why jungwon is the only one who can save sunoo from his villain arc.
to start, we need to look at given-taken.
during their stay at the orphanage, sunoo is seen unleashing his vampiric instincts onto jungwon, biting him and turning him into a vampire. this is what kicks off the story, of course, but this is more than a simple bite. this is more than survival.
they’re in a room together, playing alone. this implies an intimacy between them that is absent from the other members. they trust each other, almost to a fault. maybe that’s why sunoo bites jungwon specifically.
everyone else is away. he just needs to spend eternity with his best friend.
sunoo is later seen sobbing and holding a teddy bear he once found comfort in. he’s in the same room as before, but without jungwon in sight.
sunoo has been hurt severely. he has no one to cry to anymore, just the teddy bear that represents the ruins of his childhood. jungwon has left him; a betrayal he won’t recover from. they were supposed to be immortal together, right?
but there’s more to this, because jungwon was the one to lead them out of the orphanage and thus destroy their relationship.
let me explain.
in let me in (20 cube), the cube the members are trapped in symbolizes the orphanage and their inability to live in the outside world. they’re forced to hide; to stay trapped forever.
that is, until jungwon decides to break them out.
jungwon is the first one we see to charge forward towards the edge of the cube. he wants freedom more than anything, no matter the consequences.
so, he wanders and finds the truth that’s escaped the boys for their whole lives: jungwon must bring the members out and destroy the cube they’re stuck inside of.
so he does.
however, this has consequences for sunoo in tamed-dashed (japanese version).
in the ruins of their orphanage, sunoo finds his charred teddy bear: the corpse of the child he once was.
until now, sunoo has followed jungwon’s lead. they’ve been a team. but now his whole life has been uprooted. he wanted to live forever, yes, but that didn’t mean he wanted to destroy the past in favor of the future.
he stares at the bear with silent grief as the others look at him with unsaid judgement. but sunoo must move on. he always has.
onto tamed-dashed (korean version), the members, including sunoo, stumble upon a rugby ball. this ball becomes a new symbol. though, not for sunoo’s innocence. the ball is the companionship the brothers share.
sunoo reaches for the ball as his brothers watch on. he grabs it, looking for a game, or maybe he has never seen it before and is curious, just as jungwon does.
but what impact does this longing for connection have on sunoo?
it burns him as soon as he touches it. hot, searing pain. but the other members do nothing. that seems to be a pattern in sunoo’s eyes.
from this point on, sunoo is alone in tamed-dashed. he dresses in black robes, as if to hide the scars that have come from years of longing.
he stands at the edge of the forest where they found the ball in the first place. he hasn’t moved on. he’s stuck in the place where his brothers watched him burn and did nothing.
but what happened to jungwon?
he keeps a rugby ball in his locker at the high school the boys now occupy. he’s living freely, just as he wanted. he plays rugby with his brothers, always connected to them.
but unlike the others, he feels something amiss with sunoo. he kickstarts a game of rugby. it’s not immediately clear why, until the ball is thrown towards sunoo.
and suddenly, his perspective on the world shifts.
the boys have always been with sunoo. they escaped with him, and followed behind him all this time. he just never thought to forgive, nor to look back.
all because jungwon, the boy he saw as the image of destruction and casualty, extended a hand.
sunoo may have never forgotten what happened at the orphanage, but jungwon never forgot how much he cared for sunoo.
i have more thoughts, but i ran out of space and images to attach lol. feel free to ask questions and message me if you have theories of your own
