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trashlie · 2 years ago

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FP 223

I know this is a week late, but I figured it’s better to get this up before tonight’s episode than have to do two of these lol (writing for two different episodes is SO HARD lmao). And listen, I had a lot of feelings I didn’t get to work all the way through since I read this on vacation (literally LMAO crying in public while waddling behind my friends LMAO i am a foooooool) so this post is going to be just that - me working through this lmao

I will say upfront that as much as this episode hurts, I think it went about the best it could, or rather, the most realistic way it could. While I had a lot of hope and wishes heavily stemming from ep 219, I think I knew deep in my soul that the reality is that Nol isn’t there yet, that some scars run deeper, and that it isn’t as easy to change who he is. But I’ll get on to that under the cut!

Honestly, I think the flow of events during this arc are done SO well, so masterfully. I remember everyone being SO disappointed when we reached this arc and it was Shinae’s dad on the rooftop (the BEST possibility it could have been, frankly!!!!) but this ENTIRE arc has been beautiful and I really hope there will be a day that this series will be printed in a physical form so I can buy all the volumes and just DEVOUR this entire arc. From the beginning of the Christmas party, the Bible, Nol’s jump from the balcony, Kousuke unraveling, the arrival at Minhyuk’s party, Shinae luring out Nol, the whole intimacy of secrets shared and that glimpse of who Nol really is, the fall, the Kousuke and Nol fight, the tenderness in the hospital, the sheer flirty romance and hopefulness of 219 leading right to this. It was inevitable. In retrospect it makes perfect sense - that build up cannot reach its pinnacle, not yet. Nol isn’t ready.

And that’s what’s the most heartbreaking thing about this episode.

Nol isn’t ready. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Shinae, it’s not that love or whatever isn’t enough. It’s that he’s not ready. When he apologizes to the space she no longer occupies, he says he doesn’t want her to see him like this. I wish he could have said it to her, but it wouldn’t have changed anything, and I imagine in her own way, she must get it. Nol’s every weakness has been used against him at every opportunity that it’s no longer he wants to hide this part of him, so as to not feel like a burden, so as to be the happy, radiant friend she’d longed for. And while WE know that Shinae doesn’t need that of him, and maybe he even realizes it, it doesn’t change how he feels. It can’t - this is so ingrained in him.

I’ve started to think of Nol as a sort of prey animal; he’s easily skittish, it’s easy to startle him, and he clings to his security, because he needs it to feel safe. He clings to his masks, to his lies, to this bright personality to stave off the darkness that’s always surrounded him, to stave off the darkness in other peoples’ lives. His whole goal was to put some good into other peoples’ lives because even if he can’t have it, isn’t it better to put out something good (especially when we know he lives with this belief that the bad things that happen are his fault)? How can he bring them down with his darkness, his pain? It’s the entire opposite of what he wants to do.

And think about it, too: Nol has never really had FRIENDS, these are the first real friends he’s had and they were a total accident. But where Shinae has found security in friendship and learned to push those boundaries and put more faith into others, he lacks that experience. He can’t bring himself to do it, yet.

I think a big difference is that while Shinae wanted so badly to believe that all people suck and are awful, because it gave her comfort because if everyone was like that, then this wasn’t a one-off, then she wasn’t someone it was so easy to be awful to, and she didn’t need to be so upset when the inevitable happened, the truth was she wanted to be proven wrong, she wanted people to do for her what she expected they wouldn’t. But that’s not the case for Nol. Shinae had repressed hope buried deep down, so it was so much easier for her to change, to look at the people who DID have her back and find it in her to put faith in people she couldn’t guarantee.

And in a way, wasn’t she burned? Nol tried to leave and though he came back and offered her an explanation, they’re still at the same place: he can’t be real with her the way she wants, and she can’t bear to watch him play a charade and wear a mask that she can see through.

But it’s not the same for Nol. I think he’d resigned himself to this life, and maybe he did secretly hope otherwise, maybe he told himself otherwise when he made friends who accidentally became real. But maybe he meant it. Maybe he meant that he’d help these people before he peaced off to England. Would anything have been different, had the Kim formal not happened the way it did? If that was the catalyst that reminded Nol he can only bring harm to those he cares about, would he have made it to leaving for Oxford without telling anyone or not? But that doesn’t matter, because the Kim formal did happen and it reminded Nol how dangerous it is for him to care for people, and how futile it felt to fight back, to push back. Shinae was looking for that sliver of hope to grab on to, but Nol had given up on ever finding it, and even when faced with it, it’s too difficult for him to take hold of it.

I think Shinae never hated herself, or at least not truly, but I think Nol does, and that seems to be the difference.

For Shinae, it was much easier to change her ways because it fed into a secret hope she’d been waiting for, because it was the push she needed to make a leap of faith. In Nol’s newfound friendship, she found a sense of security. After all, we saw her struggle to put up her walls towards Nol when she thought she’d hurt him after going off on him for crossing that line. It wasn’t the Kim formal events that made her see him as a friend, but they did foster that sense of security. But when you look at those events from Nol’s perspective, it’s completely different. There was no sense of security fostered, but rather one of fear. There was no comfort in their friendship - only a sense that he’d brought her into danger, that he’d made a mistake of showing interest in her and it got used against them. One of his greatest traumas must be finding out what had happened to his mom, and to actually watch something similar almost happen to Shinae? Jesus. It’s a testament to what a friend she is to him, what she came to mean to him, that he struggled to push her away after all of that.

But I think that’s the biggest take away: Shinae has learned just how deep Nol’s scar is, and I think whenever she learns more about what happened to him, what he believes about himself, it will make even more sense to her, why Nol is unable to take off that mask, why he’s so affected by this side of him that he doesn’t want her to see it. It’s not that he can’t trust her, it’s that he can’t bear to be this person in front of her (or anyone). Even when his friends wake up, he puts the mask back on, carries on with the lies and the mask, because he doesn’t know how to let that part of himself exist, and certainly doesn’t know how to let that part of him be seen, let alone loved.

And jesus that hurts so much. It hurts to know just how badly he’s suffered and continues to. (And it’s also a reminder to my forever mantra: he needs therapy! Shinae alone cannot fix this, love and care alone cannot undo what he has suffered and internalized.)

But in the same way that it’s so heartbreaking, it’s also, weirdly, hopeful.

Shinae is able to understand him, to some degree. She’s been there, she knows what it was like. It’s just that she doesn’t know how to get through to him, yet. He’s got such an impenetrable fortress around him the only way to get through is for him to lower his guard, to let her in. Or, I suppose, find a crack in the foundation, find a way to wriggle in. But that’s the thing - she acknowledges it, and decides not to give up on him. It would be so easy - and she wouldn’t be wrong for it - to decide you know what, I can’t do this, I’m wiping my hands of this. She’s just one girl! She’s not a therapist, she’s not a trained professional. And I love her for the decision to keep trying, even if it’s not easy. Because if Nol had given up on her, then would we have any story to follow? Would she have found friendship in Dieter and Soushi, learned to open up, found a way to make up with Maya, reconciled her trust in the people she cares about?

It’s just also so sad and painful to know that it’s that much harder with Nol, that his trauma runs that deep, that it’s eaten away and left him fearful and wary and unable to be open. It was hard enough for Shinae to do it!

I gotta say, that frame of them, where she’s stepping away from him and the sunset fading to black behind them is SO BEAUTIFUL and also SO DEVASTATINGLY SAD ;~; lmao I cannot get my mind around the FEELINGS it evoked, the way it’s so easy to understand both of them. I think Shinae did what was right. She drew a line, she made it clear that she doesn’t want to blindly play along anymore. She wants to know HIM, not this false version of him, and he can’t be that person right now. As much as I wanted her to pull off the blindfold and force him to see, I think it wouldn’t have been the right move. It might have felt violating to him, to be seen in a way he’s not ready to show yet, and would have made the wedge worse. And she had to leave, because it was only stringing herself along to otherwise pretend he’d be the person he’s incapable of being right now. How is it fair, for her to share a moment with him so full of joy and happiness for her, while he’s hiding his pain? How is she supposed to feel about that? It negates any of the joy she feels.

I’m sure there’s more to read into regarding Nol’s fairness than I can get my head around, but even at the surface level, it feels like Nol feels like it would be unfair to open up to her or Dieter and Soushi, even though they’ve opened up to him. “It’ll make things fair” but like she says, how is it fair at all, if she’s the only one allowed to find joy in their relationship, if she’s the only one keeping it as a good memory. Isn’t that unfair, that she alone would have remembered this dance as a pleasant time, as something to tuck away in her heart?

I had thought that Nol’s decision to join Shinae on the rooftop was a sign that they’re on the same level, toe-to-toe, but his choice to wear the bandana negates that. He’s unable to stay on the same level as her, unable to be as open and vulnerable as she is, and that’s not fair to her. She’s shared with him a story I’m pretty sure she’s never shared with anyone else.

How much must it hurt, to hear him say “I don’t need to see anything. I’ll be fine”? GOD. I can’t get over it ;~; The whole episode is just FULL OF PAIN.

Because even after she leaves and makes her resolve to get through to him one day, the mask remains on. He says not one truthful thing to Dieter and Soushi, from pretending he just woke up to refusing to acknowledge his crying, to pretending to not know what happened to Shinae. And Dieter sees right through it, which hurts just as bad. No matter how long he was really awake, he knows enough to realize that Yeonggi was always a lie, that he’s a mask worn to placate others and deflect the truth, and maybe Soushi doesn’t yet know enough to see that in him. But just like with Shinae, how do you go back to being friends with someone, knowing they can’t be honest with you? Even knowing there’s a reason for it, it’s not easy.

(Though, I guess when Nol says “When I opened my eyes she was already gone” that’s not EXACTLY a lie, but the truth of it is pretty irrelevant to Soushi in this matter.)

Dieter has always been remarkably perceptive, and while he couldn’t figure out Yeonggi before, he now knows enough to see through, and he seems to feel frustrated over the realization. It’s not that he and Soushi were bad friends and didn’t realize how bad things were with Nol - it’s that he never let them. It’s how he was always there to take care of their problems, to help them with their dilemmas, but never let them do the same for him, and instead played this role to deter them. How are you supposed to continue to be his friend when you see through it all? When you realize it’s so hollow and empty?

I’m not saying this to make a dig at Nol, because unlike Dieter, I do understand. As readers, we get it. But Dieter knows even less than Shinae does. It just isn’t fair to them.

I’m really curious what he’s going to talk about with Shinae, because boy is there a myriad of things, huh? ;~; Even if Dieter didn’t like Shinae, I think overhearing that would be difficult to swallow, because he essentially overheard something that feels, you know, private? Overhearing their conflict, Nol’s refusal to open up, and Shinae disappearing without a goodbye. GODDDDD that’s awkward and so painful ;~; I think Dieter is a very tactful person, so I’m not sure how he intends to approach that, because I think it would be far too, idk, rude? To be like yo overheard you and Yeonggi yowch that hurts lol and far from his style, but I have to assume that his intention is to address that - Nol’s evasiveness, his masking and lies, the persona he wears for them.

And because Dieter is a tactful, perceptive person, I wonder where he he lands. Is he frustrated because it was something he couldn’t see through before? Does he feel more like Shinae, in understanding Nol has his reasons? Or is he more frustrated that Nol continues to hurt them (and specifically Shinae) over and over? He definitely seems lost in thought, so it’s hard to get a good read on him (and I’m sure that’s intentional, as his face is obscured from us a lot).

And, yeah, I’m sure the frustration could be the realization that Shinae and Nol share something very different to what he and Shinae do, but I don’t think that’s THE source of his frustration. Sure it could be a part of it, but again, because he’s such a perceptive person, I think he’s already clocked this on Shinae’s end. I think still think there’s a lot to the way that Dieter told Shiane she loves Nol with his back to her, because characters seem to share some moments of honesty with their backs to each other, but also, as someone who likes her, of course it’s something he’ll pick up on. But I think most of his frustration is in that Nol continues to play pretend, that he can’t let himself take off that mask.

But also, yes, I do feel for him in the sense of realizing that the girl you like and one of your charismatic friends you’ve envied might like each other, because of course that part also sucks. But in the grand scheme of things, I think there’s a lot of things at play that are hurtful for him. ;~; There’s something so, so bittersweet about the birthday party juxtaposed against his - Nol’s emotional “I love you guys” set against his refusal to be seen like this ;~; What can you do for someone like that? How do you encourage them when you can’t get through to them?

GOD. I HAVE EMOTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone is going through it and IT HURTS and I think I knew all along the pain would be coming but GOD it hurts even more right on the back of such a tender, SWEET series of episodes, after getting to see Nol find that sense of peace, after getting to see them share a moment of friendship together again after so long ;~;

But idk, there’s just something about the sunrise that continues to make me feel hopeful. Nol is in such a deep, dark place right now, and it’s not easy to come out of. I still think we’ll see the main trio separate leading to the timeskip, and maybe when they all reconvene in whatever way, that’s how we’ll return to them. I think Kousuke will go to Japan and we’ll probably see Yui push his isolation further from the people who care about him, I think Nol will still find a way to Oxford after serving his sentence, and I think Shinae will take Rand’s advice and opt for university. It’s hard to say where I think they’ll all be when we get through the BIG time skip, but I guess we have to get through the first one first, anyway. What will come of Yujing’s expose - and what might Nol’s friends learn about him when they learn about the family that has haunted him?

One last thought, though. I’m glad Nana has shown up - I’ve been wondering where she was, why no one had contacted her! - but I feel like I’m the only one who felt like Nol’s expression was a little weird lol. idk, people seem to think he looks really happy to see her but his smile looks a little... off? It could just be because he’s all marked up, but his smaller pupils make him look a little... afraid to me? I don’t THINK that’s the case but I just want to throw that thought out there lmao