This is Part 3 of the Yeon Si-eun chapter in a chapter-by-chapter blog series adapted from the free ebook We Keep Coming Back to Get Hurt. Start from the Prologue here.
Chapter 1. Yeon Si-eun
The Boy Who Went Ballistic. Until Someone Cut Right Through.
Part 7. The Circles on His Test Papers
Setting those old memories aside and returning to the drama — I want to talk more about Si-eun's self-harm. In my personal interpretation, even his explosive violence toward Yeong-bin in Episode 1 was, in its own way, a form of self-harm.
While Si-eun's disordered eating and sleep have come up frequently in comments, what concerned me most was something else: this boy does not interact with anyone at school. Not a single friend. Headphones in all day. No conversations. At first glance, you might dismiss it as the antisocial habits of someone who refuses to waste even a minute of study time. But underneath, it's more likely that he doesn't want his withdrawn emotions discovered — or doesn't want to experience the emotional overload that human interaction would bring. Based on the conversation he has with his father about fainting, I interpreted his recurring blackouts as a response to emotional overload.
And here's what makes it worse: Si-eun carries internalized anger. When the triggers for that anger involve threats to the perfect order he obsessively maintains — or to the people he's become attached to — that anger becomes uncontrollable. It escalates into something that is most harmful to Si-eun himself.
Notably, the drama never depicts Si-eun's rage as heroic. It's not like Su-ho's action sequences, where almost perfect emotional control is maintained throughout. When Si-eun was smashing Yeong-bin's face, he was retaliating like a cornered animal. Had Su-ho not stepped in at exactly the right moment, Si-eun had no rational capacity left to stop himself. He would have gone all the way. It was technically self-defense against bullying — but at a level where immediate expulsion would have been entirely justified, with every student in the class watching.
For Si-eun, that row of perfect circles on his test papers was the one thing that assured him of safety — a feeling of control in an environment that was either chaotic or impossible to govern. So when the bullies finally succeeded in breaking those circles, what followed was inevitable. His sense of control — a kind of lifeline — had been severed.
And as many commenters have pointed out, Class 1 has a perfect parallel structure: Si-eun going wild in Episode 1 connects directly to him going completely ballistic in Episode 8. The triggers are different. The depth of destruction is not.
Part 8. What He Had to Lose
Here's what commenters had to say about one of the most brilliant structural choices in this drama — the way Si-eun's explosion in Episode 1 mirrors his explosion in Episode 8, even as the triggers shift entirely.
"I completely agree that Si-eun going ballistic feels totally realistic. What makes him unbeatable at that point is the fact that he has nothing left to lose. It's a great parallel that the first time it happened was for a similar reason — at the beginning, all he had in his life that mattered to him were academics. So when the bullies started messing with it, he lost control." — Morzsar
Yes, the parallel structure between Si-eun's first explosion and his final one isn't just clever writing — it feels like the emotional mathematics of a boy whose entire world gets reconstructed, and then destroyed. By the last episode, he's lost the most important person who saved him from his self-imposed loneliness. Feeling that he lost that relationship — and feeling responsible for it — strips him of any rhyme or reason. He attacks everyone because once again he's lost everything that mattered to him. Except this time, it destroys him on a much deeper level.
Part 9. The Word Nobody Said Out Loud
After watching this drama multiple times, I began seeing it through a particular lens: that the direction was, at least partially, hinting at Si-eun's neurodivergence. And in some ways, I came to interpret certain elements through the possibility that Si-eun might fall somewhere on the high-functioning autism spectrum. These are personal interpretations. The lens shifts depending on who's watching.
Viewed through that lens, the commenter's observation that Si-eun and Su-ho reminded them of an autistic-ADHD friendship bond lands differently. It's well-documented that neurodivergent individuals often feel an immediate ease with one another. Si-eun's instant comfort around Su-ho — likely surprising even to Si-eun himself — and the way Su-ho clearly delights in Si-eun's "weirdo" nature from the beginning, while classmates find him off-putting, start to feel not just plausible but quietly inevitable.
I'm not interested in labeling either character. What I'm interested in is the immediacy of the bond they formed, the depth of the attachment — and specifically, the higher possibility that Si-eun, more than Su-ho, may be a neurodivergent kid. And then: when his parents or surrounding adults noticed this, did they respond? Did they provide the care or support that was needed?
We already know the answer. It's no. They likely assumed a valedictorian wouldn't have any particular concerns. Or perhaps — if they did notice signs at some point — they denied it, brushed it aside. Maybe even used his exceptional academic performance as the rationale: "A kid who scores like that couldn't possibly be..."
"Mom isn't worried about my son. You manage just fine on your own." "There's a lot I'm not good at." "Hm?" — EP5, Weak Hero Class 1
Part 10. The Wrong Food Delivery
And then Su-ho came — slicing through Si-eun's walls like a knife through butter. A misdirected food delivery that suddenly threw open the door to Si-eun's entire world. Through that accidental arrival, Si-eun experienced — in a bewilderingly short period — all the emotions he should have rightfully received from his parents: deep attachment, laughter, stability, love. They hit him like waves. Like a tsunami.
Had Su-ho not accidentally found his way to Si-eun's door, Si-eun would never have broken out of that shell.
But — and this is worth sitting with — the range of emotions Si-eun felt toward Su-ho was so overwhelming, so wave-like in its intensity, that if these two boys existed in the real world, there might have come a point where Si-eun became dangerously overdependent on Su-ho emotionally.
There are several cuts in the direction where Si-eun's eyes quietly follow Su-ho's figure — the same slightly obsessive, intensely focused gaze he carries when dealing with the things he holds most precious. Like his studies. Just like those perfect circles on his test papers had functioned as a lifeline, that same perfectionist streak and laser-focus that Si-eun developed for anything he started holding dear likely transferred entirely onto his new lifeline: his friend Su-ho.
Even his willingness to take beatings in Su-ho's place, to let his own hands get bloody — that reads less like courage and more like desperation. Like a child who has barely ever experienced stability or attachment, sensing in advance that the psychological breakdown that would hit him if this precious person suddenly disappeared would be far more unbearable than any physical pain he might absorb by choice.
In other words, Si-eun's coping mechanism — sacrificing himself to protect both the perfect circles and his friend — wasn't healthy. Not for Si-eun. And in that context, I think it was brilliant direction that Si-eun was made to experience the trauma of losing Su-ho. Because for Si-eun to sustain his own life going forward, he couldn't keep self-harming. That painful, necessary growth had to happen. Putting Su-ho in a coma — as sorry as I am for Su-ho, who had to spend the better part of his high school years in bed — was, dramatically speaking, exactly the right choice.
Part 11. The Boy Who Stopped Sleeping
The real Si-euns who collapse in silence internally — I saw them in Season 2's Si-eun. His insomnia had already been foreshadowed in the final episode of Season 1. Since Su-ho fell into a coma, Si-eun has been surviving hellish, sleepless nights.
His room — once warmly lit in yellow — now sits cold and muted, bathed in the weak blue light of a lamp hanging low over his desk. Even with sleeping pills, the boy can't fall asleep until 3 AM.
The scene of him taking prescribed sleeping pills is depicted with striking directorial clarity. And his awkward, arm-still gait — barely moving in sync with his steps — has been widely interpreted as an indirect portrayal of a boy consumed by deep depression. Many have pointed out that this disconnected way of moving is the direction's way of signaling that his mind and body have come apart. He's present but untethered.
Here is Elaine's summary, which captures everything these discussions have been working toward:
"In Season 2, we see that he's being forced to see a psychiatrist, but he won't even talk to her because he's so depressed and can't see the point. He doesn't want therapy. He wants a different life, and his friends back — but of course, she can't do that for him.
And then there's his flat voice and expressionless face. Not caring about much. Lack of energy. Not sleeping. Wanting to push everyone away. He's totally self-isolating. And self-blaming. All kinds of cognitive distortions.
Not even a doctor could fully diagnose someone like Si-eun without a thorough, accurate history — but it's pretty hard not to look on and conclude that Si-eun is no stranger to depression. Probably an ongoing clinical depression that's been going on for years. And then it gets worse before it gets better." — Elaine
Part 12. The Bird That Had to Break Its Own Shell
After completely falling apart in Class 1 — with no school willing to take him, barely escaping juvenile detention — Si-eun was sent to Eunjang High. And it was there that something shifted. He met Ba-ku, Go-tak, and Jun-tae. Their friendship — not too close, not too distant, with a sustainable rhythm he'd never had before — gave him something entirely new to look toward.
His decision to release Beom-seok's hand on that ring — the act that had been feeding his hellish sleepless nights — was symbolic. It represented his choice to free himself from the guilt he'd been holding onto, and his determination to heal and grow despite his losses.
The drama never spells it out. But anyone who truly understands this show can feel it: Si-eun was slowly, carefully breaking free from the shadows of the deep psychological struggles that had been weighing him down. We see his depression starting to lift when he's able to build meaningful relationships with people who accept him as he is — without demanding perfection. And if he can maintain that kind of connection, with people who will actually stay — then maybe, bit by bit, he moves closer to simply being himself. An ordinary introvert.
The massive psychological breakdown Si-eun went through as the price of losing Su-ho wasn't simply tragedy. It was the growth he had to go through. Like a bird breaking out of its shell — you can't survive just by cracking open. Si-eun had to learn to live without his coping mechanisms — without the perfect test scores and Su-ho as his twin lifelines — to genuinely grow into an adult.
If he had kept trying to protect those lifelines by scarring his own body and shedding blood, he never could have grown properly. And the people who care about Si-eun wouldn't have wanted him to keep hurting himself either.
So when Su-ho finally woke from his long sleep and saw Si-eun running over — with friends, this time — and chose to say "It looks good" out of everything he could have said, those words carry real weight. He was genuinely proud of Si-eun's growth. Celebrating a bird that had learned to fly on its own.
Su-ho's original line, apparently, was meant to be: "Our Si-eun has really grown up."
Closing: Do the Real Si-euns Have Their Su-ho?
We see that Si-eun has grown enough to convince himself that he can build a sustainable life with his new friends. But the question stays.
Do the real Si-euns — the ones out there right now — have Su-ho-like figures in their lives? Someone who will show up, look them in the eye, and say: "Have you been living okay?" or "It looks good"?
Some children collapse silently. Developing depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts — with no visible cracks on the surface. Others explode when a crisis finally arrives, lashing out violently or breaking down emotionally. And most of the time, the adults around them had no idea what was building underneath.
If this drama has brought us to a place where we're asking these questions — where fans from across the world are sitting with the weight of Si-eun's story and asking "Do kids like this exist in reality?" — then Weak Hero has succeeded in doing something far beyond what a school action drama is supposed to do. And it did so through precision: a meticulously adapted script, sophisticated direction, and a performance from Park Ji-hoon that externalized an interior struggle through nothing more than a blank face, a flat voice, a swollen face from sleepless nights, and an awkward, disconnected walk.
It's no exaggeration to say I spent these two months caught in a fever like an early summer cold — and I don't regret a single moment of it. Getting to have these high-level discussions with fans from all over the world, freely and joyfully — that alone made it worth everything.
In Seong-je's terms — stupidly, recklessly romantic. But strangely, deeply happy.
This piece is my final small tribute to Weak Hero.
Thank you for listening.
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