Suit Saeran doesn't know what he wants you to see. That might be a sad thing to admit but it's the truth. It's his truth. He doesn't know what he wants to feel, much less how to make you feel something for him. It might seem obvious to say that he wants you to see him as somebody strong, somebody who can never be hurt, but that's not the truth.

He tells you to treat him like Ray over and over again because that's the only way he will ever get what he really wants, to be treated tenderly, with love that won't burn. He just can't have that because that kind of love gets you sent to the basement. 

GE Saeran hopes you see him as someone worth loving. In the past, his heart spent so much time dreaming of ways to make you want him, but now he realizes that that's not something he can force on to anyone.

He needs to accept that people will either want him or not want him, and it's okay one way or the other even if it's hard to accept. He wants to prove himself to be somebody worth your admiration and love. You can see him any way you want to see him, but he prays it's in a good light as he works to be a better man, not just for you, but for himself. 

VAE Ray wants to be... in your life even if the guilt and shame of his existence is overwhelming. Regardless of if you knew him before the accident, the baggage of that incident will stick with him for the rest of his life. Why wouldn't it? He tried to, for lack of a better word, get rid of himself after he lost everything that made life worth living.

His insecurities always made him feel like he couldn't do anything right, and to wake up after the fire and realize that he couldn't even get rid of himself right, it sends him into a place where he has no choice but to spiral wildly out of control until V finds him in the rubble. Is it okay to be together despite how much of a failure he feels he is? Of course it is, but he needs to work through some of his feelings to get there.

Unknown wants nothing but for you to be his eyes. Be his eyes and ears on the inside. You don't particularly have to care for him or anything, after all, you're just the means to an end. You are the tool that allows him to dismantle the entire organization that has seemingly taken away his opportunity to be free and enjoy the sky as much as he wants.

It's nothing against you, after all, you'll get to join paradise and be happy in eternal bliss after you do your job for the savior. He doesn't feel about you one way or the other. That is subject to change, possibly, but as it stands from an initial standpoint, that's what it is. 

SE Saeran... similar to Suit Saeran, isn't sure what he wants from you. It certainly depends on the kind of relationship you had with him before it got to this point in his life, but there is no denying that he is in a situation where he has a lack of autonomy. He doesn't get to decide where he lives, and he doesn't get to decide how he lives his life.

If they don't see the way Ray Route and the RAE is setting up the clear narrative foils between V/Rika and Saeran/MC to show the differences between an unhealthy relationship where two people are obsessed with the idea of the other and run with that and a healthy one between troubled people who're trying their best to make sense of the world together and by themselves, I don't know if they will.

I'm not saying Mystic Messenger does the very best job at explaining many of these themes narratively, but I am saying if you read what's in front of you and think about it, the answers are there and it doesn't hide itself from you. If you're looking, you can see it.

However, I know a lot of people don't understand the complexities that exist between V and Rika, either. I get it, I know why people are fast to hate them for justifiable reasons, but if you don't understand the dynamics of their relationship, you gloss over a huge part of the story when it comes to what the game is exploring with Saeran and MC. I'm not telling people to care about V or Rika when I say that, I am saying that if you want to talk about toxic codependency, then your answer is V/Rika.

Maybe I have an easier time understanding the dynamic between V/Rika because there have been times where I've been like Jihyun, and that uncomfortable mirror has helped me become a better person. I am grateful to Jihyun for that. Someone wrote in my tags yesterday that V and Rika aren't about who is the perfect victim or the perfect abuser, they're two unhealthy people who are trying to cling to each other to cope in the most toxic way imaginable.

Neither of them will ever be wholly innocent as their actions hurt each other other and many of the people around them. Could we argue semantics on who did something "worse?" Yeah, you could argue that up and down because there's layers to the things both Rika and V have done. But the core of their relationship is built on unhealthy codependency. They cling to each other and as long as they do that, they'll continue to burn like a wildfire.

It's not healthy.

Jihyun even acknowledged how unhealthy it was in the RAE for him to shelter Rika. It's that awareness he has that makes me upset with him, because he'll destroy himself to keep his promise, and in doing so, destroys everyone around him because of it. Sometimes, you've got to understand that your dependency on another person isn't the healthiest thing. You have to make boundaries and start working on getting away from that dynamic, or you need to go and straight up leave.

Saeran and MC do not act and react to situations in the Good Ending the same way that Rika and V react and act to situations that they're thrust into. Saeran and MC are partners, they work together, confide in each other and make decisions based on trust. But, what they do is not based on what the other wants.

Your image shows that.

MC: Would you stop working with them if I asked you to stop? Saeran: To tell you the truth, no, I'll continue on. If it was before, I would've done what you told me to do, but, I want to persuade you now.

V and Rika don't communicate like that. V "shelters" Rika from what she has to face even though he knows it's wrong because he feels like that is the only way to prove he is giving 1000% of his life to ensure his mother didn't die for "nothing". Rika leans into the obsession she holds for Jihyun, continuing to view him as a God who will save her from her devil, even though she knows, deep down, he can't save her from her nightmares.

It's not sunshine and roses when it comes to somebody weaning themself off of the kind of drug he was taking. It was a combination cocktail of all sorts of drugs. The solution that makes up the Elixir is never quite the same each time, and the concentrations can be very different.

As far as I know, everything that's in there is bad for you. The Secret Ending tells us a few of the known ingredients but even the doctors are stumped on EVERYTHING that's in it. I've talked about about how he has to be going through a lot of painful symptoms but the game glosses over it because nobody really likes to talk about that kind of stuff. It's not pretty.

Not only that, but it's hard for people to open up about these particular issues since this is stigmatized no matter if somebody is in recovery or not. A good chunk of his time in the hospital has more to do with his physical symptoms than anything else. That is the case for many victims of Mint Eye. The mental duress and exhaustion are going to take a long time to heal, but as for the physical symptoms, some of those issues can be remedied in the meantime. 

It's a mess of migraines, exhaustion, irritability, dehydration, and many other physical and mental symptoms that can differ person to person and substance to substance.

Saeran is going to be dealing with this for a while. Even after he's out of the hospital, I can't see him being comfortable taking any kind of medication outside of something for his migraines. Why in the world would he ever be trustful of medication ever again after he spent so much of his life being forced to take the elixir? Ray called it medicine at one point, you know?

He may not have been taking it for as long as SE Saeran did, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was suffering with the elixir for nearly an entire year. 

He mentions once in the after-ending that he has medication he needs to take, and I imagine that offhand comment has a little bit to do with his recovery process. He takes medicine for migraines, that we know, but given that it’s been nearly a month and some change since we escaped Mint Eye, he’s had time to go to a doctor. Hell, I’m certain Jumin had not only helped him get a doctor, but get his proper government documentation as well. 

So, he is getting the help he needs for his health, but there's only so much they can do for his sake. They can make sure he has the medication he needs to lessen the severity of what he's going through, but it's not going to stop it 100%. He's going to have good days and bad days going forward, and sometimes there will be an itch he just can't scratch.

If you can do anything for him, you should make sure you have your hand ready for him to hold whatever he feels that ungodly feeling that tells him he needs some kind of elixir to make the pain go away. Even though he said he knew he didn't need to take it anymore, it doesn't change his body's response to no longer taking it. He went off of it cold turkey, and I can't imagine it made him feel good in the days following the aftermath.