she’s yet to have time to process. It would put her in an uncomfortable position she’s not ready to face. He could have tried to talk to Dieter before he found out that he saw it all, but what would that do in the moment? Like Shinae, Dieter needs his own time to process, to try to grapple with and sort out his feelings. He’s bound to be much more volatile if pushed right now. 

That said, I find it interesting that Nol’s eyes were closed when he said he doesn’t know where his phone is and that it’s not easy when he’s stuck in the hospital - which isn’t entirely a lie, but I wonder if it’s more that he knows he’s avoiding the inevitable, the painful and the awkward? That he’s let opportunities slip through his fingers rather than face them? idk. 

I love Nana’s tough love, though. She’s not unnecessarily harsh on Nol, even if the comparison to Rand felt like a low blow, because we know that seems to be a motivator for him. He DOESN’T want to be anything like his father and he certainly doesn’t want to treat Shinae like Rand did Nessa. 

When I first read this episode, initially I was really wary of that frame with Nol’s eyes hidden from us when he says “I would never” because man all Nol DOES is push people away. All he does is decide that he doesn’t deserve what he wants and then deny them any say in their relationship, and it feels so very much like that’s the thought in his mind. That he would never so he’ll never act on it again so he’ll shove it deep down inside so he’ll learn to be platonic. 

But listen Nol, is that even possible? He had to kick her out of his room because he could not be alone with her - because he knew she isn’t drawing boundaries and every time he toes the line she lets him because he knows he loses composure he stops thinking that she’d just look at him like *that* and he’d crumble in front of her. The problem is, he’s already started this conversation. He can’t go back on it. At some point, Shinae is going to figure out what he meant by what he didn’t say - why Dieter would feel hurt, what that moment meant for them, just like he told her to. And then what? Is he gonna play the “I have a girlfriend” card? She knows it means nothing! Is he gonna play the “Dieter likes you” card? But doesn’t Shinae get say in her feelings? 

He still needs a conversation with Dieter, of course. Nol is so unpredictable to me, but I feel like there’s no way he could move forward knowing his feelings without talking to Dieter at some point. I have no doubt Nol feels like he owes him an apology and I have no doubt that Dieter doesn’t actually think Nol betrayed him or anything. But Dieter was the one picking up the pieces of Shinae when Nol made a mess of her. He was the one who found her crying in the rain where Nol left her. He was the one trying to talk her through it - even said out loud that she loves him, knowing he sensed it was a different kind of love than how he loves Nol. He’s the one who knows how hard she’s been trying to reach Nol, how much she is afraid to lose him CANNOT lose him, how much it tore her up. 

I really want to see Nol and Dieter have that conversation. I don’t think Dieter is the type of person who would feel like he has “dibs” on Shinae because he respects her as a person and, y’know, isn’t territorial of her like she’s some kind of possession. But what he CAN lay into Nol about is the way he’s treating her. Nana is right, too - you can’t just push her away and hope all of this will go away. And Nol moreso knows better because he knows about Alyssa now, he knows about Shinae’s trauma, about being cast aside by someone you care about. Even the way she responded to him when he first touched her scar, first brought it up; Shinae has not healed completely from that wound, even if it’s a scar. 

To do what he’s done this night - to return to her and be so honest, to share those moments together when he thought everyone was asleep and then push her away, close her out, box her out again - would be devastating and hugely unfair to her. If his plan is to really leave forever and never come back then whatever, but we know better. 

I will say, though. I really enjoy seeing Nol be really pathetic about this. I am taking GREAT pleasure out of it, sorry not sorry. Especially because Shinae has already suffered tremendously over his ghosting, over the realization that someone who is so precious to her could just throw her away like that. I want this man to AGONIZE. I know he’s trying to tell himself to walk away that he can’t do this to Dieter that Shinae deserves better but I always want him to know he CAN’T that he’s in too deep that he can’t walk away from someone who care about him, someone who worries about him, someone who grants him those moments of serenity and brings him calm in an otherwise tumultuous life. 

I think that’s the thing that’s so wonderful about seeing him this miserable, too - we are so very often locked out of Nol’s mind, it’s often so difficult to understand what he’s thinking about, what’s going on in there, but we can at least tell how torn up he is. How there’s a miserable part of him that doesn’t want Shinae to figure it out, how much he loathes that he resembles his father in this way. It’s not like he set out to fall for Shinae, it just happened, it’s something that has been blooming all along in the background, the seeds were planted and tended to in all of their moments together - all of those times she disarmed him and he let her in, gave her a little taste of who he really is. Falling for her was the last thing he wanted. And yet.

And yet. 

Even though Nol is denying it at every opportunity, it’s still an indirect admission. His concern when asking Nana if she told her - we know what he means. He tells her there’s nothing going on but also states he’s trying. His attempts to deny it are futile when he keeps betraying his lies with the truth lol. 

But look, I can’t help but love how sulky and miserable he is. He made this bed now he’s gotta lie in it. 

But really, Nana is much needed at this time, because Nol’s typical moves won’t make anything better. She knows him better than that, and knows that both Shinae and Dieter deserve better. He’s not allowed to play with her feelings and then run away; he owes her a conversation, the truth, an apology. Ignoring it won’t solve anything, and pushing her away won’t fix anything, Nana gets it. Nana speaks on behalf of us. 

But Nana is also right. Shinae and Dieter aren’t the only ones affected by what’s happening here.

What a fantastic segue to Alyssa lol 

Alyssa, my messy problematic fave ;~; Alyssa my misguided lost little lamb ;~; 

I know most people hate Alyssa but I am not most people and listen, I am BIG TIME worried and scared for her.

BIG. TIME. 

We’ve known the connection between Yui and Gun Kim is close and we even know that Gun has contacts with several media conglomerates but I don’t think we really knew just HOW close he was, holy shit!!!! I cannot even begin to describe the DREAD and fear that filled me to see him show up like this. Especially like this ;~; 

Seeing Alyssa hiding in the bathroom on the toilet gave me immediate worry but fortunately it doesn’t seem like anything had happened; she’s just taken refuge in the bathroom, her shirt was thrown up on by her boyfriend who seems to have sent her a cryptic message and hasn’t responded to her since. My guess is that maybe when Kousuke punched him and he fell, a message got sent...? Maybe while people were gathering his barely conscious bloodied body and moving him into Yujing’s car? Idk! The point is: she’s worried. 

The way she’s sat on the toilet resembles the way she hid herself in her blanket at home that day Shinae visited her, a day where she was also very worried that someone was upset with her. I’m not saying I don’t think Alyssa is genuinely worried about Nol, but she does get very anxious when she thinks people are mad at her, and she knows Nol has every right to be mad at her. What she said was cruel, even if she meant it in the moment, and Alyssa absolutely cannNOT lose Nol - she needs him, not just for her career, but probably also for her protection. He’s one of the only friends she has at this time, even if she doesn’t treat him that way. And I think knowing that Rand left the party gave her some kind of indication that something is afoot, even if she doesn’t know what. 

Let’s not forget that Alyssa witnessed him jumping off a balcony into the pool below. And now this weird message? Now all these messages he’s not responding to? Rand has left? What’s going on? 

And she doesn’t even time to worry about him because Gun Kim is at the bathroom door, ushering her along, they have another schedule to make. What time is it? Are we aligned with Nol’s time? Did they stay the night at that hotel? They’re still there, at the setting of the Christmas party, not at their dorm or anything like that. They still have last night’s costumes, off to their next schedule. How long has it been? Did she sleep at all?! 

Something that really stands out is the expression on Alyssa’s face when Gun is calling in, asking if she needs any help. Maybe that expression is just because she can hear her groupmates talking about her, perfectly willing to leave her behind, but with what we know about Gun.... you can’t blame me for thinking that she, too, knows a thing or two about that man and would prefer anything but. 

One of the girls says something about how she’s always doing weird shit back at the dorm. How weird are we talking? Are we talking curling up in a ball and hiding in her blanket when she feels like things are falling apart? Are we talking coping methods for trying to deal with the plaguing feeling of knowing she’s so disliked, that nothing she does can make up for it? Or are we talking.... even weirder? Is it connected to whoever Alyssa is always on the phone with? 

The more I think about her, the more I worry for Alyssa. Truly, fearfully worry. 

Alyssa’s group is called GL4SS and the panels of her getting ready are glass shards - really on the nose there. It harkens back to that moment Shinae visited her house, where she so quickly pulled herself together like she wasn’t really moping at all, back at her violin as if nothing was amiss, nothing to see. Shinae thought it was so weird but look at how practiced it is. In a matter of minutes she pulls herself together, puts her face on - her mask, her facade, her persona - and steps back out like a good girl. 

One of my friends pointed out how very much Alyssa donning her make up was so much like Nol doing Shinae’s make up at the formal. Nol was directly helping and protecting Shinae both in putting the make up on her and taking care of her throughout the evening, and he wasn’t the only one. When she was in danger, Nol, Kousuke, and Meg came together to search for her. 

But no one is doing Alyssa’s make up.

No one is there to protect her, to defend her. 

She’s alone when she comes out of the bathroom and finds Gun Kim waiting for her, her groupmates having already left to go to their next schedule alone. 

Thinking about it from that perspective makes it feel so much worse. There is no one to protect Alyssa, to keep her safe. It is just her and an actual shark, an actual literal monster, who is to take her - alone - to her next schedule. Everything about her body language has me SCREAMING - she looks so uncomfortable, trying to shrink in on herself, arms tightly at her sides, everything about her posture screaming uncomfortable. 

But it’s the things he SAYS. That weird “joke” that isn’t funny. That pointed dig about not wanting to give them another reason to dislike her. Danger alarms are going off, this man should NOT be anywhere in her vicinity, let alone be alone with her. 

Here’s something to consider about Alyssa. 

No matter what she does, her groupmates are never going to like her - no matter how skilled she is, no matter how hard she works, because they know how she got here. They know she’s got connections to the group’s sponsors! They know Yui handed her this. They probably trained for years, worked so hard to beat out other trainees, sacrificed so much for this and Alyssa just came prancing in. 

No matter what she does, what she contributes, it will always be invalidated by how she got here. 

And despite this, she seems to be the face of the group. She’s so popular that people are already calling her overrated. She’s already been doing CFs/endorsements. She has been granted things the other girls haven’t. Not only was she invited to the ultra exclusive Kim formal, but Yui pulled strings so that she (and only she) could attend. She’s chummy with Kousuke and Nol - and we know Sumin knows/assumes she’s dating him because she pointedly mentioned how Alyssa is always on the phone. 

Her groupmates are (rightfully) jealous and she has no friends in them. The one thing she’s wanted is to belong. To be a part of something. But even in something like this, where you would expect to belong, where you work 24/7 with your groupmates, live with them, spend all of your time with them, she still doesn’t belong because of how she got there. 

Fans will never be her friend and will only ever conditionally love her. 

Who does she have? Who can she turn to? 

Yeah she has Meg, but is she going to open up about her loneliness, about what she struggles with? What if Meg takes it as a slap to the face? Alyssa isn’t dumb and she isn’t blind - I think she must know that Meg feels some kind of inadequacy measured against Alyssa, the successful daughter, the famous daughter, the one who will be bringing home money while she tries to finally finish university for once. 

And Yui and Gun Kim know this. By circumstances alone Alyssa was already isolated, has no one in her corner, no friends outside of the group, no friend in her group. And what can she do to combat that? Who can she turn to? 

I wonder if those dating rumors are going to come up soon. If everything that transpired this night/day are to set us up for the coming time skip - will Nol and Alyssa still be together? If we’re setting up for the timeskip, I think we’re about to see a major shift. 

Remember when I said that dating Nol affords Alyssa some kind of protection? While she can’t publicly say she is dating, she can at least thwart some advances privately, those who know of her relationship - like the Kims. (Though, let’s be real, has that ever stopped them? Ugh.) I think that while yes Alyssa has hung on to her relationship with Nol because she wants to keep Yui’s favor.... I think Alyssa benefits in a way Nol is very unaware of right now, and that’s why she is so desperate to keep in with him. 

But if those dating rumors come up? If she has to publicly renounce their relationship, because she’s being forced to, because not doing so will ruin her career, because not doing so will find an awful punishment for her? Then what?

I think it sets up a couple things. Firstly, I think that could be the final blow for Nol. Much like he’s wiped his hands of Kousuke, perhaps he would do so of Alyssa, because who wants to continue to play pretend that they’re dating when she has to publicly renounce their relationship? He’s tried to help her, he tried to save her, and from his perspective, it never did anything, so why waste his energy on something futile? Just like he realized reaching Kousuke was futile, maybe he’ll feel the same of Alyssa, wipe his hands of her once and for all.

But if that comes to pass, then it means Alyssa is so truly alone, so isolated, caught completely in a trap that it’s too late to turn back from, and I don’t think she’s going to be given the opportunity to escape. I’m really worried that we’re about to see Alyssa realize how very trapped she is and that this is what’s going to carry us into the future.

;___________________;

Man, the lighting and expressions in this particular episode are so good - the flashback was largely simplistic in its work, simple backgrounds, simple expressions, things mostly expressed through use of color. But we’ve returned to the present where Nol is holding back nothing - he is comfortably Nolan in his skin, no loner putting on a front or hiding his darker, potentially scarier side. When he found the Math Club photo in the previous episode, we didn’t see his eyes, which alone gave some indication to his feelings about his discovery, but that expression we finally get to see as he looks at the photo and talks to Shinae - WOW. In the past, as Yeonggi, he would never have allowed himself to show that side of him and was always so careful about the image he presented.

Nol is holding nothing back, now. With Shinae, he’s showing an authentic version of who he really is. 

The way the shadows fall on his face makes him look almost haunted. 

There’s so many good details in the art of this episode, ngl. The sequence of Shinae’s memory being jogged and snippets of that meeting flooding back to her, culminating in that close up of her eye, that red pupil with the scratchy jagged lines around it. A+ art, the shock of both the return of those memories and the realization that Nol has pieced together what she tried so hard to keep from him, something she did not want to b the one to tell him about, aaahhhh! 

Something interesting about this is that despite how things ended between Shinae and Alyssa, in a way, Shinae is trying to protect her (just as much as she’s trying to protect Nol). It wouldn’t be difficult for her to just admit the truth upfront - that yes, it turns out the ex-friend who kind of ruined my life is, indeed, your girlfriend. There’s something almost sweet about it - Shinae has been very careful to not influence Nol’s relationship, to not be that kind of person. Even before she ever knew who he was dating, she drew clearly-defined boundaries in effort to ensure that her involvement couldn’t lead to a falling out with his girlfriend. And here she continues to do that. She doesn’t want to influence how he sees Alyssa, she doesn’t want to be the reason they might fall apart. But at the same time, she is protecting not only Nol, but also herself and Alyssa. Shinae never says “Alyssa isn’t like that anymore” or anything like that. Her entire point of reason is that she knows her memory isn’t reliable, and that she doesn’t know the full story. It’s awfully mature, tbh, to be able to acknowledge that her experience is not the sum of that whole affair, that Alyssa’s side of the story is something she lacks and never had a chance to know. In contrast to her current situation with Nol, where he has inadvertently come clean and she now understands why he left, Shinae still has no idea why things with Alyssa played out the way they did, only the vague assumption of what Alyssa wanted vs how she acted. 

To be honest, I think as much as Shinae wants to protect Nol and Alyssa’s relationship, she also wants to protect her memories and the handful of good she experienced with Alyssa. Though things ended badly and she internalized that hurt and repressed it for so long, that was Shinae’s first friend, someone she was so eager and excited about. When we’ve been hurt or betrayed, it’s easy for those good memories to become soiled, to become infected by our bitter resentment. You forget that there was ever any good, because all you can remember is the bad, and how it makes you feel. 

I think we see that with Nol. The way he reminisces on Alyssa almost suggests that they were never very close, that his relationship with Alyssa never compared to his relationship with, say, Dieter or Soushi. Again, this episode plays with expression and framing SO MUCH and it’s SO well done. “She’s not important to me. So don’t feel bad.” We don’t see Nol’s expression when he says this. In fact, we only see a close up of his face, eyes hidden, as he asks Shinae to be honest. Quimchee uses the hidden eyes a lot, especially with Nol lately. I think it’s less that Alyssa was never important to Nol as much as she no longer is. Once upon a time, she was a friend he tried to steer straight, to save from Yui’s villainous grip. Again, we see that down-up view of Nol, his face cast in shadows, eyes cold as he states that he hates Alyssa’s nature. In a way, Alyssa is a failure of Nol’s - at least, this is probably how he views it. There was nothing he could do to keep her out of Yui’s grip, to save her from that woman. In fact, Alyssa continued to willingly walk into the lion’s den. 

We have that contrast again of Alyssa and Shinae - how Alyssa was unable to see beyond Yui’s facade, or even worse, how she was willing to endure Yui to get what she wanted. It makes her look selfish and spineless, wishywashy. Nol resents that, in the end, Alyssa made her choices, and in the end, all that remains of their former friendship, of the relationship they had, is one that is transactional. Don’t get me wrong, I think Nol does care about her still, in a way. I think there’s a high likelihood that Alyssa also still cares about Nol and Shinae both, but in a way she can’t act on, that she has to repress and shove away. I don’t think she feels particularly good about what she does, which is why she deflects. It’s easier to place blame on others than acknowledge that you are the one actively hurting people you care about, right? 

In a way, Shinae and Nol both care about Alyssa to some capacity, and largely in a way that is rooted in the past - who she was, what their relationships were. That’s the thing, right? You don’t have that kind of bitter, festering resentment towards someone if you never cared about them, if some kind of affection (whether romantic or platonic) never existed. There was a time when Alyssa was a person Nol wanted to help, maybe even when she was a person he enjoyed talking to and hangout with along with Soushi and Dieter, but those days are long gone. 

On the balcony at the hospital, he asked Alyssa what if they start to resent each other, because he already did. Because the weight of their transactional relationship had become that much of a burden, because there was nothing he could do to help her anymore and she felt more like a leech than a balance, because she had become the very kind of person who he resented. Swept up in the world of the Hiraharas and networking, Nol had become as invisible to Alyssa as he was to anyone else. Whatever remained of their friendship had run its course. 

Where Nol has allowed his memories to fester - the way his memory shows the gap between him and Alyssa increasing as he turns away from her and eventually has his hood up, back to her, the use of that intense red, Alyssa’s hollow puppet eyes, Yui a marionette puppeteering Alyssa, so menacing - Shinae has tried in vain to protect it, to reassure herself that there must be more to the story or maybe she’s made it all up, that maybe Alyssa was not as horrible as she looks. Both of them seem to acknowledge though, what praise does for Alyssa and the extents she’s willing to go to to earn it. 

And again, that juxtaposition - Alyssa is so malleable, is (or at least was) so willing to do whatever if it earned her praise, where Shinae’s integrity refuses to accept undue praise or handouts. It’s not explicitly stated, but it’s easy to glean that this is likely a big reason Nol was so drawn to Shinae, who always expressed concern for him, who never saw him as invisible, who has made a point to demonstrate how much she cares about him. When tempted by Yui, Shinae fought back and sees through her shiny veneer. Of course it must be intriguing, that someone can push back against Yui and not be poisoned against him by her. 

In fact, everything about this episode is SO heavily laden with how much their relationship matters. Shinae cares enough about Nol that she refuses to be the reason that his relationship with Alyssa is ruined. Nol cares about Shinae enough to start to feel comfortable as himself, doesn’t wear his mask, and offers her honesty, going as far as to call her out on her refusal to be honest. They’re taking turns baring parts of themselves to each other, sharing things they likely have never shared with anyone else. It can’t be that Nol is still drunk and his inhibitions are lower - he’s calculating looking over Shinae clutching the book to her chest, takes a step back and looks at her like that, admonishing her for lying when he’s being honest. They are actively acting on that importance to each other, the understanding that they have to be honest in order to understand each other. 

Nol is so comfortable, in fact, that he even shares a tender little memory - just a little snippet of it - about his mom. He’s always been careful not to mention her to his friends, to not bring up anything about her. The day he crashes the study session at Dieter’s, Shinae asks him about his mom, meaning Yui, and without knowing what Shinae means he switches mood completely. But here, he shares just a little piece of the distant past, and Shinae, realizing that he must be talking about his mom, offers her hand.

And GOD I love this moment SO MUCH. The dance that never was at the formal, a deal made at the masquerade. Everything comes full circle in that moment. It’s Shinae to Nol’s rescue, it’s Shinae making an offer, it’s Shinae offering friendship needed. Throughout the series, Nol has reached out to Shinae so many times, never letting himself close the gap except the one time that he hurt her. Once upon a time, Shinae drew boundaries between them and here she’s the one crossing them. Knowing what she knows now of Nol’s life, of his family, of his mother, it’s a gesture I don’t think is made lightly. Could Nol be happy, if only for a moment, if she sings and dances around to Christmas music with him like they once did? 

And god, listen, there’s a LOT of reading into this that we could do. The dance at the formal that never was - Nol denying a dance with Shinae to keep his distance, as Kousuke requested, as Nol surely had already decided upon. Maybe had Kousuke not demanded that Nol keep his distance, Nol still would have refused the dance (especially given that Shinae had previously drawn those boundaries around them), but what is to stop them now? There’s no Kousuke in the room to express disapproval. Shinae knows the relationship isn’t real, that it’s nothing that needs to be respected as she was before. Now it’s just them and the bits of their souls they’ve bared here alone in the dark. 

And again, back to the way Nol has spent so much of this series reaching out to her and refusing to close the gap - that he even did it just last episode! For it to be Shinae, this time, who reaches out to him, who offers the hand he continues to deny himself, is just SO SO SOOOOOOOO good and satisfying! Shinae is taking the initiative that Nol won’t allow himself. 

And listen man, I try, I try really hard not to be overly shippy about things but GOD the seeds have been sown, haven’t they? I have so many FEELINGS about how INTIMATE these last few episodes have been, the way their angry exteriors have thawed away and left these pockets of honesty. Shinae has been spending this time doing her best not to spook Nol - won’t ask about his mom lest he bolts again, careful about what she asks and says - and it just feels so intimate, to sit here in the dark together and bare their souls a little bit. Nol telling Shinae things he’s probably never told anyone else, just as Shinae told Nol a story she probably hasn’t told anyone else. I love the way they are just drawn to each other and let their defenses down. Nol has spent so much time trying to put distance between himself and Shinae, to escape her gravitational pull, but so many times he always wound up drawn back in. AND I LOVE IT, OKAY. 

Do they realize the ways they play off each other? Shinae has started to see their parallels (and the way they foil each other there, too - Shinae has become aware of her internalized self-loathing in a way Nol has yet to) and has a tendency to always respond to him even without realizing it. Last episode we see her response to his proximity and honesty, confused about why her heart is reacting lol. There’s also her raw anger at Nol still putting that distance between them, pointedly calling her Yoo. What she hates is that he’s trying to create that buffer, because using her first name is too close. If he keeps calling her Yoo, he can pretend that they’re not as close as they really are, that she isn’t as important as he’s already proclaimed. Shinae doesn’t want the distance, she doesn’t want the buffer. 

I also really love that she continues to call him out, and how her experiences with Alyssa have given the ability to see things how she does. In the way that her truth and Alyssa’s truth are not the same, Shinae notes that Nol’s truth and her truth are not the same - her image of him is not the way he sees himself, and neither one of them are more true than the others. In that regard, I think we will see that Nol isn’t as “innocent” in whatever it is he thinks he’s being punished for, but that he’s also not the one wholly responsible for it. Suppose this is about the incident with Kousuke, maybe Nol has internalized that he possibly hurt someone, without giving acknowledgement to what could lead to it. Was it self-defense, was it him reaching a snapping point, was it instigated, did something push him and his buttons? Nothing in I Love Yoo is black or white, only shades of grey. 

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but I can’t help but feel that all the foundation that’s been laid is slowly building now. The sown seeds are slowly, SLOWLY, maybe starting to sprout. The way Shinae has always played off of Nol and has subconsciously responded to him so many times - as he pulls away, she pulls closer; as he stops chasing, she begins to - makes me think that maybe we are seeing a little spark. I don’t think anything romantically would come of them for a long time, until we have a time jump, maybe, since Shinae is not really aware of what she’s feeling, or why she’s reacting the way she is. And frankly, Nol is so full of self loathing that I don’t think he could entertain the idea of it. I do think it could be there between the lines - he made an effort at one point with Alyssa and gave up when he realized it was fruitless, when she became someone he couldn’t stand. Does he ever think about the ways Shinae foils Alyssa? Is that why he tried so hard to keep that distance between them? He must be aware of how he succumbs to her - that whole incident in the rain proved it when he finally reached out and held her in that tight hug, before he finally steeled his resolve against her. I’m always so curious of what goes on in Nol’s head, what he tells himself about their relationship. The admission that Shinae, like Soushi and Dieter, is important to him is probably something he denied to himself for so long. 

And look, maybe just this once, he could let himself have this. Just this once, a stolen pocket of time with no one else around, no one to approve or disapprove, nothing but their own choices and intentions. The dark is for lowering inhibitions, for authenticity, and maybe for allowing yourself what you ordinarily wouldn’t.

I mean, yeah I do think they’ll probably be interrupted lol - wasn’t Minhyuk supposed to be bringing them medicine? and we heard Kousuke grousing about needing to get away from the singing lol, though I don’t think he’s the type to just go barging into random rooms - but I hope if they DO get interrupted, it’s only after they’ve allowed themselves to indulge. 

Sure, Nol could refuse her, and maybe Shinae might even feel disappointed if he did. But, idk, maybe it’s just the hopefulness speaking, but the whole thing about being vulnerable in the dark, under shadows shielding you from what might ordinarily prohibit you, I can’t help but to feel (or maybe just hope) that Nol will indulge himself. Shinae’s extended hand isn’t just an invitation to dance, but an offer of her friendship, of their mended relationship. Take her hand and become partners in crime once more. Once upon a time he extended an offer to her he didn’t really mean, and this time she does the same, but full of sincerity, on the hope that maybe she could rekindle a long lost memory of his that he can no longer enjoy. Nol will never again dance around and sing with his mom, but maybe he could build new versions of that memory with Shinae. 

ALSO someone pointed out that next week’s episode comes close to Nol’s birthday, which it finally is in the storyline, and LISTEN you can’t tell me that we’ll see nothing of it, right?! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I’m so excited for this next episode I’M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIIIIT. 

I could write so much more about just... the nearly tangible tension, the redevelopment of their relationship, the ways they affect each other, but for now I’ll refrain. Maybe I’ll babble in another post lol. I just. I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS about where they currently stand. Nol is so certain he’s a monster, someone dangerous, and he isn’t holding back anymore. He shows dark, shadowed expressions he’d ordinarily refrain from letting anyone see, and though there’s plenty of reasons for Shinae to have reservations or to doubt herself, she continues to believe in him, unflinchingly unafraid of him. Though Nol can only see himself as a monster, she’s still able to see the humanity in him, the heart of gold he doesn’t acknowledge, and will continue to hold onto that for him. And I’m a SUCKER for that, I’m A SUCKER for how they’ve developed, how they’ve grown so important to each other through these shared experiences but more importantly, by what they’ve seen in each other, what they believe in, and trying to preserve that for one and other. 

Once again, the thing I love so much about them, especially as of late, is that aspect: that they can see in each other things the other cannot, or couldn’t. Nol saw in Shinae a person who had built walls around herself, who kept people out, and wanted to help her do what he couldn’t, wanted to help her open up. Shinae is returning the favor - she sees in him what Nol can’t yet, and continues to fight for him until one day he’ll be able to see it himself. They hold mirrors up to one and other! They respond so intimately to each other! Nol knows how to read Shinae like a book, what her body language is saying, what she means even when her words say something else, and Shinae is learning the same. Don’t ask about his mom, he seems angry, he’ll bolt, how does she placate him instead, how does she get him to continue to open up? Their development is SO well done and GOD I cannot get enough of it I AM SO! LKAJFJKFKJFJKFJ living for this episode, living for this ENTIRE ARC.