I understand your point and the fact that Mokyeon is no victim. However, having your paternal figures (the people who should be supporting you almost unconditionally and teaching you how to be a decent human being) drop you TWO times isn’t the greatest situation to develop healthy relationship dynamics with any person, much less with your potential partner. Being discarded as young as he was teaches you quite some toxic lessons (here’s some examples):
1. You can’t trust people at all.
2. Everyone that approaches you has something they want from you and once they have it/don’t want it anymore, they leave or make you leave.
3. No matter how hurt you can feel and how much you beg your loved ones to change/not to leave you, they will leave you all alone eventually. And many more.
I’m not justifying how badly he acted in season 1 towards Nanjo (non-consensual sexual acts can NEVER be justified) but now I can understand he didn’t do it out of pure evil/ sadistic tendencies. How he acts is a result of various learned behaviors, things that get stuck after your nervous system has been in flight or fight mode since you were a child.
The majority of times, I’d agree with you on the fact that authors like to make their characters do horrendous/unhinged things just to justify them later on with a dramatic event around their childhood/teenage years. However, I don’t get that feeling here, because you can feel how desperate he is in everything he does, he says or even how he thinks internally and, as I said, that’s a learned behavior. He’s not doing it for his own enjoyment. He’s truly scared of another person leaving him.
He is by no means a victim, the only person who can be described as that is Nanjo and I truly hope he gets an ending he feels happy and at peace with (whatever that might feel like to him).
Honestly, I’m sick of this silly trope of giving toxic tops some traumatic past. It doesn’t excuse what they do. You don’t get to mess with other people just because you didn’t have it easy growing up. If everyone started to hurt others simply because they had something happen to them when they were little the world be in chaos.
What he did to Nanjo was unforgivable and of course, Nanjo is a nice guy so he would forgive him in the end. I know I wouldn’t. If he had feelings for Nanjo, he should have been more mature about it and been more open, honest and patient. I don’t feel sorry for that shitty uke because he brought it on himself but Nanjo did not deserve what they did to him. He was just trying to help someone who he didn’t even realize did not need his help in the first place.
It was bad enough that he had to let go of his pride for the sake of protecting that guy but Mokyeon deliberately did what he did without a thought for how it might affect Nanjo. I bet he did it so the uke would dump Nanjo but did he even stop to think about how Nanjo might feel to be found out like that? He literally moved him to tears just from the sheer shame and embarrassment. I still hate him for that.
As far as I am concerned, Nanjo is the only victim here. He is the only one who deserves my sympathy and the only one I care about. Traumatic past or not, Mokyeon has to suffer for what he did.