#and my brain went 'sure sure we don't want to be snotty before 6am on a Sunday morning'

[littleragondin]

This morning, I finished episode 6 of Once Again thinking about that Alfred Lord Tennyson quote that goes “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all” and I wondered: is it true for Shin Jaewoo?

At 10, he had his first crush on Kang Jihoon, an adult who literally saved him, was kind and caring, who was his hero. Then, he spent 15 years (more than half his life!) crushed by the culpability of that man’s murder – murder that happened in front of him as he was being kidnapped again like holy trauma Batman!!

Now he is 25, still carrying that love, and that guilt that is clearly heavily impacting his life and twisting his sense of self (“somewhere you belong and I don’t”? How ready he is to sacrifice himself as a child to not have to live through that pain again???). And then! He gets back to Kang Jihoon, he gets to spend time with him as a fellow adult, finds out that he is also beautiful, and cute, gets to kiss him, to be hugged by him, and he falls in love again, and he is being loved in return. 

But so far all the clues we’ve been given suggest there is no happy ending for them, that Jaewoo is not going to be able to change the past because everything he’s done so far is already part of what happened (he remembers his scary older self talking to him, also the killer taking his knife that looks like the one used to kill Jihoon). Tragedy is coming for them, and Jaewoo is going to lose Jihoon again isn’t he? And then what? How is he going to keep going with the renewed guilt - he couldn’t forgive his child self, how the hell is he going to forgive himself now if he isn't able to save Jihoon? - with the renewed grief? When the pain is going to be exponentially worse than it had been for the past 15 years? 

Is there a point where you go through enough heartbreak that you can’t trust that loving was worth the pain? Where you can’t believe any more that even if it was ripped from you again and again, it was better than never having known love? Is there a way for Jaewoo to not reach that point by the end of his story? I sure hope so but man, that's a very thin hope...