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 the Birth of A Flower (part 1) and The Beginning of the End
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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 final struggle and imminent 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 exactly like the physical therapist in the past. 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) So doc Dan has his share of responsibility in the champion’s misjudgment.
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. This observation leads me to the following conclusion: the MMA fighters treats doc Dan the same way than doc Dan took care of Shin Okja. They both prioritize the well-being of a loved one over themselves. And could this happen? One might say that it is because of the grandmother’s request 
(chapter 65), because she did the same in the past with doc Dan: (chapter 53), but the truth is that this reversal of position started taking place, the moment the athlete paid the loan. It is no coincidence that the new contract is based on the debts. 
(Chapter 77) This means, the debts bring the terrible mind-set to the surface.
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 the main leads’ thinking. The absence of “pink-tinted glasses,” the accurate — sometimes brutally accurate — assessment of control, responsibility, and limitation. Kim Dan and Joo Jaekyung 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‘s: (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.
(chapter 79) 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 ( 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 is still 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 and was treated by the other members of Team Black: 
(chapter 52) No one listened to his unwell-being, they rather silenced him. They showed no support and didn’t take care of him. Thus later the athlete started drinking. The physical therapist 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. Keep in mind that the athlete is actually mirroring the parents’ behavior (abandonment and sacrifice as a sign of love and respect). 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 Doc Dan’s turn to assist Joo Jaekyung… by offering his hand as a friend. 
(chapter 87)
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(chapter 89) Episode 89 does not rely on spectacle, confrontation, or confession. Instead, it performs something far more unsettling. It turns back toward the beginning 
(chapter 89) and begins to unravel what was once deliberately sealed.
(chapter 1) At the start of Jinx, the readers were not ignorant. We knew that Kim Dan had been sexually harassed. 
(chapter 1) We knew there was a witness. We knew that what happened was not ambiguous in moral terms.
(chapter 1) is not a revelation of new information. It is the resurfacing of a figure who once proved that truth alone was insufficient. His reappearance signals that what was buried at the beginning of the story—harassment, witness, cover-up, professional erasure—is no longer content to remain inert. The silence that once protected the hospital director is beginning to fray, unwinding slowly, like a gift ribbon pulled loose thread by thread. What was known but unspeakable is approaching exposure not through confession, but through loss of insulation.
(chapter 89) Instead, the narrative offers a bird’s-eye view of the hospice Light of Hope as Joo Jaekyung’s car leaves the parking lot. The implication is unmistakable. Her death is imminent. But just as importantly, she is transitioning from presence to spectral force—no longer intervening, no longer negotiating, but lingering over the narrative as memory and obligation.
(chapter 1) Readers did not meet the grandmother until Episode 5. 
(chapter 5) Before that, her existence was inferred rather than seen: through debt, through responsibility, through the ruined house Kim Dan inhabited. Absence structured the story before presence ever did. The grandmother was a force long before she was a character.
(chapter 89) When Joo Jaekyung speaks of “the way home,” 
(chapter 89) and Kim Dan repeats the phrase without hesitation, the shift is unmistakable. Home has been reassigned. It is no longer the place where Kim Dan endures obligation or where his grandmother is 
(chapter 56), but the place where he lives in the present: the penthouse. The grandmother’s influence has not vanished; yet it has been reduced to a short visit, while he spends time with his fated partner a long time on the road. Her absence no longer anchors him to a life of quiet survival. He is now enjoying life, hence he is seen smiling and talking informal to the athlete. 
(chapter 89)
(chapter 1), unseen decisions made about Kim Dan without his consent 
(chapter 89) Debts have been paid. Contracts are finite. A witness exists, though he doesn’t believe in the “angel”. 
(chapter 89) Kim Dan is no longer isolated in his knowledge, nor alone in bearing its consequences. Joo Jaekyung detected the presence of a “predator”. 
(chapter 89) 
(chapter 1), but he did not question the narrative offered to him. He never tried to justify his own action either. Park Namwook, as manager, occupied the position of authority: the one who explained, interpreted, and closed the case. He never checked the facts, like for example “rubbing him the wrong way”. He acted as the prosecutor, judge and lawyer at the same time. What happened before remained unseen, and therefore unexamined. The truth did not need to be falsified; it only needed to be summarized. 
(chapter 1), the reluctance of applicants, and the need to recruit Kim Dan through informal channels all suggested that something else had already been circulating: a reputation formed in absence, not through evidence.
(chapter 9), explanations, and silence. Only after the “hamster’s arrival”, the athlete is gradually exposed to gossip, badmouthing 
(chapter 47) and exclusion. This reached its peak with the famous slap at the hospital. 
(chapter 89) He witnessed a kiss between Kim Dan and Joo Jaekyung, and from that single image, he constructs a complete narrative: a kiss is turned into something raw and sexual. For him, intimacy replaces training, desire replaces discipline, and the explanation Kim Dan gives becomes, in his eyes, a lie. 
(chapter 88) The kiss does not erase what preceded it; it merely interrupts it. Kim Dan’s explanation is therefore neither wholly true nor wholly false. It is a partial truth, shaped by shyness, by a desire to protect, and by shame. Hence he is sweating, when he explains his presence to Potato. 
(chapter 33) That’s the reason why he was attracted to Kim Dan in the first place. He is an angel 
(chapter 30), as the latter is quiet, self-effacing. selfless, attentive, humble and absorbs blame instead of projecting it. Kim Dan initially fits the fantasy of the perfect lover — someone who would not disrupt Heesung’s self-image. Hence he doesn’t need to do anything. 
(chapter 31) By siding with doc Dan and acting as the angel’s advocate 
(chapter 89), the comedian can appear as a saint. 
(chapter 32)— he believes that he can judge the celebrity. However, he does not consider that something else might have happened before the moment he witnessed. The kiss becomes totalizing. Training is retroactively erased. 
(chapter 52) nor Heesung exercises this control. Both act from positions of perceived authority, and both mistake emotional coherence for factual accuracy. Their confidence does not only arise from what they know, but also from how strongly they feel. The strength of conviction replaces the labor of verification.
(chapter 58) He imagines a simple narrative: Kim Dan must have left because of Joo Jaekyung’s temper, his rudeness, his violence, probably due to the “defeat”. A quarrel, therefore, naturally leads to separation. From this assumption follows a paternalistic conclusion: the “hamster” must be hidden from the athlete for his own good. Protection becomes justification; concealment becomes virtue. 
(chapter 89) while smoking—a detail the episode insists on repeating, and one that should not be aestheticized. The cigarette does not merely accompany his words; it alters the air in which they are spoken. 
(chapter 58), he reinterprets the kiss as “fuck” and not as the expression of love and tenderness. In other words, he is witnessing “true love”, but he rejects it. This exposes that he has no true notion of real love. In his mind, Joo Jaekyung abused his position as “employer”. 
(chapter 89) His comment “You’re not ….” implies the expectation of a confirmation. Both are not dating. What Joo Jaekyung is actually doing exceeds the category Heesung understands. This is not casual dating. It is not secrecy. It is not consumption. It is preparation. Continuity. A future. Symbolically, Joo Jaekyung is already a step beyond “dating”: he is moving toward marriage — toward public, accountable union. He is closer to commitment than the cursed “Romeo”. That’s the reason why the author included such a reference at the store: 
(chapter 89). 
(chapter 89) 
(chapter 89), yet the antagonist does not engage him. Conversation fails to circulate. Responsibility, like dialogue, stops at the rim of the glass.
(chapter 48): who is seen, who is spoken about, and who is allowed to speak at all. By removing Kim Dan from institutional spaces and ensuring that the story of his dismissal was settled elsewhere, the director did not merely punish him — he rendered him socially invisible. Thus no one knew about doc Dan, when the athlete looked for him. 
(chapter 56) As long as Kim Dan remained unseen, power could continue to “know” without ever needing to verify.
(chapter 89) rather than exposed guilt. His posture is upright, leaning in. His hand rests on Kim Dan’s shoulder without hesitation—uninvited yet unchallenged. His face shows satisfaction, not doubt. He smiles while Kim Dan sweats and is attempting to stop him. 
(chapter 89)
(chapter 89)
(chapter 42) This raises the following question: was the wolf suing the hospital where doc Dan got his first “gig”,? 
(chapter 89) Wine is relational. It opens, breathes, changes with time. It is meant to be shared, discussed, returned to. It presupposes duration. Where whisky seals, wine circulates.
(chapter 89) But more importantly, he doesn’t hide his affection and attraction to doc Dan, while the other did it behind closed doors. Finally, thanks to doc Dan, Joo Jaekyung is learning to pay attention to his surrounding. That’s how he sensed the gaze from the perverted hospital director. 
(chapter 89) not as a plea for permission, but as an invitation into a shared future. The pause of the older man watching him echoes a different kind of professionalism: not predatory authority, not performative control, but quiet recognition. Furthermore the doctor’s suit reminded me of the doctor in episode 13, Cheolmin (pattern, colors). 
(chapter 13) The visual resemblance to Cheolmin is not accidental. It aligns Kim Dan’s future not with power that operates through secrecy, but with practice grounded in fun, care and responsibility. Earlier, suits belonged to those who decided outcomes behind closed doors 
(chapter 89) Bought by Joo Jaekyung but chosen by Kim Dan, it marks the return of agency. What was once a symbol of exclusion now signals continuity. Kim Dan is no longer preparing to survive. He is preparing to live. Hence his birthday is approaching. 
(chapter 88), and the final panel hinting at an imminent confrontation with Choi Heesung. 
(chapter 88) Discussions largely revolved around physical proximity, discipline, and anticipation — around bodies in motion and the promise of conflict to come. At first glance, the episode seemed to oscillate between intimacy and tension 
(chapter 88), between preparation 
(chapter 88) and interruption 
(chapter 88).
(chapter 88) are structured around restraint 
(chapter 88), delayed, or redirected. Words are measured, authority is redistributed, and decisions are deferred 
(chapter 88) rather than imposed. What initially appears as physical intensity and narrative suspense begins to reveal a deeper reconfiguration of roles, responsibility, and choice.
(chapter 70)—most likely in November— in late autumn. 
(chapter 88) This temporal setting is visually reinforced by the environment itself: in the opening sequence marked “a few weeks later,” the tree is already bare, its leaves gone. Nature offers no spontaneous image of growth or renewal. If a flower were to appear in this chapter, it couldn’t belong to the season. It must be cultivated, protected, and sustained in a green house—something that emerges not from natural abundance, but from deliberate care. So where does this idea of a flower come from?
: a closed circuit which we could witness once again in the training room: 
(chapter 88) There are once again sparks between them. The number 8 is not just related to doc Dan [for more read 
(chapter 58) Two trajectories —long separated, repeatedly missing one another—intersect at last. When two eights overlap, they form neither a loop nor a knot, but a new shape: a flower-like figure, suggestive of opening rather than closure. This crossing does not resolve everything; instead, it creates the conditions for growth for all the characters. 
(chapter 88), white 
(chapter 88) purple 
(chapter 88), blue, gray, 
, (chapter 88) red 
(chapter 88) Pink frames tenderness and mutual awkwardness; purple marks embarrassment and heightened awareness; red signals suppressed anger and looming confrontation; black absorbs fear, silence, and unresolved tension.
(chapter 88) are dressed in green 
(chapter 19), where green and floral elements once functioned as a silent language of care and containment. The repetition is not accidental. By wearing a similar tone in the present, Kim Dan does not merely revisit the past; he carries it forward. 
(chapter 35), which tend to assert a singular message (love, passion, beauty), hydrangeas communicate multiplicity and emotional ambivalence; they speak in clusters rather than declarations. This visual language mirrors Kim Dan’s inner world at the time 
(chapter 31). Here, the symbolism shifts. Pink roses convey affection and admiration, while baby’s breath suggests innocence and fragility. Yet the arrangement is excessive, overwhelming, and mismatched to its recipient. The bouquet does not listen; it speaks at Kim Dan rather than with him. Significantly, Heesung comes to associate Kim Dan himself with the flower—something delicate, beautiful, and deserving of protection, but also something to be handled, displayed, and possessed. 
(chapter 88) Kim Dan’s green training clothes—visually echoing the green shirt he wore in the photograph with his grandmother—signal continuity rather than regression. This is not a retreat into childhood dependency, but the reappearance of an inner child now disentangled from obligation and fear. The flower that reemerges here is not gifted, not arranged, not imposed—it grows. In this sense, episode 88 introduces a missing element in the dynamic between the two protagonists: not desire, not care, but communication. And it is here that Choi Heesung becomes central—not as a rival or antagonist, but as a structural bridge, as in reality he represents the rose, “La vie en rose” 
. He embodies speech, playfulness, and visibility, yet also reveals their limits when they are severed from responsibility and respect. I will elaborate about this more below.
(chapter 88), but the moment in which the conditions for happiness are finally put into place. And now let me ask you this. What is the symbol of happiness? Smiles and laughs. During the training session, Kim Dan smiles. These moments are brief 
(chapter 83) What is striking is that neither of them recognizes this fulfillment. 
(chapter 31)
(chapter 88) What appears at first glance as coercion 
(chapter 88) or discipline is in fact a negotiation shaped by habit, fear of burdening the other, and an inability—on both sides—to articulate desire outside professional roles.
(chapter 88), a space that is never neutral in Jinx. A car has one driver, one direction, one authority. By placing the conversation there, Mingwa signals that the relationship is still structurally asymmetrical at this point: Joo Jaekyung leads, Kim Dan follows.
(chapter 88) Secondly, such a training suggests that the athlete is gradually remembering this scene of the almost-rape. 
(chapter 17) Therefore it is not surprising that instead of asking permission or explaining concern, he imposes the idea—because that is how he has learned to act as a captain, a fighter, and later a manager. Authority precedes dialogue. 
(chapter 88) In other words, the request from Joo Jaekyung appears as a memory from the physical therapist. Why? 
(chapter 88) Because Mingwa refuses the “clean” sequence in which an order is issued and immediately executed. The narration inserts a gap—an interval of off-panel time that we are forced to reconstruct from Kim Dan’s recall. 
(chapter 88) Instead Kim Dan no longer insists on his own sufficiency. He no longer says “I can manage., but doc Dan admits not only his own lacking. 
(chapter 88), but also his own desire. He finally expresses his desire to improve, to learn more. 
(chapter 88) creates a temporal bridge that enables this recognition. Only once change is named from the outside can Kim Dan cautiously acknowledge it from within.
(chapter 88) The problem is that his form of care was influenced by his own mindset and emotions: his physical limitations.
(chapter 88)
(chapter 88). He teases. 
(chapter 88)
(chapter 88), not rest. Thus the doctor mistakes the embrace for a technique and not the expression of love. 
(chapter 88) And observe that the athlete still refuses to express the true meaning of his hug. His explanation still remains technical, defensive, and strategically framed:
(chapter 88) This sentence is crucial. It reduces contact to function. The closeness of bodies, the pressure of weight, the proximity of breath are translated into instruction. What could be acknowledged as reassurance or care is instead displaced into pedagogy. Joo Jaekyung does not deny intimacy; he relabels it. 
(chapter 88) of breath held too long, of proximity charged with something unnamed. The technical explanation arrives after that awareness, not before it. This confirms that the instructional language functions as a shield — not against intimacy itself, but against having to speak it.
(chapter 88) Directly after warning against lowering one’s guard, Joo Jaekyung kisses him.
(chapter 26) Back then, Doc Dan had accepted the challenge due to Potato, though deep down he desired to have the champion as his teacher. 
(chapter 25) That’s how it dawned on me that doc Dan has gradually taken over Yoon-Gu’s previous place at the gym. He is an “unofficial member” of Team Black. Thus he mops the floor and Yoon-Gu is not there to stop him or reclaim this position. 
(chapter 88) Yoon-Gu’s position within the gym has improved. He is now considered as a real fighter. 
(chapter 88) 
(chapter 87) For him, this trip was related to work, while in reality it was a date in disguise. 
(Chapter 88) The answer restores hierarchy without acknowledging the transformation that has already occurred. Secondly, the answer closes the future by appealing to a supposedly objective limit. Yoon-Gu can never be his sparring partner. The best he can do is hold the mitts and nothing more. The fox is using his seniority and body to have the final say. 
(chapter 88) Under that framework, Yoon-Gu is not disqualified; he is qualified. He has trained. He belongs. So technically, Yoon-Gu could indeed beat the actor, as the “puppy” has trained for a long time at Team Black. 
(special episode 1) He knows people’s patterns. 
(special episode 1) He knows how relationships fail. 
(chapter 33) He knows what he does not want. His language is saturated with judgment shaped by past experiences: lovers who become “too clingy,” attachments that turn inconvenient, people who should remain “better off” elsewhere 
(chapter 33) Heesung’s orientation is never toward what is unfolding, but toward what might be better elsewhere—another partner, another configuration, another future. His repeated invocation of a “soulmate” is revealing: it displaces intimacy into a hypothetical horizon. By looking at the grass, he is overlooking the flower. Love, for him, is something to be found later, once the conditions are ideal. What exists now is always provisional, always lacking, always subject to replacement. He needs the “perfect” lover, and in his eyes, Potato doesn’t meet his conditions: too innocent and too young. 
(special episode 1) This explicates why the young fighter is only considered as “fuck buddy”. 
(special episode 1) 
(special episode 1), he is present, available, even emotionally invested—but he is never treated as sufficient. He is smaller 
(chapter 58) Heesung’s use of the pronoun “we” is, on the surface, inclusive. Linguistically, it frames his relationship with Potato as mutual, shared, and consensual. But pragmatically, it does the opposite. The “we” is spoken over Potato’s head, not with him. Thus Potato is physically present but discursively absent. He does not confirm, nuance, or reciprocate the statement verbally. The pronoun thus becomes a rhetorical appropriation rather than a sign of partnership. 
(chapter 31) He denies the existence of feelings and attachment. 
(special episode 1) or humiliate the other. 
(chapter 34) Heesung, by contrast, is fluent. He can name, joke, insinuate. What he lacks is restraint and responsibility. His ease with words does not signal emotional intelligence; it signals control.
(special episode 2), corrected. 
(chapter 34) Heesung enters fully aware of what he is likely to witness. He is not naïve, nor totally surprised. Hence he doesn’t flee right away. Yet instead of acknowledging the reality before him, Doc Dan is not someone the fighter fucks, until he passes out, 
(chapter 34) Joo Jaekyung becomes the problem, the one who “deserves to suffer.” 
(chapter 25), accepts deferral. Later, he is displaced entirely. Unlike Kim Dan, who gradually moves from imposed participation to earned agency, Potato is never given a space where effort leads to recognition. 
(chapter 85) However, this panel implies that the young man has already been able to enter competition. Striking is that his promise at the seaside sounds like commitment 
(chapter 59), but the reality diverges. It only binds doc Dan. If the latter returns to Seoul, he has to promise to train with Potato. The reason is simple. He is already committed to the actor, he is already at his beck and call. Potato’s promise echoes the earlier promise forced upon Kim Dan by his grandmother: a future-oriented vow that justifies present sacrifice while guaranteeing nothing in return. 
(chapter 11)
(chapter 78), he didn’t remind doc Dan of his promise. At the same time, observe that none of the fighters apologized or promised something. When they hugged the doctor, they didn’t pay attention to the physical therapist’s reaction: his passivity and silence. The “laugh” lacked genuineness and felt wrong at the time. 
(chapter 78) 
(Chapter 88) This is how it dawned on me why Mingwa recreated such a situation for Heesung. Observe his reaction, when he opened the door. He never answered the question to Potato. In fact, he slammed the door and kept his thoughts to himself. 
(chapter 32), Yoon-Gu now provides unpaid labor and institutional access under the guise of familiarity and generosity 
(chapter 35). In both cases, Heesung benefits from proximity without assuming responsibility for the other person’s risk. Silence, here, is not neutral—it is the mechanism by which that asymmetry is maintained.
(chapter 88) Forgiveness, responsibility, and mutual recognition—central to the arc unfolding elsewhere—are entirely absent from his conduct. Where Joo Jaekyung begins to redistribute choice and accountability, Heesung consolidates control by refusing to speak.
(chapter 88) The irony is that the actor didn’t realize this. He had the impression to be exposed to a similar scene than in the penthouse. 
(chapter 35) And now, pay attention to the logo on the doctor’s t- shirt. 
(chapter 88) First, it appears on the left side, positioned close to the hamster’s heart. Moreover, it looks like an orange eye. Orange is not only the color of Heesung the fox 
(chapter 34), but also of friendship and social communication and interaction. 
(chapter 79) Besides, it is the same logo than when Yoon-Gu was spying behind the closed door.
(chapter 23) That’s the moment Potato realized the truth about the couple: they were intimate. That’s the reason why I am convinced that Heesung will play the role of the messenger and mediator between the wolf and the hamster.
(chapter 87), and the destruction of black glass under Baek Junmin’s foot. 
(chapter 87) Both moments operate under pressure, yet they belong to radically different economies. One gathers force inward to protect, contain, and care. The other expels force outward to fracture, dominate, and erase. The biggest difference is not intensity, but direction—and whether the other is held, or destroyed.
(chapter 87) He asks for strength and luck 
(chapter 87). Kim Dan answers with a gesture, the offered hand accompanied with a wish:
(chapter 87). Only then does the squeeze occur. Words initiate connection; the body confirms it. Speech and gesture align. Pressure becomes care.
(chapter 87) —but they are refused. Baek Junmin is denied any possibility of reply—no space to answer, to justify himself, or even to speak back. 
(chapter 87) The screen interposed between them 
(chapter 87) functions as both a physical and symbolic barrier: it delivers judgment without permitting response. Deprived of dialogue, Junmin is pushed out of language altogether. What remains available to him is not speech, but the body. His answer therefore does not come in words, but through the hand
(chapter 87) and then through the foot. 
(chapter 87) The violence is not misdirected; it is precisely directed at the medium that silences him. The screen is the site of exclusion, 
(chapter 87), before the challenge 
(chapter 87), the champion turns around.
(chapter 87) He looks—not at the crowd, not at the institution, but at Kim Dan. The gaze matters. It establishes a circuit. Like a phone call finally answered, it places both on the same wavelength. Only then does the question come. 
(chapter 87) Here again, language and body are aligned. 
(chapter 87) Kim Dan answers—first with a nod, then with words. The response is clear, immediate, and embodied. And what follows is decisive: the champion raises his arm. 
(chapter 87) 
(chapter 15) 
(chapter 40) 
(chapter 51), its meaning sharpens. For the first time, Kim Dan no longer occupies the position of fan or witness. He functions as judge and jury. 😮 And the champion acts accordingly. He declares himself the winner. 
(chapter 87) Joo Jaekyung is no longer a puppet or zombie, but a man with a heart and voice. 
(chapter 46) It regulates turn-taking, determines who may speak, in what order, and under which framing. As long as it remains in the moderator’s hand, speech is mediated, filtered, and contextualized. Questions lead; answers follow. Meaning circulates vertically.
(chapter 87) He no longer moderates; he reacts. He cannot redirect the statement, soften it, or translate it into spectacle. He can only acknowledge that something has escaped containment. The apology is not moral—it is procedural. It marks the moment the institution loses authorship. 
(chapter 57); he is narrating. He does not answer a question 
(chapter 14) Yet, CSPP 
appears more and more insistently 
(chapter 87), even in the cage
(chapter 87), contrary to before. 
(chapter 15) Either you only see the C or the name is placed out of the frame. 
(chapter 40) Yet it remains unexplained. What does it stand for in the world of Jinx? A sponsor? A broadcaster? The story never defines it explicitly—and that absence matters. What goes unnamed is often what exercises the most power. I will elaborate about it further.
(chapter 36) —depends on mediation. Delay. Scoring. Interpretation. The quiet redistribution of meaning after the fact. As long as nothing is said outright 
(chapter 69), control remains possible. Once speech becomes public, control becomes fragile.
(chapter 87), people in the seaside town, a public that exists before commentary can shape it.
(chapter 87) And the fight already answers the questions the system hopes to postpone. What we see in the cage is not merely a contest of strength, but a clash of communicative regimes. How one fights here is inseparable from how one speaks, evades, provokes, or withholds.
(chapter 87) His movement privileges distance, tempo 
(chapter 87) and visibility. That way he gives the impression that he is superior to the former champion. The middle kick appears not as a finishing tool 
(chapter 87), but as an instrument of disruption—enough to score, enough to interrupt rhythm, never enough to end the exchange. The rest of his offense follows the same logic: repeated punches to the face 
(chapter 87), the hands, the shoulder. Targets chosen not for collapse, but for points. Not to silence the opponent, but to keep him talking through damage. The choice of targets is not arbitrary. The hands and the shoulder are not neutral zones. They are sites of vulnerability that presuppose knowledge. Arnaud Gabriel does not fight, as if he were discovering his opponent in real time; he fights as if he were acting on prior information. 
(chapter 82) He anticipated a diminished MMA fighter at the end of his career who would train at the hotel gym. His punches repeatedly return to the same areas—not to finish, but to aggravate. Not to silence, but to extract fatigue.
(chapter 87) The shoulder carries the memory of surgery and recovery. The hands mediate both offense and defense; exhausting them degrades reach, timing, and confidence. And breathlessness 
(chapter 82)—noticed earlier during training—signals something even more fragile: limits that are physiological, not tactical.
(chapter 87) It aligns disturbingly well with what had already circulated outside the match: commentary about tension, exhaustion, time away from competition. Whether through media narratives, observation, or informal channels of intelligence, the opponent’s body has already been translated into information.
(chapter 47) Already discussed. Already framed. Gabriel’s reliance on point accumulation is inseparable from this logic. 
(chapter 87) He does not need to dominate the body; he needs to activate its known limits and let the scoring apparatus do the rest.
(chapter 87) —his decision to close distance, to counter decisively, to end the exchange rather than prolong it—appears less like impatience than resistance. He does not correct the narrative. He interrupts it.
(chapter 51) The fight is no longer about what happens between bodies, but about who controls evaluation. And that’s how they could rig the match between Baek Junmin and Joo Jaekyung. 
(chapter 70) acquires a different meaning. What he condemns as arrogance is not a moral failure, but a structural adaptation. These fighters have learned that they do not need to finish fights with a knockout. They only need to prolong them—to survive them—because the system will finish the sentence for them. Therefore, the moderator’s commentary during the match introducing the new Korean fighter takes on a clearer function. 
(chapter 71) He frames the rookie as someone “waiting for the right timing,” subtly suggesting a coming knockout rather than prolonged survival. The language is important: it reassures the audience that decisiveness still exists within the system, that power is merely deferred—not absent.
(chapter 71) The director is not persuaded. Hwang Byungchul reads the situation differently. He recognizes stiffness, fear, and overreliance on structure—not composure, not strategy. Where the moderator sees patience, the director sees hesitation. Where commentary insists on strategy, experience detects rigidity and lack of instincts.
(chapter 81) It is an assumption: that the outcome no longer requires athletic intervention. The champion is treated as a finished product, a celebrity whose role is to endure visibility, not to alter the terms of the fight itself.
(chapter 82) and inside the cage. 
(chapter 87) Publicly, he is courteous. Measured. Even complimentary. 
(chapter 82), gentle and polite gestures, and tactical distance— away from the spotlight, away from overt confrontation. His restraint is not humility, but alignment. He performs civility so that judgment, narration, and authority can be outsourced to the institution. That’s why for him, fighting is strongly intertwined with fun and he sees himself more as a star than as an athlete. He is definitely influenced by MFC. Hence we can say that his suit mirrors his mind-set. Gabriel’s suit does not soften his presence; it disciplines it. The patterned fabric signals rigidity rather than elegance—structure over fluidity. It mirrors his fighting style: calibrated, rule-bound, resistant to improvisation. Nothing about his appearance invites rupture. Everything is designed to hold form.
(chapter 52) He lets others speak, provoke, circulate images, manage money, create pressure. 
(chapter 54) His power does not come from direct address, but from displacement. When he does appear, it is rarely to argue. 
(chapter 49) It is to smirk, to whisper, to apply pressure obliquely. In both cases, the logic is identical: control is preserved by never being fully present.
(chapter 87) It is more observation. He allows the opponent to speak first—to reveal the structure of the exchange. 
(chapter 87) When it lands, it collapses distance. It forces the opponent inward. And crucially, it targets the center of the body—not the face that earns applause, but the core that sustains movement.
(chapter 87) and delivers an uppercut. 
(chapter 87) This is not escalation; it is completion. Where Gabriel sought to keep the fight open, Joo Jaekyung compresses it. He refuses the long exchange. He refuses circulation. He refuses to wait for judgment. His strategy is not to be evaluated later, but to be undeniable now. 
(chapter 87) This is not silence imposed from outside, but silence produced by gravity. Once the body crashes, breath cannot return, and speech has nowhere to perch. 
(chapter 87)
(chapter 74) 
(chapter 87) 
(chapter 2) While the jinx held, action could still occur, but speech could not carry consequence. Words dissipated, were deferred, or were absorbed by systems designed to neutralize them. Powerlessness expressed itself as speechlessness.
(chapter 87) His actions arrive before meaning can be reassigned. His words arrive where no answer is prepared. In this sense, episode 87 marks the moment Joo Jaekyung becomes fluent in his own discipline. Not merely competent, not merely dominant, but articulate. His movements surprise 
(chapter 5) which had surprised his manager Park Namwook. 
(chapter 5)
(chapter 69) , the switching, the method—the institution could have responded. Clarifications could be issued. Liability could be managed. But by speaking elliptically, by pointing to manipulation without anatomizing it, the champion places the burden of interpretation onto the audience. And MFC can not deny the existence of an incident in the locker room.
(chapter 62) They are not close enough to trust the system blindly.
(chapter 57)
(chapter 69), by allowing attention to cluster around foreign misconduct 
(chapter 69) and public embarrassment 
(chapter 74) Early incidents reframed as character. Let’s not forget that he was stigmatized as a thug by the members from Team Black too. 
(chapter 31) The system does not deny the champion’s words ; it reclassifies them. What was a refusal of manipulation becomes “anger issues.” What was naming becomes “acting out.”
(chapter 72) It only needs to repeat an already accepted story: abandonment as necessity, violence as justification, disappearance as victimhood. A story the system knows how to circulate. And Hwang Byungchul never questioned her decision so far. 
(chapter 78) Secondly, Kim Dan is now able to distinguish the past from the present. Finally, thanks to doc Dan 
(chapter 62), he did so many good deeds in the seaside town that the inhabitants and the patients from the hospice won’t accept such accusations. I believe that such people won’t see “motherfucker” as a problem at all, they will rather see it as a part of his role after the match. What will remain in their mind is rather the accusation and riddle he voiced: the stunt Baek Junmin played. 
(chapter 87), which already tells us that CSPP does not function as a simple broadcaster. My idea is that CSPP operates as an intermediary apparatus: a company that packages events, sells broadcasting rights, coordinates visibility, and transforms violence into consumable spectacle. In other words, CSPP does not show fights; it produces events. This explicates why CSPP was present right from the start 
(chapter 14), but barely visible. But the moment it caught my attention in Paris, I realized that its increasing visibility displays the success of MFC as company. Observe that when the champion faced Randy Booker, the weight-in took place on the same day than the fight and in the arena, not at a prestigious hotel like in Paris. Here, the champion held a conference many days before the weight-in, and the latter took place the night before the match with Arnaud Gabriel. Secondly, you can observe the success of MFC through the banners. In Busan, the website of MFC was posed in the background next to CSPP. 
(chapter 50), only MFC and CSPP. But in Paris, it is now totally different. 
(chapter 35), his suspension 
(chapter 57) 
(chapter 70) His matches are scheduled at hours accessible even to a Korean hospital 
(chapter 41) or hospice patients. 
(chapter 71) becomes intelligible. It is not a mark of anticipation, but of expendability. The match is placed where attention is thinnest, where failure or success carries minimal consequence. By contrast, Joo Jaekyung’s fights are positioned to be seen. The asymmetry exposes how dependent MFC’s visibility economy is on him—not as a competitor, but as the primary organizer of audience attention.
(chapter 47) His presence circulates through curated highlights and controlled conference footage rather than open broadcast. 
(chapter 47) His rise is engineered through selective visibility. 
(chapter 47) Weak opponents are chosen. 
(chapter 47) His image is inflated before he ever faces Joo Jaekyung. CSPP does not need to expose him fully; it needs only to prepare recognition. However, CSPP is an official company, they can not control rumors among fighters. 
(chapter 47) Thus the manager suggested this to his boss just before: 
(chapter 46) By mentioning the existence of spies, he incited the main lead to keep his distance from the doctor and the members so that the rumors about the underground fighting wouldn’t reach his ears.
(chapter 14), the United States, Paris—the fights are placed in high-visibility slots. Loss must be witnessed. Decline must be shared. By contrast, the fight between Baek Junmin and Joo Jaekyung takes place in the morning 
(chapter 49), a time of dispersed attention, private viewing, and reduced collective response. Visibility is not maximized; it is managed. 
(chapter 49) CSPP’s role, then, is not neutral mediation. It is temporal governance. It decides when exposure becomes dangerous and when it becomes profitable. It does not silence events; it times them.
(chapter 77) Once Joo Jaekyung does not contest the loss of his title—once he does not sue, demand more investigation, or interrupt the administrative process— MFC and CSPP no longer need to justify anything. Delay becomes normalization. Silence becomes confirmation.
(chapter 87) is dangerous not only for MFC, but for CSPP itself. If his connections to the underworld surface, CSPP is no longer a distributor of sport, but a conduit for illicit spectacle. Contracts dissolve not because violence occurred, but because violence escaped framing.
(chapter 49) Under normal medical protocol, this should have stopped the fight immediately. 
(chapter 41) No athlete should perform when injured. Yet MFC Medical remains silent, the staff simply treats the wound. The bout proceeds. Only later—after attention has shifted, after consequences have begun to circulate—does the same medical authority step forward to issue disciplinary sanctions and a suspension 
(chapter 52) There were cameras in the arena. What cannot be allowed to surface is proof of foreknowledge: that an injured athlete was permitted to fight under institutional supervision. Thus it raises the question if the match in the morning was broadcast on TV. 
(chapter 52) Structural complicity is translated into an individualized incident. What occurred in the cage is no longer the issue; what occurred afterward becomes the narrative.
(chapter 46) that began elsewhere—losses already acknowledged when Choi Gilseok brought him into the system in the first place. 
(chapter 30) This implies that he won’t remain passive and silent like in the past, relying on structure and institutions (Entertainment agency…) and accepting to become a scapegoat. 
(chapter 54) 
(chapter 84) and the progression of their relationship, attuning readers to intimacy 
(chapter 85), care, and emotional release. When the chapter opens with a tactile, reassuring gesture, it naturally confirms that reading mode. The squeeze feels like a culmination.
(chapter 87) This sentence marks a limit. It is not indifference, but acceptance. The champion has just registered the doctor’s surprise 
(chapter 87) — the slight jolt, the hesitation—and he responds by stopping. The restraint is not automatic; it is chosen. He does not ask for more reassurance, more certainty, or more support, even though he clearly desires it. Instead, he recognizes sufficiency.
(chapter 87) So the doctor’s support was indeed limited in time. So the stop of the champion ‘s squeeze 
(chapter 87) The opening scene unfolds in a space that feels inhabited and shared, composed in softer shades that emphasize stillness and presence. The final scene is colder, darker, sharper. 
(chapter 87) —the second collapses time inward. Baek Junmin does not act toward what is coming; he reacts toward what has already been. His violence is not exploratory but recursive. 
(chapter 49) When Joo Jaekyung addresses him with open disrespect, the breach of seniority provokes immediate outrage. 
(chapter 49) Intervention follows quickly. The insult is not tolerated 
(chapter 49) because it threatens hierarchy itself. Choi’s anger is genuine in that moment and it reveals what he truly guards: status, order, and the visibility of respect.
(chapter 87), and continues escalating without repercussion 
(chapter 78) Both continue to perceive Joo Jaekyung as nothing more than a fighter 
(chapter 87) This assumption governs how they speak to him, how they threaten him 
(chapter 46) His presence creates a convenient fiction: those around the table come to believe that he is the owner, or at least the one who truly governs the gym. Joo Jaekyung’s absence is interpreted not as autonomy, but as immaturity or dependence. Authority, once again, attaches itself to performance rather than reality.
(chapter 46) Even after boundaries are formally stated, Park Namwook continues to rely on seniority to address the champion 
(chapter 46) as if he were a child or an employee—someone to be corrected, instructed, and disciplined. The warning does not alter behavior because it does not challenge the underlying assumption: that Joo Jaekyung’s place is below them.
(chapter 49), handshakes, and private humiliation 
(chapter 49), the gesture becomes clearer still. He is accustomed to violence without witnesses, to domination shielded by proximity and secrecy. He was always the man in the shadow. The live broadcast deprives him of that refuge. 
(chapter 87) also unfold under the sign of privacy. 
(chapter 87) He is announcing a shift of identity.
(chapter 47). The broken screen already signaled that he no longer cares about how he is seen. 
(chapter 47) By rejecting visibility and embracing excess, he also rejects the last requirement that tied him to that system.
(chapter 87) Kim Dan sleeping openly, showing his face, remaining there without fear—this is read by the champion as tacit trust. That trust becomes energy. In other words, this scene serves as the positive reflection of the argument in the locker room: 
(chapter 51)
(chapter 75) —showering, cologne, self-regulation before a match. Here, that sequence is conspicuously absent.
(chapter 69), recognition, and above all visibility. Yet this visibility is curiously incomplete. Despite his victory, Baek Junmin is not immediately present as a public figure. He appears as a result 
(chapter 52) —his name, his win—but not yet as a narrative subject.
(chapter 50), they remain structurally hidden, absorbed by intermediaries, or misattributed. 
(chapter 47) Where the legal economy requires patience and exposure, the illicit one promises certainty and silence.
(chapter 52) In practice, hierarchy barely functions. Authority exists without discipline, protection without accountability. Baek Junmin is not positioned among other fighters, nor anchored in a collective. Thus he is not truly celebrated at the restaurant after the tie. Thus the fighters mentioned the director Choi Gilseok’s financial success or the odd behavior of Joo JAekyung. 
(chapter 52) Besides, he watches the match alone 
🌶️😂 
(chapter 85) Why care about the color of a carpet or the direction a door opens 
(chapter 85), when the real story unfolds between Joo Jaekyung and Kim Dan?
(chapter 82) Floors and patterns are not neutral decoration. They function as a parallel narrative system—one that tracks changes in status 
(chapter 85), exposes the actual situations in which the characters are placed 
(chapter 85), and helps us locate spaces and relationships within the hotel architecture itself. In other words, the floors do not merely frame the story; they add a spatial depth that sharpens our understanding of the “characters.”
(chapter 82)
(chapter 82) 
(chapter 82) One might think, the only information we get is that MFC had booked a conference room at the hotel where Team Black is staying. However, in the States, the carpet of the hallway at the hotel had a similar pattern. 
(chapter 37) This similarity and repetition caught my attention. It suggests continuity between public spectacle and private space, between what is shown and what is concealed. Following this thread led to a broader realization: the floors simultaneously signal elevation and confinement. They show who appears powerful—and who is, in fact, enclosed.
(chapter 37)
(chapter 37) It is in that hallway that Kim Dan collapses after drinking a drugged beverage. He literally falls onto the carpet, on his knees. The trap activates—but not on its intended target.
(chapter 46), not by MFC directly. The scheme exists, but it is imperfect. Joo Jaekyung is not truly “caught” in that moment, which explains why the plan ultimately fails. 
(chapter 69) As you can see, the pattern of the carpet could be seen as an evidence for a trap, and the “Emperor” is their target once again. Their plan is to end his career so that all the incidents and crimes from the past can be buried.
(chapter 82). The opponent stands on the surface that embodies order, hierarchy, and control, and behaves accordingly. He flirts, comments on the doctor’s eyes, and treats the moment as harmless. Then he turns his back. 
(chapter 82) He never steps onto, nor does he seem to register, the animal-patterned carpet nearby, as doc Dan was standing on a white-off carpet. In other words, Arnaud Gabriel interacts only with the space that reflects the institution’s worldview. 
(chapter 82) This is not the response of a neutralized Emperor, but the instinctive surge of a predator whose territory has been violated. The scene echoes an earlier, more intimate image from the bathroom in chapter 30, 
(chapter 30), where Joo Jaekyung appeared wearing leopard-patterned pajamas. The animal imagery was already present then, but dormant. Here, it reawakens.
(chapter 85) The champion is not alone inside the cage. He is supported, grounded, and no longer isolated. What MFC fails to see is that this support does not weaken the predator—it stabilizes him. And a stabilized predator is far more dangerous than a cornered one. For years, Joo Jaekyung’s violence was reactive, triggered by threat, humiliation, or loss of control. Such a fighter is powerful, but predictable. He can be provoked, exhausted, and manipulated.
(chapter 84) These visual cues distinguish floors, mark thresholds between zones, and separate different kinds of isolation. The hotel ceases to function as an abstract backdrop and instead reveals itself as a structured environment in which hierarchy is materially inscribed.
(chapter 85) 
(chapter 85) The corridor seems to have white linoleum covered a dark brown carpet, similar to the one in his bedroom. However, observe that the manager’s entrance has the same tiles than in the hallway. 
(chapter 85) reminds us of the champion’s living room in the hotel. 
(chapter 82) This clearly exposes that doc Dan’s room is not a normal room. It exceeds that basic category. It is larger, brighter, and arranged for comfort. The interior layout is particularly revealing: the bathroom is located close to the bedroom 
(chapter 85) clearly separating living space from bedroom 
(chapter 82), and extending outward through more than one balcony. 
(chapter 82)
(chapter 82) And the moment I had this realization, architecture, once again, speaks first, my attention returned to the hotel in the States. 
(chapter 37)
(chapter 37) This detail is crucial. It explains why he can hear their laughter and smell the food they are eating. 
(chapter 37) Architecturally, he was not isolated. Despite his status, he remained embedded within the collective space of the team. 
(chapter 37) Besides, Episode 40 confirms that Joo Jaekyung did occupy an imperial suite: the interior layout includes a door separating the bedroom from another room 
(chapter 40), a feature characteristic of a suite rather than a standard hotel room. The issue, therefore, is not the absence of a suite, but how that suite was positioned and managed.
(chapter 37) Because the suite was embedded within a shared corridor, an intruder could approach the champion’s room without attracting attention. 
(chapter 37) intended for weight-cutting and post–weight-cut recovery. This detail exposes a managerial failure rather than a hotel failure. The environment was not curated around the champion’s physical needs. Discipline was demanded of his body, but not enforced in his space. Meanwhile, fighters and coaches purchased junk food behind the champion’s and Kim Dan’s back, reinforcing the gap between stated goals and actual practice.
(chapter 37) There is no visible keycard system, and no clear indication of an interior lock. 
(chapter 37) This absence is striking, especially when contrasted with the Paris hotel 
(chapter 85), where doors are equipped with keycards and locks on both sides 
(chapter 37) Access was not negotiated; it was simply taken. The architecture allowed it. The space did not protect its occupants.
(chapter 37) At first glance, this appears implausible. A suite, by definition, should insulate its occupant from such disturbances. His bedroom is not situated next to the corridor.
(chapter 7) Status was asserted rhetorically, but not enforced spatially, exactly with Joo Jaekyung.
(chapter 37), negotiating access with local coaches and nearly getting into a physical altercation before being allowed to use their facilities 
(chapter 37). Only after asserting himself does he gain permission to train. Even then, the gym he ultimately uses is unremarkable — functional, crowded, and indistinguishable from what any average fighter might access. There is nothing exceptional about it.
(chapter 82) The infrastructure finally aligns with the demands placed on his body. This shift is not a luxury; it is a correction. It reveals retroactively how deficient the American setup was — and how little institutional care surrounded the champion at the time.
(chapter 82) It is a generic fitness room intended for ordinary guests. There are no heavy bags, no proper equipment, no environment suited to the demands of a reigning champion. 
(chapter 37) This is precisely why his training must be adapted, restrained, and partially improvised.
(chapter 5) MMA is not baseball or soccer 
(chapter 54); it does not benefit from the same institutional prestige or resources. Earlier in his career, the champion was more likely trained to endure damage than to prevent it. What we see now is not the continuation of an elite system, but its gradual construction — one in which Kim Dan plays a central role. 
(chapter 81)
(chapter 49), rather restraining him and as such exposing him to danger.
(chapter 37) and the post–weight-cut recovery. 
(chapter 82) Kim Dan may indeed possess a keycard to Joo Jaekyung’s suite. If so, this is not a minor convenience. It constitutes a symbolic transfer of access. The physical therapist is granted proximity not merely to the champion’s body, but to his private space. Hence the athlete is not caught by surprise, he doesn’t even mind this intrusion or interruption.
(chapter 82) and support 
(chapter 85), he expects everyone to wake up on time and appear at seven sharp. He doesn’t see it as his “task” to wake up the champion. Once again, he is delegating responsibility onto others. However, it is clear that he expects Joo Jaekyung to be awake early like he did before. So if the champion doesn’t appear on time, the manager’s decision should be to call doc Dan or visit his room. In his eyes, he is the one responsible for the champion!! 
(chapter 80) for his contract is limited not only to Joo Jaekyung, but also in time. He was never a fighter, hence he is not part of MFC at all contrary to the other hyungs. 
(chapter 40) 
(chapter 82) These are managerial functions.
(chapter 40) Doc Dan is not one among others, but the BEST physical therapist. He is also a champion 
(chapter 86), it does not close the night through narrative resolution. There is no statement, no promise, no verbal seal. And yet, for many Jinx-philes, the final panel refuses to let the scene dissolve. What remains is not heat, not tension, not even tenderness — but circulation.
(chapter 33), short circuit 
(chapter 53) reset. And once that lens is adopted, it becomes impossible to limit the consequences of episode 86 to the couple alone. Because a closed circuit does not only affect those directly connected to it. It alters the surrounding system. 
(chapter 86). This section will explore how acknowledging change without denying past harm opens a new ethical position — one that prevents memory from being weaponized, while still preserving responsibility. Third, the analysis will turn to conversion, revisiting earlier nights marked by failure, asymmetry, and isolation. Rather than cancelling them, episode 86 absorbs and transforms them. This is where forgiveness, reflection, and the first true encounter with consequence quietly enter the narrative. Finally, a new section will widen the lens further by examining shared experience and memory 
(chapter 53), particularly through Kim Dan’s relationship with his grandmother. Here, the focus will not be accusation, but contrast: between memories carried alone and memories held together; between cycles of repetition and moments of presence; between a worldview structured around endurance and one shaped by circulation. The Paris night does not only affect how Kim Dan sees Joo Jaekyung 
(chapter 86) carries such weight, we must return to the origin of kissing itself in Jinx. Because surprise, in this story, is not an abstract theme. It has a history. And that history begins with a body being caught off guard.
(chapter 14) There is no warning, no verbal cue, no time to prepare. The kiss arrives as interruption. It is not negotiated; it is imposed. Hence the author focused on the champion’s hand just before the smooch. 
This moment matters far more than it initially appears, because it establishes the template through which Kim Dan first encounters intimacy. 
(chapter 15) Affection does not emerge gradually. It breaks in.
(chapter 15) He needs preparation. He needs time to brace himself emotionally. This request reveals two aspects. First, he connects a kiss with love. On the other hand, the request is not really about romance; it is rather about survival. Surprise, for Kim Dan, has already been coded as something that overwhelms the body before the mind can intervene.
(chapter 39), he violates his own request.
(chapter 39) They are unannounced, often landing on unusual places (cheek or ear) 
(chapter 44). They often take place under asymmetrical conditions — when one of them is intoxicated, confused, or emotionally exposed. Sometimes they occur without full consent, sometimes without clarity. In chapters 39 and 44, kisses surface precisely when language fails or consciousness fractures. It is as if Kim Dan has internalized a rule he never chose: a kiss must be sudden. Observe how the champion replies to the doctor’s smile and laugh: he kissed him, as if he was jealous of his happiness. 
(chapter 44) That’s how I came to realize that the kiss in the Manhwa is strongly intertwined with “surprise”. This is the missing link.
(chapter 2), he comes to reproduce interruption as intimacy. He knows that surprise destabilizes him — that is why he asked for warning — but he has no other model. What overwhelms him also becomes what he reaches for. Surprise is both threat and language.
(chapter 3): the sudden call from the athlete, 
(chapter 1), the offer of sex in exchange for money 
(chapter 6), the switched spray 
(chapter 49), the sudden changes in rules. These moments strip Kim Dan of anticipation and agency. His body reacts before his will can engage. Surprise equals exposure.
(chapter 1) His life is governed by “always”: always working, always returning, always responsible. He lives for his grandmother. Nothing unexpected is allowed to happen, because nothing unexpected can be afforded. This is safety through stasis. Presence without experience.
(chapter 5) 
(chapter 1) They shattered routine rather than enriching it. Surprise, in that context, did not open possibility; it threatened survival. It meant debt, coercion, fear. And precisely because of that, it could not be integrated into memory as experience — only repressed as trauma.
(chapter 2) but in a fundamentally different form.
(chapter 11)
(chapter 11) His appearances are sudden, his demands non-discussable, his violence immediate. He does not ask; he enforces. Surprise, under his rule, eliminates speech. It leaves no space for argument, no room for clarification, no possibility of consent. One endures, or one is punished.
(chapter 6) Even when power is asymmetrical, even when the terms are coercive, speech is required. Conditions are stated. Rules are articulated. Kim Dan is forced to listen, to answer, to argue, to object. He must speak.
(chapter 17) The two figures cannot coexist because they represent mutually exclusive regimes of surprise: one that annihilates speech, and one that forces it into being. In other words, only one allows experience to be lived rather than survived.
(chapter 27) Experiences accumulate instead of disappearing. They demand response, speech, negotiation. Life no longer consists in enduring impact, but in processing it.
(chapter 41) not despite surprise, but through it. Not because dominance is romanticized, but because surprise is the first force that treats him as someone to whom things can happen. And don’t forget that for him, a kiss symbolizes affection. Even negative experiences generate subjectivity. They prove that he exists beyond function.
(chapter 85) Kim Dan either endures it or reproduces it under unstable conditions. Agency is partial. Meaning collapses afterward.
(chapter 39), irony 
(chapter 41) or rejection 
(chapter 55). He does not retreat into his habitual “it’s nothing” or “never mind.” He does not reinterpret the gesture as convenience or reflex. 
(chapter 86) He kisses back while looking tenderly at his partner. He holds Kim Dan’s head gently. He can only see such a gesture as a positive answer to his request: acceptance and even desire. Surprise is not punished. It is received.
(Chapter 45) This time, the athlete not only accepts the present (the kiss), but but also expresses “gratitude” by kissing back actively. 
(chapter 65) In her eyes, she has never changed, just like her grandson. 
(chapter 65) If the past is absolute, it can be endlessly invoked to invalidate the present. We have a perfect example on the beach. 
(chapter 65) 
(chapter 65) They are evaluated exclusively through a moral lens. Smoking and drinking are not responses; they are flaws. And because they are framed as flaws, they retroactively define his character rather than his situation. This is where agency collapses.
(chapter 65) Her behavior does not contradict her claim that she wants Kim Dan to “live his own life.” 
(chapter 78)
(chapter 86) Once again, the “hamster” is given the opportunity not only to decide, but also to follow his heart. Where the Paris night allows difference to coexist with memory, Shin Okja’s framework collapses difference back into judgment. Where electricity requires polarity, her logic insists on sameness. Under this new light, it becomes comprehensible how doc Dan came to neglect himself. Self-care is inseparable from choice — from the belief that one’s decisions can meaningfully alter the present. If change is denied, care loses its purpose. Attending to oneself becomes optional, even suspect, because it implies a future different from the one already prescribed. 
(chapter 44) The one who remembers bears the – alone, while the other continues forward unmarked. That imbalance is corrosive. It distorts perception. It turns even good memories sour.
(chapter 65) Change is allowed only insofar as it returns to the same point. Electrically speaking, her system is grounded — all charge dissipates into endurance. There is no polarity, only repetition.
(chapter 65) Even though the word jinx is never spoken during the Paris night, its logic quietly collapses there. 
(chapter 75) In chapter 75, it is explicitly framed as a way to “clear the head”: an act designed to release pressure and return the system to zero. Partners were interchangeable. Feelings were excluded. Electricity existed only as a spark — brief, violent, and self-extinguishing. Energy was expelled, not circulated. That is the true mechanics of the jinx: power without continuity, intensity without consequence.
(chapter 85) Desires matter, not the match the next morning. Besides, the identity of the partner matters — not just romantically, but also structurally. Current requires two poles. It requires response. It cannot flow through an object, only between 2 subjects.
(chapter 39) and chapter 44 
(chapter 11), the care – even if he had hurt himself – 
(chapter 47), the shared smiles 
(chapter 47). Thus this photograph 
(chapter 65) becomes a talisman — not a record of reality, but a distilled image of safety. Painful dimensions are filtered out. Conflict, coercion, and silent pressure recede into the background. Memory protects him by idealizing. Because of this picture, he projected himself in the future, making unrealistic plans. 
(chapter 47) It was, as if he only had good times with his grandmother. 
(chapter 21) 
(chapter 47) and memories. 
(chapter 21) 
(chapter 85) I believe that its appearance does not function as decoration. Its imagery — figures suspended among clouds, bodies neither falling nor grounded — introduces a different register of time. Not urgency. Not performance. Not spectacle. Stillness. Interval. A space where movement pauses without collapsing. Under this new light, the reference is Morpheus.
(chapter 75) Until now, rest had been replaced by discharge: sex as erasure, violence as exhaustion, ritual as compulsion. The Paris night does not abolish wakefulness through collapse; it introduces the conditions under which sleep might finally be possible. 
(Chapter 78) Here, he reduced it to the absence of sex, but I am sure that deep down, he would have been satisfied, if the “hamster” had given him a good night kiss. 
(chapter 86) The charge redistributes. Memory ceases to isolate and begins to circulate. Hence it creates a new memory. 
(chapter 86) was a reflection of the picture. 
(chapter 86) No one is erased or reduced to an object. Nothing is overlooked or forgotten. But repetition loses its hold. And from here, the story can no longer proceed as before.
(chapter 85) represents the positive reflection of this night 
(chapter 58) 
(chapter 58), when the physical therapist chose to give up on the athlete and stop listening to his heart. Here, I am not only referring to the numerical symmetry but also to the doctor’s shifting vision of Joo Jaekyung.
(chapter 85), Jaekyung appears with a towel around his neck. This simple object evokes water and sweat, but in Jinx, these elements are never neutral. They are tied to one of the champion’s earliest traumas: the humiliation of being called “dirty” 
(chapter 75) and “smelly” as a child. This is why Jaekyung learned to perfuse his body with cologne after every shower 
(chapter 40) It was, as if the fear of smelling “wrong,” of being perceived as contaminated, was still dictating his movements. Hence he could only claim doc Dan as one of his own, but not as his “physical therapist” or even “family”. And interesting is that doc Dan copied his attitude. In the hallway, he maintained a certain distance from the athlete. 
(chapter 40) the moment he dried off 
(chapter 85) and trust — and perhaps even the moment when Dan chooses, for the first time, to be honest with his own body and heart. 
(chapter 85) 
(chapter 61) [I will elaborate it further later]. And perhaps this is why the moment feels so disarming: because the downfall is not tragic but tender, not humiliating but intimate. Sweet, even.
(chapter 85) Dan is lost in his thoughts — anticipating the night ahead with the champion — and has barely touched his food. Park Namwook notices this. One might think, such a remark displays the manager’s concern for the main lead’s well-being. However, the manager adds that the other members of the team are all almost finished. With such a remark, it becomes clear that the manager is urging the protagonist to finish his plate. Although Park Namwook addresses Dan as if showing concern, the content of his remark betrays his true priority: not Dan’s well-being, but the team’s schedule. By pointing out that ‘the rest of us are almost finished,’ he urges Dan to keep pace, treating him as staff who had to follow the group rather than someone with personal needs. As you can sense, schedule is essential for the manager. However, because doc Dan couldn’t reveal the true reason behind his behavior, he gives an excuse for his lack of appetite. 
(chapter 53) The manager’s words bring Joo Jaekyung back to reality and its uncomfortable truth that Dan’s presence now is still bound to a contract — temporary, contingent, never fully his. In other words, with his remarks, Park Namwook is reopening old wounds which shows his total blindness and lack of finesse and of empathy. He treats the last match, as if nothing bad had happened. The incident with the switched spray is simply erased.
(chapter 53) leaving without thinking; now, after Dan vanished from his life entirely, that earlier departure feels like a sign he failed to read. Park’s question brushes against this bruise, and Jaekyung’s lips reflect the discomfort.
(chapter 85) The younger fighter suddenly bursts into panic, declaring how nervous he would be in Jaekyung’s place, how his heart would be pounding out of his chest. His outburst is sincere, naïve, and completely focused on the champion — he never once considers Dan’s feelings. Yet these words strike deeper than he intends. At the mention of a pounding heart, Jaekyung’s eyes lift upward in a brief, involuntary movement. It is the smallest gesture, but it exposes everything he wishes to hide. Because his heart is pounding — but not for the match. It is because of doc Dan! 
(chapter 85) the need for reassurance, the wish to rewrite the pattern of the past, the quiet hope that Dan will not leave him again — not tonight and not afterwards.
(chapter 85), as soon as the athlete stands up right after his recommendation and announces he is now returning to his room. 
(chapter 54) 
(chapter 38) and Korea 
(chapter 48) before a big fight: watch his opponent’s videos, study their habits, rehearse counters. If we only looked at the clock, we might assume he spent the evening thinking about Arnaud Gabriel.
(chapter 85) He opens the door and immediately grabs him inside 
(chapter 85) This is not the controlled, casual emperor of old; it is someone who has been holding back for hours and refuses to risk even a second in which Dan might change his mind. 
(chapter 65) and the comment of the champion in front of this movie: 
(chapter 29) Moreover, I consider this scene 
(chapter 85) as a new version of Choi Heesung’s advice: Doc Dan just needs to sit back and enjoy!! 
(chapter 31) Joo Jaekyung is now doing everything, as deep down he wants to become the perfect lover! And how had I described the night in the States? 
Back then, the hamster Dan had become the champion’s perfect lover, especially because he had kissed his face, hugged him and confessed to him. 
(chapter 38) One might reply that the athlete desired to maintain appearances and as such to hide his suffering and anxiety. In other words, he was hiding his emotions behind routine, Jinx-sex would always start at 11 pm. However, this idea is not entirely satisfying because once doc Dan was in his room, the fighter was no longer hiding his emotions and desires. 
(chapter 72), when the latter would return late from his “work” and the death of his father 
(chapter 73). 
(chapter 85) This explains why his worried gaze followed his fated partner. 
(chapter 85) In other words, the text had a different meaning. It was not an order, but rather a wish…and it had nothing to do with his match against Arnaud Gabriel. During that night, Joo Jaekyung is not seeing a surrogate fighter in front of him or a sex toy, but his real partner, his future boyfriend. This means, this night stands in opposition to the one in the penthouse: 
(chapter 85) This is why he touches Dan’s face instead of flipping him over.
(chapter 85) — something he has never done before. This does not come from instinct. It comes from intention. It comes from effort. It comes from learning. He is indeed showering doc Dan with love and tenderness, therefore it is not surprising that the “hamster” is moved sensually and emotionally. Exactly like during the Summer Night’s Dream, he is reaching nirvana, hence Jinx-philes are constantly seeing stars,. 
(chapter 85) 
(chapter 85) — or the emotional slip that comes with resurfacing feelings: the therapist losing distance, falling back into intimacy. All of these readings sound plausible at first glance. 
(chapter 85) Styled up, hardened with gel 
(chapter 85) — but not the way adults or professionals usually do. 
(chapter 71) So doc Dan could recognize the little boy in the athlete, the more he sees the protagonist with his hair down. Furthermore, I noticed that contrary to season 1, Doc Dan has now more memories of the “wolf” facing him. 
(chapter 85) In the past, he would more look at him from behind: 
(chapter 35) 
(chapter 35) Seeing his face reflects not only the increasing care for each other, but also the improving communication between them. 
(chapter 85) more mature, more “masculine” in the traditional sense. This explicates why the stylists had to dress him up. 
(chapter 82) Yet such an intervention did more than prepare him for the cameras — it tightened the restrictions around his own image, reducing the fighter’s rights over how he appears to the world. With the suit, he appeared older and more powerful. The French fighter leans into age, while the Korean champion leans into youth — a symbolic inversion that reinforces the central tension in the Paris arc: Gabriel performs adulthood; Jaekyung rediscovers the adolescence he never lived. 
(chapter 85) But just as Jaekyung begins to slip into these youthful, softer identities, MFC reasserts control.
(chapter 85) hair up, face polished, a look engineered for posters and rankings. He becomes once again the Emperor — the man who must appear older, sharper, more intimidating, more manufactured.
(chapter 79) This is the boy from the childhood photograph.
In the rain, with his hair heavy and unstyled, his gaze dark and sensual, Jaekyung appears nothing like the commanding emperor. He looks free — freed by weather, freed by desire, freed from roles. It was foreshadowing, not just fanservice. It announces the end of the « jinx » in reality. 
(chapter 85) He is describing himself. His sweetness is the taste of freedom — freedom from performance, freedom from control, freedom from MFC, freedom from fear. He is enjoying this moment. Dan tastes sweet because Jaekyung is finally tasting the life he never allowed himself to want.
(chapter 21) The image of winged rescue and divine protection hangs over the very piece of furniture that, throughout the series, has functioned as Dan’s private sanctuary. This is not incidental. In Jinx, the couch is tied to his deepest memories of care and abandonment, and Mingwa activates this symbolism each time Dan gravitates to it.
(chapter 81), even though he was exhausted? Why does he place the teddy bear 
(chapter 10) Secondly, at no moment, we ever witness the grandmother carrying the little boy to bed. Either she is rocking him to sleep outside the house 
(chapter 44), 
(chapter 44) traces from parents. And now, you comprehend why the hamster could never truly rest in the bed. The couch is therefore not an adult preference; it is a trauma imprint. Resting there feels safe because beds—large, empty, abandoned spaces—became reminders of whoever no longer carried him. Hence it is no longer surprising that he woke up, when he sensed the vanishing of warmth. 
(chapter 84): the bear stands in for a lost comforting presence. It also represents the main lead, Joo Jaekyung. The latter is gradually reentering in the physical therapist’s heart and life. Therefore it is not surprising that there, he squeezes the hand of the toy. It is also why Doc Dan curls around it like a child who deep down hopes to be chosen, lifted, and held. And it is why, even as an adult, his body still whispers the same yearning: someone, please carry me to bed again.
chapter 40, chapter 65, chapter 68, chapter 79)
(chapter 85) and he was still able to arrive on time in the arena. 
(chapter 40) For me, it is a clue that the manager would always request to meet around 7.00 am, when the match was at noon. But what should do the athlete do during all this time? He can only get nervous and feel pressured. 
(chapter 81) I noticed that in different scenes from season 2, the athlete started waking up later and even after doc Dan. 
(chapter 66) But the manager’s rigid schedule threatens even that. An early morning summons drains the fighter’s cortisol reserves before the match has even begun, creating a long, empty corridor of waiting — a period where tension, anxiety, fatigue, and irritation ferment in the body. Instead of resting, centering, and preparing, the champion would spend hours fighting against the clock imposed on him.
(chapter 54) , he might even jump to the wrong conclusion: that Jaekyung drank again — this time behind his back. 
(chapter 81) The plane soars not only above the Alps, but also above a vast river (probably the Rhône)— two landscapes that silently echo the dual composition of breath itself. Breath is made of air and water: oxygen and vapor, wind and moisture. 
(chapter 82) In that sense, the clouds surrounding the aircraft are not mere weather; they are the perfect union of the two elements that sustain life.
(chapter 82) That’s why, when Potato offers him a bottle of Evian, he doesn’t even look. He doesn’t need the water from the mountain and as such the world; he needs the water of the body — the intimacy, the shared moisture that reconnects him to life itself. What he truly longs for is Kim Dan’s saliva, the living trace of water transformed into affection, into care, into exchange. 
(chapter 81) He is longing for his lips and as such a kiss.
(chapter 15)
(chapter 82) Many attractions — the Ferris wheel, the fountain rides, the water park zones — combine air and water, height and spray, just like breath itself. And now, you understand why the champion got wounded with the spray 
(chapter 49) It corresponds to the negative version of the “breath”. 
(epilogue), because doc Dan wants to ensure that the drink or the ice cream is okay. 
(chapter 15) The arena that once fed on pain, blood, and hierarchy gives way to a landscape of shared laughter, circular motion, and renewal. Here, entertainment is not built upon the exhaustion of bodies but upon their liberation. The crowd no longer watches to see who will fall; they rise and descend together. 
(chapter 82) People are more focused on their own emotions and experiences. 
I placed the doctor’s birthday. And that’s how I remembered here the boy’s huge smile and joy. 
(chapter 11) And now, pay attention to the number of the next episode: 83! The two numbers combined together make 11! As you can see, the amusement park is the most natural setting for a smile and kiss. Joo Jaekyung could even speak about his first kiss, an intimate secret that even Kim Dan doesn’t know. Confessing it there would align his personal myth with the fairy-tale architecture around him. This would make doc Dan realize that he is special contrary to the green-haired ex-lover. 
(chapter 81) letting the lips slip past him like water. Yet, in the very same scene, he allows a kiss on the neck, a place where breath, warmth, and pulse converge. 
(chapter 81) He never pushes him back. The doctor resists with the face — with speech, with identity — but not with the body. 
(chapter 81) Why? Because the lips are not mere flesh; for Doc Dan, they are the visible border between desire and love. Jinx-lovers will remember his quiet request in the locker room (chapter 15): he links the lips to the heart — and through it, to the notion of consent. 
(chapter 81) The water envelops them both — fluid, intimate — yet the final element is still missing: agreement, the meeting of air and will. Until Jaekyung learns to ask, to replace taking with invitation, the kiss will remain suspended, like a breath held underwater, waiting to surface into love. And now, you comprehend why he couldn’t achieve his goal in the swimming pool. It was, as if he was trying to recreate the situation in season 1. In other words, I deduce that there will be a confession before a kiss happens!!
(chapter 17) and the one in front of the amusement park: 
(chapter 82) The two scenes mirror each other like opposite poles of Joo Jaekyung’s evolution. In both, he is dressed in black — a color that once signified anonymity and danger, but later becomes the mark of calm confidence.
(chapter 17) When he intervenes to save Kim Dan from the loan sharks, he is first mistaken for one of them — a predator among predators. The irony is sharp: the man who comes to rescue looks indistinguishable from those who harm. The fighters’ world has taught him that power and fame must be hidden; he was encouraged to hide, as if the fans would attack him. He chose anonymity, unaware that this would not only isolate him but also make him appear as a thug. And don’t forget how the manager called him initially: 
(chapter 75) He is a monster. It was, as if the manager wanted to hide the “wolf” from people out of fear that he might attack people randomly. But the problem is that by dressing like that, he was no different from Heo Manwook. Therefore his heroism passes unnoticed, interpreted as violence and intrusion. 
(chapter 18) Like Batman, he moves in secrecy, protecting without ever being thanked. The outfit explains why his good deed leaves no trace of gratitude — the savior looks like the aggressor.
(chapter 82) He still wears black, but the darkness no longer hides him. The cap now sits higher, revealing his eyes and mouth — the organs of emotion and speech. A necklace gleams at his throat, a quiet emblem of openness. He walks beside Kim Dan in daylight, not to fight but to share joy. The man who once lurked in alleys now stands beneath the sky of the amusement park, where black absorbs light rather than extinguishes it.
(chapter 17) A princeling! He was mocking him, because he knew that the fights were actually rigged. That’s why he called him fake. 
(chapter 17) This new connection reinforces my theory that the schemers are anticipating the Emperor’s demise. 
(chapter 56) He doesn’t yet see the storm and suffering beneath.
(chapter 82) But in such a place, it is, as if time was stopped. Thanks to the many emotions and sensations, his body and heart will be revived. Through fun, the duck will change. As Kim Dan ascends from floating duck to swimmer and to a flying duck, he moves from hidden suffering to open breath. Thus the Ferris Wheel will have definitely an impact on him. Both arcs revolve around air and water — the two elements that make up breath and emotion. Don’t forget that the doctor embodies the clouds as well, while the athlete stands for steam.
(chapter 82) scattered on the table, one displays the Eiffel Tower — the obvious choice, symbol of mastery and control. Built for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, it was meant to celebrate France’s industrial power and the centenary of the Revolution — proof that bourgeoisie and steel, not kings and nobility, now ruled the sky and ground. It was even supposed to be dismantled after twenty years, yet it remained, and has since become the symbol of Paris and of France. A monument to progress, modernity, freedom, national pride and endurance. 
(chapter 82) — the drinking, the empty and aimless trip (“check out the area”). For the wolf, such a downtime could only mean endurance, not release and excitement. By the way, such a suggestion from Park Namwook borders on stupidity and blindness. How could he propose drinking, when he had seen his “boy” indulged in alcohol before?
(chapter 44) Yet, this time, the little “stars” belong to the celebrity. 
(chapter 82) His choice of the amusement park is not really about himself and his desires— it is an act of care, a wish to give happiness to someone else.
, Sleeping Beauty 
).Hence there is the castle on the brochure. 
(chapter 65) So yes, this may look like a simple date. Yet beneath its playful surface lies the quietest revolution of all: the man who once ignored every view now opens the window, looks outward, and chooses wonder and fun over war.
(chapter 82) 
(chapter 82) — a creature of heights and thin air, born to dominate the skies where others can barely breathe. The metaphor could not be clearer: altitude is his arena, but also his undoing. 
(chapter 81) The air remains clear and generous, the sky washed in blue as if nothing could go wrong. Yet the trees, touched by the first copper tones, announce the slow turn of the year. It is a calm, lucid atmosphere, the kind of weather that hides transition inside serenity. The unseen Seine glides through the city like a long breath, steady and effortless.
(chapter 82), to build joy outside the ring 
(chapter 81) A single breath — huu — escapes, white against the air. It looks like calm, but it isn’t. It’s the sound of a man forcing his body to obey. The clenched fist that follows betrays him: anxiety condensed into muscle. 
(chapter 14), but his lungs and heart. Yet at the airport, the sportsman doesn’t realize it 
and makes the following resolution: 
(chapter 69) Back then, he feared for doc Dan’s life and ran as if his own heart depended on it. His breathlessness wasn’t exhaustion but panic: the instinctive terror of losing the person who keeps him alive. Thus when he saw him alive on the dock, he could start breathing properly: 
(chapter 69) From HUFF to HAA… exhale versus inhale.
(chapter 82) His brain and heart remember that night at the dock; every harsh inhale during practice echoes that same dread of separation.
(chapter 82) And how did the champion respond to that provocation? Like a cornered animal. 
(chapter 82) He is now a tamed wolf following his master’s suggestions! 
(chapter 55) 
(chapter 72) 
(chapter 72), yet she made no attempt to build an independent life. Her survival had always depended on his success — and when his career crumbled, she vanished with it. That’s the reason why the trash remained uncollected — a visual proof of abandonment 
(chapter 72) But the little boy failed to notice it, because he was suffering from the father’s abuse. Before leaving, she gave her son a phone number, as if absence were only temporary, as if love could be reached through a dial tone. That small gesture sustained an illusion: that she would come back if he became strong enough, rich enough, worthy enough. That illusion became the foundation of his life.
(chapter 72) His first fight was not about trophies — it was an act of filial negotiation: a promise to buy her return. But of course, 300 dollars could not rebuild a family. His first fall became the confirmation of her silence. This explicates why he recalls his first tournament and considers it as “fall”. He had not been able to win, thus the mother could not return. He doesn’t fight for glory or passion; he fights to avoid being discarded again. So, when he says “I won’t fall again,” what he really means is “I won’t let myself be unloved again.” 
(chapter 74), while in reality, she had long abandoned him. Her departure turned growth into punishment, and independence into exile. This explicates why as an adult, he used money to buy people and turn them into toys. This could only make appear as a spoiled brat. 
(chapter 79) Even Park Namwook himself, only days earlier, had described the French match as 
(chapter 81) “a breeze” — a fight so effortless that it would bring some fresh air into the champion’s career. But that metaphor betrays its irony: what was supposed to refresh him is now suffocating him. The “breeze” promised by his manager has turned into lack of air.
(chapter 70) — a detail no one around him ever learned. This simple fact overturns their interpretation. 
(chapter 70) The breathlessness they see now is not a decline in performance, but the residue of transformation. His body, once trained to suppress every weakness, had finally surrendered to nature.
(chapter 46), whose clash with the champion exposes two different forms of frustration.
(chapter 46) He reproaches Seonho for using his title and image to promote himself, for bragging about their sparring sessions to boost his career. From his perspective, Seonho lacks both endurance and authenticity — he performs strength rather than living it. 
(chapter 46) For Jaekyung, such behavior is intolerable because it cheapens everything he has sacrificed to achieve.
(chapter 46) He turns on Jaekyung and accuses him of arrogance — of using his champion title to look down on others. What Seonho perceives as disdain is, in truth, the athlete’s defense mechanism. The star’s detachment is not born from pride but from obligation and trauma (abandonment issues). 
(chapter 46) His perfection is not freedom; it is captivity.
(chapter 52) tried to recruit Potato, the youngest member from Team Black. He wanted to become the new idol of Hwang Yoon-Gu. He imagined that he could replace the main lead and Potato would be happy to become the new sparring partner of Seonho. 
(chapter 81) 
(chapter 82) and press coverage — to lift his name higher. That’s why Mingwa made sure to show him at the press conference. 
(chapter 82) Every post, every camera flash, every headline serves as borrowed oxygen. 
(chapter 70). Both men embody the same cruelty disguised as professionalism — one in the ring, the other from the shadows. They blame the champion for the new match, none of them question the system. 
(chapter 36) or the media’s harsh verdicts after defeat 
(chapter 82) He is now seen signing autographs 
(chapter 82), whereas in the past, he was only seen in company of reporters in a secluded area. 
(chapter 40) 
Here the athlete has only one goal: talk to doc Dan and clean the air. He has no intention to truly rekindle with him 
Thus he is still stuck in a traffic jam. 
Here, there is a progression, because he can switch the lane. However, he is still driving in one direction, not looking out of the window. He is not taking his time either. These scenes illustrate the champion’s psychological confinement and mirror doc Dan’s mindset as well.
(chapter 75)
(chapter 27) 
(chapter 80) He has not grasped that he can make the champion happy. In fact, this day would represent a real break and rest, as they would learn nothing, only make new experiences so that life can appear colorful again. Here, we can see two balloons in the form of heart: green and yellow. 
(chapter 41) They were destined to be together and lived happily. 
(chapter 55)
(chapter 74) What does it mean that a man who once reached for his mother’s voice is now suspended between clouds, unreachable himself? 
(chapter 74) Why does the same stillness that once followed a farewell now fill the air around his flight?
(chapter 65) Let’s not forget that the last poster of chapter 81 
(chapter 74) In that earlier scene, the smoke rises from burning incense sticks which is linked to scent — the invisible bridge between the living and the dead. Here, it reappears as the airplane’s exhaust 
(chapter 75), perfume 
(chapter 75) The fighter calls it a “dream,” not a nightmare, because fighting was once his father’s dream — a dream of escape, of being seen, of proving that poverty was not fate. But for the son, that same dream turned into a curse. To fight was to repeat what had already destroyed the family.
(chapter 75), the forbidden comfort that ended in scolding. 
(chapter 72) When he finally received it, it was not from a mother but from the director — a man whose gift could fill the stomach but not the heart. From that day, nourishment and submission became one.
(chapter 44) — nuzzling the one destined to become his anchor. Jinx-philes can observe not only the presence of steam (which is similar to smoke), but also the effect of the scent. Back then, the champion had calmed down thanks to the hamster’s scent. 
(chapter 44) To conclude, that moment, half dream and half awakening, had already begun to rewrite the map of scent. There, the fragrance from doc Dan had triggered his appetite, hence he couldn’t restrain himself during that night. 
(chapter 45) 
(chapter 36) When the champion left South Korea for the United States in episode 36, the plane glided through a void of light. There was no sky, no earth, no horizon — only a white expanse pierced by the sun’s glare. Even the boundaries of air and space seemed dissolved. The image radiated purity but felt sterile, stripped of texture. The machine was rising, not toward a destination but away from attachment itself.
(chapter 37), the heart disinfected of need. Hence the bed became an instrument of “torture”. The upward flight marked a beginning, yet it already smelled of exhaustion and futility. A life built on departure cannot land anywhere.
(chapter 36) instead of naming Joo Jaekyung himself. He might have stood beside the MMA fighter the entire time, yet he preferred to disappear behind collective language, as if the plural could shield him from personal involvement. It was a professional gesture, an attempt to efface the self, to stand beside the fighter without belonging to him. His role was service, not solidarity; his language confirmed distance. Thus his karma was that he got abandoned by the team after the match, while rescued by the celebrity himself!! 
(chapter 81) translates that awareness into sensation. It’s no longer the passivity of a bystander but the heartbeat of someone invested. The count of days becomes a shared horizon between doctor and fighter, a bridge of feeling. 
(chapter 37) The others indulge in small pleasures — snacks, shopping, light rebellion — but the champion and his doctor remain trapped in routine, orbiting one another inside sterile rooms. I am suspecting that doc Dan must have bought the scarf at the airport, a small act of thoughtfulness before departure. 
(chapter 41) Yet the gesture, though sincere, carries a quiet irony. The scarf is printed with flowers, mostly roses, but as a piece of fabric it has neither scent nor warmth. It imitates life without containing it. What he gives her, in truth, is a copy of affection, not its essence — a bouquet that cannot breathe.
(chapter 72) — the garbage, the spoiled food, the stale air of neglect. What he truly covers is not his nose, but his fear of returning there. Later, in episode 22, when Dan cooks for him, the champion instinctively associates food with corruption: 
(chapter 22) Interesting is that here fish has a negative connotation: intrusion and thoughtlessness. This shows how detached the champion was from his true self: water and the ocean. Moreover, cooking, warmth, nourishment—all evoked garbage, the chaos of his first home.
(chapter 54) couldn’t nourish him. Hence he replaced it with wine for a while.
(chapter 74) Their fragrance became the perfume of loss. To his senses, flowers never meant beauty or love or nice smell; they mean burial and as such pain. Every petal recalls the suffocating smell of the funeral room, the smoke, the artificial but painful peace of goodbye.
(chapter 32) The blue tie contains 3 striped colors: red, white and blue, which are quite similar to French flag, though the order has been switched. Secondly, Choi Heesung purchased 
(chapter 32) Hermès’ item, a French company famous its bags, scarfs and perfumes. So I am quite certain that once Jinx-philes discovered the identity of the next fighter 
(chapter 81) and saw the plane, they must have jumped to the conclusion that the next fight will take place in Paris! But France is more just than the capital. This country is called the Hexagon due to its form, and this name stands in opposition to the MMA ring, which is an octagon! 
(chapter 81) So we could say that despite the disadvantage being in a foreign country, they are “equal”, 6 colors against the team from the Hexagon, the blue light from the MMA ring. But let’s return our attention to Paris. The latter is widely recognized as the symbol of love, the global center for fashion, art, and stardom. The city has a deep historical connection to these fields, being the birthplace of haute couture and home to many of the world’s leading fashion houses and luxury conglomerates. Its cultural scene is equally rich, with a long history as a hub for artists and a more recent reputation for being a center for music and film stars. However, the image with the landing plane is actually revealing the truth. 
(chapter 14) Here, exactly like in the States, his trip to Busan never gave him the opportunity to visit the city and the beach, exactly like the athlete. The next airport to Cannes is Nice- Côte d’Azur and it looks more like the one in the Manhwa. Furthermore, the South of France has a milder climate in the fall, hence it is still possible to swim in September. Besides, in my last essay, I had connected the champion to Bruce Lee and water: 
Finally, Naturally, here I could be wrong with Cannes. Nevertheless, Cannes, with its glittering shorelines and film festival glamour, symbolizes the marriage of money (millionaires, yachts) and illusion — the theater of appearances. It is where contracts are made, where bodies are displayed, traded, and consumed through the gaze, the very economy that has always governed the champion’s existence. The wolf, once born among garbage and hunger, now finds himself surrounded by luxury, in a world perfumed with artificial success. Yet beneath the surface of that “breeze” and “splash” lingers the scent of corruption. The coastal light hides what the smoke once revealed: exploitation, manipulation, and the unspoken violence of commerce.
(chapter 59); silence had replaced air; life was drained of flavor. None of them truly enjoyed the nature: the ocean or the mountain. The seaside town was strongly intertwined with work 
(chapter 77) or danger. Then, when they returned to that place, their time was limited to visit the grandmother and the landlord. 
(chapter 81) They had no time to walk through the woods or visit the hills. They had no time for themselves. Consequently, I believe that in The French Riviera, the two of them will discover “savoir vivre”. Everything breathes, glows, and stirs. It is a land overflowing with color, aroma, and taste — precisely the senses that the wolf had long sought to erase through ritual. Doc Dan had led a similar life too, dedicated to his grandmother and work. If they are close to the sea, they might decide to walk on the beach together.
(chapter 69), where Baek Junmin once fought for the championship belt. Thailand in Jinx is not a paradise but a mirror of corruption — the place where victory turns into prostitution, where the body becomes currency. There, the Shotgun won a crown but not respect; his triumph was drenched in manipulation, spectacle, and moral decay. He was admired by no one, celebrated by ghosts.
(chapter 36), the transition from flight to arrival unfolds with seamless precision: no airport, no customs, no luggage — only the honk of city traffic and the flags fluttering over a hotel entrance. Everything about that journey screams logistics. It was a corporate trip, arranged, timed, and contained. The athletes passed through invisible gates, their movement stripped of individuality. The champion, like cargo, was transported rather than welcomed. His arrival, though triumphant 
(chapter 81)
(chapter 81) The suitcase becomes the true protagonist of this threshold. In that small vibration lies all the instability the white air once denied. It is his portable home, his compressed past, the fragile proof that he finally has something to lose. In the earlier arc, he could have vanished mid-flight and no one would have noticed; now, if the suitcase disappears, another heart will break. That difference measures his evolution. Yet it also marks new vulnerability: any hand can touch what he carries.
(chapter 41) and the wedding cabinet
(chapter 80) before it, the suitcase belongs to the same symbolic lineage. It is the container of intimacy — filled with clothes, precious items like pictures or books, with the silent evidence of presence. But unlike its predecessors, it moves. The wardrobe once stood still, rooted in the domestic; the wedding cabinet invited intrusion within a private world, as it was once discarded. The suitcase, however, carries that vulnerability into the public realm. It is exposure on wheels — the private made portable. 
(chapter 81) 
(chapter 81) and Kim Dan has still no idea that the athlete has kept them like cherished relics. He might have placed the notebook from Hwang Byungchul as well. However, the person carrying the suitcase is the manager: 
(chapter 55), where he expressed his desire to work for Joo Jaekyung for a long time. What would be the manager’s reaction, when he recalls this incident with the switched spray and Doc Dan’s sudden departure? Moreover, we have here “erased words”: to be ho… The timing of the discovery is really important. This could generate some tension and confrontation between the manager and the physical therapist. Besides, such a birthday card could generate negative feelings (like jealousy), Kim Dan is gradually taking more and more place in the athlete’s life. The violation that once occurred behind closed doors (the penthouse) now could happen in plain sight. The line between private and public collapses, just as the boundary between success and loss blurs.
(chapter 75) While he was sick, he could recall this scene. 
(chapter 75) where the fighter could stay focused, though he was surrounded by noise and people. The advice had seemed trivial, when first given. Now it re-emerges as revelation. The emperor, once incapable of rest, now reads 
(chapter 81) beside someone who represents safety. The book becomes a bridge between wakefulness and sleep, a ritual that does not erase consciousness but calms it. Where his earlier practices sought to block sensation, this one restores it.
(chapter 73), which should have offered nourishment, attention and peace, had been replaced by absence and deceit. Her warmth was an illusion, a posture mimicked but never felt.
(chapter 80) And here, I had imagined that the mother had offered this t-shirt as a birthday present. 
(chapter 29) which reminds us of breastfeeding. And now, look at the embrace in the swimming pool: 
(chapter 80). The hamster was imitating the behavior of the little Jaekyung in the past, clinching onto the “parent” like his life depended on him. But how did the athlete react to this embrace? He looked at his fated partner 
(chapter 80) and got all warm and fuzzy by looking at him: 
(chapter 81) A sign that the mother had never reacted the way her son is doing now, the feel to kiss the loved one! The problem is that in the swimming pool, the doctor’s scent and taste are covered by chlorine. 
(chapter 61) or solitude, becomes again what it was meant to be: a place of rest and tenderness. Thus he touches his fated partner’s legs over the cover, showing his care and respect. 
(chapter 81)
(chapter 81), he can recognize the false nature of his mother’s affection. What she offered was conditional, deceptive and self-centered; what the doctor gives is ordinary and consistent. No grand gestures, no promises — only presence. The doctor does not rehearse concern; he lives it through routine. And this ordinariness, paradoxically, becomes sacred. It was, as if the athlete was treating his own inner child through the physical therapist. 
(chapter 74) At this moment, the page itself turns black, veined with smoky whorls of gray — as though her words had burned into the air rather than spoken. “I can’t live with you… please understand… let’s just go our separate ways.” The sentences rise like vapors, leaving behind the faint residue of a scent that refuses to vanish. This visual texture — half smoke, half ink — captures her true condition: she dissolves herself with every attempt at escape.
France itself mirrors her — beautiful, perfumed, wrapped in silk and secrecy. She definitely climbed the social ladders through her second marriage, hence she could offer toys to her second son. The nation of couture and fragrance becomes the stage for the mother’s unmasking. Once the name of Joo Jaewoong rises again, questions about her will inevitably follow. And here, she can no longer hide behind silence or excuses. The myth of refinement — both hers and France’s — collapses under the weight of exposure.
(chapter 13) 
(chapter 48) — had mirrored faces, two bodies, two lights. This time, there is only one. The duel has vanished. What remains looks less like a fight and more like a myth in the making. 
(chapter 81) chosen to face the Emperor. According to Oh Daehyun, this man is fighting for the title of the hottest male athlete in the world. 
(chapter 14) Why is there this abbreviation? Why does the image proclaim a return while simultaneously concealing the full title? What does it signify? 
seems to be corroborated: this event doesn’t announce the glorious comeback it pretends to be, but a carefully staged trap. However, there is more to it. The longer I examine the composition 
(chapter 30) The latter had to learn fighting in order to play his role in the drama Extreme Worlds 
(chapter 29). 
(chapter 8) His eagle is spreading his wings in front of his god, the sun, attempting to fly closer to the sun. According to me, Joo Jaekyung is the sun. This explains the loyalty of this purple belt fighter toward the protagonist! 
(chapter 47) But that’s one possibility among others, one thing is sure. Oh Daehyun will play an important part during their stay in France.
(chapter 46) People would bet on him and win… they needed him to lose and break his “lucky streak”. In other words, the organization betrayed the body they once sold. They had prepared the fall long before the injury, the surgery, or the suspension. But their plan failed. Despite every setback, the wolf remained beloved at home. People still admired him, not for the trophies, but for his kindness 
and strength 
(chapter 62) In other words, what the champion did in the seaside town had a huge impact in his life and world. He lingered in the hearts of those he touched. He was not a fallen idol, nor a forgotten champion, but a living memory — proof that integrity leaves deeper marks than victory ever could. To conclude, his fame no longer comes from spectacle only but also from empathy and presence — from the very qualities the schemers and media system fail to grasp.
(chapter 81) The new battlefield is the face. Under this light, Jinx-philes will grasp why the agents from the Entertainment agency were so zealous in defending the star’s reputation. If he were to lose his good looks, they would lose one of their most profitable clients. 
(chapter 52), whose envy of beauty turned into a creed. Imagine this. Now he holds the championship belt, yet no one admires him. His ruined face became the excuse for his bitterness,
(chapter 52) and his rival the embodiment of everything he lost. He had to flee to Thailand to claim glory and admiration 
(chapter 52) In the past, his insult 
(chapter 74) merged anger with heat; now that very “hotness” materializes in the media and poster as smoke, an image of resentment turned into atmosphere. 
(chapter 74): the visible trace of a man who dares to rebel. He once watched the fighter smoke a plain cigarette and sneered at him for it, precisely because he knew it was not a joint. In Junmin’s world, violation meant courage and power intoxication. He assumed that fearlessness linked to drugs would bring admiration and success. Jaekyung’s refusal to accept their drug wasn’t prudence; it was, to him, an insult — a quiet act of superiority. The wolf’s restraint exposed his indifference and own dependency, and that humiliation still burns.
(chapter 74) The main lead was seen “wearing a black suit with three white strips” showing that he was the chief mourner. 
(chapter 74) Once you recognize this 
(chapter 73), hiding behind his hyungs, the mobsters who granted him borrowed strength and false belonging. Joo Jaekyung, by contrast, was raised in the ring — the gym shaped him as both a professional and a person.
(chapter 49) If you have read my previous essay, you’ll remember that I connected the arc of chapters 80 to 89 to the theme of jealousy. Baek Junmin embodies that poison completely. His words — “ 
(chapter 73) Both men are haunted by the same delusion: that to win, one must erase the other.
(chapter 81) It is a subtle but telling detail: the physical separation mirrors the emotional boundary now forming within the team. The healer’s hands have been withdrawn. So the emperor’s empathy is incomplete, hence he is only EMP. It extends only toward his chosen one — the doctor — and not yet to the others around him. True empathy, however, cannot be selective; it must reach beyond intimacy to encompass even those who do not stand at the center of affection.
(chapter 1) He was a beast of destruction, someone who made sure to crush his opponents without mercy 
(chapter 15) Unstoppable in his rage, he moved like a man possessed — bloodthirsty, unrelenting, fighting not for glory but for survival. Each strike was a declaration: I will not die.
(chapter 36) One could think, the other members are not wearing it, for they don’t want to be associated with the champion. He has been stigmatized as a thug or a child losing his temper, the consequences of Park Namwook’s badmouthing. However, observe that even the star is not wearing it. 
(chapter 36) What once symbolized sponsorship and solidarity has quietly disappeared. The explanation seems obvious at first: the loss of commercial partners following scandal and suspension. 
(chapter 36) no cheering spectators — nothing recalls the hero’s welcomes of earlier arcs.
(chapter 74) but with a different public.
(chapter 16), the moment Heo Manwook thought that the “hamster” was working as an escort due to the name “Team Black”. 
(chapter 16) So because of the jacket Team Black, doc Dan could be mistaken for a prostitute. Naturally, Jinx-lovers will remember the great fight between Heo Manwook and his minions, when the athlete saved his fated partner. Back then, no one discovered his great action.
(chapter 47) In the past, they participated in the underground matches of Gangwon Province, where Baek Junmin reigned as a local legend — a thug made myth through blood and rumor. 
(chapter 46) But now, the same hunger for spectacle has simply migrated upward. What once belonged to the alleys has climbed into the penthouses. The illegal thrill of the poor has become the curated decadence of the rich. And they were invited to witness the death of the “emperor”, someone who tried to escape from his origins. Thus I deduced that this is only a match that the high rollers (I suppose, mostly people from the Occident, though expect some from South Korea) know about.
(chapter 81), breathing without bracing, learning that flow is strength. The author placed the swimming lessons here so we’d see him practice calm under pressure before he performs it in the ring. But observe that when he is in the swimming pool, he is expressing more and more his emotions. 
(chapter 81) In other words, during the swimming lessons, he was encouraged to find the right balance between instincts and control, which Bruce Lee recommended. It is no coincidence that he referred to the philosophy of yin and yang! 
(chapter 36) The pool inverts it. Laps replace lunges; rhythm and love replace revenge and hatred. Anger loses its grip because water refuses to hold it. And now, you can grasp why the athlete was calm during the meeting: 
(chapter 81) His fear and anger were no longer controlling his heart and mind. “One of the best lessons you can learn in life is to remain calm.” The swimmer learns it; the fighter must now prove it. Thanks to doc Dan, the athlete was incited not only to accept himself, but also to get self-knowledge.
(chapter 62), and you are in a state of constant learning. 
(chapter 80) The seaside town and doc Dan taught him kindness, the pool teaches him composure and precision, the poster’s smoke teaches him restraint: you don’t swat at vapor; you breathe and move through it. “It is far better to be alone than to be in bad company”—so he steps out of the schemers’ frame. “When you accept yourself, the whole world accepts you”—so he stops fighting the audience and starts speaking to one person who matters, then to many. In my opinion, Joo Jaekyung will use this bout to express his feelings for Doc Dan (“to me, martial arts means expressing yourself“) and the birthday card 
(chapter 17) And once the cloud (doc Dan) meets the steam 
(chapter 53), yet she kept her distance. Observe that she only talked about one time experience. She sensed its danger and built her life on the solid ground of caution, duty, and control. In other words, she belongs to the world of the shore 
(chapter 28) and learn that not everything can be postponed or entrusted to someone else. Water, in this sense, rejects fatalism. It calls for motion, for risk, for personal responsibility.
(chapter 80) He is no longer the man waiting to be rescued; he is the man learning how to swim. The champion’s words 
(chapter 80) distill the new doctrine: don’t wait for salvation 
(chapter 80), create your own buoyancy. Between the first swim 
(chapter 27) and this second lies the true point of no return—where superficial judgment turns into reflection, dependency into self-trust 
(chapter 80) and the rejection of powerlessness, 
(chapter 28) into the first stirrings of love 
(chapter 53) Safety lay in patience and dependence. Even when she later spoke with the champion by the sea, she avoided mentioning the ocean —as if to deny that any movement beyond her control could exist.
(chapter 65) 
(chapter 80) Yet her absence from the pool scene is precisely what reveals her theology of avoidance. The pool was never her domain because her life revolves around work, not pleasure. She has no notion of rest without guilt, no concept of joy detached from utility. For her, swimming would appear frivolous—something “unnecessary” as long as one stays on solid ground. Jinx-philes should keep in mind that she never gave such a task to Joo Jaekyung. Her instructions to him were always practical, delegating care outward: take him back to Seoul, bring him to a big hospital and make sure he’s safe. 
(chapter 78) sounds like ordinary concern, yet it hides her familiar logic of blame. It is as if she were implying that Joo Jaekyung has failed to fulfill her favor because Kim Dan has resisted care. In her eyes, the grandson is still the one responsible for trouble; the athlete’s role remains that of the dependable proxy who must “fix” him. What makes this moment striking is her tone of urgency, so unlike her habitual fatalism. The woman who once repeated “I’m the same as always” 
(chapter 77), respect and care. What she calls delay is, in truth, meditation and transformation.
(chapter 80) It was her graduation gift, yet it had nothing to do with his new profession or status. In contrast, the first episode already shows Kim Dan in a blue therapist’s uniform, name tag neatly pinned — a garment he must have purchased himself. 
(chapter 1) Traditionally, a graduation present helps the recipient embark on a career — like for example, a watch, a suit, or even a briefcase — symbols of adult entry into the job market. By offering him a hoodie instead, she unconsciously devalued her grandson’s professional worth. The garment belongs to the domestic sphere, not the workplace; it wraps him in comfort rather than readiness. In a moment meant to celebrate his arrival into public life, she reinscribes him into the private one — the house, the caretaker role, the obedient child. He doesn’t look like someone who went to university. 
(chapter 65)
(chapter 41) While dying, she reduces love to an equation of productivity: “Dan, it’s important to give back as much as you take.” The verb do anchors her worldview — love must be measurable, visible, earned through action. To do good by someone means to labor for them, not to rest beside them. What caught my attention is that neither doctor 
(chapter 27) nor the champion employs the expression “vacation” or “break”. 
(chapter 80) Why? It is because they never experienced a break. We have to envision that the “hamster” must have followed his grandmother, when he was not busy studying or working. Both main leads never experienced a real vacation. They say a day off, as if the day itself didn’t really exist, as if it were a temporary pause between “real” time. In their inherited logic, only work gives time its value; everything else evaporates. The grandmother’s way of loving has turned rest into an absence, something unworthy of being named. However, observe that there’s a gradual change in doc Dan’s vocabulary: 
(chapter 80) The problem is that for the hamster, only the athlete is worthy of getting his rest. It still doesn’t belong to his world.
(chapter 5) the focus remains mechanical. Eating is fuel; sleep is maintenance. But rest, in the sense of surrender, stillness, or joy, is foreign to her lexicon.
(chapter 30) — she watched The Fine Line, the very drama that made Choi Heesung famous. The detail seems trivial, yet it exposes everything: she had leisure 
(chapter 30), she simply refused to call it that. Watching television was permitted because it was passive, solitary, and could be rationalized as recuperation, not pleasure. In contrast, genuine rest — time shared, chosen, or joyful — never existed in her vocabulary. What she denied was not the existence of rest but the act of resting with him. She kept her downtime to herself, as if peace were a private possession. For her, love meant providing, not accompanying. Yet true care requires presence — sharing is caring, as the saying goes. [For more read this essay: 
(chapter 65) displays that she perceives her grandson’s exhaustion not as suffering but as malfunction, as if the human were a device that could be recalibrated through work and pills. That’s why her favors revolves about living conditions, but not about his “happiness”. Perhaps she genuinely hoped that the drugs and the stability of a “regular job” with the champion would realign him, as though routine alone could fix what grief and deprivation had unbalanced.
(chapter 11), scarf tied under her chin, carrying a single sweet bun. She doesn’t need to say she “went out of her way”—her action already proclaims it. The effort is the gift. 
(chapter 11) That simple walk to the store becomes a moral event, proof of affection through fatigue. 
(chapter 80) In her eyes, generosity always justified expectation. The flowers were for display; the hoodie was the contract.
(chapter 41) When Dan gifts his grandmother an expensive scarf, he hides its true price — “I got it for a bargain” — repeating her own pattern of disguised generosity. She sees through the lie, teasing him for “spoiling” her, yet she accepts the luxury without feeling guilty. The scarf becomes her version of the hoodie: a fabric trophy of moral worth. But its later disappearance is revealing. In season two, she wears it 
(chapter 56) shortly after her arrival at the hospice, never again. When she greets Joo Jaekyung, the scarf is gone 
(chapter 61). Why? One might reply that the scarf lost its value, especially since she is living next to the director’s room. I doubt that such men would pay attention to such an object. Another possibility is that she fears its brightness might betray her neglect, for the champion has lived with her grandson for a while. How could she display silk while her grandson owns almost nothing? 
(chapter 80) The gesture that once symbolized love now feels like pain and loss. The signification of the gift has changed. What once wrapped him in safety now weighs like absence — the fabric retains the shape of someone who is about to vanish. His silence is not understanding but hurt, a wordless awareness that affection can curdle into memory. The audience, not the character, perceives that with the grandmother’s approaching death, her ledger is about to close. The gray fabric, once proof of her sacrifice, will lose its moral weight; her “gesture” will expire with her. Yet Kim Dan may not yet realize that this very ending could one day free him. The book-keeping dies with the bookkeeper.
(chapter 31) and tries to refuse it. 
(chapter 31) 
(chapter 67), loses sleep, or pays a price. He interprets Joo Jaekyung’s concern as “trouble,” Heesung’s gifts as “too much.” In his mind, affection is inseparable from cost:
(chapter 80) is the site of its quiet destruction. His act of giving reverses every law the grandmother ever taught. First, he does not “go out of his way.” The clothes are delivered effortlessly, without fanfare or moral accounting. 
(chapter 80) There is no speech about sacrifice, no self-congratulation. 
(chapter 80) If the grandmother’s motto was “I went through so much for you,” the champion’s is “It’s no big deal.” Generosity becomes invisible, unburdened, and therefore trustworthy.
(chapter 80) The row of garments invites choice — a concept absent from Shin Okja’s universe, where love came in single doses and with strings attached. Here, the doctor is asked to select what he likes, to exercise taste, to inhabit preference. The abundance of options grants him agency, dignity, and the right to refuse.
(chapter 22) 
(chapter 30) becomes unexpectedly true here. The wardrobe bridges the distance that the grandmother’s gifts had always created.
(chapter 80) This is why his hesitant and embarrassed gratitude, framed against a background of dissolving gray waves, feels so transformative. The air behind him ripples as if washing away the residue of his old faith.
(chapter 80); they mark the passing of days, the return of seasons, the rediscovery that not every morning has to look the same. Variety itself becomes a form of freedom. When the wolf once complained that all his shirts looked identical, he was unknowingly naming what both of them lacked: differentiation, spontaneity, change. Through this act, he restores color not only to the doctor’s wardrobe but to his emotional world — a quiet resurrection through fabric.
(chapter 80) The “hamster” had instinctively turned to the only person who had ever offered him help without cost.
— the luminous, wish-granting jewel said to contain both wisdom and life energy. The dragon’s power is not innate; it is completed and elevated by the jewel. Without the yeouiju, it cannot ascend to the heavens — strength without meaning, force without direction.
(chapter 79) This is one part of the new circle. Jealousy is the residue of imbalance — the echo of the 7 within the 8. In the numerology of Jinx, the 7-chapters, like for example episode 7 
(chapter 7), episode 18, where the champion had sex because of this statement 
(chapter 18),episode 34 with Choi Heesung 
(chapter 34) or episode 52, where the former members of Team Black and expressed their disdain and jealousy toward the main lead 
(chapter 52)
(chapter 79), the final test before the circle closes for good.
(chapter 47) and 8 lies that invisible hinge: the death of the old economy of love and the birth of a new one.
(chapter 61) and Heesung’s residual rivalry and resent. Each acts as a different face of control: the woman binds through guilt, the manager through hierarchy acting as the owner of the athlete’s time, the actor through charm and deceptions. Together they form the triad that tries to reopen the circle closed in the pool. Let’s not forget that the athlete chose to take a day off on his own accord 
(chapter 80), but he had just returned to the gym. It is no longer the same training and routine.
(chapter 78) Their noisy excitement — hugs, wishes, smiles, jokes, even talk of meat — gave the impression of a long-awaited reunion. Yet the suggestion was cut short by Jaekyung, who rejected it like this: 
(chapter 9) in episode 9, the champion’s birthday dinner 
(chapter 43) in episode 43, the talk of hospital get-togethers 
(chapter 61), or the festive tone of fighters after director Choi Gilseok’s victory 
(chapter 41) Why did they not organize a party in Seoul to celebrate his victory in the States? Dan devotes himself to work, but his departures are marked by silence 
(chapter 53) rather than farewell. 
(chapter 78) always miss their mark, either hollow in substance or unseen by the very people who should be honored.
. (Chapter 43) Even the “dragon’s” birthday, supposedly a day of personal celebration, is reduced to an awkward dinner at his expense, with a cake arriving a day too early 
(chapter 43) or gifts from sponsors and fans he never wanted. 
(Chapter 41) In Germany, it is considered as a bad omen to celebrate a birthday too soon. Rituals that should affirm intimacy instead expose distance and lack of respect.
(chapter 56) However, this is just an illusion. What caught my attention is that the nurses wondered themselves why such a skilled therapist would come to a small-town hospital.
(chapter 56) They speak about him, as though he had no reason to stay there, as if he were a stranger passing through. Right from the beginning, he was treated unconsciously as temporary, someone whose presence required explanation rather than welcome. Finally, no party was held for him, no ritual of inclusion was offered. His distance and their detachment mirrored each other, producing the silence that would later define his departure. 
(chapter 78)
(chapter 15) The high peak of his celebrated victories takes place at the gym where Park Namwook gather the fighters in front of the Emperor congratulating himself for his “good work” and the spectators for belonging to a winning team. 
(chapter 53) For him, the physical therapists were just tools and as such replaceable.
(chapter 43) A birthday, especially in Korea, is typically a family-centered celebration, held at home or among close friends. Yet Jaekyung’s “party” takes place in a restaurant, under Yosep’s casual announcement that they would be having a “dinner party.” 
(chapter 45) By keeping Dan in the dark about the “surprise,” the fighters created another problem. Their silence pushed him to offer his own present on the same day as the gifts from sponsors and fans — exactly the kind of attention Jaekyung resented. He had already said he did not want those presents, and now Dan’s sincere gesture was placed in the same category, indistinguishable from the flood of unwanted offerings. What could have been a private, meaningful moment was absorbed into the hollow ritual of the group. Hence the champion never got to read his card! 
(Chapter 50) Then later the athlete questioned the physical therapist’s actions and told him this 
(chapter 51) out of fear and pain, the physical therapist thought, he was fired. Once again, he left in silence, unacknowledged. No one stood up for him, no one tried to reintegrate him, no farewell was offered. 
(chapter 74) The silence of his grandmother on this point suggests that even the most basic ritual of mourning was denied him.
(Chapter 59) Only Dan and the landlord marked the event with a quiet burial. Since no one knew about it, it left the ritual incomplete. For Dan, the small act was meaningful, but its invisibility to the larger community echoed his own life: recognition always hidden, always partial, never public.
(chapter 43) This was the real heart of the evening, the only moment where ritual turned into intimacy. And yet even this was missed by Potato, who was absent at that crucial moment, lingering elsewhere with Heesung. The party’s form was there, but its essence — the recognition of Jaekyung’s loneliness and Dan’s importance — was overlooked by the two men at its center due to the presence of alcohol.
(Chapter 78) To them, departure is not tragedy but play, a noisy farewell parade. Their barking and chasing become a spontaneous party, a joyous ritual of attachment. 
(Chapter 78) Striking is that here, doc Dan is making a promise to Boksoon and her puppies, but the latter have no idea. Therefore imagine this. On the weekend, the moment the car approaches the landlord’s house, the puppies will recognize them and celebrate their return! And this time, both characters will witness this welcome party: 
(chapter 78)
(Chapter 78) He doesn’t limit the number of matches, only that he will focus on the “wolf”. So for them, his return is not limited in time. Nevertheless, his paleness and dark circles speak louder than their words: he is exhausted, fragile, still haunted.
(Chapter 78) They are more worried about another possible departure than about his condition, as though his leaving again would be a greater tragedy than his ongoing suffering. This exposes that the members are not totally oblivious and their reunion is not a repetition of the past. On the other hand, warm words and a noisy welcome are enough for them. They take his generosity for granted, just as they always have. Therefore they ask for his magic hands. 
(chapter 9), and abstaining from drink often means being excluded from group belonging. Yet Dan, on medication, cannot drink. His doctor’s recommendation makes it impossible for him to participate in such “public” rituals. Even the customary sharing of a huge bowl — a symbol of intimacy and unity — must be avoided. For Jaekyung, who once used alcohol to dull his own struggles, 
(Chapter 78) Hence the latter has no interest to organize a welcome party and even maintain the ritual with the bowl!! What might appear to others as grumpiness or stinginess is in fact a form of protection.
(chapter 9) 
(chapter 26), or allowed whether welcome parties or surprise celebrations or pre-match meals 
(chapter 22). These events were never about genuine recognition but about maintaining power and appearances, boosting morale, or reminding the fighters of their dependence on the team structure he managed. The “surprise” birthday party in chapter 43 bore his fingerprints, 
(chapter 43) This absence is revealing: Namwook preferred to avoid direct conflict with Jaekyung’s visible displeasure, leaving the awkward burden of paying and performing to the champion himself to Yosep. In other words, his parties were tools of control, not gifts of belonging. By chapter 78, however, the balance has shifted. 
(chapter 78) Standing in the back, Namwook watches as Dan returns and is embraced by the fighters. He notices a “different vibe” between the two leads, but fails to grasp what it means. Doc Dan is actually free and has the upper hand in their relationship. Hence he can no longer ask this from doc Dan: 
(chapter 36) Doc Dan should put up with everything. What he cannot admit is that Dan is no longer replaceable. 
(chapter 69) Yet unlike all the hollow celebrations that came before, this missed event would finally have meaning. It would not be absence through neglect, but absence as recognition: proof that Dan’s life matters more than ritual, profit, or performance.
(chapter 78) This delay suggests a split loyalty: while the team is already celebrating, Potato is likely still tied to Heesung, perhaps even speaking to him on the phone. His tardiness betrays how his heart is pulled in two directions — caught between the actor’s orbit and the gym’s renewed center around Dan. Yet the embrace of the fighter, and his tearful reaction at seeing Dan again, show that his real place lies with Team Black.
(chapter 60), which he took on the day one of them died! 
(chapter 58), and his presence ties alcohol directly to the champion’s vulnerability. At the same time, Potato’s loyalty is beginning to shift. He once orbited Heesung like a hidden lover, but Dan’s return rekindles his attachment to the gym and as such will affect his relationship with the gumiho. 
(chapter 78) Sitting stiffly in his hospital bed, he waves away any possibility of affection. His body language, arms crossed, his words reduced to commands about training, erase the emotional bond that might have connected him to Jaekyung. Where halmoni’s silence is passive, Byungchul’s is active — he refuses intimacy, replacing it with obligation. For both figures, farewell becomes an empty form, stripped of the recognition that makes partings bearable. In these moments, the absence of a hug, the denial of tenderness, is more devastating than the loudest rejection. It is a party that never begins, a rite of passage left unspoken.
(chapter 22) 
(chapter 13) a breakfast in silence 
(chapter 68), the embraces in the dark 
(chapter 66) (the wordless recognition of suffering) — these become the true celebrations of Jinx. They lack alcohol, noise, or spectacle, but they carry sincerity. They reveal that belonging can be built not through grand gestures but through repetition, through the transformation of fleeting kindness into ritual. This implies the existence of conscious and choice. And yet, these moments remain fragile. After their return to the penthouse, there is no shared meal, no laughter, only nostalgia and sadness. 
(chapter 78) Even Jaekyung is troubled by the reminder that Dan’s stay is temporary, as if the very walls of the penthouse resist turning into a home.
(chapter 78) In other words, the wolf’s task is no longer to win battles in the ring but to protect these fragile celebrations — to make Dan feel at home, to turn missed hugs into embraces, missed parties into warm meals, missed gestures into habits of care. Only then can the cycle of exclusion be broken. Only then can “The Missed Party” become, at last, a real one.
(chapter 68), the shared meal 
(chapter 78). For me, it is no coincidence that the senior followed them to the street and waved at them! 
(chapter 78) He expressed not only his genuine feelings, but also his longing: he hoped to see them soon. He had come to appreciate their presence which is not related to their work. The Missed Party becomes not a single absence, but the haunting rhythm of the entire narrative: recognition always arriving too late, always seen by the wrong eyes. And perhaps the story’s promise lies here — that one day, the real party will finally be held, not in karaoke bars or gym halls, but in the unbreakable bond of two men who learn what true friendship and belonging mean. This means, the more the champion and his fated partner develop new routines, the more it will affect the gym and as such Park Namwook, which can only feel more and more excluded.
(chapter 78)
(chapter 76) This admission is no mere reversal of pride. It gestures toward something Jaekyung has never known: an exchange that does not end in domination or silence, but in dialogue. For Kim Dan, too, it marks a turning point. 
(chapter 76) For the first time, he uses the expression you’re right in front of his fated partner. He seems to concede with this idiom. Yet this apparent submission hides a deeper reversal. By admitting Jaekyung never asked for his help, he redirects the exchange toward his own truth: the loneliness of having no one to care for you. 
(chapter 76) What unfolds in the kitchen is not a quarrel about porridge but a fragile recognition. Dan’s “You’re right” acknowledges Jaekyung’s perspective without bitterness, while Jaekyung’s “I lost” 
(chapter 9) 
(chapter 45) 
(chapter 76) The kitchen scene closes one cycle and announces another. 
(Chapter 76) In this view, his fixation would be the product of ambition, pride, or ego: the expected cost of survival in a cage where only victory pays. 
(chapter 76), because the adults in his life cut them off before they could exist. Winning became his only mode of survival because every formative argument in his youth ended in defeat, and not the kind decided by a referee. With his father, mother, coach, and manager, words never led to recognition — only to insult, silence, utility, or obedience. He learned early that dialogue could not protect him; only victory could. His victories were not chosen freely, but forced into being by guardians who made him feel like a burden, until relationships themselves became burdens.
“(chapter 73). It was not just defiance; it was a vow that victory would silence abuse once and for all. When he returned with the trophy, he shouted triumphantly, 
(chapter 74) At the funeral he remained dry-eyed, his face locked in shame (ch. 74). No one saw his guilt, but it consumed him: the one man he needed to hear “I was right” from could no longer answer. At the same time, his smile and laugh were also linked to misery. For Jaekyung, laughter was never the sound of joy, but the echo of mockery and rejection due to the father. Just as tears became tied to betrayal and abandonment through his mother, so too did his father twist laughter into a weapon 
(chapter 74) But when the calls went unanswered, her silence became the sharpest weapon of all. Her eventual reply 
(chapter 74), his tears expressed not just grief but the recognition of betrayal. From then on, tears themselves became equated with loss, weakness, and abandonment. This is why, in the wolf’s nightmare, Dan’s crying form 
(chapter 76) appears: the sight of tears recalls the moment he unconsciously realized that even his mother’s “you’re right” was a lie. At the same time, those tears function as a mirror. The champion projects onto Dan the very weakness he has always forbidden himself to show. 
(chapter 76), the boy he once was who longed to weep but had to swallow it down. At the same time, Jaekyung himself occupies the place of the “adult” — 
(chapter 74)
(chapter 76) His trembling hand upon waking 
(chapter 76) shows the yearning to be held, comforted, reassured — something he never received from either parent. He is not entirely responsible for the physical therapist’s suffering. And here lies the difference: Dan’s tears are not manipulative or hypocritical , like the ones Jaekyung suspects from his mother, but unfiltered honesty. He expressed his emotions, not just through tears, but also through body language! 
(chapter 74), whose quiet devotion and silence kept the gym alive, nor Jaekyung’s, whose absence he accepted without challenge. 
(chapter 74) Unlike Jaewoon’s domination or the mother’s evasive silence, Hwang cloaked his authority in the language of advice — yet beneath it lay a black-and-white dualism: winners and losers, villains and victims. Thus Joo Jaewoon was blamed for becoming a thug 
(chapter 74), while the wolf’s mother was a victim. He viewed her as a selfless and caring mother: 
(chapter 74)And observe how he provoked the main lead. 
(chapter 74), unable to answer, Hwang strikes him in the chest. 
(chapter 74)and justifies his action behind social norms. 
(chapter 74) In that instant, he takes the role of judge, referee, and executioner, collapsing “argument” into violence. The very words “Am I wrong?” contain the irony: the coach is less interested in truth than in reasserting his own authority. Silence is treated as guilt, hesitation as defeat.
(chapter 74), he effectively admitted “you’re right” to the coach. Yet this wasn’t simply genuine agreement — it was submission, respect mixed with survival. The director misread it as validation of his worldview. This only reinforced his certainty, encouraging him never to reconsider his role. 
(chapter 74) When the protagonist finally left, the director could declare with satisfaction: 
t(chapter 74). 
(chapter 70) Once again, Jaekyung is reduced to “that bastard” — a label, not a person — while Dan is framed as the pitiable victim. The old coot remains the righteous observer, untouched by guilt, protected by a rhetoric that always shifts responsibility elsewhere.
(chapter 75) He was happy again, though he initially tried to hide it. We have to envision that before the wolf’s visit, the elder had to face what his own life outside the gym looked like: sickness, solitude, the collapse of the studio that had sustained him and came to resent the main lead. Yet, Joo Jaekyung’s behavior changed everything: 
(chapter 71) 
(chapter 71) Only during the champion’s visit, did his words alter.On the rooftop of the hospice, he finally tells Jaekyung: 
(chapter 76) It is not too late. The question “Am I too late?” is the consequence of Hwang byungchul’s words and it gradually indicates the switch in the champion’s mentality. It is no longer about being right or wrong. However, the nightmare reveals another aspect: the world is not black and white, but grey. 
(chapter 76) Hence he remained silent and avoided his gaze. But like the director showed it, it is never too late: 
(chapter 76)
(chapter 31) in good 
(chapter 45) or in bad times. It goes so far, he does not take his silences seriously, and does not register his pain. This explicates why the manager saw in the champion’s silence at the restaurant as an agreement for a new fight! 
(chapter 69) His role is not to guide or protect, but to extract: money, victories, publicity. 
(chapter 75) In my opinion, he is fighting against oblivion through the star. This hidden disability explains why the coach can never truly connect with the champion. He listens instead to other voices – the CEO of MFC 
(chapter 46), the media 
(chapter 41), the spectators or “authorities”
(chapter 52) His question is not mere anger. It is a confession of position — an inadvertent acknowledgment that he knows he is the true backbone of the gym. He is the one responsible, the one carrying the burden that Namwook refuses to admit. These words crack the illusion: the fighter is not subordinate, but owner. The gym lives because of him.
(chapter 71), hence he tried to help in his own way. On the other hand, Park Namwook shows clearly no sign to be interested in the private life of his boss. He is preferring ignorance over “knowledge and connection”. 
(chapter 66) Despite the incident, the manager hasn’t changed yet. He clinched onto the past, thinking that everything will be like before, as soon as the athlete enters the ring. He images a return to normality with the next match. 
(chapter 66) For years, he had accepted his manager’s judgments out of habit, mistaking silence for consent. But here, for the first time, the repetition feels deliberate — not resignation, but reflection (“though”). The phrase becomes a question more than an agreement: is he truly right? He is admitting this out of habit. 
(chapter 69) His silence has shifted from obedience to suffocation. The weight of Namwook’s deaf authority is no longer bearable. And yet, even here, his confession is muted, confined to the private space of his car. He is not yet ready to speak the words aloud — not until someone appears who will listen. 
(chapter 48) This scene was observed by Kwak Junbeom, so the latter could have reported it to the coach. If it truly happened, this would expose the coach’s deafness and cowardice. He chose passivity instead of confronting the doctor or the champion. That way, he avoided responsibility. And this brings me to my final conclusion concerning the deaf manager. His main way to contact the celebrity is the cellphone: 
(chapter 66) It is both his mask and his crutch — a tool for barking orders, never for dialogue. The moment the line goes dead, his authority collapses, for he has no other means of contact. His power depends on Jaekyung’s reception, not his own strength. In truth, the manager’s disability is exposed here: deaf to Jaekyung’s voice, he has trained himself to hear only the ring of a phone. A fragile authority built on silence, ready to crumble the instant Jaekyung decides to switch it off.
(chapter 76) must be read not as pride, but as a desperate shield against annihilation. In other words, in episode 76, the athlete is too harsh on himself, though I am not saying that he is innocent either. He only thought of himself because he had taught to behave that way. He was just mirroring the adults surrounding him who hid their weaknesses and wrongdoings behind “lies, social norms and hierarchy”. 
(chapter 57) With his grandmother and with every authority he encountered — doctors, employers, even predators — he believed unquestioningly that others were right and he was wrong. Hence he trusted others blindly. He was trained to accept decisions made for him or against him. 
(chapter 70) Thus he accepts criticism with defending his own interest. He was not taught how to fight back or resist or even argue. 
(chapter 6), both were forced to discuss with each other about the “content of the agreement”. That’s where the champion was trained to communciate with the physical therapist. Thanks to the champion, because of this victory/loss mentality, the doctor learned gradually to argue and “reply” with his “boss. However, due to his childhood, he couldn’t totally drop his old principles like for example “saying no”. 
(chapter 34) To conclude, before their fateful meeting, neither man had learned how to argue as equals. But in the kitchen in front of the stove, this changed: both are right and wrong! 
(chapter 76) He speaks like someone expecting rejection. Hence he keeps his distance. Yet the very fact that he says it at all signals change. Where once he would have doubled down — by barking an order, by firing Dan, by retreating into silence — he now admits defeat. The vocabulary of winning and losing, inherited from his father and reinforced by every adult in his life, collapses in the presence of Dan’s quiet honesty.
(chapter 76) — an acknowledgment that he can no longer keep his walls intact. He is now willing to rely on doc Dan exclusively.
(chapter 76). His confession reveals not strength but guilt. Kim Dan’s suffering was the price of his victories, and he knows it. “On the other hand, his mea culpa should be relativized, for both were the targets of a plot!
(chapter 76) These words expose both responsibility and shame: he had prioritized survival over connection, career over compassion. What boils under his skin is not pride but remorse.
(chapter 76) The star’s thoughts in the kitchen are actually mirroring the ones in the bathroom: 
(chapter 68) In the bathtub, he still saw himself as the one in control, with the upper hand… but this is no longer the case in the kitchen. Through the physical therapist, the wolf is learning that even being in a vulnerable state doesn’t mean that this person is powerless. It is just that his “strength” lies elsewhere. In other words, someone struggling can also give comfort to another person in pain. 
(chapter 72) a place of solitary consumption rather than shared meals, the bed was the place where the little boy would drink his milk. 
(chapter 76) But the wolf didn’t understand the hamster’s intention and followed his “hyung” to the kitchen. That’s how a misunderstanding was born which is also reflected in this interaction:
(chapter 76) However, doc Dan agreed to this, he remained calm. 
(chapter 41) The latter actually represented a hindrance between them, it marked their relationship: boss and “employee” (servant). Moreover, since the table in the champion’s childhood was linked to one person (the father), it is clear that the champion has never shared a table with someone. And this aspect brings me to my other observation. 
(chapter 46) It was a place where others dictated terms, while Jaekyung’s silence was mistaken for consent. And now, you comprehend why the two main leads could get closer in front of the stove in the kitchen. This place stands for warmth, care and family. 
(chapter 13) a meal after his collapse. He refused to bring a meal to the bed, he asked him to join in the dining room and sit at the table. And what did they do there? The champion talked about his career, his fight etc… 
(chapter 13) the champion has long associated the table to business and not “care”. That’s why it is important for him to remember the significance of the bed in his childhood. It was the place where he could feel comfortable and safe, where he would eat! 
(chapter 75), the perfume 
chapter 75) that suddenly appeared on his body 
(chapter 75), for example, were left unmentioned — proof that silence still surrounds him.
(chapter 75) Why fight as though every match were a matter of life and death? Why keep repeating the same acts, long after survival was secured? 
.(chapter 75) They are the product of a long chain of humiliations, betrayals, and systemic exploitation, each layering onto the next until a young man’s raw talent was encased in a carapace of compulsions. To understand the jinx is to understand how the protagonist’s life collapsed around the word loser, and how the fighting industry transformed his private shame into public myth.
(chapter 75)
(chapter 75) — a boy who fought with the desperation of someone who had nothing else. Victory after victory gave him the illusion that he had escaped his father’s shadow. As long as he was winning, he could suppress the pain, bury the insult loser, and silence the memory of that cursed night when his father died and his mother abandoned him. Triumph became his shield, proof that he was not what he had said he was.
(chapter 75) 
(chapter 75) To them, a fighter’s struggles had only one explanation: weakness. Park Namwook and the other coach dismissed his losses as nerves 
(chapter 75), as if the only measure of worth were what happened under the spotlight. They never thought to ask what kind of weight he was carrying, what kind of nights he was surviving before he entered the cage. While the other fighters were well aware of the champion’s insomnia 
(chapter 75), Park Namwook still has no idea of the champion’s struggles. This shows how disconnected he is from his “boy”.
(chapter 74) bodies to be tested, pushed, and discarded if they broke. Where Jaekyung’s defeat cracked open childhood trauma, they saw only performance failure. What he lived as suffocation and despair 
(chapter 75) Even before his first loss, Jaekyung fought like a cornered animal, pouring every ounce of strength into proving he could not be beaten. That’s why he rose so fast. But why? The reason is that all his opponents were reflections of his “father”. 
(chapter 75) Consequently, his matches always looked like life-and-death struggles. He wasn’t strategizing against a specific fighter; he was exorcising a ghost. That’s why he never refused a challenge. His opponent never mattered. Besides, as long as he could win, it didn’t matter. 
(chapter 75), the more the cracks showed — and the ghosts of his father and mother made every fight feel like a replay of abandonment and accusation. The five losses 
(chapter 75) were not just setbacks in his career; they were the repeated reopening of a wound that would never heal. Each one confirmed his father’s curse. Each one reinforced the sense that he was marked, that no matter how high he climbed, he would always be dragged down again.
(chapter 73) To the boy, it was a cry for pain and survival — an instinctive urge to escape despair and criticism. To the father, it was betrayal. Already emasculated by failure and drink, he was reminded of his wife’s discontent, the specter of another abandonment. He lashed out the only way he knew: 
(chapter 66) — speaking not with fists or insults but with tears and an embrace. 
(chapter 66) His sleepwalking reacting to a simple touch 
(chapter 65), his dissociative pleas 
(chapter 66) give Jaekyung the words his father could not say. Where the father’s unconscious leaked out in aggression, Dan’s unconscious offers gentleness and honesty. Both men speak from a place deeper than reason; one chained Jaekyung to guilt, the other opens the possibility of release. In Dan’s trembling body, Jaekyung sees the tender reflection of his father’s hidden plea 
(chapter 72) His violence expressed his powerlessness. And when his son shouted his desire to leave the “dump of a house,” 
(chapter 57) Violence and insult became his only idiom. “Loser” was not simply an accusation, but the displaced confession of his own defeat: I was abandoned. I failed. I have nothing.
(chapter 73) The boy’s boxing talent was a source of pride — proof of strength — but also a threat. Strength meant escape. Escape meant abandonment. The father, who had already lost his wife and his dignity, projected onto his son the terror of losing everything once again. His resentment was not born of disappointment alone but of recognition (unconsciously): you are me, and you will leave me too.
(chapter 73), while keeping Jaewoong’s own origins shrouded. Hwang had someone by his side — gentle, quiet, but present — while Jaewoong had no one, as according to me, the mother was counting on her “husband”‘s success and dream. The director’s stability, however fragile, was rooted in that maternal figure. Jaewoong had no such guide, and without it, he simply made the wrong choice.
(chapter 73). To win was to prove his father wrong, but to stand alone in victory was to prove his mother right. Success and emptiness became inseparable.
(chapter 75) If ritual could bend fate, he would build his own. But where the Bible fighter had a single, unifying story — scripture, God, fellowship — Jaekyung had nothing to draw on. No faith to lean on, no parental blessing to inherit, no safe home to return to. Instead, he began to stitch together a mosaic of rituals, each one disguising a different childhood wound. To outsiders it looked obsessive, neurotic, almost superstitious. To him, it was survival. Each gesture was both repression and remembrance, a scar disguised as armor. And this is the paradox: the rituals made him strong enough to survive, but too broken to live. 
(chapter 27) , self-punishment, the willingness to suffer endlessly for the cage. He didn’t fear pain. Their sudden appearance 
(chapter 75), a reminder that he had entered a machine in motion, a system that swallowed fighters whole and spat out statistics. From that point, the acceleration was merciless: by April, he was in the 272nd bout against Randy Booker 
(chapter 14); by June, the 293rd against Dominic Hill 
(chapter 75), he had not merely “built” a career, he had been consumed by one. There was no time to recover from injuries, no space to process victory, no room to integrate defeat. No wonder why his shoulders were in bad shape. 
(chapter 75) Every fight blurred into the next, every opponent older, stronger, more experienced. And yet Jaekyung fought them all with the same desperate, survival-driven ferocity.
(chapter 27) still called him an athlete — someone whose body required balance, protection, recovery. But MFC and KO-FC never did. For them, the main lead or his colleagues were addressed as 
(chapter 40), “my boy”, 
(chapter 47). Thus only doctors are allowed to do them officially. But Jaekyung’s rise shifted that meaning. As “The Emperor,” he normalized tattoos for the new generation of fighters, transforming what once marked marginality into a badge of visibility. This is why even Oh Daehyun, one of his admirers and members of Team Black, now carries one: 
(chapter 14) ripping open the scar of his father’s “loser” and his mother’s absence and silent parentification. Not long after, an article exposed his shoulder injury 
(chapter 35), reducing years of discipline to a liability on the page. Later came the suspension narrative 
(chapter 5) the name Seo Gichan appeared here for the first time… a faceless name!
(chapter 47), questioning the selection of Baek Junmin, is so crucial. It shows that the manipulation of opponents was no accident — it was systemic. Matches were not about fair combat but about narrative management: making sure the emperor’s story served the company’s balance sheet.
(chapter 75) Here, it looks like a mirror, but naturally it is a fake one. It was not earned with fists alone; it could be stripped, reassigned, reshaped at will. One tie, one whisper, one adjustment in the rankings, and the Night Emperor was dethroned without ceremony.
(chapter 75), not for intimacy but to clear his head and stave off loneliness, emptiness and his abandonment issues.
(chapter 75) must be read in this light. It is not a relapse into the system’s treadmill, nor a blind return to the pitfall laid before him. Notice that he does not say he will fight in the fall, nor does he mention the upcoming match that everyone else is waiting for. 
(chapter 71) Instead, he frames his goal with a word that changes everything: reclaim.
(chapter 73), but he lost his father and his mother abandoned him. 
(chapter 51) The mirror is clear: the cycle can be broken, but only if he dares to answer the question that was never asked of him before. Therefore it is not surprising that the physical therapist’s question appeared in the champion’s vision: 
(chapter 61) He was acknowledging the main lead as a real physical therapist. 
(chapter 62)— and even to those closest to his body — it looks like nothing more than sex. That was all the uke from chapter 2 saw, and it was enough for him to sneer:
(chapter 2) The insult landed with devastating familiarity, not as a new wound but as an echo of his father’s curse: “loser.” Both words reduced Jaekyung to nothing — not a man, not an athlete, just a fraud kept alive by crutches.
(chapter 2) In slamming his former partner against the wall, he was not merely silencing a lover’s cruelty. He was fighting the ghost of his father, the voice that had branded him weak, cursed, unworthy. The jinx that kept him alive was being twisted into proof of his failure, and he could not bear it. 
(chapter 2)
(chapter 62), Dan recoiled. 
(chapter 62) To him, “jinx” meant objectification, a reduction of their bond to sex. 
(chapter 62) but as a therapist he trusted. His words about wanting to return to the “usual pre-match routine” 
(chapter 62) were, in his mind, a way of saying: I need you to bring back wholeness, to help me steady myself again. But because Dan only knew fragments of the jinx, the message landed with devastating distortion. 
(chapter 62) For Jaekyung, the plea was about coherence; for Dan, it sounded like reduction.
(chapter 22) He cooks breakfast for Jaekyung, offering something warm, homemade, human — a substitute for the cold, industrial glass of milk. 
(chapter 54) throws the plate away 
(chapter 54) But when Dan cooks, Jaekyung is surprised, even touched. For once, nourishment is not consumption but connection. The milk was always a disguised memory of deprivation; Dan’s meal becomes the antidote — food as presence. So for him, the prematch-routine was also referring to the meals prepared by his fated partner. And I feel the need to bring another aspect. Since there was no “family” in the athlete’s life, he never got the chance to discover the joy of the table. 
(chapter 22) Hence it is not surprising that he looked at his phone, while the others were eating and discussing. He never had a real conversation with a family member around the table. 
(chapter 45), whispering that he misses Jaekyung’s warmth, reveals that the champion’s natural scent is already enough. He never gets to see this — Jaekyung doesn’t know how deeply Dan treasures his smell.
(chapter 2), and not the other rituals? Because to admit the rest would be to expose the origin of the jinx: the father’s insult, the mother’s abandonment, the hunger, the bullying. Sex was the only ritual that could be spoken without directly dragging the past into the room. It was the “safe” shorthand — though tragically, it became the most dangerous. Homosexuality is definitely a stigma among boxers and MMA fighters.
(chapter 68) In his own way, he was showing him that he did care! He was more than just a body… or even a physical therapist!!
(chapter 13) — helpless, cornered, often pleading. Thus the champion taught the doctor to overcome his fear and fight back: 
(chapter 26) This imbalance was no accident. It replayed Jaekyung’s own childhood roles: he became what his father had been to him (the better version naturally, for he is the mirror of truth), and forced Dan into the position he had once held himself. Through Dan, Jaekyung unconsciously re-enacted his trauma, reversing their positions as if to master what had once mastered him. That way, he was pushed to mature emotionally! That’s why he could connect with the main lead unconsciously. His trembling words in Chapter 51 
(chapter 71) He believes to know the truth, while he is ignorant. He is insecure, extreme in his behavior (drinking)
(chapter 71), but also selfish and questioning, still fragile yet capable of protest. He is struggling with his own emotions and thoughts. 
(chapter 71) How can he trust the athlete, when he doubts himself so much? From my point of view, he is on the verge of become “mature mentally” and as such “responsible”. At the same time, Jaekyung is revealed as the adult in crisis. His exhaustion 
(chapter 70)
(chapter 74) It is because thanks to the director’s confession, the “hamster” is able to see the champion as a “a kindred spirit“, an orphan and as such as the younger “boy”. 
(chapter 69) It is not about treatment or jinx, but about presence. This hug reframes the meaning of strength. True strength is not the ability to fight endlessly, but the ability to hold and be held, to mirror” is like touching oneself! Let’s not forget that the mirror represents the reflection of a person. Respecting the physical therapist signifies respecting oneself!
(chapter 40) 
(chapter 53) 
(chapter 75) His eyes open after the dream, and they open to the same light. It’s the opposite of every earlier awakening 
(chapter 54) —no gasp for air, no clutching his throat 
(chapter 75), no father’s voice strangling him. This sudden awakening embodies enlightenment. 
(chapter 75)
(chapter 70) He knows the athlete from the past. The latter was attached to people and not to places. Why does he speak of “something” rather than “someone”, if he knows? The lesson is not about fixing a new goal or object to chase, but about discovering how to live differently — how to live happily. 
(chapter 75). Even before, he could only mutter to himself this: 
(chapter 70) The negation indicates denial, but observe that he couldn’t even use a noun. He cannot yet translate this vision into words, because he has never heard “I love you” himself 
(chapter 65) 
(chapter 75) His love is expressed through humility — through not knowing. At the same time, his words and facial expression ooze trust and confidence. 
(chapter 29), Joo Jaekyung opened up a little to doc Dan! Thus the next morning, he visited the bathroom where doc Dan was! 
(chapter 74), no “dear,” no “I love you.” In the father’s memory, she used the child as an excuse to distance herself from her spouse. In that moment, Jaekyung is not a son to be cherished but a barrier in an adult quarrel.
(chapter 67) Not because he felt nothing, but because he lacked the language to connect worry with love. In his conscious mind, conception of care was still bound to usefulness — Dan mattered because he was needed for training, not because he was loved as himself, while deep down, he had already moved beyond this aspect. He was just in denial in this scene,
(chapter 74) On one level, she does not recognize his voice. But on a deeper level, her words ring as truth: she does not know her son. She has no idea who he has become, what defines him, what characterizes him beyond money and survival.
(chapter 74), promising to provide for her if she returns home. He unconsciously appeals to the only logic he has ever known: that love equals provision, that affection is secured by usefulness. 
(chapter 42) His father’s voice was violent and scornful, but its framework remained lodged in him.
(chapter 62) That way, he can still be “free”. 
(chapter 75) Keep in mind that we have these mysterious phone calls: 
(chapter 43) 
(chapter 49)
(chapter 75) 
(chapter 34), Jaekyung assumed later that the actor would have helped doc Dan to hide. 
(chapter 58) His violent intrusion into the actor’s home was the natural outgrowth of Namwook’s teaching: if love is real, it must show itself as service.
(chapter 45), Jaekyung struggled to even recognize it. Giving him a gift and expressing gratitude was not “helping the fighter”. 
“ (chapter 75) There’s a life outside the ring and the spotlight. 
(chapter 72) was quite futile, for at the end, he ended up alone and felt lonely.
(chapter 68) 
(chapter 69) 
(chapter 69) And that’s what makes him so human. 
(chapter 71) This means that he lives now in the present. It looks like the “old coot” has been tamed by the “gentle hamster or duck”. 
(chapter 41) He didn’t know how to judge such a confession. Hence these words were reduced to a mistake! 
(chapter 66), whispers through tears 
(chapter 31)— which he associates with unbearable debt. His mother’s final “gift” of love was one he could never repay. Any present risks reopening that wound: “What if I can’t repay this? What if I lose them too?”
(chapter 74) — the quiet sign that the sun is about to rise. Dawn is not just a natural detail in Jinx; it is a symbolic hinge. It is the moment when night meets day, when moon and sun overlap, when endings bleed into beginnings. In myth and fairy tale, dawn often marks metamorphosis: the Little Mermaid turns to foam, the enchanted sleepers awaken, the beast becomes a prince. For Jaekyung, too, dawn is the threshold. His father cursed him at dawn 
(chapter 73), stripping him of worth, tying the rising sun to shame. But in this new dawn, another voice will have to intervene. Only Dan can replace the curse with a blessing. Only “I love you” can undo “you are not special.” And if it is not “I love You”, then it could be a kiss, the symbol of “affection”. 
(chapter 41), an invitation to walk together. Namwook’s long presence embodies the trap of quantity without substance. Dan’s brief but luminous presence reveals the power of quality: the kind of attention that transforms.
(chapter 75) Namwook’s whispers, too, keep him chained to that rhythm of urgency — rankings, titles, deadlines. But once Dan’s whisper replaces Namwook’s, time itself shifts. The future is no longer a debt to repay but a horizon to approach slowly, hand in hand.
(chapter 27), even rediscovered his love for swimming. Water, his true element, was reclaimed as play rather than punishment. 
(chapter 27) That single day was a seed — a foreshadowing of what life might look like once the curse is broken for good.
(chapter 74) What do they share? You might already have noticed it. At first glance, the answer seems obvious: each sentence turns around the word after. But if we pay closer attention, it is not just after that repeats, but after all. And here, the “all” quietly carries the weight of everything. A slight shift, but one that feels significant. But why this expression, and why here? Why does it resurface precisely in the context of Jaekyung’s family and past?
(chapter 70) For the first time, the flow of time shifted. Besides, no explanation, no certainty—just an admission that something happened beyond his planning or reasoning. Where the earlier lines spoke with closure, this one arrived without a verdict. But what does this “confession” signify for the athlete now? 
(chapter 73) locked in confrontation, while in the past, the woman had already shown her back — a gesture of refusal that foreshadowed her desertion. She had withdrawn in silence; the man, however, lashed out in noise. Both abandon, but in different registers: hers in silence and absence, his in noise and abuse. But the father’s gaze was selective. 
(chapter 73) — all were rewritten into a story where the woman was the sole traitor, and the child nothing more than her extension. In this way, the boy was denied recognition as a victim in his own right. He had been abandoned too. He had been abused either. He became instead a mirror in which his father projects the wound of being left behind. 
(chapter 73) To speak was to wound, to be wounded in return. Besides, the boy could never speak of this truth. He carried the memory of that last conversation in silence, crushed by the belief that he bore guilt for his father’s death. Shame and responsibility bound his tongue. That is how words, once used against him as weapons, became impossible for him to wield in his own defense. However, this was only the beginning of his withdrawal into silence. His fists would become his language, his body the only safe instrument of reply.
(chapter 73) The betrayal he lamented was nothing more than the logical outcome of his own principle. There had never been a we — only a man clinging to his pride, a woman turning her back, and a child caught in between. His after all 
(chapter 72), clinging to the hope that she might answer one day. Eventually, those attempts ceased — but not the attachment. What remained was the number itself, saved under “Mom” on his phone 
(chapter 74) Here, he was old and rich enough to buy his own cellphone. The phone number was no longer a channel of communication, only a relic: a fragile thread he could not sever, because the fact that she never changed her number sustained the illusion that reunion was still possible. That dormant hope was shattered only when she finally picked up — not out of recognition, but by mistake, assuming the unfamiliar call must be important. 
(chapter 74) In a city of anonymity, hearsay cannot replace documents. She left a paper trail — a legal identity that binds them together. Should the champion cause trouble in Seoul, or even become the victim of a crime, the police would have to turn to his legal guardian. And that can only be her. 
(chapter 26). Oh Daehyun mentions that the young fighter broke the punching machine so many times he was blacklisted. Such destruction could easily have brought police intervention — and if it had, they would have been forced to search for his legal guardian. That guardian is none other than the mother who abandoned him and her new family. In other words, her erasure was never complete: every act of the boy risked pulling her shadow back into the open. Furthermore, this is what Kim Changmin revealed to his friend and colleague: 
(chapter 26) But Joo Jaekyung had long discovered sports and MMA, when he arrived in Seoul and met Park Namwook for the first time. 
(chapter 74) who redirected him before he was swallowed by the wrong path. The discrepancy between these accounts exposes more than just the manager’s manipulation: it points to the shadow of another intervention. How could he afford to destroy machine after machine without consequence? The only plausible answer is the “mother” and her new family, whose money and silence allowed him to pass as the “self-made” Emperor while erasing their own responsibility from the tale. And now, you comprehend why The Emperor was made voiceless. [For more read 
(chapter 74) For doc Dan who embodies the present, such a statement can only become the ultimate truth: the star had been an orphan like him.
(chapter 74) Once again, the director was there — but his presence was mute. He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, yet he never lent him an ear. He never invited the boy to speak, never created a space where grief, anger, or longing could be put into words. In other words, he was present in body but absent in voice and heart. Thus the director’s pat was a gesture of pity. It was a substitute for words, a way of saying “poor boy” while protecting himself from deeper involvement. But precisely because he withheld speech and listening, it denied Jaekyung the chance to articulate his own grief. It comforted without connecting.
(chapter 74) 
(chapter 74) He was given a chance to step in, to finally become the guardian he had failed to be on the night of the boy’s deepest collapse. Therefore it is no coincidence that he claims to have raised him, while the readers are well aware of the truth. 
(chapter 54) The director’s form of guidance could not sustain him; it was external, borrowed, conditional. Therefore, it is not surprising that he was never contacted after the main lead’s departure for Seoul. By then, the director had already become like his own mother — reduced to a memory 
(chapter 70) and nothing more. He neither possessed the boy’s number nor showed the desire to stay connected; worse, he had told him explicitly never to return. 
(chapter 56) 
(chapter 52) That way, he could divert attention from the “before and circumstances”. And in season 2, the man hasn’t changed at all. Instead of asking what caused Jaekyung’s crisis, he chides him for straying from the routine — for not showing up at the gym, for being absent.
(chapter 52) The slap at the hospital was more than a physical outburst; it was the eruption of long-repressed truth. Where he once swallowed pain in silence for his mother, and later endured fists in silence for his coach, here he answers back. Lately thus marks not only Namwook’s delay but also Jaekyung’s refusal to bear the weight alone anymore. 
(chapter 45) 
, (chapter 70), while remaining oblivious to the rot within their own world and the medical world. The director accused Joo Jaewoong of “choosing the wrong path,” 
(chapter 69): for the first time, a figure of authority assumed responsibility, however insincerely. What to others looked like shallow PR, to Namwook appeared as a dangerous break with the rule of denial. It highlighted the emptiness of his own guardianship, where reproach replaces protection and victims are erased from the narrative.
(chapter 74) Honestly, it would be funny, if the champion used the same words than his own mother against the manager 
(chapter 70) As you can see, it is never too late… Thus we saw this on the roof of the hospital: a real and intimate conversation between the “guardian” and his pupil: 
(chapter 71) The director has changed!
(chapter 57), and his forced maturity to a single, fleeting day. No trauma, no endurance — just inevitability. By collapsing years of hardship into a harmless “day,” she erases both the past and the victim. And now, you can understand why doc Dan is trapped in the present! By erasing the “before” (abandonment, trauma) and trivializing the process of “becoming an adult,” she collapses time into a single, static present. Kim Dan is not allowed a past that hurts (because she erased it), nor a future that could unfold differently (because “he just grew up” is presented as inevitable).
(chapter 62) cannot, by themselves, sustain love. Emotions flare and fade, tied to the immediacy of the present. Thus the mother could break her promise and even lie to him later. What endures is not emotion alone, but the principles that Fromm identified as the essence of love: care, responsibility, knowledge, and respect. These qualities stabilize the fleeting nature of feeling and transform the present into something continuous, something that can grow. In this sense, the teddy bear bridges the gap between “present” and “future”: 
(chapter 65) it transforms the fleeting moment of emotion into a promise of constancy. After all, before it’s too late, what both men longed for was never glory or escape, but a home where they could rest — not alone, but in each other’s arms. By discovering emotions and learning to live in the present, the champion also rediscovers his inner child. His line — “Is this a joke?” — marks that shift, since jokes, like emotions, only exist in the immediacy of the moment. It is only a matter of time, until he laughs because of a joke. By embracing doc Dan like a teddy bear, he allows himself to cling and regress, no longer the wolf or the Emperor but simply a boy seeking warmth. Even his cold becomes symbolic: 
Bebebisous33s' analyses in K-Dramaland and Manhwas 