#ooooooooooof

Golden moments keep us going, literally.

After experiencing some system errors, some setbacks, his sunbae comes back to the rescue with some more not-so-hypothetical questions.

Through the lens of a loving relationship, he hopes to show Myung-ha that the choices we make out of despair are still our own (free will). It’s a direct parallel to Myung-ha deciding to cut his life short (break up, no pain, no hard feelings), instead of living longer (delaying it, enduring the hurt, getting scars, coping with regrets). 

Myung-ha is not quite ready, and has trouble understanding what is being implied. Because he hasn’t reached a state of self-love, he unknowingly doubles down on the fate he’s assigned himself once, and chooses to repeat it. 

He chooses to give up (again), he chooses to avoid the suffering (again), which he associates with unhappiness. It takes just as much courage to live as it does to die, and happiness doesn't exempt you of pain, but Myung-ha doesn’t know it just yet. He falls back into his old habits, and symbolically gives up staying longer in the game (of life), worried about Yeo-woo’s happiness more than his own. 

After working tirelessly to get Yeo-woon to happiness, and becoming the reliable person Yeo-woon can lean on, he hits the wall of his own contradictions. The relationship is uneven, the choice too biased. The gap widens, the fragility of the whole thing is apparent: the game is bugging, as Myung-ha doesn’t align his needs/desires with his actions/reactions. 

Not only does he refuse Kyung-hoon’s and Yeo-woon’s offer to lean on them (he hurt his leg following a system error), he also struggles accepting his own feelings. In spite of the time running out, he fails to tell Yeo-woon he loves him properly, retains important info about himself, and breaks up with him in the exact same location where they share their first kiss (loud wailing sounds of poetic cinema)

Myung-ha’s core issues are bursting out in the open (increasingly alarming error messages appear): because he doesn’t let himself be loved, he can’t love properly. Because he can’t lean on others when he needs it, he fails to be there when it matters. 

Myung-ha misguidedly keeps choosing a sad ending for himself when the whole game, his whole life, is fighting to give him a happy one.

That’s not to say his entire journey until now was in vain. In fact, Myung-ha is incredibly resilient (child...❤️), and opens himself to change at the end. He’s just missing a piece of the puzzle for it all to fit into place. It is, in fact, quite a big pill to swallow that happiness doesn’t happen to you passively like destiny, but instead is something that you actively choose. Hell, I struggle to even comprehend or believe it, tbh.

The game being littered with questions, answers, and possible choices/options is a visual representation of our everyday pondering, and choice making. What goals are we setting for ourselves? Myung-ha's sunbae is there to remind Myung-ha that if we refuse the existence of fate, then we should make use of your all-powerful free-will. 

At first, he blindly runs towards the game’s main goal--happiness--and doesn’t realize you can’t find it at the finish line. If he only wants happiness for someone else and not himself, why would he get a different ending? By the end, he learns that happiness can, possibly, be found on the way there, though.

The hand, the love he extends to Yeo-woon one-sidedly in episode 1, he accepts it when it is returned in episode 8.

The story comes full circle, but doesn't repeat itself; he gets a different ending through a new start.

From a pure stylistic standpoint, I'm obsessed with repeated lines/motifs in media because they give a lot of rhythm to a story. Like a poem or a song.

The story reaches its final stanza, he listens to himself, and resolves the error, his own contradictions. He found the will to fight for happiness, a way to love himself, chooses to stay longer, chooses Yeo-woon, chooses to maybe suffer along the way a little, but he chooses life. 

Notice how the question does not have Myung-ha's answer this time. Now, we choose.

Life is not an express lane, and if you're short 5,000 won to take the bus, or if the bus breaks down on the highway, you might have to fight and make a run for it. It'll suck. But it's not in vain; you might just get rewarded with the happy moments you created for yourself. Myung-ha does.

It is such a hopeful, kind, gentle message.