“You’re going to blow out your arms,” the villain observed. They watched as the hero merely grit their teeth, shoving themself through another pull-up. It looked painful, and if the sweat slicking the hero’s brow was any indication, it was.
They waited for the hero to let themself drop from the bar and accept the villain was stronger. But they didn’t.
Three more pull-ups, and the villain stepped in.
“Hero,” they said slowly. “You’re about to tear the ligaments in your arms. You need to stop.”
The hero blew out a shuddering breath. Struggled for purchase, fighting gravity—and let themself drop.
The hero’s hands were bleeding, calluses torn open by the bar. The hero didn’t seem bothered when their own hands shook so much that their blood began to splatter on the gym floor.
For a moment, the villain could only stare at them.
Shit.
They didn’t know how to handle this. They knew the hero was dedicated. They knew the hero was strong, and perpetually trying to be stronger, but they hadn’t thought…
They hadn’t thought the hero would be so willing to tear apart their own body for success.
It was supposed to be fun, the villain thought. They felt a little sick as the hero pressed their palms together to soothe the bleeding, an action that was practiced and familiar. As if they had done this before.
The hero reached for something in their bag, smearing blood on the side, and pulled out a roll of blue electrical tape. The villain didn’t understand why, until the hero tore a strip off and made to wrap their hands with it.
The hero would be the death of them.
They crouched in front of the hero, plucking the electrical tape out of their hands.
“What are you doing with this?”
The hero blinked at the villain like they were the strange one in this situation.
“Wrapping my hands?”
The villain hissed in a breath.
“With electrical tape?”
The hero flushed slightly, looking down at their bloody hands. They looked close to tears.
“It…sticks to skin, really well. And it doesn’t move, either, when you move your hands or wherever else, even if you’re fighting. Plus, blood doesn’t make it come off, at least, not for a while.”
The villain blinked at them.”
“Blood doesn’t make it come off,” the villain repeated, processing. The hero nodded, reaching for the electrical tape. The villain settled it out of reach.
“Not if you wrap it right.”
Dimly, the villain realized that meant the hero had done this enough times to have it down to a science.
“And you couldn’t use a bandaid?” The villain asked incredulously. The hero shrugged a shoulder, then winced at the motion.
Yeah, the hero had absolutely blown out their arms.
“Bandaids move—“
The villain hushed them.
“Be quiet for a second.”
The hero, wisely, went quiet.
The villain rubbed a hand over their face, then studied the hero for a moment. They took one of the hero’s hands into their own, studying the damage.
“Why did you do this to yourself,” the villain murmured.
“What do you mean, why,” the hero snapped. “It’s my job.”
“Your job is to save people,” the villain corrected. “Not destroy yourself.”
“I’m not destroying myself—“
“You are.”
“Shut up—“
“Hero.”
“I need to be better,” the hero snapped. Their voice rang out across the gym, echoing into the rafters, and they both froze. After a moment, the hero spoke again, voice soft. “I need to be better.”
They said it like they needed the villain to understand. The villain wondered who they were really saying it to—the villain, or themself.
“Better than who?”
“Everyone.” It was hushed, like a secret.
The villain watched them, waiting.
The hero took a shaky breath
“My whole thing is being the best. I have always been the best. That’s the only reason I matter. If I’m not strong enough, then I am nothing, so I need. to be. better.”
The hero had started crying, very quietly, like they were afraid to take up too much space.
The villain was not equipped to handle gifted kid burnout.
“There’s more to you than just being a good athlete,” the villain said hesitantly, and the hero shook their head.
“No. There isn’t.”
“Hero.”
“Can you give me back my electrical tape?” They hiccuped to contain a sob.
“No,” the villain said firmly, and then the hero really was sobbing.
“You don’t understand—“
The villain didn’t. Not really. They had never been the kind of talented that the hero was.
They wondered now if maybe that was a blessing.
“I don’t,” the villain agreed. “But I do understand that you’ve saved half the city, and you give everything you have to give, and you always do your best.”
“But I-“
“No.” The villain stopped them. “You are doing your best.” They tipped the hero’s chin up until they met the villain’s eyes. “And it is enough.”
The hero froze, eyes darting over the villain’s face. They wondered if anyone had ever said that to the hero, if whatever mentor they had was giving them anything other than orders to be stronger. Be better. Be more.
The villain had some new targets to take care of, it would seem.
For now, though, they had to take care of hero.
“We’re going to go wrap your hands,” they said softly. “And then we’re going to take care of your arms, and you’re going to take a nap.”
The hero nodded, watching them like they were some kind of good, selfless person.
“And if I ever catch you using electrical tape again, so help me, I will put you six feet under.”
That startled a laugh out of the hero, and they let the villain guide them to their feet.
“Fine.”
The villain turned to them. “Okay?”
Are you going to be alright?
The hero seemed to understand.
“Okay,” the hero agreed.
Yes.
And so, it was.
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the appeal of yeojeong as a normal guy who’s just a little bit off. not enough that you would notice when talking to him, of course, but it’s just there, under the surface. a disturbance. and i think it’s interesting because typically you have two types of guys somewhat adjacent to this: guy who seems totally normal but is secretly sadistic/a psychopath, and then guy haunted by a traumatic/troubled past, who has that secret layer of torment running beneath the surface of their image. but yeojeong breaks through these archetypes, and i think part of it is because he’s just so...calm. it’s not that he’s living a double life (kind doctor by day, killer by night) or hiding part of his past (everyone he worked with knew about what happened to his father, and watched his downward spiral during his college days). he’s not the typical male character who is, at every attempt, trying to outrun his tragic past (even though he does run once or twice); he’s not haunted by flashbacks, or suffer from PTSD in the way that is usually portrayed in dramas. and i think part of that is because the glory is a story about victims. it’s dongeun’s story, first and foremost, even though it is also yeojeong’s story, and hyeonnam’s story, and sohee’s story. but it’s a story about dongeun’s pain, and when it’s not about her pain, it’s just about the pain of victimhood - unlike other dramas, this isn’t a show where male pain outweighs the rest.
so yeojeong is just a normal guy. he’s handsome. he has a good career. he’s a plastic surgeon, an interesting choice when both his parents were/are hospital directors, and his father seemed to have worked in the er or something of the sort prior to his death (or at the very least wasn’t a plastic surgeon). something could be said here of yeojeong choosing the ‘safe’ path as a doctor, a path where he cures pain and makes people happy without the added risk of being attacked by one of his patients. there’s no proof of that in the show - why he chose to be a plastic surgeon - but it’s an interesting thought path to travel.
dongeun says he must have lived a good life. that he’s never had to worry about the path that he’s on. and that’s true, to a certain extent. to everyone, including her in the beginning, yeojeong is perfectly friendly. he’s perfect, but not the perfect that people perceive as too perfect (i.e. the guy who’s hiding things); he has his moments where he spazzes out, gets into fights, goes crazy over dongeun texting him back, teases his mom. he’s perfectly well adjusted (a perfect contrast to dongeun’s ‘maladjustment’). he wears flip flops to work and gets the same coffee order daily. he plays go with old men in the park.
he likes to listen to the fizzing of vitamin tablets in water because it calms him down. is this a strange thing? only because he thinks it’s important enough to mention to his therapist. he does it at work too - drops the tablet in, closes his eyes, rests his head. he does it at home - drops the tablet in, opens the drawer, draws a knife. it’s about the noise. bubbles rising to the surface, like bubbles rising from underwater. he stays underwater until the last possible moment, when he has to break the surface in order to breath. dongeun makes him feel like he’s at the eye of a storm - a deceptively calm center, while everything else rages outside. and i think it’s kind of important that he makes that comparison, when he’s someone always seeking that calm. the soothing noise, that makes him feel lonely.
so he’s just a normal guy. a normal guy who receives letters on a regular basis from the prisoner who brutally murdered his father. he doesn’t like letters, he tells dongeun. who knows what he does with the letters - does he keep them? does he throw them away as soon as he sees them? he must have read some of them; maybe you only need to read one to know what is in the rest. maybe he’s still reading them; maybe he keeps them without reading, an invisible torment. it’s not what he does with the letters that matters, but that he receives letters at all.
can you still call it a haunting if you’ve almost made your peace with it? if you’re living with it?
he’s just a normal guy, who looks his therapist right in the eyes and tells her that she couldn’t fix him. he diligently attends therapy for years on a regular basis, even though it doesn’t work. he finally abandons it when he moves to semyeong, because he chooses to embrace dongeun’s revenge. he chooses his own revenge, too, in a way. the dark part of him that he can’t escape. the one that makes him pick up the knife, who asks dongeun who to kill before she even tells him she wants any of them dead, even when he’s a doctor from a family of doctors, and doctors don’t kill - they save lives instead.
you couldn’t fix me, he tells his therapist calmly. so calmly. as if there’s not a bloodied man sitting next to him, a man he dreams of killing. the man is just life to him, just like the letters are life to him to. a dulled numbness. an acceptance of it.
is your son going through hell? can you even tell it’s hell, if it’s what you’ve become used to? is it hell when you’re a doctor dreaming of murder? is it hell to no longer be tormented by dead men and living murderers who send you letters? is it?
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