100% Juyeon also suffers from ptsd (Jiwook inflicted it upon him and now he makes Jiwook suffer from ptsd). I’ve seen comments where people say why doesn’t Jiwook just leave, he literally can’t cause Juyeon will not allow for that to happen. They’re both just mentally ill in the same house.
But I don’t agree with the “chosen” comment. Jiwook is just homophobic. Juyeon didn’t want to be chosen, in the past he’s shown signs of clearly wanting to move on. It’s just ptsd and trauma.
yes trauma and ptsd are a huge part of it! and i probably made the “chosen” point sound more literal than i meant it. i don’t think juyeon consciously thinks "i need jiwook to choose me", or that he hasn’t tried to move on. what i’m questioning is why that trauma manifests as such a specific need to control, isolate, and create dependence. we’ve seen that juyeon deliberately orchestrates situations where other people hurt and humiliate jiwook, while keeping himself outside of it (unlike jiwook, who actually participated in the group acts when it was done to juyeon). but he isn’t simply recreating what jiwook did to him in the past. jiwook’s cruelty came from fear and an inability to confront what he was feeling (homophobia), whereas juyeon is actively stripping away jiwook’s other sources of safety so that he becomes the one person left to turn to. which feels less like retaliation and more like an attempt to control the attachment itself: “if i make myself the only safe place left, you’ll have no choice but to come back to me.” that’s why i struggle to see it as only revenge. there seems to be something unresolved underneath all the anger and trauma that makes hurting jiwook alone insufficient. he wants to occupy a very specific place in his mind, and when i say he “wants to be chosen,” i don’t mean it as a conscious motive. i mean that his actions seem designed to manufacture the choice he was never able to get naturally (in their past), which is to make himself the person jiwook can’t escape, but also can’t stop turning toward. but hey, maybe it really is just the way his trauma has manifested! even if i don’t understand it.
Yeah I understand now what you mean and I agree! I wish the novel actually expanded on that and explained it. It would’ve made for a more compelling story writing and it would’ve been more engaging
this just proved to me that it isn’t JUST vengeance that drives juyeon, but the pleasure of making himself indispensable to jiwook. yes, he wounds him with the same humiliation and pain he once endured at his hands, but then he takes it further by isolating jiwook until juyeon becomes the only place left to turn. as uncomfortable as it is to admit, i think the fact that jiwook didn’t choose him (referring to their past) is the greatest wound juyeon has carried all these years, buried beneath everything else, the anger, the resentment, and all that vengeance (more like longing) that ultimately pushed him to this point. he just wants to be chosen. anyways im sticking around out of a morbid curiosity but this is hard to stomach.