#another TED talk about cale's shitty childhood

[fallen6253]

Hello hello!

I was rereading Choi Han’s indignity test for the thousandth time (I need more little rok soo pls I'm desperate) and the thing that catches my attention now is the clues.

It says food, warm home, clean clothes, and abundance of food for dinner.

Not thinking about any other clues the author did not show us (there was definitely so much more; we were robbed–) because that would drive me insane from what we know so far (there’s so much yet so little I wanna cry).

Anyway, some found it confusing how there were two notifications about ‘food’ and ‘abundance of food for dinner’ so now I want to word vomit about it.

There is a difference between having food to eat at all and being in front of so much food there’s no way you could eat it all.

Food in general was scarce for Kim Rok Soo at that age (well, at most of his ages but anyway) so imagine being Rok Soo and letting a stranger take you to their house because you want to avoid your own and instead of the things you probably had been expecting, this total stranger just.  Started putting food in front of you and tells you to eat.  To eat all you wanted.  And he leaves for a bit and Rok Soo enjoys the cartoons you rarely get to watch because the TV makes too much noise and you don't want to be locked away in your cold and dark room again.  But then the guy comes back with even more food and when you tell him you’re full he looks.  Devastated.  And the man hides the food he thought you didn’t see, which is so ridiculous you almost crack a smile, until he brings out an apple pie, and now you’re baffled.   

And what really gets me is that Choi Han calls him a good boy.  And little Rok Soo looks baffled.  And there is no notification about comfort or praise covering up his indignity.  

Which implies he is already at that stage where he does not know how to take compliments seriously and just assumes the person is either lying or stupid (which may track in his logic for this stranger that brought some random kid home and just started feeding him).

Or it implies that compliments and praise were never something Kim Rok Soo thought of wanting.

You can’t focus on wanting to be loved if your priority has to be finding a way to survive.

Which tears my heart into pieces because.  This little baby, o my lord, I wish you could feel safe enough to want someone to say something nice about you, that you lived well enough to be concerned about people liking you.  I wish he knew that there would be people who loved him, waiting for him in the future, and that he would not only feel lost forever.  I wish he was living well enough to want to delve into his favorite books with open fervor, talking with others who were reading the same thing and discovering a new way to see a story.  I wish he could feel safe enough to express himself in any other way that did not say ‘it does not matter much what happens anymore’ and ‘I don’t have the strength to go against all of this despair’.  Because this little kid grows up to be so strong, in ways he can’t even see in himself because he’s too busy lifting other people up from groundless depths. 

And he grows up to be something so big, and so warm that it’s such a happy miracle he survived the environments he lived through.  And even after suffering so much loss and failure, he still can’t help caring for people.  And he does it in a way he is conscious of, but he explains it away as a strategy to survive, and it’s his selfish way of finding solace in bright young futures he never had.  Because he needs to justify it.  Because simple kindness can be thrown away and mistrusted so easily, and it can vanish in an instant.  

So he explains it away as a selfish action when he wishes to find solace in saving others.

In becoming the comfort to others he did not get.

In becoming the person he wanted to save him.

#the big sad here oml #little kim rok soo #child kim rok soo #cale henituse #tcf cale #trash of the count's family #lout of the count’s family #indignity test #can we just talk about this amazing little man #another TED talk about cale's shitty childhood