rough notes from a parallel noticed in chapter 28 and chapter 31
there are two pages in ch 28 and ch 31 where yesol and hanrim are framed at the entrances of their houses and they are pretty similar in their paneling / function / form wherein the first (at yesol's house, chapter 28) moves from desire to want of control at yesols part, whereas the second (at hanrim's house, in chapter 31) is an attempt at yesol trying to understand through being able to close the distance between them
was reading desire/love by lauren berlant the other day and she talks about the object of love remaining opaque to the desiring subject and the want to achieve that transparency or at least a fantasy or approximate of that transparency puts the desired object at a place of wanting to be taken apart / off / away < and while that extremity isn't experienced here to the extent as which a fantasy goes in chapter 31, the anger then pushed into erotic/desirous violence which achieves a place similar to that as yesol displaces his anger / loss of trust / feeling of betrayal into desire …
also in both instances hanrim pushes away yesol grabbing / searching / desperate / wanting to have control but while in chapter 28 the framing closes in to the yesol's hand (on hanrims waist and then grabbed by hanrim), chapter 31 moves further away from the space/tussle between them to the bodies themselves closed in together.
also really thinking about the space of the house [the entrance] at which both these instances take place ; at yesols house things at the entrance remain light and teasing / mostly flirty banter and yesol continuously lightly pushing away / resisting with words but mostly giving in [as yesol chooses to be externally/socially at the start of the story, more cheerful around hanrim, while still occasionally we keep seeing how short tempered he really is underneath all this time] ; it still represents the beginning of their desire fully realized to an extent and yet internally/foundationally lacks a structure that has been rebuilt/maintained over time vs hanrims house as the entrance represents a place more of vulnerability / lack of closure / remembrance [as hanrim does externally/thematically at the beginning of the story / in the repetition of the dream, as a place of the beginning of the friday night] where things fall apart or don't make sense or have become so unstable over the years that the simple act of lessening the distance / expression of desire does not accommodate the internal layers of hurt that have also piled up through distance / time
some random thoughts
my side story wish is for yesol to tug at hanrims earrings . with fingers n teeth #myperversions
to expand, i like to play around with the idea of yesol wanting someone as self-assured and willful as hanrim to become pliable but there's also the added context of 1. hanrim is continuously pliable around yesol & it doesn't seem to yesol as such because yesol himself gets his guard pulled down without being able to resist so that pliablity coming into bc of a deliberate act from yesol is ... crazy2me 2. i love the idea of a frazzled turned on hanrim without having to extend his own desire towards yesol sometimes .... to be on the receiving end of being bitten into ... when that was all yesol did in highschool 3. i like that yesol is constantly perceptive of what hanrim wears+has+does i.e. his expensive ring, pushed back hair, coming across outfits while scrolling & thinking of hanrim, etc's so having that attention be receptive than internal would be delicious....#lettopsfeelseroticintimacy
disingenuous to categorize hanrim as a puppy top when he is anything but, specifically his devotion + desire are much more willful than primarily for service ... & crazy to me that the definition of puppy top has been lost because how are we reading his clinginess as an evidence of fitting the trope when he doesn't fit the personality of someone exceeding their own desires to meet the other's (i.e. yesol's) && by exceeding his own desires i don't mean that hanrim is not consistently+desperately reaching out to yesol ... like hanrim seems to have a thing for continuously aligning his own desire+want+path with yesols ... or more like moving yesols path to align with his desires&wants && the best part about this is that it leaves yesol room to resist whatever hanrim keeps doing but yet ... yesol refuses to do so even though he really does want to ... and thinks that he wants to but cannot in face of someone who doesn't have it in him to bend his willfulness in the face of obscurity/hindrance
some notes from chapter thirty three
this is the second time yesol & hanrim have met in their lives >> the second life that yesol is trying to live & hanrim is trying to prevent a loss for the second time where yesol removes himself from his life ; as much as it is about reflection / mirroring, it is mostly also about a repetition of parts of their lives which remain unclosed / interrupted [both essentially by the same thing / moment / pivot] & in doing that trying to a return to a place where a desire was originated & made comprehensible > for yesol that means a life lived on his own terms / for his own self [thus his struggle with the hole hanrim digs in & into yesols life] while for hanrim that is to return to the hope / compassion that yesol gave him [my reading makes it seem like yesol wants to pull himself away from hanrim, and that is true at least at some instances / situations considering what his second life is built upon > reproduction of normativity]
yesol in this chapter says that this is a life that he chose from himself & that he knows that he endures it, he knows that because endurance has got him to this part of his life, and if he can tolerate it until here what is stopping it from doing it more & more ; a lot of this is about the continuous interruptions that happen in yesol's life and how he cannot find the right footing for himself anywhere; for a person who is hell-bent on perfecting the causes & consequences, a lot of his agency is lost both within the workplace and elsewhere [currently: within a romantic setting] ; yesol wants the change that comes with his second life, he does not want the interruption to be from outside [with hanrim: from love/protection/compassion/desire] because it is easier to come to terms with your autonomy being hampered on at workplace / by colleagues [who are insignificant to your life] than your agency being interrupted or ripped away from you by a lover [also to contend with work & love as different forms within the power structure as in you are always negotiating with where your wants are attended to / by yourself & how they are constantly being interjected with → to desire is to come to terms with what you want from your life which comes at a cost to your self (then thinking about yesol sabotaging the last game which comes as a cost to himself, so his constant re-negotiation at the workplace and renewal of another life is in defense against that which can come at a cost to himself) → thus to realise that one is never fully agentic under the current circumstances and conditions of life & the consequences can come with something that costs a sense of self that one has to realise isn't continuous but interpreted as having gone much ahead than where yesol currently is, i.e., the adult life he has conceded to has been thought of much ahead from where yesol stands right now]
yesol's attachment to his new [second] life operates within systems of institutional control [as in how hegemony can and does control his life] but also how he [now] has the capacity & capability to control himself within that institution or at least negotiate / put himself under control of who he he has become as an adult → as a way to compensate for the lack of pushback against authority he had back in highschool [also see; within highschool he is operating in a hierarchy where he is attempting to retain hanrim's position in that baseball team (to an extent → his creation / work)] & then to see that work / control ultimately being handled by those in more authoritative positions puts him at a place where he has lost that control / creation / imagination / ambition (thus desire for a future) ; again work can be read both as a punishment as he could not disrupt that authority back then → now he cannot disrupt the authority [manager] who he is subordinated to, it is more that he has tolerated & stomached this unfairness that he can feel himself under control → you can only endure when the thing to be endured comes from a place of guilt of the thing [sabotage, loss of control, interrupting hanrim's life] from where the hurt originates. What is the life that belongs to yesol? One which precludes his desires? One which is built on corporate non-agency? one where he misses baseball and still regrets and holds onto the guilt of what he did to hanrim?
i like the circle that comes back with yesol controlling the last game with hanrim as an act of protection when hanrim is at his most vulnerable (injured) & now hanrim controls yesol [tracking movement, daily routine] as an act of protection when yesol is at his most vulnerable (injured, stalked); [here asking; what does protection seek to do? what do you see other people as when under your protection? where is the need for protection originating? how is the person being protected positoned?] ; and that hanrim's actions are a repetition of exactly what yesol has done, its not only the perimeter of the circle that is being come back to, but also the hole in the middle which is being filled again → hanrim as the one who fills that hole by completing the perimeter but also by enclosing that wound by completing that perimeter → yesol’s own control leads him to become barriered within hanrim's control [we can also talk of that control not only being that but also desire & fear & fantasy → one which pushes against any other alternate [self-destructive path → as hanrim has had already taken in highschool] path availbale → thus that desire & fear & fantasy is that hanrim is the only one who can tend to the wound, who can close it because he has been at the centre of the circle without the circle being closed … & also as i have stated before, hanrim's tending to / protection of / responsibility for yesol is a deferral of his own wounds → if he can push himself away from what was lost back in highschool and complete what is incomplete today, he can gain back the control he had lost in highschool [but also see: cannot easily put their relationship within the temporal frame of continuing right as it was left in highschool, though at times the emotional significance of their conversations + actions still linger there ofc] → yesol's leaving behind an unfinished path [/abandonment without conclusion] is what becomes of hanrim's control [as a way to reach some form of return for that conclusion]; they're both being returned back to within/around that same circle of deferral and renewal && especially connecting all this to hanrim immediately relating his own wound to yesol's when yesol speaks of his second life + wanting to endure it → in referring to his wound, hanrim is delegating it to a relational aspect than it as what existed as a singular experience [at a certain time] → whenever he refers to his hurt, it comes in relation with yesol's present condition (as far as i remember)
when in ch 33 yesol recalls himself lying becoming the way he understood hanrim's loneliness, what hanrim is not privy to at that moment is of the fragility & distance that comes with yesol “elevating” himself to the role/position that hanrim occupies i.e. to an extent while yesol believes and holds on tightly to his adult life, there is also a realisation of that elevated place where hanrim is at which not only puts hanrim at a significantly authoritative place w.r.t his social positioning but also emotional positioning where it draws a line from the echoing in yesol's dream wherein hanrim speaks of what yesol believes in, whereas outside the dream, yesol speaks of himself as if he is hanrim → punishment extended through embodiment . . . so when yesol repeats the words from his dream again, as himself now, he is again putting himself in a relatively unstable + degraded position with regard to hanrim → not as emotional capacity or his own position in his life [that he continuously defends] but as a a person/lover in hanrim's life
while the previous dreams are almost memory recalls that bring forth both yesol’s desires and fears & their intermingling when it comes to hanrim; the dream in chapter 32 is removed from memory itself because afterwards, yesol himself brings that dream into reality through himself [inversion, as a form of wanting agency for what he believes to be true in what he has done + as self-realisation because this is the first time we see him coming to terms with his guilt as a lengthened expression rather than form / memory] & through that dream he realises hanrim’s loneliness and his own as i am considering that dream continued as an extension to his subsequent actions & words & reflections ; also a weight to the silence of when yesol repeats his line from the dream → it is not anything hanrim had said, but his silence doesn't deny that either & yet that silence does not lead yesol to self-condemnation (as past pattern would have led him to do so) but rather an understanding of the truth [whether absolute or not] in that dream from ch 32 & so dream becomes formation of how yesol perceives himself after the distance between them squeezes within this mirrored temporality of present push&pull vs the attentions&accusations from highschool [also: prior dreams obscured by desire & fear as dream / a changed part of reality whereas the present dream is desire & fear becoming the reality itself without the distinction between what had happened and what yesol remembers + dreams of ; while the prior dreams leave yesol questioning and/or remmbering and/or putting himself within the position of his dream self to test his desire + memory, the present dream is mostly just a convergence of the consequence of his past + present guilts that he then gives shape to in the bar]
some quick notes after finishing chapter thirty two
thinking about the hanrim who says in his dream in ch 32 that yesol keeps saving and abandoning him [hanrim made up in yesols dream, as a current authoritative figure who can make a path for his guilt to take, a condemnation which is filtered through yesols own guilt & regret → both of the past and now the present] And immediately after that he decides to leave his own self behind and occupies hanrim within himself to speak about / as to other ppl ; also thinking how he occupies hanrim within himself bc there's also regret of not being able to fully help hanrim in high school as hanrim is doing so for him now ...... i.e. cannot bear himself who did not have the social and financial capital at 18 yrs old …..
it is because yesol sees the hanrim in his dream as the hanrim who takes up the primary authority on what yesol accuses himself of [one who accuses yesol of his need to control & to abandon and save] that he takes on the role of hanrim as an imitation of hanrim → perhaps a carrying on from that dream as a way to punish himself → he is the part of hanrim from the dream that “truthfully” points towards yesols failure in fulfilling his responsibility and trust and thus impersonates hanrim in real life too as a way to judge himself as a he currently is → the closest and most absolute way to absorb and drown in that guilt is to become hanrim himself from the dream who has accused him & thus fully hanrim himself
miscellaneous notes from my first time flying alone, after a sleep-deprived night on the sofa because the accomodation bedroom pretty much appeared haunted (notes written after the release of chapter thirty two)
in chapter 27 there is a page at the beginning where yesol mentions that he has hurt intae again and hanrim tells him that his arrogance of believing that he can control everything at his own will makes him stuck to the last and in ch 32 of ofcourse there is a mode of regret that yesol caddies with the way he has destroyed/broken the relationship that had started between him and hanrim and i am supposing that because of that similar form of regret, of having hurt hanrim, perhaps because of his own impulsivity that he dreams that hanrim echoes back that same line to him again, of always wanting to be in control. And I find it interesting that yesol places himself in the position of a savior in the dream because it does remind me of the [moral] responsibility his mom had put on him as a kid and that interaction & internalization still carries onto this day. that control + responsibility = saviorism are a result of each other and feed onto each other and result in the massive guilt and regret that yesol has and has disappeared into [because he couldn't meet the internalized expectations of that equation] and really what does that control do except isolate him more from others but also himself where the more responsibility he takes onto himself and his own life and hanrim's too, the more that manifests in the form of control which is a saving factor for others [specifically and really only hanrim] [again < internalization as the structure that defines what he wants to save / who he wants to, yet that internalization is never questioned because he cannot see that it is a lack of structure towards his control that then ends up encountering others in defensive / as a reduction of himself, or overexertion of what he has become].
saviorism as a form of taking the responsibility to right the wrong and that inevitably which leads him to do what he thinks is the best situation [in ch 25, when hanrim mentions that he wants to do it because yesol himself wanted to do so – while there is a responsibility to not let hanrim be overworked in the games, there's also the need to remove himself from that position he has taken in hanrim's life at that point – fear of what he says or does having an earnest influence on hanrim's life < thus leading hanrim towards self sabotage]. sometimes i just think – maybe yesol should have let hanrim take the painkillers, but really the point isn't the yes or no of it but that why has hanrim even been pushed to the point where he requires some form of saving from a highschooler so as to not fall into [drug] dependency.
and is hanrim not doing the same, want to take the responsibility of saving yesol from bis own dependencies, impulsivities, and work harassment specifically wherein we can put hanrim's method not only much mo legible but also doable since he does remain financially stable enough to being that responsibility and control into action. whereas in yesol’s time, he did have the social and financial capital to bring his responsibility into a reality. hanrim does have that social and financial capital to save yesol and to urge or move him away from his dependencies which yesol could not. a neat parallel that stems from this is that they both have / use the way of collecting the information to save each other i e. through creating reports of what has happened & even logs of what can further be done. Again hanrims reportage/collection holds more weight to it because of both temporality and the social/financial legitimacy it holds as a documentation [ex: connecting with lawyers]. However, that same cannot be said of yesol's personal life which becomes part of the reportage → intervention as control by the other party of that specific situation, yesol still believes that hanrim's knowing of his life is the most shameful part of his life that he wants to keep as a facade and unintervened, but now has been interrupted by hanrim. Whereas, similarly, hanrim believes that the part of him that he wants to power through to keep doing what he loves has been interrupted by yesol & then a betrayal of trust at both ends at different times of their lives. Both of them want a way to control each other but do not want that control to be enacted onto their own selves.
i also want to look at the thing about impulsivity within the text. In the first case scenario, it is yurim [similar to/as a before & after to yesol < transitory] who mentions that yesol's impulsiveness should not be mistaken for liking hanrim who replies that even if that impulsivity leads to curiosity [and thus desire] he does not mind it.
is yesol an impulsive person or is he so careful and controlled [especially how he is choosing to portray himself in his adult life] and wants that control over his own life that any act that happens out of his sense of control happens in a fit of impulsivity / as an act of impulsivity itself ; and is that impulsivity really as destructive as i am reading it to be? and is his impulsiveness not a control of his own desire towards an end that he knows where it will lead to (in chapter 32) and yet cannot face that when he is sober (after Friday night)? when he sleeps with hanrim on the friday night is it a display of his impulsivity or his desire for intimacy/sex [also to note that even the boundaries between impulsivity and desire aren't strong the same as i believe the demarcation between who yesol is as who he is when sober and when he is drunk isn't some sharp line of separation but rather a line of control that he sees himself giving into when not upheld by his own expectations and other social expectations] → and therefore how does that impulsivity come forth when he is not rejecting his own desire when he is sober? can we group yesol's desire into his impulsivity if he does not know where that desire even comes from [or we the readers are led to believe that] ; hanrim's desire can more or less be pinpointed because he has carried it with him for 10 years, but what about yesol? [ → who carries less desire and more a burden without cause for those 10 years]
because we cannot put a point at which yesol's desire materializes or has a root to it, that his actions can be filed as impulsivity. however, is it really impulsivity and not his own desire coming through when he lets down his guard through drinking to lessen the burden of his sober self [ ← as a performance that he has a hard time keeping up with → not that all else is entirely not a performance but that's a topic for another time] and to gradually let down the facade that he wills himself to keep on in his daily life. almost futile to ask who really is yesol → because hes both the persons who puts up a facade as a form of control and to further lessen the control of that facade as a form of control when he's under the influence of a substance.
and even in chapter 32 there is a wanting to control himself [by punishing himself] through drowning himself in the guilt and regret [and consequently into performing as hanrim] [→ what yesol does when he is sober and drunk are different faces of what can be called being under a sort of control ← to feel the crushing weight of what he has done is under his own control if he does it under substance, if he faces that when sober it becomes an entirely different spiral that he cannot essentially control → under sobriety, yesol cannot control the person behind the facade]
being drunk isn't really a removal or addition / assertion of his memory or impulsivity but rather what gives him more control over what he prefers to do at those moments and what he doesn't [perhaps to give into impulsivity is something he does have under his control because he knows he would not remember that the next day ← self-desteucitve (?) but why & how]. when the guy at the bar says that if he acts so impulsively he might regret it gesols expression is almost as if he has remembered the time hanrkm mentioned that his impulsivity would be a prerequisite to hus curiosity and says nk because perhaps that impulsivity is what he does crave now [i.e. he knows that he is controlling himself through his own impulsivity because he's giving in to his want of being hurt / of spending the nignt as a way to forget] aka to give into what his desire at that moment wants to give into intentionally.
impulsivity is not self destruction but rather self-forgettance in chapter 32 i.e. to disappear from himself and forget that which he can remember. the impulsivity is a wanting for emptying himself from the memories that come up and that make him remember the impulsivity that he had not regretted [in chapter 21] but later on regretted in his state of sobriety
also to note that the impulsivity which hanrim mentions in ch 20 is more of a a forward facing factor that yesol can embody and then let it move him towards acceptance of his desire / relationship & in ch 32, the guy mentions it as more of a negative part of his self-destruction that night → impulsivity as another regret he might carry it with himself ; perhaps there also it becomes clear that the friday night of impulsivity is not an act of impulsivity that he regrets ; yesol himself sees his impulsivity as a movement away from the facade of daily life → closer to what hanrim says is a curiosity and later on acceptance of his desire if he faces ot full on, but because yesol keeps wanting to control himself in both moments of sobriety and drunkenness, he cannot reach that stage of acceptance from impulsivity [also the obstacles of regret (though of a different nature) are in the way of that end]
some notes after thinking about chapter thirty one
is hanrims identification and subsequent wanting to “save” yesol because of a negation of his own past self → displacement of one's own hurt / pain from childhood onto the other as a form of mimetic identification to not think of / remember the burden of the past [i.e. his own circumstances, his own abuse at home and at school]. yesol serves as a person from where hanrim can fixate on something similar to his own situation but at the same time have the room to escape from it
yesol fears the reversal hanrim is echoing in the present time because there might also be fear of his own reversion to the self he was a child ← need to note how this marks a clear divide between who is in the present as not carrying his child/teenage self with[in] his adult self. to revert to his past self means to relive the “mistake” → perhaps even because he sees the present problem as a an individual one rather than one that carries a much larger weight to it, to let hanrim get involved in the movements of this entire psychological drama means yesol has the potential to hurt hanrim the same way as he did back then ← impt. to note that this blurs/removes the boundaries between the present and past [in more conclusive way → yesol does not want to “taint” hanrim as he has become now because he cannot “taint” himself with who he doesn't remember his past self to be
as yesol removes himself from insanity / being a lunatic, that negation brings with it a merge between the past and present when it comes to hanrim → while yesol has removed himself from being a person plunged in madness, he displaces/disturbs the place hanrim has come to occupy without yesol but as an extension of his confirmation as “you're not crazy” from ch 25 until the present day → because he places hanrim within the same category he had helped hanrim get away from, it collapses the distance between the present and past → also makes you think about how really “unmad” hanrim is in terms of “normality” //
wherein yesol mentions he is not crazy when hanrim mentions being thrilled & relieved beating up his dad – he again mentions hanrim is crazy when hanrim points to the corporate harassment yesol faces ← different situations + both institutionally located as hierarchical where they both come at the bottom [relatively]
>> past – you're not crazy for wanting to push back against a hierarchy that keeps you under control / abuse
>> present – you're crazy because do you not see that it is normal to fit within the corporate that regularly psychologically abuses you
more notes from chapter thirty one
hanrims claim to yesols personhood is almost paternalistic / moralistic bc even if there's compassion to his actions and doings (wanting to protect yesol, despite through surveillance – again an act of violence against yesols personhood, when yesol mentions “how would you know that?” after hanrim mentions he's being harassed at work, the reaction is not only about why hanrim has pried into something he hasn't yet given him the access to [which also then brings into question how much either of them are willing / unwilling to open up to each other] but also why hanrim keeps attempting to mirror himself as someone who has had his personhood taken away, when yesol believes he still has hold onto something – even if he really doesn't, there's once in the bathroom when he has a breakdown where he ponders over how the workplace isn't for those who have a weak stomach and wanting to return to baseball, and yet we do not see that vulnerability from him again, perhaps once more when he's drunk at the restaurant in ep 10/11 but thats more unconscious and an accumulation of the hatred he holds for his workplace, rather than outright contempt for where he has come to be in in his life
to yesol, the life he has built is something he prides himself on – even if he somehow deep down knows that its not the life he has wanted, and yet when he shouts at the former baseball teammates at the baseball rink, he does say he has built himself in all the 10 years and moved on, but how much has he moved on that hanrim shaking the foundations he's built his stability on keep shaking by hanrim merely mentioning that yesol drowning in substance abuse is just a reflection of hanrims younger self
by saying that hanrim is crazy and refuting the statement from his past self – yesol not only denies hanrim the reprieve from what hanrim has anchored himself to, but also distances / ruptures his adult self from the child who had said that to hanrim out of compassion, his regret and guilt amount to violence [as hanrim mentioned, theres nothing to be gained from carrying that regret and guilt for so many years – because now it has just accumulated and resulted in more anger > again an expression of ashamedness and guilt on yesols face as he looked back at hanrim]
i don't think hanrim means to intentionally reduce yesol to his victimhood [of drinking / being harassed] but he does in the sense that he continuously brings back the conversation to yesols instability & for yesol to be reminded of that instability is much more destabilizing because to him he feels like he has built this life for himself ; whereas hanrims insistence that he wants to help yesol the same way yesol helped him when they were in highschool is different to yesol because hanrims circumstances in highschool were a result of his environment / home while yesol now believes that what he is a product of what he has built himself to be ; and to have that foundation shaken is what gets to him ... because even if hanrim can get away from his parents & household [< also need pondering about this] yesol cannot get away from who he has become in his adult life -- not because he can't but because he believes he is the result of the circumstances he has put himself into willingly
a few thoughts on yesol's parents & christianity
i am curious as to the framework yakkuk is using to explore christianity within the story; the dining table conversation between yesol and his mother is a pretty clear indication (at least to me) that there are certain values through which yesol has and still does, to an extent, understand responsibility within a relationship and how it comes with self-sacrificial tendencies + ways of self-effacement [which, ironically and amusingly does with yesol's personality] as necessary to what has been “given” to him as a weight because of his positionality, thus obligation > thus he becomes the basis of the framework of /everything/ that happens
[one which i also want to consider as a part of hierarchy that is being formed / is in place with yesol and his mother, yesol (as a leader and someone older than hanrim) and hanrim, and even what i will further want to look into, yesol's parents as missionary workers and the persons for whom they are doing missionary work for in cambodia]
i wouldn't say that yesol's parents being missionary workers is a direct imposition / transposition onto yesol's person & ethics, but there is relationality and borrowing, thus alterity, in there from which he navigates his own relationships [saving and abandoning > rather than just a form of compassion given and then pulling away from, it's a direct interpretation of the persons/others which he takes from as a way to be responsible/sacrificial for what he believes is in the right (as a form of control) → in a way similar [perhaps a parallel] to missionary work as interpretative work on already built ideological frameworks of extraction / “care” as a responsibility towards people who don't know better / are ignorant / in need of saving]
that framework of saving and abandonment is mostly provided by his family; however especially because he is still a high schooler i would say yesol is still learning to navigate and work out how relationships themselves work, so having his mother's words be the first where he [quite literally] eats them up become the foundation of how he continues to intervene within hanrim's life → not that it is not coming from a place of care and love but rather because of what fundamentality that care and love is determined upon, which i wouldn't even say responsibility (which is a necessary part of every relationship) but rather an ethical obligation that comes from his position as a leader / one older than hanrim → where he isn't able to resist his mother's reasonings as a teenager/child/under her care, he too expects hanrim to not resist because of their power difference [thus precluding hanrim's interiority (to an extent) and want, specifically at that moment]
some notes from chapter twenty five
i keep thinking about the last page of chapter 25 and the many things its doing
1. hanrim placing yesols desire [to win + continue playing baseball] at the forefront, which is mostly explicitly shown through his actions in relation to the entire team in the flashbacks, but when it comes to in relation with hanrim < its mostly always about how to have hanrim improve himself so that they can continue winning [which isn't separate from his other feelings for yesol per se ; i.e. his worry for hanrims shoulder, him wanting to hang out with hanrim until sunset, him keeping a check on hanrim so he doesn't overwork himself < ultimately much is also tied to baseball as much as to his personal feelings]
2. yesols realization that his own desire to win & continue playing doesn’t preclude hanrim's own feelings for baseball / the game / the team / him (? not even sure if yesol was considering that at the moment) > and bc theyre both not mutually exclusive it falls on him as a weight of what he had not done as a leader / guide (?) to hanrim [inserting yesols moms dialogue at the dinner table here]
3. yesol using this in as a heat of moment thing where he immediately takes a decision of what to do (in possibly barely a few days) by immediately effacing his future want to continue playing baseball & then that continuing upto adulthood where bc he is continually effacing himself he does that with his hurt (to a very far extent) & his desire (to a certain extent)