UNDER HIS SPELL { taekook }

✧ BOOK NOTES ; ０２ ✧

✧ BOOK NOTES ; 02 ✧

so here's another extra chapter with info about the story, just like how i did when PART 1 ended :]

i'm trying a different format for this one, since there's more to cover now that a longer PART has ended. in case you're curious, the topics i'll put here is in the table of contents below:

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table of contents;

01. of love & war

02. on V's lies & games

03. of seojun & yerin

04. on V & jeongguk's toxic relationship

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— no.001 ; OF LOVE & WAR

At the end of PART 1, the first thing I shared in the first Book Notes was the meaning of PART 1's title "Metamorphosis." So of course, it only makes sense for me to explain PART 2's title "Of Love & War."

The meaning of 'War' in this context isn't really in the context of battle, politics or in a military setting. It's used more loosely, to describe a person's inner battles or a 'personal war' someone's dealing with in their life.

So if there's Love and there's War; then Jeongguk is Love. He grew up around love, knows how to give love and believes in the good of love.

Taehyung is War. He grew up fighting for his belief of freedom in a toxic environment, only knows cruelty, and believes in the worst of love.

The beauty of PART 2 is that Love and War start to intermix somewhere along the way. War (Taehyung) realizes that he has love, and Love (Jeongguk) realizes that he has war.

Love & War go together. Without love there is no war, and without war there is no love. One can only know happiness once they realize sadness. But the two can coexist, learn from each other, teach each other.

Through Jeongguk, Taehyung learns love, and through Taehyung, Jeongguk learns war (meaning the dangers of the underground scene, his encounters with Acre, etc.)

They come to understand each other, and coexist. Together, I believe they'll cancel out the bad qualities of both love and war.

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— no.002 ; ON V's LIES & GAMES

So it's pretty obvious that V is kind of the 'wild card' of all the alters. Especially at the beginning, you're never quite sure what he's thinking, what kind of mood he'll be in, or how he would react to certain things; which is why Jeongguk often feels he's walking on eggshells around him.

It also doesn't help that V himself has accepted the kind of 'villainous' behavior he knows he possesses. He takes amusement in toying with people just for the fun of it, and is the type to push at your buttons just to draw a reaction out of you, or make others take part in things just to see how it would play out - like the time he made Jeongguk deliver drugs merely for his entertainment, and to see what kinds of chain events it would bring later on.

He also takes amusement in telling small lies. Again, to draw a reaction or to see certain facial expressions in people. In a way he also indulges in this behavior to see what kind of person someone is, since how they react would tell him a lot about their personality. This is how he's able to subconsciously make a conclusion that Jeongguk is a good soul, and makes an effort to push him away so that dealing with Taehyung and the other alters doesn't sully him. It's a kind of defense mechanism, in a weird way.