is this love? and if it is love...

So what Fighter says at the end of the episode, about how he wants Tutor thinking about how he feels about Fighter. Hmm.

Because their relationship has mostly been defined by Fighter pushing until he gets a reaction of some kind. From the very start, he wants Tutor’s attention on him all the time, good or bad. He’s been the main proactive element in the relationship (with certain important exceptions).

It seems like Fighter’s mom has been out of his life for a very long time (maybe all of it?), since we didn’t see any evidence of her in the house. And his dad is controlling and also talks down to Fighter a lot. So probably the most attention Fighter ever got from his dad as a kid is when he was acting out, and it was likely punishment of some kind. Which means he’s been trained from childhood to seek out negative attention (that the other older student we see him hang out with the most is aggressive Dew is probably no coincidence).

In general, Fighter doesn’t ask for things he wants, because no one has ever shown an interest in helping him get anything he wants. I think he doesn’t trust the vocabulary of expressing genuine desire at this point. To be so incredibly hungry all the time and yet believe that asking for food is the thing most likely to leave you starving? So, instead of asking, he either just takes what he wants or attempts to trick the other party into giving it to him (both tactics used liberally on Tutor).

And when he tries to give things to Tutor, he makes it safe by trying to create a zone where the giving and accepting isn’t a vulnerability for either of them – oh, it’s just a game so you might as well go along hehe, look! what a coincidence that I happen to have what you need lol it’s not like I care bro – he’s trying to give Tutor plausible deniability in letting him no-strings accept things without either side needing to express vulnerability. Except, of course, that Tutor has zero interest in that kind of plausible deniability.

I am just… constantly fascinated by two people with such different ways of interacting with the world fumbling at each other and trying to figure out why this person makes no sense and yet is so intriguing and attractive. Because just as Tutor’s desire to put everything into words goes against all of Fighter’s self-protective instincts, it’s clear that Fighter’s all-action/no-talk approach grates against Tutor. Watching Fighter’s face is a very different experience from just reading what it is that he’s saying; he almost never says what he actually feels. At most, he likes to only imply it. But Tutor obviously doesn’t trust subtext. He wants things to be main text only, thanks.

I’m really curious about how exactly Tutor’s family lost its money because I wonder if the reasons are related to this tendency of his; I do feel like we will learn more at some point, because Fighter’s subtext re: his emotional struggle has been main-texted this recent episode with his conversations with his father and Hwa, and it all lined up with what had been implied before through subtext. If that was a relative of Tutor’s who showed up at the end of the episode, maybe we’ll find out next week! We were told in… episode four, I think… that his father got sick and died, and his mom has to work as an in-house maid now but I feel like there are still some lines missing in there from point A to point B.

(I’m also tempted to go back and rewatch all the Tutor & Hwa scenes through this lens – between the implications of Tutor getting angry at the idea of being Fighter’s pet charity case, and Hwa straight-up telling Fighter that she pities Tutor… and Hwa is not a subtle girl so if she does feel pity towards Tutor, I’m sure he’s noticed – then we’re seeing a complicated story of a friendship between two people who used to be on the same social-class rung, but now one of them has tipped off into a different rung. And does the friendship still survive in that case? Depends on the people involved, yeah? But this would definitely also have an impact on Tutor’s perspective on Fighter, as we saw with Tutor’s wistful mention that Fighter’s big fancy house reminds him of the house his family used to have.)

To go back to Tutor and Fighter and my initial thought – Tutor has been pushing Fighter to use his words but he hasn’t really expressed anything himself. Fighter questions Tutor’s feelings at the end of episode six and, well, yeah. It’s a fair point.

From their first kiss at the end of episode two, Tutor has structured all this in terms of a challenge to Fighter’s relationship with Hwa or to Fighter’s sexuality. It’s all about Fighter’s side of things and never about Tutor’s own potential feelings. Even as early as Fighter and Hwa’s first meeting, Tutor is teasing Fighter to be the one to admit to something, and doesn’t actually admit anything himself. But Fighter doesn’t want to admit to liking Tutor if that puts him out on a limb alone, with Tutor leaving him now that his curiosity about whether or not Fighter is attracted to men has been satisfied, because Fighter has no concrete evidence that this is personal on Tutor’s side of things (Fighter wants proof that this matters just as much as Tutor does).

Neither of these boys wants to be the first to admit to having actual feelings for the other one, because emotional vulnerability is scary. Which you know. Fair.