thinking about sayeon and her guilt.
ryujin carries a tremendous amount of guilt for having precipitated the death of her family, yet she is still able to recognize that, ultimately, she was just a child who wanted to do good. what happened to her was profoundly unfair, and not the fault of a well-intentioned child acting with limited understanding. of course that doesn’t stop her from feeling guilt, but it allows ryujin to situate her actions in a broder context and therefore recognise the larger actors at play that are the actual root of why that happened.
sayeon, by contrast, views herself as the sole component responsible for everything that happens. she avoids directing frustration toward the actions of others because, in her view, “blaming others” inhibits self-improvement. as a result, she dismisses the behavior of others as something not worth dwelling on, and instead concludes that she should have anticipated and accounted for their actions in advance. and of course sayeon assumes blame for every negative outcome. because if she’s at fault then the situation must have been within her control; and if it was within her control that would entail she has the power to fix everything. this mindset is foundational to sayeon’s world view. accepting limits to her responsibility would also mean accepting limits to her ability to remedy what goes wrong, something she is unwilling to concede. a good example of this is the juxtaposition of ryujin and sayeon’s approach to the aberrant corps. ryujin views the system itself as fundamentally unsalvageable. conversely, sayeon believes that even a decades-old structure like the aberrant corps system can be fixed, and that she herself has the capacity to do so.
everything sayeon does is fueled by a guilt that has been gnawing at her since she was a child. throughout her life, she has lived with the singular aim of purifying herself of her family’s sins. the irony is that she is not responsible for her family’s actions; she did not make those choices, nor did she participate in them. but she still insists on carrying the weight of it, because in her mind the burden must be borne by someone. and since her family lacks the conscience or willingness to confront their wrongdoings, the responsibility naturally falls on her. and since this is the idea that sayeon has internalised, her identity becomes inextricably tied to atonement for wrongs that were never truly hers.
she did everything by the book, striving to become the perfect rule-abiding, dutiful citizen in an effort to compensate for the wrongs committed by those around her. she dressed in a deliberately feminine and modest manner; she even set her sights on attending law school, pursuing a path associated with order, justice, and propriety. she allowed herself to be pushed around at school and never defended herself against the degradations her classmates directed at her. because this was her penance.
i mean, sayeon’s guilt extends even to her own existence, believing as she puts it, “the world will never become a better place as long as there’s someone like me living in it”. but if she believes that she’s in control, she can fix everything, including and especially herself. however, if she were to concede that she is not responsible for everything, then she would also have to contend with the fact that she was never fully in control, and if that’s the case, what if she’s someone that can’t be fixed? what course of action should she take then when she firmly believes that the world will never improve for as long as she still lives? should she just cease to exist then, if she’s nothing but a net-minus to society, and she can’t fix herself?
