The way Unjeong's grief and guilt about not being able to save the Child of Eternity translates to his relationship with Chae-ni and uncertain feelings toward her is so interesting to me.
Here is a boy who gave you kindness and friendship in a scary place where you're constantly hurt and dehumanized, who comforted you even while going through worse at the hands of your captors, who helped you figure out your abilities even at the cost of his safety. Here is a boy whose name you never knew, who you tried to save from the torture he was being put through, who was dead long before you returned to the city that haunted your nightmares in hopes of saving him.
Here is a girl that you found dead in a ditch hours after you first met her, that woke from the dead in a haunting reminder of the friend you failed to save. Here is a girl that seeks you out to help her and her friends control their volatile abilities, that gives you her friendship and trust regardless of how many times you've hurt her and turned her away, that gives you kindness and warmth you haven't experienced in years, that fills your cold, impersonal apartment with personal affects and her weirdly endearing charm. Here is a girl that holds the stolen heart of the friend you failed to save, that you betray in hopes of moving on and closing this haunting chapter of your life, that you realize filled a hole in your heart that you couldn't handle losing again. Here is a girl that dreamed of traveling, being kissed, and living past 30, that pushed through all the physical and emotional barriers shielding your heart and helped you at the cost of her safety and dreams, that wants to save you as much as you once did him.
There's so much overlap between Chae-ni and that boy and I think there's something so hauntingly beautiful about how they sort of become the centre of his lonely world, the beating heart that brought the colour back into his life.
The same heart that they shared.
