Chapter Text
Jumin is the focus of my story, and I only wrote that story in the first place because I felt that the writing of Mystic Messenger’s later crop of writers failed to capture Jumin’s real character. Consequently, I did a detailed study of Jumin in order to transfer him from bare-bones chat to detailed narration and to try to stay true to his character in my lengthy story.
Jumin is what the Koreans call a chaebol heir, the up-and-coming generation of an incredibly wealthy family-run conglomerate. (The word “chaebol” literally means ‘wealthy clan.’) Korea was a monarchy almost up to the beginning of the twentieth century, and South Korea has modernized incredibly rapidly since the Korean War. There’s a famous Korean entertainer in the prime of his career today who took his parents’ advice and didn’t expand his career beyond Korea when he had the chance to do so, something he regrets now: as he tells it, “I took career advice from two people who didn’t even own shoes.” So the chaebol families like Jumin’s continue to fill in modern Korean society the traditional role of the rich ruling families from not so long ago. Korean culture was incredibly firmly stratified before, and even now, there’s a huge cultural chasm between the chaebol and regular people.
Some chaebol members seem more like mafia dons than wealthy Americans: they walk around with groups of big bodyguards and do what they want when they want, even if it’s criminal. The corruption scandals involving government officials and chaebol are epic and have rocked Korea to its foundations, and the evil chaebol character who engages in casual rape or murder is a staple of Korean television.
On the other hand, there is a sense that the chaebol should promote and further Korean business and culture in the way that the English might feel about their queen. Siwon, a real-life chaebol heir who joined the entertainment industry as an actor and singer, is proud to be the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific representative and is very active on the organization’s behalf. He is also reading the Bible aloud on his social media account to fulfill his goal of being a good influence and a responsible Protestant missionary.
Unlike Siwon, Jumin doesn’t act or feel in the least bit altruistic. He’s a capitalist to the core. But he does have a strong belief that he needs to be extraordinary in order to fill the role life has given him. And because of how hard and how successfully he works, he feels quite confident that he IS extraordinary. Jumin is a member of MENSA and has gone to college overseas; one of his special skills is foreign languages, although the game never reveals which ones. Jaehee describes her boss as “incredibly intelligent and talented.” And when he’s chided for not being humble, Jumin remarks, “Considering my wealth and abilities, I am being humble.”
Jumin’s father, Chairman Han, is the founder and CEO of C&R International, a massive conglomerate focusing on exports and diversified investment opportunities. Like all chaebol companies, this is a family business, and Jumin is expected to be CEO in his turn, although C&R is publicly traded and has a board of directors to which he and his father both answer (at least in theory). Jumin speaks occasionally about how his upbringing has been shaped by “risk and sense of duty: the burden,” which he claims simplifies his life. He points to Yoosung’s depression as coming from the fact that no one expects much of him. Consequently, Jumin forces himself to work to the limit of his time and talents: at the age of 27, he is an executive director (a vice president) and has made his division of the company twice as financially productive as any other division.
Jumin seems to be in charge of investigating new investment opportunities. At different times, he travels to the Middle East to meet with an “oil prince,” probably in Dubai (his hotel room—likely the hotel penthouse—is on the 100th story); he works with a golf clothing company on their new line; he investigates a semiconductor deal; he meets with a group of winery owners (whom he claims are usually drunk but very rich); he works up a proposal to invest in a line of coffee shops; and he oversees the acquisition of a pharmaceutical company specializing in pain medications. At one point, Jaehee comments that the entire company relies on Jumin’s exceptional ability to analyze data and make accurate predictions.
For his own entertainment, Jumin also has the company invest in a number of cat-related businesses because the greatest love of his life is his cat. Jumin’s answer to overwork is more work: he starts new cat businesses whenever he’s feeling particularly stressed because it gives him something fun to think about along with all the boring work. At one point, he complains, “I’m so busy I’m about to die,” whereupon he starts working up a proposal for a line of cat hotels. Jaehee lives in terror of this behavior because it upends her schedule and adds to her stress.
One of the chats takes place at three in the morning, and it’s Jumin and Jaehee, still at the office. When Jaehee asks, “When can we leave work?” Jumin replies, “When we finish all the work.”
Along with investigating new business lines in which to invest, Jumin, handsome and charming, is expected to work to secure contracts with new investors and generally make the company look good through outreach and public appearances. He speaks confidently at one point about how he could hold a conference on a particular niche topic (“Black Cat, White Cat, the Mysterious World of Fur”), implying that he’s organized and spoken at conferences in the past. Jumin’s father approves of Jumin working with the RFA because even though RFA parties are supposed to promote nonprofits, they actually make C&R look good and always bring in more investment.
Jumin is a pragmatist in life and particularly in business. At one point, when he’s being criticized for not being worried enough about the danger MC is in, and therefore seeming inhumane, he comments, “I am humane too—I am only practical,” explaining that worry is a waste of time. As a pragmatist, Jumin believes that it is good professional behavior to do whatever is necessary to make the company successful. Although he wouldn’t break the law, he doesn’t believe that it’s the job of corporate executives to police themselves in terms of the harm capitalist institutions can cause society. When Zen reproaches Jumin over the problem of big corporations putting mom-and-pop concerns out of business, Jumin launches into a long lecture on the role of government in reining in the power of corporations. He doesn’t pretend he’s out to better the world: at one point, he says, “Life is supposed to be harsh.”
Jumin also believes in doing whatever is necessary (again, within the law) to close a business deal. For instance, Jumin plays a lot of golf with prospective investors; he tells Yoosung at one point that he dislikes the game but is good at it, “enough to adjust my skills depending on who the other player is—if he wants me to win I win, if he wants me to lose I lose convincingly.” Disgusted by his father’s womanizing—and by his father’s women—Jumin detests meetings with “women who approach me with different intentions,” but he points to his ability to “coax them as best I can to make sure the deal goes through” as a sign of a true professional. Jaehee boasts about how he and she had a meeting with the Cultured Citizens’ Association, a collection of incredibly wealthy women. Although Jumin hated spending time with them, Jaehee gloats that thanks to his “sugar-coated smooth talk,” they received an enormous investment, at which point Jumin comments, “I must sacrifice for the company.” Jaehee goes on to say that Jumin got that enormous investment by knowing how to pay these rich women compliments—“compliments not related to money: their grace and personality, the color of their scarves, things like that.” At one point, Zen attempts to shame Jumin by saying, “You’re the creepy one who sucks up to everyone to make them sign contracts.” But Jumin just replies, “What’s wrong with that?”
Off and on throughout the routes, it comes up that Jumin is a celebrity in his own right, something that Zen thinks is unfair. At one point, Jumin has come back from a photoshoot for the cover of a financial magazine. Zen fumes that actors work so hard for a photo opportunity, but Jumin gets straight into the magazine just because he’s rich. Jumin replies that “handsome actors are common, but the world knows that naturally handsome corporate heirs aren’t.” This media attention isn’t always positive, though. Jumin complains at one point that if Seven follows through with a threatened prank, “tabloid magazines will annoy me again.” During Zen’s route, an idol (that is, a top kpop celebrity) takes revenge on Jumin and Zen by filling the tabloids with really damaging rumors about the two of them, including a rumor that Jumin is gay, a very serious allegation in homophobic Korea. Zen is devastated by the negative attention, but Jumin is blasé about it and can’t understand why Zen would bother to keep checking social media to see how bad it’s getting. Jumin is more used to being in the public eye.
In Jumin’s after-ending DLC, after Jumin and MC have married, they are besieged by reporters and crowds everywhere they go. Jaehee says, “I’m so sick of rumors… reporters… working overtime…” and laments that someone has leaked Jumin’s schedule to the tabloids so that the paparazzi could ambush them at the airport. Jumin apologizes to his new wife, saying, “I’m sorry we have to keep being surrounded by cameras,” and adds, “you’ll get used to the crowd someday.” His security detail has to protect the couple by keeping the mob pushed back.
Jumin’s relationship with his father complicates his workdays, naturally, since they lead a business together. Jumin takes a week of vacation (the first in years) because he knows his father has been slacking off to spend time with a new girlfriend, so “the talented son has to take a break for him to work.” Chairman Han uses this same ploy on his son in another route: he learns that Jumin has taken a day off to visit a cherry farm, so the Chairman takes a “business trip” to Hawaii with yet another new girlfriend and forces Jumin to pick up the slack while he’s gone. This sort of tension leads to Jumin complaining occasionally about his father, usually in fairly muted tones because he doesn’t want to seem undutiful and also because he doesn’t generally like to vent. (He considers emotional outbursts to be a sign of poor mental training.) But he does say at one point that “I don’t feel very good thinking about my father this early in the morning” and at another time says, “I genuinely no longer wish to have anything to do with Father.” Each time this sort of conflict occurs, Jumin handles the stress by working even harder, a tactic not likely to produce any change.
Jumin states at one point that “hate would be the more appropriate word” to describe how he feels about his father’s womanizing, a very strong statement coming from Jumin, who generally prides himself on avoiding violent emotions. Jumin hates all of his father’s women largely because they have tried so hard to cozy up to Jumin as well. He says, “I’m sick of looking at gold diggers,” and in another place remarks, “If Assistant Kang and you saw my father with all those extravagant women at my house, you would understand.” He says that he came to realize during his childhood that everyone but his father treated him nicely and flattered him just because they wanted something from him. He talks about going through a phase in childhood when he was rude to everyone, but everyone treated him just as nicely as before because it wasn’t Jumin they were being nice to, it was his wealth and position. Because of this, Jumin measures his self-worth only against his work: he realizes that his business results can’t lie, so he drives himself relentlessly to succeed. He also has what Rika once called a “mental allergy” to women in general—and indeed, Jumin himself compares his having to meet with fawning women to Zen’s having to take a modeling shoot involving cats, leading MC to say, “So, if Zen’s allergic to cats, Jumin’s allergic to women?” When Yoosung states that Jumin “might actually hate all women,” Jumin initially denies this, but when questioned further, weakens his denial to state that it’s “probably” not true. The only woman his own age Jumin has been friends with was Rika, and that’s because she was important to V, his childhood friend, and so Jumin allowed Rika to become important to him too.
Throughout the main Mystic Messenger routes, Jumin never once refers to his mother. (She was added into some after-ending DLCs years later in what I think was a creative mistake.) The assumption is that his father divorced his mother long ago. Jumin has had a stepmother since his early teens, and it’s revealed at one point that she hit on Jumin when he was a teenager because she was lonely and neglected. Jumin now has a standing rule: he refuses to meet any of his father’s girlfriends until his father has maintained the relationship for six months, something his father never manages to do. This has kept Jumin from having to see most of the recent women, but his father occasionally breaks Jumin’s rule and surprises him at one of their father-son meals by bringing along someone new, an experience Jumin finds distasteful.
Jumin’s work assistant is very important to him, functioning not as a secretary but as a highly skilled “second Jumin” to whom he can delegate very difficult tasks. It is revealed in several routes that Jumin lost the assistant before Kang Jaehee because his father had an affair with her. Jumin immediately fired that assistant, very bitter about her loss, and made it a requirement of Jaehee’s hiring that she keep her hair cut short and wear glasses she doesn’t need, all to try to keep his father from making off with another assistant. At one point, Yoosung reproaches Jumin for not having met his own maid, but Jumin replies that if she too winds up becoming one of his father’s many women, he’d just as soon not know who she is.
To a great extent, Jumin extends this notion of gold-digging beyond women to everyone around him. He states that only he and his father understand the “emptiness” that comes from being surrounded by people while being “utterly and perfectly alone.” As Jumin puts it, his father and he will always “have that much responsibility, and our lives will be that lonely” because the people who surround them will never act as true peers but will always either need the talents of the two men to guide them or else will want to manipulate them. Jumin states that he saw his father’s womanizing as a sign that “the emptiness my father feels is more complicated than mine” and says that he became grateful during childhood for the fact that “my father had no need to use me because he already had so much more than me.” Because of this, Jumin does try to reciprocate his father’s genuinely fatherly efforts in spite of the tension between them, and Jumin mentions that they exchange gifts, dine, and go on trips together. At one point, Jumin shows off a pen his father gave him, telling him to sign good contracts with it, and he is upset when he later loses it. The few times Jumin gets the chance to see his father alone, he enjoys himself.
Perhaps because of this suspicion that everyone is attempting to use him, Jumin is an extreme introvert, avoiding people whenever possible. He says, “I just don’t want to waste my energy by conversing with someone who doesn’t help the company,” an indication that he probably is a true introvert who finds social interactions tiring. At one point, Jumin reproaches Jaehee for not having come to meet him at the airport. She had sent someone else, and Jumin says, “Thanks to that, it was awkward on my way home.” Jumin’s regular involvement in the RFA chats indicates how important its members actually are to him and how seriously he takes his senior role in the absence of RFA’s actual leader, V.
Jumin’s favorite activities are solitary ones: he enjoys visiting two orchards and his “small weekend farm” at his private garden. He laments being too busy to visit his garden, where he loves looking at the flowers, complaining, “What’s the point of having a garden if you can’t even walk in it?” He has a very expensive aquarium in the one in-game picture of his penthouse, indicating that he enjoys watching fish, and he also enjoys a quiet glass of wine, revealing at one point that his average bottle costs $200.
But Jumin dislikes being drunk, and only twice in the chat is he reported to be drunk. Once, he complains about it himself after that meeting with the rich winery owners, saying that they served too many drinks and that he still feels it. He seems annoyed about it. Another time, V discourages Jumin from talking about their happy friendship in the past, telling him that he’s drunk. But both times, Jumin is as articulate as ever. The only sign of impairment is that he may be slightly more sentimental and less reserved than usual. When V warns Jumin that he’s drunk, Jumin is drinking one of the bottles of Montrachet that V gave him years earlier, and he’s recalling sadly that V and he used to share those bottles together.
Because of Jumin’s loneliness and his refusal to consider any sort of relationship due to his “mental allergy” to women, Rika gave him his cat, Elizabeth the Third. (V picked out the name.) Jumin adores his cat (“Her existence itself is a blessing”) and deliberately treats her as a kind of girlfriend (he calls her his companion), devoting all the love and romance of his soul to making her happy. He convinces the owners of a strawberry farm to grow cherries instead because “Elizabeth the Third likes the scent of cherries,” and he brings her different items from his garden, such as roses, because she seems to find them interesting. He takes her with him on business trips when he can and worries about leaving her behind when he can’t; he brings her into work with him sometimes and even took her to the last RFA party, a move that reduced highly allergic Zen to a sneezing wreck. Elizabeth the Third is used to eating out of crystal bowls, and Jumin has bought her innumerable jeweled collars. He loves taking her to the countryside because the sight of her padding softly through the grass makes his heart happy.
But even without this need to fabricate some sort of meaningful personal relationship for himself, Jumin would still be a cat person. (Seven calls him a cat mom.) One of the only cute things about Jumin’s chat persona is his tendency to use cat-shaped notes to express himself. He tries to encourage Zen past his cat allergy, saying, “Not knowing the appeal of cats is basically missing 50% of the joys life has to offer.”
At one point, Jumin finds a little lost kitten. “All kittens are cute no matter what,” he says, but this one is “more beautiful” because it was abandoned in his private garden. He takes care of it even though Elizabeth the Third doesn’t like this, losing sleep to their squabbling until he can find it a good home. MC offers to take the kitten, but they’ve learned by this time that the RFA apartment is wired with a bomb capable of destroying the whole building. So Jumin refuses, saying, “I can’t leave a cat where there’s a bomb.” When Jaehee says that he talks as if the cat is more important than MC, Jumin replies, “Don’t hand me a problem with moral conflicts. My head hurts.”
Essentially, Jumin is Confucian in his habits of mind. Confucianism, the state religion of Korea during the Joseon era, is woven through Korea from top to bottom of society and woven into every single sentence of its language. Jumin’s relationship with his father is fraught with tension, but Jumin holds close to his heart the idea that family is sacred, so much so that when Yoosung is going through a particularly rough patch at college, ditching class and gaming constantly, Jumin reaches out to Yoosung’s mother and tells her what he’s up to. All the other characters side against Jumin on this, but he is completely unfazed, saying that “family is beautiful.” And it turns out that Jumin is right: Yoosung’s mother comes out for a holiday with him, cleans up his room, feeds him home-cooked meals, and reignites Yoosung’s desire to work for a future. Similarly, when Zen is at his lowest, it is Jumin who goes out to talk him out of despair. (It’s a prickly conversation.) While doing so, Jumin convinces Zen to reach out to his family and let them know how he’s doing for the first time in ten years. Jumin’s profound belief in the value of family despite never having had a happy family is at the core of a Confucian mindset.
During Jumin’s route, Chairman Han arranges a marriage for his son, something not generally done in Korean society anymore but still apparently practiced quietly among the chaebol. (The arranging of marriages for rich young chaebol heirs is the key plot point of a number of kdramas.) Jumin resists the proposed match, telling his father with some bitterness that if he’s bent on forcing Jumin to marry, he should at least give Jumin the courtesy of letting him pick from a set of resumes. But Jumin confesses in chat that he doesn’t really want to oppose his father like this: “Since my company is a family business,” he says, “there’s no point in my work if I don’t trust my family.” Jumin feels that he has a duty to respect his father regardless of his father’s character, another Confucian thing to believe: filial piety is one of its core values. Nevertheless, Jumin feels betrayed by his father’s effort to arrange a marriage for him because his father is only doing it in order to please yet another new girlfriend who wants Jumin to marry her friend (actually her sister). Jumin feels at this point that since his father has made him a pawn in his romance—used him, essentially—Jumin has lost the only peer he had.
Jumin is very conservative in his beliefs, not unusual for a Confucian since the whole point of Confucian philosophy is to uphold the essential and unchanging order of society. Jumin was raised as a Protestant, and even though he doesn’t believe God exists, he points out that most rich families have a religion because it helps support their conservative goals and views. So Jumin doesn’t really seem to see a conflict between his Protestant religion and his atheism. Jumin expresses several times his firm belief that a man and a woman should be married before living together. This probably isn’t because Jumin views the alternative situation as immoral, it’s just that Jumin strongly supports a clearly defined societal structure as a good in itself, and family is the central focus of Confucianism. Confucianism is probably also at the heart of Jumin’s drive to be an extraordinary chaebol heir and businessman. Confucius taught that a leader must not be small-minded but must lead through virtue, guiding the people who depend on him as a father leads his children. Jumin is being Confucian when, as the oldest active RFA member (in the absence of V), he works hard to keep in touch with the other RFA members and their needs despite his time constraints and introverted nature.
To force himself to achieve as much as possible and to interact successfully with colleagues and investors he doesn’t like, Jumin puts a lot of effort into controlling his negative emotions. At one point, Jaehee calls him “very emotionally lacking” (Jumin just says that “you have to use your time wisely regardless of the situation”), and Jaehee also draws attention to how guarded his expression is. Jumin himself frequently refers to his efforts (successful, in his opinion) to suppress negative emotions such as anger and grief. About Rika’s death, he says that he was shocked, but that “I was able to conclude that grieving is only a waste of time and emotion” since “it was very clear in my head from the start that she’d never return.” And Jumin’s commitment to suppressing negative emotions isn’t just a matter of controlling appearances, either. He works hard to suppress their negative consequences as well, as he does when he’s distraught over Jaehee’s quitting her job but nevertheless wants to help her find a new one.
In fact, Jumin is by no means unemotional. He just invests lots of energy into handling his emotions in a manner he finds appropriate. When others are emotional, he often tries to console them or encourage them. When it comes out that Yoosung is still devastated over Rika’s death, Jumin talks to him several times at length to try to help him, telling him that “after enough emotion has been let out, scars always heal.” And when MC finds out that there’s a bomb in her apartment and that she can’t leave for fear of triggering it, Jumin brings the topic up sympathetically, saying, “Having to work at a place with a bomb… I could never.” MC replies that she’s so nervous she can’t stand it, and Jumin responds, “I fully understand how you feel.” He’s the one who goes after Zen when Zen is at his lowest point emotionally and again talks for some time about emotions with him in order to persuade Zen to have hope. He is also quick to pick up on the emotions of others, at one point telling Zen, “You’ve got a good girlfriend there,” before either Zen or MC have admitted their feelings for one another.
Although Jumin tries to keep his negative emotions in check, he often inadvertently indicates that his feelings are just as violent as anyone else’s. He admits that the loss of Rika, one of his only two real friends, was “a blow” to him, and he uses the word “hate” to describe his father’s womanizing. At one point, anger and distress cause Jumin to take one of Seven’s sports cars for a very dangerous joyride that ends in him flipping the car. And he implies at several points that worry and nerves are causing him tension headaches, even though he tries to persuade those around him not to worry because he says, “You become happier in the process if you just let go. The result is going to be the same.”
Because of the harshness of Jumin’s workaholic life and the loss of the friends he loved, Jumin doesn’t often get the chance to express positive emotions. But when the occasion comes up, he doesn’t deny them or try to control them away as he does worry, sadness, and anger. At one point, Seven asks Jumin sincerely if he is happy, and Jumin says that he is happy because they’re getting the chance to hold another RFA party. Jumin talks about the good times he and his father have when they’re alone together, he reminisces warmly about his childhood adventures with V, and he waxes lyrical about the joy and peace he finds in nature and in spending time with Elizabeth the Third.
In fact, it’s an interesting side of Jumin’s character that he refuses to hide the happiness he finds in his cat’s company no matter how often he’s teased about it. Zen and Seven give Jumin constant grief about his affection for Elizabeth the Third. (Seven is hoping for a “cat wedding.”) But Jumin isn’t shamed into hiding his feelings: he speaks constantly and warmly about how much he loves her and how much happiness she brings him. In a way, Jumin’s full expression of that happiness indicates just as much strength of character as his suppression of negative emotions does.
Jumin’s life doesn’t have a lot of excitement in it, but he loves it when excitement comes along. He has a lot of fun in what is probably Dubai when he visits the Oil Prince, and he posts photos of the sunrise over the desert (showing his love of nature again). When he flips Seven’s car, he’s positively giddy afterwards, laughing several times in spite of MC’s worry and disapproval. Of the drive (and wreck), he says, “Wasn’t it great?” and adds, “I feel much better now.” And he admits that he only starts cat businesses in order to bring some excitement into his workdays: “I feel more energized when I start a *fun new project* to accompany the boring one.”
It’s not surprising that Jumin, having witnessed so much greed and flattery in his life, struggles with even the idea of friendship. He strongly prefers relationships that come with clear contractually mandated obligations on either side, such as the relationship he has with Jaehee. At one point, when Zen tells Jumin he should be more warmhearted to his employees, Jumin replies, “It’s a waste giving yourself to people you’ve employed. It’s a business relationship. Money should be all there is to it.” Similarly, when urged to praise Jaehee for her work, Jumin replies, “I thank my employees with money. Words will only temporarily make them feel better.” He prides himself on the fact that he pays well and gives good bonuses. At one point, MC does the math and realizes that Jumin is paying Jaehee more than “most other companies” would.
The business relationship Jumin has with Jaehee is one he finds very comfortable. He lets Jaehee nag him, and he regularly solicits and takes her advice. (He closes one chat feud with Zen by saying, “I’ll respect Assistant Kang’s opinion and stop teasing.”) At times, the two behave almost like an old married couple, understandable since they have spent by far the majority of their waking hours together for the last several years. But Jumin is content in this relationship only because he knows he’s completely in charge. At one point, when Jaehee follows up one of his orders by saying, “I personally think a bit differently,” Jumin replies, “We don’t need personal opinions right now.” When MC points out that everyone gets tired after working too long, implying that he should lighten up on Jaehee, Jumin just answers, “God…do you think I wouldn’t know that?” and ignores the point of her comment. And later, when Jaehee again complains about her workload, Jumin responds that she has traded her free time for money, “so nothing to cry about.”
The RFA is a bit of a gray area for Jumin. Even though Jumin has known the other members of the RFA for years, he still calls V “my only friend.” Jumin is interested in the other RFA members, who seem to be the only thing resembling a peer group for him, and he does support them and even trust them to some extent. But he prefers to see the RFA as an extension of his business life and therefore to see the other members as colleagues, not friends.
Jumin’s desire to keep his RFA relationships all business results in some interesting behavior. He unhesitatingly supports the members during danger from Unknown (Saeran or Ray, the hacker), and with good reason: at different times in different routes, Unknown partially blinds Yoosung, blows up MC, tries to kill Seven, abducts Zen and turns him into a drugged-up puppet, abducts MC and uses her as a sex slave, steals Jumin’s cat, and even shoots and kills V. When Jumin realizes how dangerous Unknown is, he immediately sends security guards out to protect each member, prompting Zen to lambast him for sending “the gangster-looking ones” to his house because they scared away Zen’s favorite street vendor, the fish-shaped bun man. Jumin isn’t upset about this ungracious response but merely replies, “Come to think of it, all you care about is looks.” And Jumin’s first reaction, when MC shows up at his penthouse, is to ask if she’s there because of the hacker and adds, “Tell me what you need.” But Jumin justifies his care of the RFA members both as a pragmatic act (since the parties are good for his business) and as a favor to V (since he believes the parties enhance V’s reputation). As noted above, he also views the RFA as a setting in which his senior role obliges him to take care of the others. Thus, when MC praises Jumin for being kind to the other members, Jumin rejects the compliment, saying, “The safety of RFA members is an important issue to me—nothing related to kindness.” This leads Yoosung to exclaim, “Oh! Rich people are really different…”
At one point, Yoosung comes to Jumin to beg for help because Yoosung believes MC is in mortal danger. Jumin probably decides to help immediately, but he insists on treating the situation as business, saying, “Nothing is free in this world. If you think I’m going to do two favors for you without anything in return, you’re mistaken.” Jumin then presses Yoosung to adopt the kitten he’s taken in, saying, “I feel like we can make a good deal.” Yoosung has the cat for years and names her Lisa.
Similarly, when Zen is at home with a broken ankle, Jumin becomes worried for his safety. Jumin’s initial comment is that “Zen’s problem is bothering me,” paving the way for Jumin to intervene but make it seem as if he’s doing it just in order to put Zen out of his mind. He then decides to send MC to look after Zen, but he asks her to attempt to persuade Zen to take a modeling job Jumin has offered him, pretending that this is his primary motive. When MC comes back having failed to make headway on the modeling job, but having done what Jumin has really wanted—protected Zen—Jumin remarks, “I gained nothing from this. It was a foolish investment.” Then he encourages MC concerning her developing feelings for Zen.
When Jumin really does have to do the right thing out of pure kindness because the other RFA members don’t have that much to offer and there’s no deal even to pretend to make, Jumin prefers to interpret his compassion as a temporary act of selfish caprice rather than as something more meaningful. At one point, MC calls him rigid for leaving Jaehee in a particularly difficult work situation. Jumin states that he doesn’t like hearing her call him that, so he will help Jaehee after all. Jaehee and Zen, quick to sense weakness, immediately call Jumin out for caving to criticism, something he never does. (As Jumin puts it, “I cannot become a good executive if I am easily persuaded by others.”) But this time, Jumin just replies, “My choice.”
Similarly, when Jumin helps Zen during his broken-ankle incident by loaning him a car and driver, he later gloats that “[Zen’s] already loving it,” implying that Jumin has done this purely in order to push Zen into betraying his fiercely independent philosophy. When Zen later feels grateful to Jumin and apologizes for his earlier thoughtless behavior, Jumin isn’t quite sure what to do. “I did not expect to receive an apology,” he says. “This is flustering me a bit.”
Ordinarily, rather than give way to feelings, which he feels waste his time and might mislead him, Jumin does the right thing if he thinks it meets his Confucian standards, looking to his role as a leader to guide him. For instance, during Zen’s route, when Jumin has lost something important, MC offers to come to his penthouse to help him look for it. But Jumin refuses, saying that it “won’t be right to Zen, who has feelings for you.” And when Jaehee quits working for him, Jumin is so upset that he wrecks the car. But he also says, “If Assistant Kang needs anything in finding another job, I’d like to help her as long as it is appropriate.”
RFA and the workplace might only see Jumin’s more reserved side, but when Jumin does give his heart, he gives it completely, with no further need to hide behind business customs. Jumin would do anything in the world for V, his “only friend,” and he doesn’t hesitate to make that clear to everyone. He repeatedly defends V’s secretive and emotionally distant behavior, even though he doesn’t understand it himself, and his comments imply that V’s refusal to confide in him causes him pain. When V tells Jumin, “Just trust me for now,” Jumin replies, “I always do,” and Jumin’s loyalty to his friend generally prevents Jumin from even speculating about all the odd and dangerous things that are going on, even though Jumin is smart enough to know better. “I don’t want to harbor doubts,” he says. He admits at one point, “I’d be lying to say I don’t have doubts about V.” And at another point, he says, “It’s difficult to trust something you can’t understand—but I try.” When MC asks a question that Jumin feels cuts too close to implying that V might be a bad person, Jumin warns, “That question, you should be careful of it,” and then he reiterates, “I trust V.”
Jumin’s conversation with V is always openhearted and marks a contrast to his typical detached style. They trade stories about their childhood, and Jumin allows V to question him about his feelings and his relationship with his father (but not to nag). After one chat with V, Jumin tells MC, “It feels very strange to have you see me talking to V when you haven’t been here for long. We used to talk on the phone often, but we rarely do these days. We each have our own lives, so there’s nothing you can do about that. But what happened to Rika was a blow to both of us. … I should get going before I end up talking too much.” V has largely stopped treating Jumin as a friend, probably because he knows that Jumin of all people would be the first one to figure out V’s secrets. The hole left in Jumin’s life by the death of Rika and the loss of V’s friendship is one that he rarely brings up directly, but at one point, he tries to console Yoosung in his grief over Rika, saying, “I understand the anxiety that comes with being alone.”
Jumin’s style in friendship is to be a doer, and he has done many things for V over the years. Jumin is a doer in his relationship with his cat, too, the other “person” he wholeheartedly loves. He spends a great deal of time thinking of ways to enhance his cat’s life and make her happy. V's and Jumin's childhood friendship itself was a gift to V because V’s parents were neglectful, so V was often with Jumin at his house. V’s parents were estranged, and it was Jumin who persuaded V to rekindle a relationship with his mother (placing value on family again) and to pursue V’s artistic goals in spite of V’s father’s resistance. Jumin’s motivation for being involved in RFA in the first place was to support Rika and V, and he still does it to help V and enhance V’s reputation. It is Jumin who has to bankroll the expensive parties.
Jumin reveals at a certain point that he has known that V is losing his sight and that he has done everything to try to talk his friend into getting the surgery to fix it, including making all the arrangements. But Rika herself caused the injury, so V feels that his blindness is a parting gift from her. Nevertheless, Jumin refuses to give up, even inviting an ophthalmological surgeon to the RFA party because he knows V will be there and might be persuaded to meet with him. Eventually, in some routes, Jumin gets his way and is able to arrange for V’s surgery and save his sight.
Jumin laments in all routes that V has refused to confide in him concerning whatever secret problems V is facing: “He could have asked for help at any time, and we could have solved it.” And whenever V does reach out to Jumin and ask for a favor, Jumin follows through instantly and unquestioningly. When Jumin can’t do anything, he finds it very frustrating, at one point lamenting the fact that V has sent Seven and Yoosung into danger without telling Jumin first. Jumin says, “I wish I could have provided them help.”
One of the saddest aspects of Jumin’s and V’s friendship is how little V deserves Jumin’s love and regard anymore. He has been allowing his character to become corrupted and ends up supporting other less worthy people against Jumin and the RFA in a way that Jumin almost certainly would never do to V. After one route, when V’s secrets have caused tremendous damage and pain to the RFA members, V announces that he accepts their censure and disapproval and will leave Korea and disappear. The rest of the members are fine with this, but Jumin never stops searching for his friend.