ILY FP 262
I know I'm a broken record, but this one is SO hard to figure out just where to jump in! There's SO MUCH that I have and want to say, but getting it all organized neatly in my head is the difficult part. Without saying anything too spoilery outside of the read more, this episode gave us SO many answers I wasn't sure we'd ever get - or at least not so soon! - and of course left us with more questions, as is Quimchee's method, haha. But the answers we received are so heartbreaking and painful, which you know, I had come to expect. But still, to see it played out is still painful.
And just a heads up, but she's shared a deleted scene if you'd like a little more over on her patreon. Always worth subscribing to!
But let's go ahead and dive in.
I think you guys know me well enough to know we're diving right into the Nessa and Rand backstory. I love you Shinae but we'll swoop back around to you, there's very important things at hand right now!
Like many, Rand and Nessa's history is something I'd been anticipating for quite a while now. I'd come to this thought that they must've had a relationship when they were younger and Rand was in uni and then Rand realized he had bigger dreams than this and left in pursuit of those dreams when it became apparent they wanted different things in life and that his career was more important than relationships and he didn't want to be tied down but BOY WAS I SO WRONG HUH!!!!!
I will admit that Quimchee shared an image on Patreon which had me and my friends already convinced that they'd been married and I am stressed to realize we were, in fact, correct about that aflkjafkajffajfaj (again go join Patreon if you can, we get really fun content!)
The thing that really strikes me about Nessa and Rand - and I think we all kind of figured this all along but now have this confirmed in an even worse way than expected - is that they are the epitome of "sometimes love just isn't enough". Except I'd always thought it was "love just isn't enough" in the way that Rand would move on, not Rand would keep stringing poor Nessa along and she would keep believing in him and them and hoping this time it will be different. And I think, worse, it demonstrates how much he loved her? That he held on to her for so long and dragged her through so much pain because he just would not let go, even when he should have realized he was always going to put his career first.
And look, I'm not going to demonize Rand for putting his career first. I won't admonish him for valuing his career and security because we see between Nana and Rand two very different types of orphan experiences. Nana sought out her family, sought out to make her own family and tried to hold on to them (and lost them in doing so). Rand, however, focused on financial security rather than familial security. He wanted the kind of security that provides for you and gives you a sense of power. Comfort in knowing you never need be left for want or destitution. His refusal to let Nessa stay with him in England when he was suffering says so much about how important this value was to him. Nessa has lived a life in the country of, presumably, making ends meet (Nana describes her being able to visit Rand as "scraping together the funds to afford a train ticket") and it's not something she feels ashamed of. But Rand spent his life in the orphanage, from which he aged out of never having been adopted and taken in by a family, left with nothing and wanting for everything, and it makes sense why he personally would never want to be the reason Nessa lived that way, would want only to be able to provide for her.
But it's an indication they weren't ready to be married - and this is partly on Nana, who I feel rushed to get them married as she was so worried about them "committing sins". I'm not blaming her, I'm just saying. They were not ready to be married - Rand wasn't ready to settle down yet.
I'd also like to point out how painful it must've been for Nana to learn that Rand wanted to settle down with Nessa in England of all places. Yeah he doesn't have the history, but WOOF.
But anyway, it was so clear that Rand wasn't ready to settle down, but he did anyway, because he loved Nessa and he wanted his career and he was convinced he could do them both - that a little patience would be rewarded in the end. And he wasn't entirely wrong, except I think his Oxford bestie, Kouichi Hirahara, was a trap. But we'll get there. I want to focus on Nessa's pain a little bit before we ruminate on Rand's mistakes and the trap he fell into.
The audible gasp that I gasped when it was revealed Nessa was so stressed she was having fertility issues and kept having miscarriages - that reveal absolutely devastated me! That she struggled so much to conceive and start their family and when it finally happened, it was after he came to her with deception, when he was married to someone else already had a family with somebody else, and he asked her to abort it. He knew what she struggled and asked her to abort it!!!!!!
Now I am fully acknowledging that I think Rand knew what he was doing when he made that request. He'd been married to Yui for years at this point and the family knew about Nessa to some degree because Kouichi was Rand's bestie at some point, had met Nessa, had gone to a tea ceremony together, were on friendly terms. And, again, we're taking the Mukoyoshi Theory to be truth at this point, Rand knew the dangers of having a child that wasn't with Yui, one that could be viewed as a threat by Yui. He didn't ask Nessa to abort because he wanted nothing to do with her and a child - he asked her to abort out of protection for what would befall the child and even possibly Nessa, I believe. I think it must've hurt Rand to ask, too. I don't think he was as cruel and cold as we're led to believe.
Something very important to remember about this entire flashback is that this is a 100% biased flashback from someone who admittedly hates Rand and this is going to color everything about how Nana describes the relationship, the way things played out, etc. etc. SHE sees Rand as this unsympathetic man who didn't care nearly as much about Nessa as he did about his career and that colors our perception of him as we read, and therefore how we process new information. We internalize what it means for Nessa to have struggled with keeping a pregnancy to be asked by her former lover who now has a new family to ask her to abort the ONLY viable pregnancy she's ever had and we assume that it means he was cold and cruel and uncaring, but we have to be highly critical of these types of recollections. She is recalling someone else's relationship from her own biased perspective. None of this is firsthand accounts from Rand or Nessa.
And to that matter, one of the most devastating things about Nessa, which I think makes her such an interesting character, is that we are NEVER going to truly know, because we don't have her point of view. Unless there exists some kind of diary that has been preserved by someone somehow, we'll never be able to be in her head. We only get to see her in the very biased recollections of others, be they incredibly idealized versions of her or distorted nightmares of her. I think even Rand, who has well-preserved memories of the day he met her after her post-abortion, will have distorted recollections of her, warped by his love and his tremendous guilt and shame.
Nol remembers his mother in such a way that he believes the tea poisoned her and completely altered her personality, even though it seems much more likely that Nessa, at the VERY least, since Rand left her, but probably since they married/the miscarriages, has struggled with some form of depression and maybe even anxiety? We'll never know Nessa TRULY because no one was in her head. No one saw the parts of her that she hid, the parts of her that she tucked away to perform for others, to be the version of them they expected to see, to hide the difficult aspects of herself, etc.
Nana exemplifies this when Shinae returns from the bathroom to ask for her phone back - found breaking down sobbing over the overwhelming grief and pain of being confronted with these mementos of her daughter who she never properly got to grieve. Nana who never gets to show this side of herself because she's always busy being a strong pillar for Nol and never has room in her life to grieve for the daughter she lost, the daughter she pushed away, the daughter she left to the wolves, because she needs to be strong for Nol. Nol himself exemplifies this - none of his friends knew what he was dealing with while he wore his Yeonggi mask. Maybe it's something he'll figure out one day himself - that what he witnessed with his mother was likely exacerbated by whatever drugs she was on, in the way that "this drug can create worsening depression and or suicidal ideation, please let your doctor know about worsening depression" but what he witnessed was just as much a part of her as the version of her he remembers?
And this is what's so interesting about Nessa in people's memories. Look at Nana's memories and Rand's memory of her. So often we don't see her eyes and the times we do are usually strong emotions - the kinds of things that are emblazoned in your memory. But it feels so symbolic of them remembering Nessa, but not remembering her in her entirety. Especially for Nana and Rand, it feels like they don't remember her face in full because of the guilt and regret of how they've hurt her, the ways they've lost her. Nana left her daughter alone and vulnerable when she needed her the most, and by being left alone, she died without her ever knowing. It's also been such a long time since she last saw her, details fading and falling from memory, blurred away by her regret and shame ;~; But I think it also represents that Nana remembers Nessa as she remembers her, but not as she was. And this is typical of all of us, but something I feel is so especially true of parents. Parents latch on to their children at a certain point in their lives, and sometimes it becomes difficult to accept when their children have grown and become their own person and developed their own ideas. Nana remembers Nessa as humble, salt of the earth, etc. but how do we know that Nessa's values never shifted as she experienced more of life? How do we know she had other values that Nana ignored because they didn't align with her own beliefs?
Nessa is such a fascinating character to me in this way. She haunts the narrative, but we'll never really know her. We'll always be trying to piece her together through everyone else's memories, and through the things that are unsaid, or what they may not remember or didn't see.
But to get back to the actual episode, Nessa's resilience was truly impressive but also.... I wish she'd had the strength to walk away. A lot of reactions to this episode I see have a lot to do with blaming Rand and screaming about him, but it needs to be pointed out that Nessa kept going back. Nessa kept giving him chances. Nessa always believed he'd changed. I'm not saying this to blame her at all - I'm saying this as a reminder that it takes two to tango and in this relationship, Nessa, like Rand, continued to hold on even when it was clearly not working.
And I think this is why things culminate in Rand married to Yui.
Hear me out.
Isn't it pretty interesting that Rand meets a Hirahara in Oxford and they become friends. Kouichi even invests in his company, helps him get things started. Later, Kouichi buys Rand's firm and offers him an executive position at Hirahara Corp.? And Kousuke recalls that Rand never really liked being in Japan. Isn't this all really interesting?
And more to that fact, Kouichi follows the same naming convention as the Hirhara heirs. Koutara. Kousuke. So who is Kouichi? Where does he fit in....? It would make sense for him to not be an heir with the naming convention, would it? He hasto have been a son of Koutaro's, brother to Yui and Hansuke's mom !!!!!!!!!!!
And another interesting detail. Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn was named for important people in Rand's life - but Kouichi, best friend who helped Rand start his firm, bought it, and got him an executive position at his family's company, is not one of those names. That implies he must not have been all that important to Rand in the end, despite everything he did.
We ALSO know we've never heard of Kouichi - he's not mentioned anywhere, never in any articles, never in anyone's conversations. How was it Rand who became the temporary chairman of the board after Youngchul's sexual assault allegations caught up to him if Kouichi was an heir and would have had experience? In the two years from Kouichi buying Rand's company to Rand marrying Yui, what happened? And what happened to Kouichi?
And HOW did Rand end up married to Yui, as opposed to, yknow, Nessa (who he was ACTUALLY married to!!!!!!!!)
OF COURSE I HAVE THOUGHTS!!!!!
So we have a loose timeline here.
Rand sells his company. He goes to Japan to interview because he needs to secure his position before he can begin his paperwork to settle in.
He's supposed to start Nessa once he has his position and has filed his paperwork so she can join him.
Presumably he begins his position as CFO in Japan.
(Rand never liked visiting Japan. He must have experienced something in Japan that has ruined it for him.)
Youngchul is removed from his position as chairman of the board due to sexual assault allegations. (Someone is noted to have stepped in when Youngchul was trying to drag a girl to his room at a post-conference party, and there's also said to be several witnesses during the business conference earlier that day. Rand easily could have been one of or both of these witnesses. I think it's significant if he was someone who rescued a woman from Youngchul, in fact.)
Notably, at this time, Rand has been seen publicly with Yui
At some point after, Rand is married to Yui, legally adopted into the family as head of household/manager of the company via Mukoyoshi Law
Nessa returns home from England under the impression that Rand "couldn't wait for" her and married someone younger, from the big name fancy big money company
I think it's really interesting that Kouichi invested in Rand's company because this screams SNAKE to me. Who else do we know who has been trying to.... invest in people to potentially cash in on at a later time...? This has been Yui's entire deal with Shinae and it feels very interesting to see this show up with Kouichi.
The thing is, it seems like a good thing at this point. We saw that Rand's portfolio holdings were 68+ million, thanks in part to the acquisition! That sounds like a really good deal for him! But what were the stipulations of that acquisition in the first place? Esp with it leading Rand to Hirahara Corp and all of the Hirahara-Kim corruption, the seedy underbelly of their executives.
There's also some interesting dialogue in Kousuke's claw machine memory when he's visiting Japan.
Rand gives Kousuke a talk about want vs need (clearly something he's learned in his life about his career vs Nessa) but what Yui says feels even MORE interesting in light of this episode.
"Though he does have a point with these claw machines. If you don't play it right, you lose a lot of money before you get your prize. Something you could say your father is all too familiar with..."
I am CONVINCED that Kouichi investing in Rand was a long-term bide his time set up. Invest in this penniless man with so much potential and then cash in on him when he's done all the work. Rand is said to have acquired several big-name clients (who he still worked with once he was part of Hirahara Corp) which means once the company was acquired, that was money going to the Hiraharas now. All his hard work, paid off Kouichi's investment. But Yui says you lose a lot of money before you get your prize. So what does that mean?
Was he cheated in the acquisition? Was he given an unfair deal? Something that sounded promising but was, in fact, not that fair or good in the end? It sure seems like it, right? For Kouichi to be a person who is apparently not important to Rand, despite being his best friend once and investing in him, it feels like he must've been a person who Rand felt revealed his true colors and was no longer worth his loyalty. And the fact that Rand never did enjoy Japan in Kousuke's memories? This is probably tied heavily to realizing how very corrupt the company he'd joined was - and that if he left, he lost so much. His contacts, the money he'd be making from them, he'd have to start everything all over again. Sunk cost fallacy.
And we know that when Rand became temporary chairman of the board (and he remains chairman to this day), there was a controversy about Rand being seen with Yui outside of the company. What kind of relationship did they have? Was Yui someone who Rand had helped out when Youngchul was being a creep? Did she play into the "victim" role to take advantage of Rand and his position?
Recall that Rand praises Shinae's character and tells her to be careful of who she trusts because there's a lot of people who would want to take advantage of her good character - as though he, too, has experienced this kind of thing. As though his own good, honorable character was taken advantage of - and it led him into a trap.
And if there was a controversy, Hirahara Corp would want to clean it up immediately because they're already dealing with a sexual assault controversy they need to clear up which is affecting their image.
So what if there was some kind of blackmailing happening? Because isn't it so convenient that there's a controversy about the new chairman being seen with the daughter of the founder of Hirahara Corp and then.... he's married to her? Could he have been backed into this via some kind of blackmail? Losing Youngchul, causing a new controversy, maybe something in their contract, idk. Could Nessa have been at risk? Was it more that Rand realized this was a place he didn't want Nessa involved that he couldn't safely bring her here, that she'd be in danger around these people? Was there a subtle implied threat?
I know people think Rand threw Nessa away but I don't think that's it. I think he had to do something to protect her and he knew she would never leave him otherwise. That she would never understand anything he tried to explain, would want to be with him regardless, would expose herself to harm for him. Is that why he married Yui? To break things off with Nessa in a means to save for her? Was there any kind of push, shoving him in a corner, or was it just a decision he made? The implications of the controversy make me think there was something more than just making the choice.
Again, we have to remember this is a very biased recollection that does not favor Rand, and definitely does not know what happened where Nessa and Nana were not involved. Even things like Nana asserting that she knew Nessa's inability to carry a pregnancy bothered him and affected their relationship - that it created a fervor that he'd be willing to do anything about - is probably not true, or the way she thought it was. She hated this man for the way he hurt her daughter, and she only sees him through this lens of her hatred, her own hurt.
I think Rand was more than Nana knew him to be - or was willing to accept him to be. And that makes perfect sense! There's so much we still don't know, we can't just follow Nana's accusations and accept that Rand just. Gave Nessa up for a younger wife, for a family of money, for his own sheer greed.
So one of the questions that remains, of course, is: if Kouichi was an heir, how did we end up with Yui and Rand the Yoshi? Especially given how quickly this timeline seems to have gone. And where IS Kouichi?
I think the first obvious guess is that Kouichi is dead. No one ever mentions him, he hasn't been seen, and there would never be a need to utilize Mukoyoshi Law if there was a male heir to manage the company. This is a sort of last resort, no other options left kind of deal. So it stands to reason that perhaps Kouichi met an.... untimely demise. I think the other option is that he was left in some manner incapacitated, but this one is harder for me to get my head around. Yui being behind the stroke the former CFO had works better because he was an older man more likely TO be incapacitated by a stroke, but a younger man might not necessarily be taken down by that, so what good would a medically induced stroke be? And if that were the case, people might still talk about him? I'm not sure.
Obviously, I think if he died, Yui was behind it, because that's the character she possesses - she has clawed her way towards her goal and hasn't let anyone or anything stand in the way of it. We know she had to go through her sister(s) to push them out of the company in any means (we've seen Hansuke's career held hostage in what was likely Yui coercing her sister to step down/remove her involvement from the family). But imagine if she had to also go through a brother - someone who would be granted what she'd never be allowed, simply because HE was born male, unlike her, he'd be given everything she dreamt of. But because she was a woman, she would only be pushed into other directions, never into the company.
Yui possesses a loathing of the patriarchy and men in particular despite how closely she works with them, largely in part because the most worthless man will be granted things she won't via the patriarchy, where she's been oppressed by it, denied the same opportunities, even if her skills far outrank the men's. Imagine if she had to go through a brother who was instantly granted what she dreamt of - who represented everything she couldn't have, given so freely and easily. Who didn't have to fight and claw.
Could Kouichi have been the first blood on Yui's hands?
Because again, there's too many coincidences here. Rand is wed quickly to Yui, who earns the status of chairwoman via her marriage to Rand, the chairman - something she'd not have been able to do without marrying him. Yui seen publicly with Rand causing a controversy when he was named chairman feels like it's so pre-meditated - what if she played that victim role, took advantage of Rand's good character, found opportunities to be seen with him in public so that people would talk. The new CFO and the daughter of the founder are seen together often, what could this mean? Force the hand of her father. All while taking out her brother?
Worse, what if Rand was somehow involved in this, and it went in a direction he didn't expect? Yui and Rand teamed up together against Kouichi, the man who wronged Rand, someone who Yui could spin stories about having wronged her, too. Rand willing to work with her to bring him down, maybe make him pay.... and then he paid in a way Rand never expected? idk that part's a little dramatic but I DO think Yui is involved with what happened to Kouichi and I DO think her involvement with Rand was part of a bigger plan.
The most wild reveal to me, really, is that Rand had been trapped so long by the Hiraharas - that he's been a rat for so long, that Kouichi had his claws in him long before Yui ever did. That the Hiraharas truly are a web that he could never escape and every trap he walked into, he should have seen coming.
Poor Shinae, tbh, having to deal with this trauma dump lol. Like, don't get me wrong. Nana has never had the room to grieve and it clearly wasn't her intention to dump this all on Shinae. She didn't turn away Shinae, thinking she could remain strong, but the letters broke her. The photo broke her. Talking about the things she never properly grieved destroyed her and opened a dam and everything came out and here's this teenage girl who is going through her own crisis, saddled with her own abandonment issues, learning all about Nol's past, the stories about his family that even he doesn't know. Things Nana had never spoken about until she shattered now.
That's heavy. And she's been saddled with the kind of knowledge that will be horrible to accidentally slip up, as is foreshadowed with the lack of eyes talking about never telling Nol about the abortion. You know that's going to come up one day, maybe while they're arguing, maybe something that casually slips because she's forgotten this isn't something he knows, and it's going to shake him to the core - reinforce that he was never meant to be, that he defied everything by existing even after he was aborted, and that life continues to punish him for it, and likely feed into his anti-hero arc.
But more than that, Shinae is just going through it. She came to Nana looking for answers, and it ended with a lot of trauma dumping and more questions than she had before. Mind you, I think if Shinae were to sit down and parse through some things, it would help her create a better understanding - and maybe she could try to connect some loose ends, like Nol's dislike for tea being tied to his mother's death and his intense fear of Yui, but given her slower processing and the way she tends to miss these bigger picture items, I'm not sure if that's a connection she can see just yet. I'd like to hope it is, but I worry that everything else she's learned might overwhelm her and make it difficult to put things together.
This feels especially reinforced in her surveillance of Nol's room, and the way she missed details that were kind of there in the open - her hat, for one thing, the make up, which she might've been able to connect to him doing her make up at the formal. She comes away feeling like she doesn't know him at all, that she knows even less of him now (especially seeing his marks and his nearly perfect score on his entrance exam), but there's little signs sitting right there that she doesn't pick up on because she doesn't know what she's looking for. She's looking for something and expecting it will just stand out to her, that the pieces of the puzzle will come together, but there's little details that I think could have helped her tie back to their early friendship that she blatantly missed. Again, this makes sense, because she doesn't know what she's looking for and she's hoping to see a sign, but in doing so, she misses obvious keys.
I don't know how she's supposed to get any sleep after this, though lmao. If she was already unable to sleep before, this is NOT going to help the insomnia lmao my poor girl ;~; Nana's tea isn't even going to be of use because Nana has led me to believe that's caffeinated.
I do think all of this new information will be interesting in seeing how Shinae and Nol's interactions go in the future. She now knows so much more about his own past, about his own parents' history than even he does, and it becomes more difficult to not slip up and accidentally say something the longer that knowledge sits with you, because at some point you begin to forget "oh yeah he doesn't know this". None of this knowledge even provides any comfort - it just further makes it seem like Rand never wanted Nol nor anything to do with him and worse, paints him in a light that he abandoned Nessa when we, as readers, can conclude there's something more, we don't have enough details to know why Rand made that decision.
But there's really never gonna be a reconciliation between Rand and Nol huh loooool D:
