Please support the authors by reading Manhwas on the official websites. This is where you can read the Manhwa: Jinx  But be aware that the Manhwa is a mature Yaoi, which means, it is about homosexuality with explicit scenes. Here is the link of the table of contents about Jinx. Here is the link where you can find the table of contents of analyzed Manhwas. Here are the links, if you are interested in the first work from Mingwa, BJ Alex,  and the 2 previous essays about Jinx  Between A Squeeze And A Crack – part 2 and the Birth of A Flower (part 1)

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The Hand That Says Everything and Nothing

There is a gesture in episode 90 that unsettles me more than any act of violence, any argument, any explicit rejection. Joo Jaekyung reaches out (chapter 90) — and then he pulls his hand back. (chapter 90) No words are spoken to stop him. His hand is not even pushed away, like doc Dan did it before. (chapter 21) Everything happens in silence. The interruption comes entirely from within.

As readers, we could be tempted to read this as restraint, perhaps even growth. Yet the text itself resists that interpretation. The thought accompanying the gesture is not “I need you”, but “Who am I to ask you to stay?” The question is not directed at Kim Dan. It is directed at himself.

This hand says everything and nothing at once. It reveals a conviction without explaining it, a decision without justification and dialogue. In this moment, Joo Jaekyung no longer sees himself as a person capable of care, protection, or repair. He sees himself as the origin of harm — not merely someone who committed mistakes, but someone whose presence has become synonymous with violence and sin. It is, as if he has absorbed every accusation, every outcome, every imbalance of power, until he no longer distinguishes between what he did and what was done through him. He does not fear becoming abusive; he believes he already embodies it. To conclude, Joo Jaekyung has reached a point where he positions himself as the origin of Kim Dan’s suffering. (chapter 90) In his mind, everything that followed the hiring — the money, the contract, the protection, the conflicts — converges back onto him. Faced with this conclusion, he rewrites the past. The good moments lose their weight. (chapter 26) (chapter 27) (chapter 88) (chapter 89) The help he provided becomes irrelevant. What remains is a single narrative: meeting him caused harm.

To grasp the logic of this withdrawal, it is not enough to examine this scene in isolation. We must also contrast it with earlier scenes, with figures who shaped his thinking, and with patterns of responsibility and shame that predate Kim Dan. Only then does the withdrawn hand reveal its meaning: not respect, not restraint, but the first visible sign of self-erasure and sacrifice — a silence chosen in the belief that presence itself has become a form of wrongdoing.

The Art of Letting Go

What is striking in this scene is not only what Joo Jaekyung does, but what Mingwa deliberately withholds from view. (chapter 90) We never see his face while listening to his thoughts. The panels deny us access to his facial expression (chapter 90), his eyes, any visible articulation of emotion. Instead, we are positioned behind him, aligned with his back and his outstretched hand, while his inner thoughts unfold in silence. Meaning is displaced from facial expression to bodily interruption. Jinx-philes must infer everything from posture, movement, and absence.

The hand he extends is open, hesitant, and trembling. (chapter 90) In Mingwa’s visual language, this matters. An open hand is not an instrument of control but of appeal. It does not seize; it exposes vulnerability. He needs help and support. The tremor is equally significant. This is not the vibration of contained rage or adrenaline before a fight. It is a body that no longer commits itself fully to action. For the first time, Joo Jaekyung’s physical certainty fractures before a gesture is completed.

At that moment, what collapses is not his strength, but his fighting spirit. It becomes obvious, when you compare this gesture (chapter 90) to his old habit, (chapter 61) the clenched fist, when he expressed determination to achieve his goal (bringing back doc Dan or winning a fight). (chapter 81)

Until now, Joo Jaekyung has always responded to crisis through resistance. Even when cornered, he pushed forward—by clenching his fists, facing confrontation (chapter 74), or converting conflict into challenge. (chapter 73) Fighting was not only his profession; it was his primary mode of being in the world. Here, however, the impulse to fight dissolves. (chapter 90) The hand does not harden into a grip. It falters. The will to confront, insist, or endure gives way to resignation.

It is precisely this loss that recalls another scene—not because the gestures are identical, but because the logic of bodily collapse suddenly aligns. In episode 16, Kim Dan does not begin by pleading in front of Heo Manwook, the loan shark. (chapter 16) His hand is first crushed. The antagonist targets the very instrument of his livelihood, injuring what allows him to work, to treat, to survive. Only after this act of violence does Kim Dan cling to his aggressor. (chapter 16) The grasp that follows is not an invitation, but a reaction to damage already inflicted. Resistance has been broken through the body before appeal becomes possible. It symbolizes submission, exactly like in the penthouse.

Mingwa stages this sequence carefully: injury precedes supplication. Kim Dan’s grip is not a sign of agency, but of desperation. He does not extend his hand freely; he clutches because he has been made vulnerable. Survival no longer depends on strength or refusal, but on mercy extracted after harm.

The echo in episode 90 is therefore not visual symmetry, but structural reversal. Joo Jaekyung’s hand has not been crushed. (chapter 90) No external force has targeted his body, his career, or his means of survival. And yet the gesture falters all the same, as the damage has already occurred.

The violence here is not enacted through force, but through language. Heesung’s words on the rooftop —accusations of brutality (chapter 89), unlovability, moral contamination (chapter 89) — do not introduce a foreign judgment. They articulate what Joo Jaekyung already believes about himself. (chapter 84) Deep down, he thinks that he can not be forgiven and even loved. This is precisely why they take hold. Spoken aloud, they acquire the authority of truth. Once internalized, they no longer need to be repeated.

Mingwa makes this internalization visible not through dialogue, but through a remembered image. (chapter 89) The panel does not show Heesung speaking again; it shows Joo Jaekyung’s clenched fist, isolated, rigid, suspended in recollection. This is not the fist of imminent action. It does not precede a strike. It does not convert pain into confrontation. Instead, it freezes.

In earlier scenes, the clenched fist functioned as a promise—to endure, to retaliate, to win. Here, it marks the opposite. The body remembers the accusation, but no longer translates it into resistance. The fist no longer gathers force; it contains it, uselessly. What we witness is not suppressed violence, but the collapse of the impulse to fight at all.

This is the decisive shift. The accusation has done its work. Joo Jaekyung does not respond by proving Heesung wrong; he responds by accepting the premise. If violence defines him, then restraint is no longer ethical struggle—it becomes erasure. The fighting spirit does not turn inward. It simply disappears.

Unlike Kim Dan, whose resistance is broken by injury, Joo Jaekyung arrives at surrender through “self-recognition”, another false belief. His hand retreats not because it has been harmed, but because he has accepted the premise that his presence itself is harmful. The violence has migrated inward. It no longer needs an aggressor.

In this sense, Joo Jaekyung mirrors Kim Dan not at the moment of physical injury, but at the moment after domination has succeeded—when resistance feels illegitimate, and appeal itself begins to seem like an act of transgression.

The contrast, however, is just as important as the resemblance. Unlike Kim Dan in episode 16, Joo Jaekyung is not on his knees. (chapter 90) He is not physically lowered, cornered, or framed from above. His body remains upright, broad, and imposing. From the outside, he still appears strong, yet deep down, he is falling apart. The withdrawal of the hand is not restraint, but surrender. A strong body remains standing while the will to fight quietly disappears.

What deepens the tragedy of this moment is that Kim Dan does not witness the champion’s action. (chapter 90) His gaze drifts elsewhere, toward the teddy bear. He is oblivious to the trembling, the hesitation, or the aborted appeal. Nor does he meet Joo Jaekyung’s eyes—because the eyes are never shown. The scene is structured around a double absence: a plea that is never fully expressed, and a witness who never sees it. To conclude, the physical therapist has no idea about the inner turmoil of his fated lover.

After revealing his past with the perverted hospital director, Kim Dan had tried to calm Joo Jaekyung by touching his arm , (chapter 90) offering reassurance. That attempt failed, not because Kim Dan lacked care, but because reassurance can only reach someone who is still willing to fight for their place. Joo Jaekyung is no longer asking how to endure. He is asking whether he should exist in this space at all.

What blocks Kim Dan’s words from reaching him is not their content, but the position from which they are received. Joo Jaekyung hears them through a familiar filter — one that reduces Kim Dan to someone who must be protected from himself. In doing so, he unconsciously aligns himself with the very figures who shaped Kim Dan’s silence: the grandmother who decided for him (chapter 65), and Heesung who dismissed his agency (chapter 89) under the guise of concern.

Yet Kim Dan’s words are neither naïve nor dependent. He states them clearly: the arrangement was consensual; the price was his to set; what followed was his responsibility. He does not ask to be spared, corrected, or guided. He asserts authorship over his own choices. (chapter 90) But this assertion cannot be heard by someone who has already decided that Kim Dan must be shielded — even from himself.

The rooftop scene before that night exposes the same logic from another angle. Heesung, too, frames Kim Dan as “too nice for his own good,” implying that he does not know what is right for him, and that any involvement with Joo Jaekyung must therefore be exploitation. In both cases, concern becomes a form of erasure. Kim Dan’s agency is acknowledged in words (chapter 65), but denied in structure.

Faced with this, Joo Jaekyung does not challenge Kim Dan’s claim. (chapter 90) He does something more drastic: he removes himself. If Kim Dan cannot be recognized as an equal subject capable of choosing him, then the only ethical position left, in Joo Jaekyung’s mind, is disappearance. By refusing to claim a right, Joo Jaekyung does return choice to Kim Dan. But he does so by removing himself from the field of choice altogether. There is no negotiation. What appears as liberation is inseparable from abandonment, because it is grounded not in trust, but in the belief that his presence is illegitimate.

This is why the scene cannot be read as growth. It marks the moment when the champion loses the impulse that once defined him. The withdrawal of the hand is not restraint, but surrender. A strong body remains standing while the will to fight quietly disappears. At this point, the language of the jinx quietly inverts. Earlier, Joo Jaekyung spoke of it as something he had—a misfortune attached to him (chapter 2), an external curse that followed his steps. Here, that distinction collapses. He no longer experiences the jinx as an event or condition, but as an identity. He does not fear what might happen because of him; he accepts that he himself is what causes harm. The curse is no longer something he carries. It is something he has become. Once internalized in this way, it no longer requires rituals to contain it. (chapter 75) Practices that once functioned as talismans—gestures meant to ward off misfortune or secure victory—lose their meaning. (chapter 75) What collapses is not only belief in luck, but belief in the necessity of striving at all.

A Space Marked by Collapse

This collapse does not occur in a neutral space. (chapter 90) The room in which Joo Jaekyung withdraws his hand is not simply Kim Dan’s bedroom, nor a private refuge removed from the world. It is a place already marked by interruption, illness, and loss. Again and again, this room has functioned as a site where bodies fail, where care becomes urgent, and where stability quietly dissolves. Fainting, sleeplessness, sickness, drinking, and disappearance have all passed through it. Long before episode 90, this space had been associated not with recovery, but with moments when endurance gives way and something must be endured instead. What unfolds here does not begin with the withdrawn hand. The room has been preparing it all along.

The pattern begins early. In episode 10 8episode 10), Kim Dan wakes up there after drinking excessively, confused why he is sleeping in the penthouse. He doesn’t know that the night before in his drunkenness, his thoughts were turning toward his grandmother. He was mistaking the athlete for his relative. (chapter 10) He feared getting abandoned. When the doctor realized his whereabouts, he imagined that he had sex with the champion. As you can see, the bedroom is strongly intertwined with longing and sin, where consciousness returns only after collapse. This association deepens in episode 20, when sexual intimacy is immediately followed by a phone call announcing his grandmother’s critical condition. (chapter 20) Pleasure and threat coexist in the same space, binding the room to the anticipation of loss.

Later, in episode 29, Kim Dan wakes up there after fainting (chapter 29), his body once again giving way under accumulated strain. The room is no longer merely where exhaustion manifests; it is where it becomes undeniable. In episode 61, the association shifts again: Joo Jaekyung comes to the room seeking sex, but Kim Dan is unwell, unable to voice his own thoughts, unable to refuse. (chapter 61) Illness interrupts desire, and the room marks the moment where agency falters.

The most alarming incident occurs when Kim Dan sleepwalks and nearly falls from the railing (chapter 79). Once more, it is this room that frames the danger. (chapter 79) The body moves without consciousness, hovering at the edge between presence and disappearance. The room becomes a liminal space where life is not actively threatened by violence, but quietly endangered by exhaustion and dissociation (suicidal thoughts).

This accumulation reaches a turning point in episode 53, after Kim Dan leaves. Joo Jaekyung enters the now deserted room and finds the jacket left behind. (chapter 53) The object becomes a trace of absence, and the room transforms into a container of loss. Standing by the window, Joo Jaekyung is portrayed without eyes. (chapter 53) The visual choice is crucial: it does not indicate blindness in a literal sense, but an inability to see forward, to orient himself. He is present in the room, but detached from direction and purpose. This scene announces the falling apart of the athlete.

What follows does not mean that Joo Jaekyung begins to deteriorate inside this room. On the contrary. After Kim Dan’s departure, he avoids it. (chapter 55) The space is sealed off, preserved, treated almost as a forbidden zone. The cleaning staff is not allowed to enter. Nothing is moved, corrected, or neutralized. The room becomes a reliquary rather than a dwelling — a place frozen in the moment of loss. Joo Jaekyung does not confront what happened there; he keeps it intact, untouched, and therefore unresolved. At the same time, he imagines that avoiding that place will help him to forget doc Dan’s gaze and face.

Therefore it is logical that his collapse unfolds elsewhere. The displacement is visible. In episode 53, the jacket is thrown in the direction of the couch. (chapter 53) (chapter 53) In episode 54, wine bottles begin to accumulate beside the couch (chapter 54) in his own bedroom leaving a huge red wine stain on the carpet. (chapter 55) And in episode 90, the teddy bear now rests on the couch in Kim Dan’s room (chapter 90) — occupying the very place toward which the jacket once flew. Across these scenes, the hand and couch emerge as a recurring site of impact, exhaustion, and surrender. It is where bodies fall, where frustration lands, where the weight of what cannot be said is deposited. One detail caught my attention: because they are not sitting on the couch, the main leads are discussing together. They are able to face each other and as such to listen to each other. (chapter 90) Their respective position in this room reminded me of their previous arguments. (chapter 45) (chapter 51) (chapter 61) (chapter 64) Only when they would truly face each other, they would be more honest and expose their thoughts and emotions. As soon as there is a table, a bed or a couch, I detected some restrain and silence. In other words, the presence of the teddy bear and the couch in that scene explains why Kim Dan is silent and passive after their conversation. He is definitely remembering the day and conversation at the amusement park. (chapter 90) I am hoping that he finally talks about his past and childhood in the next chapter. But honestly, I am a little skeptical, as doc Dan has no idea how Joo Jaekyung suffered, while he was away (loss of money and contracts, members, reproaches from Potato and Park Namwook, the slap, no one showed a true concern for his well-being). They all expected him to return to his old self and become a champion again. He only learned recently that members had abandoned him. (chapter 88) On the other hand, it is about time that doc Dan becomes proactive so that they finally become a real team.

But let’s return our attention to the room. (chapter 90) The latter itself remains suspended, untrespassed. (chapter 55) But the logic it contains spreads. What cannot be processed there resurfaces around the couch: drinking replaces training; avoidance replaces discipline; headaches replace resolve. Insomnia leads to inertia and passivity. Joo Jaekyung does not resign, and he does not openly collapse. Yet something essential fractures. Here, the fighter remains active in form, but disengaged in spirit. His depression does not announce itself through breakdown, but through relocation — from the preserved space of loss to the furniture that absorbs its aftermath.It is a space where suffering does not explode but accumulates, where the narrative repeatedly returns to show that unwell-being is not an exception, but a condition that has been waiting to be acknowledged.

Within The Silent Friend in the Blue Light, this room becomes one of depression’s many disguises: familiar, enclosed, outwardly calm, yet saturated with vulnerability. It does not announce danger. It hosts it quietly.

The Hidden Mirror of Sacrifice

What emerges after this displacement is not merely grief, but inversion. Without naming it, the narrative stages a quiet exchange of positions. Joo Jaekyung begins to occupy the place Kim Dan once held — not in circumstance, but in moral posture. The champion who once advanced through force, certainty, and entitlement now adopts the logic of self-erasure (chapter 90) that defined the doctor’s earlier life.

For a long time, Kim Dan lived under the conviction that his presence imposed a burden. He apologized (chapter 79) for everything. He was to blame for everything. (chapter 37) He endured before being asked. He accepted harm as a condition of acceptance and staying. His silence was not passivity, but a learned ethics: if I ask for less, if I take up less space, if I disappear when necessary, others, in particular his grandmother, might be spared. (chapter 53) That posture did not originate with Joo Jaekyung. It preceded him. It was shaped by debt, obligation, omission, and by figures who decided on Kim Dan’s behalf what he could endure and what he deserved.

In episode 90, that posture reappears — but it is no longer Kim Dan’s. Joo Jaekyung does not lash out. (chapter 90) He does not argue. He does not demand. Instead, he blames himself for everything, thus he withdraws. He refuses to claim a right. He positions himself as the problem that must be removed so that something better might follow. (chapter 53) This is the same moral calculus Kim Dan once applied to himself: the belief that care becomes ethical only when it is accompanied by sacrifice, and that love, if it exists at all, must be proven through disappearance. The only difference is that he can not apologize as his existence has become the synonym of wrongdoing. Thus Kim Dan can not hear the distress from his “loved one”.

The mirroring is not obvious, because the bodies do not look alike. Kim Dan’s earlier suffering was visible: exhaustion, malnourishment, fainting, tears. Joo Jaekyung’s is not. He stopped crying a long time ago. (chapter 74) He remains upright. His posture holds. Yet, he is now voiceless. From the outside, he still appears powerful, but the loss of cry or sound indicates loss of agency and choice. But structurally, the positions have reversed. The one who once endured now asserts authorship over his choices. (chapter 90) The one who once claimed authority now doubts his right to remain.

This inversion does not arise in a vacuum. It is prepared by encounters with figures who mistake projection for truth. Both Heesung (chapter 89) and the green-haired man (chapter 42) operate through the same mechanism: they reduce complexity into a single verdict. Like false mirrors, they collapse months into moments, gestures into essence, and relationships into accusations. They speak as if they own the truth — not because they see clearly, but because jealousy and greed demand certainty. Hence they are connected to the color green. Their words are not reflective (chapter 89); they are consumptive.

As I argued in my earlier essay on deceptive mirrors, the green-haired man is not a mirror at all, but a monster revealed by one. He does not reflect; he distorts. Kim Dan, by contrast, functions as the Ungaikyō — the mirror beyond the clouds — which does not invent monstrosity, but exposes it. In his presence, hidden motives surface: envy, entitlement, moral resentment. This is why certain figures cannot bear his gaze, and why others attempt to shatter the reflection by attacking the one who stands beside him.

This reversal also explains why Kim Dan cannot recognize what is happening. (chapter 90) He continues to address Joo Jaekyung as an athlete, a patient, a man who needs reassurance. He speaks clearly, claims responsibility, and insists on consent. He does everything that would have saved him in the past. But those words reach someone who is no longer negotiating endurance. Joo Jaekyung is not asking how to stay. He has already concluded that by keeping him by his side is wrong.

Here lies the fatal misalignment: because Joo Jaekyung possesses such a damaged self-image, he interprets his ability to expose corruption as proof that he belongs to it. He detects the hospital director’s moral rot instantly (chapter 90) — not because he shares it, but because the mirror he has become reveals it. Yet instead of recognizing this capacity as ethical clarity, he mistakes it for contamination. He equates himself with the very figures whose cruelty is laid bare in his presence. However, he is making a huge mistake, he is accepting this projection forgetting that he had it all wrong for one reason: (chapter 90) During their first meeting, the “hamster” had grabbed his “anaconda”. (chapter 1) Such a gesture could be interpreted as a seduction, and don’t forget that the previous physical therapist had rubbed him the wrong way: (chapter 1) Finally, observe that after this incident, Joo Jaekyung was looking at the embarrassed doc Dan (chapter 56) and thinking that they could have fun together in bed. (chapter 56)

In this sense, the mirror remains hidden because it reflects an earlier version of Kim Dan that the latter himself has begun to leave behind. That’s why he is looking at the teddy bear. (chapter 90) Earlier, in Paris, Kim Dan took its hand and squeezed it, drawing steadiness from what it represented rather than from struggle. (chapter 84) This gesture symbolized their reconciliation in the end, (chapter 84) the return of trust and faith in the “champion”. What Joo Jaekyung mirrors is not who the doctor is now, but who he once had to be in order to survive. The tragedy lies precisely there: the champion adopts a posture the doctor has already outgrown thanks to him.

And as with all mirrors in this story, the reflection is imperfect. Joo Jaekyung’s withdrawal is framed as ethics, not necessity. He believes he is restoring balance by removing himself. But this belief rests on the same flawed premise that once governed Kim Dan’s silence — that one person can decide alone what harm is, and who must vanish to prevent it. The mirror reveals continuity, not resolution.

What appears as role reversal is therefore also a warning. When responsibility becomes indistinguishable from self-removal, the structure of harm does not disappear; it simply changes hands.

The Inherited Horizon (Living for Others)

Joo Jaekyung’s collapse and resignation in episode 90 are not a new development. (chapter 90) It is the reactivation of an older logic — one learned long before Kim Dan entered his life. What surfaces that night is not a crisis born of romance, but the return of a childhood structure in which existence is justified only through sacrifice, and value is always deferred to someone else’s future.

From the beginning, Joo Jaekyung was never taught how to live for himself. Though he was initially encouraged to fight for himself (earning money) (chapter 72), the reality was that he longed for a home, which he came to associate with his mother. Thus over the phone, he promised to become strong (chapter 72) and earn a lot of money so that his mother could return home. As you can see, fighting was strongly intertwined with his mother and his longing for a family.

His entire horizon is shaped by adults who frame life as endurance in service of others. His father beats him and argues with him by asking for respect. (chapter 72), as if the boy’s role was to validate the father’s existence. Joo Jaewoong does not ask his son what he wants (chapter 73); he mocks his ambition (chapter 73) and reduces his dream to delusion. Yet even in conflict, Joo Jaekyung seeks recognition. (chapter 73) He does not reject his father’s gaze — he argues within it, hoping to prove him wrong through success. (chapter 73) As you can see, his life is always focused on the future, on one goal and as such one person: the mother, then the father.

Later, Hwang Byungchul reinforces the same structure. He offers MMA fighting not as a way to find joy or self-discovery, but as a means to “honor his mother’s sacrifice” (chapter 74) He warns against becoming like the father, to change for the sake of his own mother (chapter 74), not by encouraging freedom, but by replacing one obligation with another: win, endure, don’t disgrace the dead. Many years later, he encourages him to change his mind-set, because he could end up alone. (chapter 75) For the first time, it is no longer about winning or enduring. (chapter 75) However, observe how the main lead reacts to this well-meant advice: (chapter 75) He starts visualizing Doc Dan as his goal. It is once again focused on one person and future-oriented.

Striking is that the grandmother in Kim Dan’s life articulates the same ethic from another angle. Kim Dan stays for her sake. (chapter 65) He grows up too fast for her sake. (chapter 65) He suppresses desire, health, and rest for her sake. The moral lesson is identical: if your presence risks harm, reduce yourself; if your absence protects others, endure it.

This is the philosophy Joo Jaekyung inherits — and internalizes.

The night of episode 74 crystalizes this structure. Joo Jaekyung wins a title, believing victory might finally justify his sacrifices. Instead, he loses both parents at once: his father through death, his mother through abandonment. (chapter 74) The latter justifies her betrayal by saying that he is too late, as he is already too old. The promise that sustained him collapses. Winning no longer guarantees return. The future he fought for vanishes. And in the penthouse, we have the same thought again: (chapter 90)

Episode 90 repeats this pattern with devastating precision. Once again, Joo Jaekyung believes that his presence is harmful. Once again, he concludes that removal is ethical. Once again, he lives for someone else’s sake — this time Kim Dan’s. He withdraws not out of desire, but out of obligation. He does not ask what doc Dan wants; he questions himself whether he has the right to keep him by his side. But the gesture represents the answer: He has no right to hope that doc Dan will still live by his side.

Crucially, this is not about winning anymore. The logic of victory has already collapsed. Joo Jaekyung no longer believes that success can restore what was lost. He has internalized the jinx not as misfortune, but as identity. In his mind, Kim Dan has every reason to leave — not because Joo Jaekyung failed, but because he is the failure.

This is why episode 90 does not mirror Kim Dan’s past alone. It repeats Joo Jaekyung’s own childhood logic.

• In episode 73, he claims to fight in order to escape the house.
• In episode 74, he learns that victory costs him everything.
• In episode 90, he stops fighting — because fighting no longer promises return.

The core belief remains unchanged: if you cannot guarantee a good outcome, remove yourself. The hand gesture symbolizes the loss of hope in the end. (chapter 90)

That belief once governed Kim Dan’s life. Now, it governs Joo Jaekyung’s. The tragedy is not that he lets go — but that he does so for the same reason he once fought: not for himself, but to justify his existence through sacrifice. He has never been taught another way to live. Heesung’s words poison him precisely because they echo this logic, arriving at the moment when he had just begun to enjoy life with Kim Dan.

The Silent Friend

At first glance, one might search for the silent friend in the room itself — perhaps in the teddy bear, quietly placed on the sofa where the jacket almost once landed. (chapter 90) The object evokes childhood, comfort, and a softened version of intimacy. It almost invites the idea that this silent presence could be something benign: a substitute for words, a witness that does not judge.

However, with silent friend I am referring to something else. It did not appear in episode 90. It has been there all along. Long before Kim Dan entered his life, Joo Jaekyung was already living with an unnamed mental burden — one he never recognized as such.

It is guilt and self-loathing (chapter 54) — longstanding, cumulative, and corrosive. (chapter 90) And these two “friends” return during that night. What inhabits the room in episode 90 is not nostalgia, nor an unprocessed sadness that merely needs to be named. The same shame that has structured his life since childhood resurfaces here, stripped of all justifications. Joo Jaekyung is not suffering because he feels abandoned in the present. He is suffering because he believes himself to be the reason others leave. (chapter 90) This conviction predates Kim Dan. It is rooted in the unresolved grief surrounding his father’s death, the mother’s disappearance, and the belief that he arrived too late — that he failed at the very moment success was supposed to redeem everything. That night taught him a lesson he never unlearned: love is fragile, and your existence may be what destroys it. So the childhood traumas led him to develop depression, the silent friend.

The clearest indication is his own confession in episode 29. (chapter 29) He cannot sleep. He cannot relax. His body remains permanently alert because, in his words, he could “be killed” at any moment. (chapter 29) For him, this is not a symptom. It is simply part of being a fighter. Insomnia is normalized, rationalized, and dismissed as a professional hazard. Yet his listener immediately senses otherwise.

Kim Dan does not react with admiration or resignation. He worries. He asks himself how he could help. (chapter 29) He understands that this state is unsustainable — that it is only a matter of time before something gives way. What Joo Jaekyung treats as discipline, Kim Dan recognizes as danger.

This asymmetry matters. It reveals something essential: the champion cannot perceive his own depression, while the doctor can perceive it in others. That is precisely why Kim Dan becomes its mirror.

When Kim Dan later decides to leave, the gesture reads as abandonment — even betrayal. But the motivation is the opposite. Blinded by his own low self-esteem, he believes he has failed as a physical therapist. He takes Joo Jaekyung’s harsh words literally and imagines that if he removes himself, the athlete will remain strong. The last memory he carries with him is not intimacy, but rejection. (chapter 53) In his mind, he is obeying a command.

And yet, Kim Dan never truly leaves. He remains present through memory. The abandoned jacket in episode 53 is not a simple object. It becomes the first catalyst. Joo Jaekyung interprets it as rejection, as loss of status — no longer a fan, no longer part of his team. He throws it away in anger. (chapter 53) Read superficially, this looks like karmic reversal for his cruelty on his birthday. (chapter 90) But that explanation is insufficient. What actually begins after is grief and recognition.

The memories associated with Kim Dan do not punish Joo Jaekyung — they unsettle him. They force him to confront something he has never allowed himself to name: that he is unhappy, unmoored, and profoundly insecure. He has never been at peace with himself. He has never known how to live outside of obligation and performance. This is why he has never truly lived.

This is where my earlier interpretation deepens rather than changes. After season one, the “hamster” functioned as a personification of the champion’s jinx. (chapter 54) Now the logic sharpens: Kim Dan does not merely embody bad luck. He embodies the champion’s mental state — depression, trauma, and chronic self-devaluation. He becomes the surface onto which Joo Jaekyung’s inner instability is projected.

This insight is inseparable from depressive realism.

What struck me when I first encountered this concept was how closely it resembled Kim Dan’s position. The absence of “pink-tinted glasses,” the accurate — sometimes brutally accurate — assessment of control, responsibility, and limitation. Kim Dan does not exaggerate hope. He minimizes it. And paradoxically, this allows Joo Jaekyung to justify not changing. His arguments in episode 29 are coherent, logical, and devastatingly persuasive. Kim Dan ends up convinced that the champion should not rest, should not slow down, should not alter course. (chapter 29) And now, in episode 90, Jinx-philes can sense that the athlete is wearing the glasses “depressive realism” once again, where everything seems so true. He recalls all his misdeeds and can only perceive himself as the source of unhappiness for doc Dan. And like mentioned above, during that night, he is just only recalling his wrongdoings. He is overlooking that thanks to him, Doc Dan’s mental and physical conditions (chapter 89) improved, that he could make doc Dan smile. Meeting the hospital director made him see everything in a bad light. As you can see, he still has a black and white mentality. However, the truth is that right from the start, the champion had not just been a terrible person. He could be generous, help someone in need. (chapter 17) He saved doc Dan’s life twice. (chapter 59) He is reducing everything to one single moment and emotion: pain. And his reasoning is resembling a lot to the grandmother: (chapter 65) The only difference is that the grandmother doesn’t express guilt or responsibility for doc Dan’s suffering. For her, it is fate, as she is not responsible for the doctor’s childhood. (chapter 65)

Depression thus becomes mutually reinforcing — invisible to the one who carries it, hyper-visible to the one who mirrors it.

This is why the chapter numbers ending in 9 matter.

• 19 introduces absence and the first rupture linked to family and death. (chapter 19) This image announces the vanishing of the parents.
• 29 stages bodily collapse and unrecognized danger.
• 59 flirts with disappearance through dissociation. Back then, the puppy died leading doc Dan to walk into the ocean.
• 69 , when Joo Jaekyung imagines that doc Dan has once again fallen into the ocean and fears to lose him.
• 79 when Joo Jaekyung stops him from falling. gestures toward falling, both physically and psychologically.

None of these chapters announce suicide. But all of them circle it. They trace the gravitational field of depression — the slow erosion of self-preservation, the normalization of exhaustion, the quiet flirtation with vanishing. However, observe that in episode 89, the notion “suicide” is brought up for the first time by Choi Heesung. (chapter 89) Secondly, he is the only one referring to mental illness: (chapter 89): crazy, egomaniac. As you can see, the last arc linked to the number 9 seems to be focusing on depression and mental issues. Joo Jaekyung’s mental state as an athlete was never treated so far by doctors. And now, you understand my interpretation. The celebrity is now placed in the same situation than the physical therapist for another reason: it is to confront both men with their self-loathing and childhood traumas.

Episode 54 ( = 5+4= 9) is the pivotal transfer point. It is the moment when Jinx-philes are confronted with reality, his mental issues and their origins. No wonder, why he started drinking. (chapter 54)

The dream seals this logic. Joo Jaekyung does not dream himself crying. He dreams Kim Dan crying. (chapter 54) The image functions as guilt, interrogation, and reflection all at once. It asks: Is he still suffering because of me? But the champion chose back then to read it differently: I am in pain because of you. Thus he tried to find a new “toy” shortly after. But it also reveals something more disturbing: those tears are the champion’s own. He feels them — but cannot express them.

He cannot cry because vulnerability still reads as danger. This is why episode 90 is so alarming.

The silent friend — depression, guilt, self-loathing — no longer needs a proxy. Joo Jaekyung internalizes it fully. He no longer misrecognizes it as insomnia or discipline. He recognizes himself as the problem. The jinx is no longer something that follows him. It is something he has become. But in order to be freed from this immense weight, he needs the support of a friend and a family.

And this is where the unspoken risk emerges. So far, Joo Jaekyung has never spoken about Kim Dan’s suicidal episodes. He has never named them. (chapter 78) Now, he is blaming himself for everything — and the narrative quietly aligns him with the same numbers, the same silences, the same logic of disappearance.

This does not mean he is suicidal. But it means the silent friend has returned — no longer mirrored, no longer shared, no longer displaced. And now, look at his eyes once again, (chapter 90) you will notice the redness, a sign that until that night, he has been suffering from insomnia. His insomnia and depression were never treated, and he took care of doc Dan all this time. He never rested properly, especially that there is another match around the corner.

And this belief — more than sadness, more than despair — is what makes episode 90 so dangerous. It marks the point where suffering no longer seeks relief, and responsibility turns inward, demanding disappearance as proof of care. But someone needs to notice how fragile Joo Jaekyung is. But why did the author choose to switch the character’s positions? Doc Dan assumes that during his absence, nothing changed in the athlete’s life. But the reality is that Joo Jaekyung lost contracts (chapter 54), while he tells the opposite to his partner. (chapter 80) Secondly, he doesn’t know how the champion was blamed for everything: (chapter 52) He has no idea what Potato heard either: (chapter 52) At the same time, I am suspecting that Mingwa is putting doc Dan in a similar situation than in the past, so that repressed memories about the parents will come to the surface. Thus the teddy bear is placed on the couch and the physical therapist is looking at it. (chapter 21) A teddy bear, was present in his childhood, until it vanished. (chapter 19) Let’s not forget that in episode 90, money plays a huge role and so far, the champion still thinks, the debts truly belong to the physical therapist. Finally, I believe that both could connect emotionally, when they talk about their respective past. In my eyes, it is now the turn of Doc Dan to assist Joo Jaekyung… by offering his hand as a friend. (chapter 87)

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