humans only feel pain for things that matter. stuff only hurts when we care.
the only people that have ever mattered to si-o, and changed the course of his life have been:
his parents
binbin
nam-soon
and it is heartbreaking how he persists in his love for them, even through his many ordeals.
he finds his father, and even amidst operating under the assumption that he’d been abandoned: gives him a way of living comfortably.
he sees a girl, free in the way he wishes to be, and wants to give her all of him – carrying within him hope for a future that includes her. wanting to stay alive and willing to do anything to see that future.
he meets his only friend, decades later and thinks: disown me, but don’t betray me, i won’t be able to handle it.
his redemption may not be in his ending, but it certainly is in the way he wished for a future, free from the chains of his existence.
my only regret is that he died, knowing that there was no one who saw light within him
