suho is literally everywhere in whc2. he’s in the boy sleeping at the table in the back of sieun’s new classroom. he’s in gotak, teaching juntae to fight. he’s in baku’s touchiness and fierce protectiveness. he’s in juntae, who talks with his mouth full. he’s in the boxing ring sieun sits in the corner of in his dreams. he’s in sieun’s sleepless nights and his evenings at the hospital. in gotak and juntae’s persistent doorbell ringing that sieun hears from his bedroom, and the split-second spark of hope in his expression that it might be suho. he’s the driving force when the time comes for sieun to make a crucial decision—to help juntae, to refuse to fight at first, but then do it in the end still, to accept the boys’ friendship, to let fun and laughter into his life again, to wake up from his well-deserved sleep and go back to his friends and suho. he’s in the way sieun smiles differently around his new friends, and that familiar smile at the very end that he only saves for suho.
while the narrative keeps suho alive through these subtleties and implicities, sieun keeps his spirit alive explicitly. he goes to him, he talks to him, he writes to him, he lets himself be led and taught by him, despite his unconscious state. he’s still sieun’s best friend and his guiding light. he’s his heart and his home. he is all over whc2, and not as a ghost haunting the narrative, but as the soul of sieun’s story.
