BELIEVE IN THE HEART OF THE CARDS!

It came together for me when it was revealed what Ho is looking for in Sekwang. Himself. But moreso than that, it became clear that Sekwang is Ho's home. He's always lived there, it's precious to him, but he was violently torn from it and is desparately looking for a way back.

Which should be familiar to anybody, as that is exactly what happened to our dear Soleum. More than that, both of them have forgotten their homes. Sekwang was put under the memory seal by the bureau, and Soleum forgot about his home through the summoning process. Neither of them knows exactly what they're looking for, they just have... a feeling. A feeling that they have to go back.

They're both desperate.

None of this matters. The people here don't truly matter. The world doesn't truly matter. How shitty Daydream is as a faction doesn't matter. Ho and Soleum both look at the hidden truth of Sekwang with the exact same frenzy. Ho first and Soleum only when he spots the Cheerful Research Institute there, but still. It's the very same desperation that drove Soleum to ally with Ho in the first place following the tuesday talk show.

And I do dare believe that Soleum sees that similarity between Ho and himself, realized that the Sekwang exploration is personal for Ho, and that's why he ultimately decided to fully help Ho. The moment he finds that, is the moment that his and Ho's goals are unified, and he wholeheartedly starts trying to end the Sekwang disaster.

However... However, despite their desperation, both of them remain kind. Which perhaps seems fucking wild to say about Ho considering certain incidents involving a taxi, but one also needs to consider the psychological warfare campaign against a certain goat and Soleum's behavior toward the end of Sekwang arc to see he's not a saint, either.

What I mean is. One of Ho's big humanizing moments is when you realize he wants to save the Sekwang Techical School students. They were his students. When you come to see that his goal may seem selfish, but he loves Sekwang so much. And he's still a counselor! The fox counciling room is an important benefit that brings a lot of the Daydream employees peace. It's a role that Ho cherishes more than that of director. Especially with how the very ending, where he spirits away the people of Sekwang, puts into perspective why someone might be spirited away by the fox counciling room in the first place (considering that's the One Danger from when its introduced as a ghost story). Helping people is important to him. He feels responsible for them. (Doesn't change him also being an ass tho lmao)

In addition to the forgetting, both of them are established to be fragments. Ho first, though. He's one little fox-shaped fragment that managed to slip out together with Soleum. Meaning that he woke up confused, alone, without memory in a new location he didn't understand. Which lead him to working his way up the Daydream ladder, exactly like Soleum waking up at employee orientation, though the process was probably... very different, for a guy who already knows he's not human.

Ho's backstory gets increasingly more similar to Soleum's, and Soleum's gets increasingly more similar to Ho's, especially when the core part of Soleum is also trapped in Sekwang City. Just like Ho, our Soleum is also a projection of a different being trapped in that eternal May 4th. They're both "good friends" more or less, and Ho clings to his identity as The Counselor the same way that Soleum clings to his identity as a human. Hell, Soleum ended up cementing that identity for Ho to prevent him from destabilizing, the same way he melted when he first realized he isn't human (anymore).

It is actually interesting to backread Ho's first interactions with Soleum and see how often Ho emphasizes Soleum being kind. That's likely the one feeling that stuck with Ho. That Soleum is the one who saved him. The one who was kind to him. Which reflects back on Ho's own amicable behavior with Soleum - down to calling him Soleum-nim when they first met.

And in return, it is often that Ho saved Soleum, in the form of the fox counselor. Without Ho's intervention, Soleum would've been caught by the contamination of the church scripture in Part 1, and he only regained his true form through the fragment of Ho left in Sekwang.

They have the mutual dynamic where they are the one saved and the savior, perfectly circular. Because Soleum saved Ho in Sekwang, Ho can save Soleum, and it repeats. (I REALLY FUCKING LOVE THE CLOSED TIMELOOP).

I looked at him. "But you're the one who saved me." "...!" "And you use the same name." [...] "So... you are not a small remnant, you clearly exist here. You gave yourself a name. [...] And here you are, having inherited that name."

This is not only a scene that is going to be lodged into my brain forever at the same tier as "Did being a good friend make you happy?", but now I also have to wonder whether it's going to reflect on the "original" Kim Soleum at all. The one we know was a fragment, a projection, but he is still the same person, the one who bears the same name, so he is also a full, meaningfull being. In that sense, this scene is also laying the groundwork for the rooftop confrontation between Kim Soleum and himself.

And in that sense, it was also this Ho, the one our Soluem knows, who showed up when Kim Soleum tried to kill his true self. In the same vein, Ho didn't become one with his "real" self either, but found the strength to continue his own existence as it was -- a fate shared by our Soleum, whose "real" self remains in the fox counselling room while he went home.

(Haha don't worry about that in the context of "a world without ghost stories except for me" because that's a different subject).

Anyways. With the shit that makes me the most insane out of the way (them saving each other in the same way in a circular loop as they suffer from the same personhood problems and the lessons one taught the other are what enabled the other to teach the one in the first place), let's talk about other aspects!

Contracts!!

Besides just savior and saved, they are also, mutually, employer and employee! (it obviously doesn't start that way, but)

Ho is as a character incredibly oriented around deals and bargains, which is befitting his status as a supernatural corporate entity. But it's also a trait that Kim Soleum ends up sharing with him through his (previously unknown) nature as (kind of) a yellow dragon. Contracts are how the two of them come to an understanding and inform the basis of their first proper dynamics and extended interactions, thinking particularly to the basement exploration / happy ending sect.

Ho is the first one to enforce one sided bargains via supernatural means (rip Choi), but Soleum learns to speak that language and strike back, which in turn puts it on Ho to wiggle his way out through loopholes. The most notable thing here is him taking the golden flower employment contract from Soleum as a sign of trust, as that puts them both on equal footing in the employer/employee relationship with the same mutual power over one another.

(And this also makes it all the more delicious that Ho is able to show up and save Soleum precisely because he's still technically an employee!)

So it's just, another fun aspect that they share, which makes sense since the story already draws parallels between the fox bead and the dragon orbs, which might be a reason that Cheong stole it from Ho to begin with. The similarity between them just adds to the rivalry expected of mythological foxes and dragons. (...I did just a little bit of reading on gumiho because of this, yes. It's also fun that when first meeting Ho, Soleum is like "I have a good idea of what he is because of his surname" so every korean reader would be going OH HE'S A FOX but alas, cultural context.)

Another fun random detail is that Ho is first described as looking like a young man around Soleum's age, lmao.

There is just!! A lot to work with here!! There's inversions between them, as well! Like Ho starting out associated with the bureau, but then switching to Daydream after May 4th, an inverse of Soleum starting with Daydream but then switching to the bureau. And how we gradually grow to humanize Ho through Sekwang and his backstory, while Soleum finds some measure of peace by accepting his inhuman nature (through Ho's help, lmao).

In many wayyys all these parallels that we only get down the line feel to me like positing that someone like Director Ho is who Kim Soleum could've become under different circumstances, or if he'd given in to desperation and despair rather than trying to hold onto his identity and humanity. Kim Soleum could've climbed the ladder of Daydream and remained successful, if he'd been crueller. If he stopped letting kindness distract him from his own goals. To Ho, kindness is Soleum's defining, memorable trait, and it inspired Ho's own compassion to come out of hiding.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,they made each other better people,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

anyways. yeah. i uh. I may be obsessed with that fucking fox now, which you can see because I'm at the stage of character delirium where I refuse to say his name and give him a fuckass epithet.

Director Ho Yuwon redemption arc of the decade. Of the century. Of the millenium. Rip in piss Agent Choi ✌

As a sidenote to all this I also want to say that home/forgetting/belonging/you can never go back is reiterated across a LOT of characters who all have their own parallels to Kim Soleum! I've talked some about Baek Saheon and Jisan mirroring Kim Soleum and his home, but there's also the blatantly obvious aspect of Go Youngeon and Sekwang, who also forgot her home and family with no other choice but to go to Daydream, right down to her wish taking her where she doesn't want to be. Fuck, you could write another essay comparing "how to persist when you've lost your home" between Blue Dragon and Magic Bunny, with Blue Dragon trying to find fulfilment in its current existence and Magic Bunny ruining itself trying to claw back scraps.