The illustration is of “The Little Prince,” a novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry written around World War II. Viewers will have their own interpretation but this is mine.

I skimmed through the story last night before going to bed and Chapters 8, 9, 15, and 21 are the relevant ones to this post. Feel free to read the book yourself. I quoted excerpts from The Little Prince pdf 1 and The Little Prince pdf 2.

Chapter 8

The little prince tells the narrator that all the flowers in his planet had been simple and undemanding flowers. “One morning they would appear in the grass, and by night they would have faded peacefully away.” But this all changed when, one day, a mysterious “seed blown from no one knew where” began sprouting.

At first, the little prince worried that it would be a new variety of baobab trees which threatened to encroach on his small planet so he cautiously watched as this new seedling grew. And the flower took her sweet time to emerge because she “did not wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear.” It was a beautiful but vain flower but still the little prince was enamored by it.

Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed herself.
And, after working with all this painstaking precision, she yawned and said:

“Ah! I am scarcely awake. I beg that you will excuse me. My petals are still all
disarranged…”
But the little prince could not restrain his admiration:
“Oh! How beautiful you are!”
“Am I not?” the flower responded, sweetly. “And I was born at the same
moment as the sun…”

The little prince could guess easily enough that she was not any too modest–
but how moving– and exciting– she was!

“I think it is time for breakfast,” she added an instant later. “If you would have
the kindness to think of my needs–”

And the little prince, completely abashed, went to look for a sprinkling-can of
fresh water. So, he tended the flower.

So, too, she began very quickly to torment him with her vanity– which was, if
the truth be known, a little difficult to deal with. One day, for instance, when
she was speaking of her four thorns, she said to the little prince:

“Let the tigers come with their claws!”
“There are no tigers on my planet,” the little prince objected. “And, anyway,
tigers do not eat weeds.”
“I am not a weed,” the flower replied, sweetly.
“Please excuse me…”
“I am not at all afraid of tigers,” she went on, “but I have a horror of drafts. I
suppose you wouldn’t have a screen for me?”
“A horror of drafts– that is bad luck, for a plant,” remarked the little prince,
and added to himself, “This flower is a very complex creature…”
“At night I want you to put me under a glass globe. It is very cold where you
live. In the place I came from–”

But she interrupted herself at that point. She had come in the form of a seed.
She could not have known anything of any other worlds. Embarrassed over
having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naïve untruth, she
coughed two or three times, in order to put the little prince in the wrong.

“The screen?”
“I was just going to look for it when you spoke to me…”

Then she forced her cough a little more so that he should suffer from remorse
just the same.

See that? At first sight, the little prince loved the flower very much that he tended to her every need and obeyed her every whim: watering her, humoring her about her fearsome claw-like thorns, shielding her from the drafts of wind, and covering her with glass globe.

However, she was caught about to tell a petty lie. She was going to tell him about the place where she came from, even though she couldn’t possibly know about her homeland because she grew up from a seed on the little prince’s planet. Her little lie made the prince doubt her and his love for her.

So the little prince, in spite of all the good will that was inseparable from his
love, had soon come to doubt her. He had taken seriously words which were
without importance, and it made him very unhappy.

“I ought not to have listened to her,” he confided to me (the narrator) one day. “One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe
their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take
pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much,
should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity.”

And he continued his confidences:

“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have
judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance
over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed
all the affection there was under all her rather silly games. Flowers are so
inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…”

The lie disturbed him so much that he would later (in the next chapter) decide to leave the planet and the flower. In hindsight however, the little prince admitted to the narrator that he was at fault. He shouldn’t have listened to her words but looked at her deeds instead. Her words confused him, sure. But he should have paid attention to the fragrance she perfumed his tiny planet with. That should have been a sign for him that she actually loved him. He realized too late that he had been too immature and inexperienced to know how to love her.

Now, do you see the similarities between the little prince and Lee Ahn? I’ll point them out briefly because I’m not yet half-way through explaining the book.

First, like the little prince, Lee Ahn was the first one to fall in love. He probably didn’t like Jaein much when she accused him of being a Peeping Tom, but definitely he was more “in like” with her than she was with him.

Second, like the little prince, he tended to her needs, followed her like a puppy, and obeyed her every whim. He said in Episode 5 that he’d do whatever was needed to be done.

Then in Episode 8, after their rooftop kiss, he told her plainly, “I’ve cared for no one else since the start. Why I said I’d wait for you. Why I’m following you around saying it’s to improve. You know that too.”

And like the little prince, he protected her. Despite her insistence that she could do things on her own, he was there for her.

Third, Jaein was similar to the rose. The rose was too demanding unlike the other flowers in the little planet who would appear in the morning and fade peacefully away at night. Jaein was just as complicated as the rose. She had so many rules for him. Remember their bus ride in Episode 3? She didn’t want him telling other classmates that they were neighbors and living in rooftop homes, and she warned him about touching her. She was prickly like the rose.

Despite her unfriendliness, he was attracted to her and overlooked the barbs and insults she flung at him.

Fourth, just as the little prince began to doubt his love when he discovered the rose’s little lie, Lee Ahn, too, began to doubt his love for Jaein when he discovered her secret connection to Yoon TaeHa. He was angered by her relationship with the man whom he blamed for his parents’ death and his cursed psychometric abilities.

And this camera shot was cool. It showed Jaein and Lee Ahn at a metaphorical crossroad where their conflicting histories intersected. Her past demanded that she proved her father innocent. But his past shaped him to hate the man whom he believed caused his life’s miseries. It was a critical junction.

Fifth, just like the little prince who was too young to understand how to love his flower and fled, Lee Ahn ran away from Jaein.

It was understandable that in the heat of the moment, he would reject her hand reaching out to detain him. But later on, while reflecting on this moment with Daebong, he’d realize that running away from her, hurt her the most.

Next, Chapter 9

Before the little prince left his planet, he did his chores one last time. He cleaned out all his three small volcanoes (which were useful for heating up his breakfast, lol) and uprooted all the remaining baobab roots. He thought he’d feel happy to leave the place…

He believed that he would never want to return. But on this last morning all these familiar tasks seemed very precious to him. And when he watered the flower for the last time, and prepared to place her under the shelter of her glass globe, he realized that he was very close to tears.

“Goodbye,” he said to the flower.
But she made no answer.
“Goodbye,” he said again.
The flower coughed. But it was not because she had a cold.
“I have been silly,” she said to him, at last. “I ask your forgiveness. Try to be
happy…”

He was surprised by this absence of reproaches. He stood there all
bewildered, the glass globe held arrested in mid-air. He did not understand
this quiet sweetness.

“Of course I love you,” the flower said to him. “It is my fault that you have not
known it all the while. That is of no importance. But you– you have been just
as foolish as I. Try to be happy… let the glass globe be. I don’t want it any
more.”
“But the wind–”
“My cold is not so bad as all that… the cool night air will do me good. I am a
flower.”
“But the animals–”
“Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to
become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful.
And if not the butterflies– and the caterpillars– who will call upon me? You
will be far away… as for the large animals– I am not at all afraid of any of
them. I have my claws.”

And, naively, she showed her four thorns. Then she added:
“Don’t linger like this. You have decided to go away. Now go!”

For she did not want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower…

Two things on how this chapter relates to Lee Ahn and Jaein:

One, even though Lee Ahn was upset and wanted to disappear from her sight, he still followed her home that night she visited their old apartment. Like the little prince had chores to do for his flower before his departure, it’s become a habit of his to look after her. She was his responsibility to protect, no matter how furious, hurt, ambivalent, overwhelmed he felt about everything else.

I like this scene because…

it reminded me of this, lol. Just because Lee Ahn was mad at her father and their cruel fate, in the end, he really couldn’t stop caring for her.

Two, Jaein finally remembered who Lee Ahn was!

When she realized who he was, she understood that she had no right to ask him to stay and help her. That was why she chased after Professor Kang to question his motives when she saw him lurking around the security center.

She confronted him, “You knew all about my dad. You knew it, so how could you? You knew An’s parents passed away due to the Yungsung apartment fire. How could you…how could you ask Ahn to help me? What right do I have for Ahn to help me?”

Although I found this scene a bit melodramatic for my taste, I understood the message: she was on her own.

Honestly, I was expecting soundtrack of Eponine from Les Miz singing:

Like Eponine the little prince’s flower who must endure the caterpillars, Jaein must endure on her own, too. She had no right to hold onto somebody who’d already decided to leave. She was convincing herself that she was fine walking, or to be exact, limping, on her own, without him.

Chapter 15

The little prince found himself on planet with a geographer who only wanted to record things that are consequential and eternal. The geographer was willing to record the existence of volcanoes on the little prince’s home planet, but he refused to note the existence of the flower because the flower was “ephemeral.”

“My flower is ephemeral,” the little prince said to himself, “and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!”

Meaning: Jaein’s life could be as ephemeral as the rose because the stalker/killer had her in his cross hairs. Sungmo left Lee Ahn the map and the note telling him protect her. She was as vulnerable to extinction as the rose with her four thorns.

Lee Ahn realized too late that he left her all alone.

Lastly, Chapter 21

The little prince encountered the fox who wanted to be tamed.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others.

Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me.

The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

Here, it’s easy to see how the fox resembled Sungmo and the little prince, Lee Ahn. Without Lee Ahn, Sungmo’s life story could be summarized as a prey eluding his stalker, like the fox hid from the hunters. But Lee Ahn’s appearance in his life made all the difference. Didn’t he once call Lee Ahn his “virtue”? Ahn gave new meaning and value to Sungmo’s life.

He used to be anti-social. He had no time for Ahn, and he pushed him aside.

But after he saved Ahn, he became “responsible” for his well-being. See how he went over to him as soon as he heard Ahn cry out? He became a “Hyung.”

Not only that, Sungmo EXPERIENCED emotions through him (and from Jisoo and Jaein as well), instead of merely conceptualizing them through textbook learning.

He was “normalized” due to his relationship with him. Thus, in Episode 9, when Ahn stepped on his right foot, he could honestly say that it hurt.

And when he saw his mother’s dictionary, he could truly cry in longing for his mother.

His mother was correct when she reassured him, when he was young, not to worry as his “emotions” would come later on. His unemotional life, like the fox’s monotonous life, slowly but steadily changed when he became “tamed” by his relationship with Lee Ahn.

To continue with the chapter:

After the little prince tamed the fox (and the fox tamed him, too), the fox told him to return to the garden where he had previously found hundreds of roses just like the rose he had at home. You see, when he had first come across that rose garden, he was distressed to find that his beloved rose wasn’t unique in the universe as she had touted. He was utterly crushed. “I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; but all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees– and one of them perhaps extinct forever… that doesn’t make me a very great prince…”

He thought his flower was worthless and he cried.

However, the fox told him to go back and look at the garden of roses again in order to appreciate the unique value of his rose.

“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

And so, we come to the whole connection between the Lee Ahn and the little prince.

Remember how Lee Ahn went to his parents’ grave site and cried?

He said, “I must really be dumb. No matter how I think about it I can’t figure out an answer. When I think of both of you, that person (Yoon Tae Ha), even that girl, I can’t help but resent them. (flashback of him swiping her hand) I can’t get the thought of her reaching for my hand out of my head. Even though I know she must have felt so vulnerable holding my hand. Even though she didn’t do anything wrong.”

He was like the little prince who though his flower was worthless and common because there were others similar to it. In his mind, his feelings for her were:

worthless (i.e., useless and no good),
impossible (i.e., he couldn’t find a way to justify it) and
repugnant (i.e., irreconcilable differences, lol).

Loving the daughter of Yoon TaeHa was anathema to him. He hated her father, and by extension, her as well. Call it “transference” if you want. Lee Ahn was redirecting his anger at Yoon TaeHa to his daughter. It enraged him that she could fervently believe in her father’s innocence (But what could she do? She was her father’s daughter.) considering he caused his parent’s death and his cursed ability. In his mind, there was not way he’d ever forgive her dad.

And here’s where the fox’s advice “what’s essential is invisible to the eye” comes in handy. For me, this moral has two significance for Lee Ahn.

The first interpretation is something I pointed out already. Remember when Sungmo (aka the fox) reminded Lee Ahn of the shortcomings of his psychometry?

From Episode 2, Sungmo said, “I know you want to help with that ability of yours. But I think your psychometry is still pretty dangerous. Your ability can see the person who’s wielding the knife, but not the person he stabbed or know if the person could be covering up for someone else. It’s an ability where we can’t know anything. Don’t be proud of seeing ONLY A PORTION of a big picture.”

Well… Lee Ahn had gone and done it. He made the mistake his Hyung tried to warn him about. He saw a flash of reality, that image of Yoon Tae Ha, and he immediately assumed he knew the whole truth about that night.

Lee Ahn thought that, given his abilities in psychometry, he could quickly discern the key events and easily judge the innocence or guilt of an individual like Jaein’s dad.

In those brief glimpses of Jaein’s dad, he assumed that her dad had a nefarious mission to accomplish.  That was why Dad told her, “I’ll be back soon,” and “Dad will be done soon.” These visions confirmed the news reports he saw as a child that the Yoon TaeHa intended to fake being a hero and planned the fire all along.

But he was mistaken, of course. Unfortunately, he lacked the insight and maturity to put all the puzzle pieces together. He couldn’t have known that Jaein’s dad was only reassuring little Jaein.  Ahn was looking at the images of a father loving his daughter so much that he didn’t want her worried while he did his job and frightened at the sight of him in a burning building.

If he could see the whole picture, and not these fragments of memories, then he’d know the essential truth that Jaein’s father was innocent.

Second interpretation: Lee Ahn couldn’t see what’s essential since it wasn’t something he could simply “read.” It was invisible to the eye because it was hidden inside the heart.

Lee Ahn thought he could use reasoning and logic, his memories, his anger and pain, his sense of injustice and righteousness and whatever else, to discount and dismiss his feelings for Jaein.

Boohoo with aegyo. (Who’s this? Is this IU?) 

But when he saw her again at the apartment, he realized he couldn’t just forget her. He hid from her,

(BTW, I like the imagery here. He couldn’t SEE her, but he could SENSE her presence. He didn’t need sight to know she was there.)

Afterwards, he followed her home to make sure she was safe.

That night, Lee Ahn was in a better position to understand what love was all about. It sure helps talking to a friend like Daebong.

Ahn: Daebong. About me…I thought that I liked that person a lot. But maybe that’s not the case. Running away like this –
Daebong: This isn’t a problem that can be resolved by liking someone.

But Ahn continued his self-reflection because he realized how wrong he was. If he could reject her so easily, without giving her a chance, then his love wasn’t that real or that mature to begin with. Notice the similarity to the book: the little prince also admitted to bearing some of the fault when he left the rose. “He was too young to know how to love her.”

Ahn: Jaein said this when we discovered the body in the carrier. What kind of person the deceased woman was, how this person’s family would feel, what happened for them to die this way, she asked me if I had ever thought about this seriously.

He was wondering if he ever put himself in the victim’s shoes. Jaein encouraged him to see the perspectives of the victims, and their loved ones. AHA! So that’s why we were seeing so many close-up views of Jaein’s shoes in this episode. But none of Lee Ahn’s.

Lee Ahn was supposed to put himself in her shoes. He wanted to solve her problem without fully grasping or anticipating the complexity of the problem itself. It was simply a mystery to figure out. But if it were that easy, then it would have been solvable a long time ago.

Ahn: Meanwhile, Jaein (he sighs) never lightly brought up the topic of her dad, not once. Have I ever seriously thought about her pain?

Ahn: I guess I just wanted to use my silly powers to act like a hero around her. Just to look cool. To impress her. Her wounds. Her memories. I talked like I’d take responsibility. But I hurt her the most. With these hands, I said I’d save her. And yet I used them to hurt her.

That’s how Lee Ahn realized that “what’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

He finally got this: Jaein’s connection with Yoon TaeHa and his feelings for Jaein might cause him much pain and suffering but HER PAIN was more important than all his heartaches combined. Do you see it? He wasn’t anymore railing against fate,

and wallowing in bitterness,

because he understood her own pain and his part in exacerbating her pain.

He meant to help her but unwittingly he hurt her.

From Ep 3.

Ahn: Aren’t you tired?
Jaein: I’m tired. I’m so freaking tired. It might not even be that he was framed. He might actually be the criminal. So…that’s why I’m scared. That’s why I can’t rashly ask you to read into me, because I’m not confident enough.
Ahn: But what if…just because your dad did something wrong doesn’t mean you did.
Jaein: The world doesn’t think like that.
Ahn: Why do you care about what the world thinks? The only thing that matters is that the people you like don’t think that way. I’ll help you. Not now. But when you’re ready.

And I think this is what shook him the most. He remembered how she pretended she was okay during the hydrochloric acid incident. Her hand was trembling but she didn’t want to show that she was vulnerable.

He tried repeatedly to offer her a hand, but she didn’t want to until the rooftop incident.

Then, at the park, she must have felt very vulnerable showing her real feelings but she held his hand anyway because she finally was ready for him to know about her father.

Then last night, when he actually learned about her father, he fled. She tried to hold onto him but he flung her hand. She did nothing wrong.

She became more important to him than his pain. He was responsible for her, as the little prince was responsible for his rose. In the story, the little prince realized how important the rose was for him, and he wanted to return to his planet. He worried about the flower he left in his planet unprotected. He was searching for his way back to the planet when he encountered the narrator.

And that’s why the staging of this exact moment was brilliant to me.

Sungmo (aka the fox) reassured Jaein (aka the rose) that Lee Ahn just needed some time but he would be back soon. Like the little prince, he had to travel outside his own world of hurt and anger to see what truly matters to him the most.

The End.

lol. I hope I made sense. I only took a day off from work and you’d think I lost my security clearance the way my @$# office kept calling. Will probably edit later after my Costco run. Ciao!