This review brought out so many feelings, it’s been hard to grab on to all of them to encapsulate them for this review.

First, as I knew it would in the last episode, Nakyum’s silliness about Inhun left him horribly exposed, and vulnerable. And just like that, he’s in the clutches of a wilier wolf than any he’s previously encountered. And while I hate to see him cry, I am also really mad at him for putting himself in that position over a fucking Dry Twat.

What disturbs me, aside from Min’s silky and facile evil, is just how sneaky his plot was. More, how easily he manipulated both Heena and Nakyum, in addition to Jihwa and Nameless. And worse! How easily he is manipulating Seungho!

This leaves me pondering so many things on a deeper level. Surely insult alone (done by Seungho after Min’s mischief began and he was already goading everyone) is not the sole motivation for this.

I cannot imagine that Min would go to this kind of trouble and take on this kind of risk, just for amusement. I sense that there is something deeper at work, another very deeply buried bone, I can smell it. I strongly believe there is something else motivating Min to do this wickedness, it’s not just his innate wickedness. He is innately wicked. There is something buried between Min and Seungho from which this springs. This isn’t about Nakyum. It’s about Seungho.

And speaking of Seungho. In just a few panels, byeonduck manages to convey his panic, his fury, his intense need to find Nakyum. And while his first conclusion was wrong, I think there are enough breadcrumbs that maybe he will figure it out. But will he arrive in time?

I want to make a prediction here.

I have, over the course of these logs, more than once expressed a deep empathy with and sympathy for Lee Jihwa. I understood his pain, and understood his anger about the way Seungho treated him. I’ve commented throughout these logs about it. He gained my respect when he sent Nakyum back, realising it made no difference to his wants. I have observed that his feelings for Seungho were real, and shouldn’t be dismissed as nothing.

And, let’s be real… all of Jihwa’s troubles began when he let Min goad him, (more on that in a moment).  But here is my point: Min has been engineering almost all the conflict in this story since about the middle of Season 1.

Why?

It cannot be for mere fun. Something else is happening.

And when both Nameless and Jihwa wanted to back out at the end of Season 2, Min behaved like a proper cunt and bullied the shit out of everyone into continuing.

Why?

It brings us to this moment in the story. This awful moment.

I am distressed to see Nakyum this way, but this story makes almost a regular practise of tossing Nakyum around. He often feels like an inert character in this story, to an infuriating point. But it made me notice something about Painter of the Night, as a story that I hadn’t quite noticed previously.

It wasn’t until I went through the entire story, piece by piece to prepare the writing of these logs, that it struck me like a ton of bricks.

This is Seungho’s story. It’s a lot less about Nakyum than it is about Seungho. And I mean, a lot lot less. Every character, every motivation, everything circles back to Seungho.

And this is interesting, because you never hear Seungho’s internal POV, monologues, thoughts, history, none of it in his own voice. We get all the goods about Nakyum from the get go. Nakyum is an open book, right down to his predictable lying from the very first episode. Nakyum’s thoughts, motivations, backstory… we get all of that, from Nakyum and other characters all the time from the first fucking panel.

Seungho tells nothing to any one… Nakyum is the only one who hears how he feels, and about Nakyum. Everything we know about Seungho, comes from the mouths of others or from his behaviour on the screen. We have no ‘internal monologues’ with Seungho’s thoughts. Just one or two musings spoken aloud here and there to another character or in their presence.

We never know what Seungho is thinking. EVER.

Yet this story is completely driven by him. He is the main character… and the story is occupied with his redemption. Nakyum is definitely the second protagonist, but even his empowerment and self-actualisation serves the story’s greater theme of Saving Seungho’s Soul.

Speaking of redemption, Seungho knew Min and Jihwa… these were his playmates and fuckbuddies for years. There is no way that Seungho didn’t know Min was a nasty piece of work. Seungho lived a dissipate and dissolute life right alongside them both. So he knows the utter lack of morality they all lived with.

I suspect Seungho is starting to put together the disparate pieces of things. The finding of Dukjae’s body. The ‘Jihwa’ meeting with Heena at the kisaeng house. I just hope his tendency to jump to the wrong conclusion doesn’t lead him too far off.

And now, my prediction: I believe Jihwa will help Seungho find Nakyum. For no other reason that he had true feelings for Seungho, and he knows (via his own premonitions and Seungho’s behaviour) that losing Nakyum would destroy Seungho. And while that is clearly what Min wants (WHHYYYYYYY? SO much fucking why?), Jihwa never wanted any such thing.

In this context, Jihwa’s already battered and fractured conscience is likely to pull itself together, put on it’s big boy jockey shorts and go help Seungho.

Min is too clever (or thinks he is)… he’s laid his traps in a way as to mislead, while still achieving his aims… which is what Min, you silky demon? You cannot convince me a little ‘tasste of Nakyum’ is all he wants.

Not when he can have sex so easily with willing partners, and hasn’t particularly shown a taste for raping. No, this is about hurting Seungho, while protecting his own vile neck. And as dismissive and evasive as he has been about the why he wants to hurt Seungho so badly, this is still a lot of fucking effort to be making.

Too much.

The end of this episode still has me asking, is that Dry Twat, Inhun dead or not?

My final note is to the many, many, many responses this chapter has evoked across social. I’ve read so many people talk about dropping the story if Nakyum does in fact get raped by Min and his cronies.

My honest question is, “Why do you even read these stories?”

You can watch these things in medical and police procedural dramas, watch Attack on Titan’s giant monsters eating the fuck out of people, zombies chasing and eating people, vampires… all these wild ass stories that have uncomfortable moments, but the minute a story makes you uncomfortable it’s suddenly, ‘too much’?

That’s not a love of stories and storytelling. That’s a response based or a presupposed moral superiority, and honestly, it’s performative. It’s not real. Just like these are works of fiction. They’re not real. Painter of the Night, is in fact, a work of fiction.

Finally, everyone who says that: I can tell you aren’t paying for the episodes.

There ain’t a way in hell I have been giving byeonduck my money for this incredible fucking story she is telling, and I’m going to drop it because she makes her characters suffer and makes them (and me) uncomfortable. That is why we tell stories. To watch characters grow like trees.

However, I am not a young woman. I have actually lived out here in the wide world. I know it’s not black and white but hued in more colours than I can perceive. I always enjoy the scenery and the ride.

Chile, I ride that bitch ’til the wheels fall off. Gritting my teeth then laughing, hollering and whooping all the way.

Don’t give up now… the darkest hour is always before dawn.