hontobl

I thought about that, and I think it's cause we understand Aeroc's motivations for his actions. The fact that he was denied love from a young age, and then decided to seek it out from the person he first fell in love with. I think that's part of the reason we love Aeroc so much. He was just an innocent character that was driven by a love that he didn't managed to ever experience from anyone else, and used wrong ways (since he didn't know how else to do it) to seek it out from Kloff.

I wouldn't say innocent. Though his emotions were innocent and he was driven with obsessive love (let's be for real, it was obsession), his actions toward Kloff's mate were repulsive and worse than cruel. I wouldn't entirely blame him for the deaths, but he knew he wanted Kloff's mate to hurt just as he is hurting. In the end he is a product of his upbringing. As you mentioned, he was missing the love he should have recieved from a young age. His intentions weren't fueled by malice, but he did, although unintentionally, kill Kloffs mate and his baby. I'm not even going to talk about the things Kloff did to Aeroc in the first timeline, he was just despicable. That can't be excused or justified at all, but he didn't do it for no reason. Again, not defending him. They were both cruel, though I would say that Aeroc in no way desereved the life he was forced to lead. It was a tragedy. Kloff should have just killed him if he wanted to get even. The pain Aeroc went through made me very emotional. Especially the rape, the counless miscarriages, and the forced pregnancies.

Holy, I typed a lot, sorry for that. ╥﹏╥

Aeroc for me would have moved on properly if he was allowed to. I’m not defending him, he should have taken that cruise like he said..but connecting what Kloff said in Vol 2. He described his relationship and future marriage boring, so he kept riling up Aeroc because thrilled him using Rapiel as an object to envied. The mind games sadly fucked up Aeroc. I feel bad for Aeroc, he genuinely wanted love, he was awkward and comes out as cold and arrogant. But Kloff created this monster out of that, trying to prove his superiority, he punished Aeroc for his own game.

I think by innocent.. he’s incredibly naive, showing how he is easily scammed. He instructed the thugs to scare Rapiel, thinking that they wouldn’t go that far… it’s stupid but he did allow himself to be caught in Kloff’s trap when he was invited to stay in the estate after Kloff bought it. Drinking the medication without thinking why it was making him feel weird…

Humans have an intuitive sense of where punishment ends and injustice begins. We can often feel the moment when accountability crosses into cruelty, especially when both the punished and those around them begin to suffer unnecessarily. The key difference in your example is that Aeroc eventually acknowledged his wrongdoing whether intentional or not which opened a path toward redemption. Kloff, however, either refused to acknowledge his actions or was denied the same chance for redemption, despite showing recognition later in his third life.

This distinction mirrors real-life situations, like in the Reddit post “TIFU by calling my mother a homewrecker.” In that story, you can see how punishment is valid only until it becomes a way to satisfy selfish motives. Once punishment is used as a tool for personal gratification, it shifts into cruelty or even crime. Psychologically, this is where sympathy changes: we stop empathizing with the punisher and begin to empathize with the punished, because we recognize the imbalance of justice.

Thanks you all.

Amen glad we didn't forget what led to all this mess. I just hope this new world will give use something to look forward to, after all, kloff mate is alive here, so that's great right?

It felt like he never died

Sorry for the typos, wasn't thinking straight and am bloody exhausted.

Yes! Rather than being innocent, you're absolutely right to say naive. He was so gullible of the world around him. He told the thugs to "punish" but they took it too far, and he was also always scammed into investing as well. It's sad the way things turned out for him since his intentions weren't to be hostile; and like I mentioned before, poor Aeroc was motivated by blinding love rather than malice.

This is so beautifully written, it describes perfectly the course of events from the first timeline and the conflicting feelings in the 2nd. Thank you.

Awww thank you

The reason I don’t hate Aeroc too much is because he had never truly wanted to kill Rapiel and his kid. He did on accident. But it was never his intention. And also because be repented after suffering so much. Having those men beat up Rapiel was wrong of course, but not completely unforgivable by itself. The murder and rape just added to it and his silence on the matter. But tbh, most people who do bad things no matter how small keep silent about it. Many readers off aren’t beating people up and accidentally killing people, but there’s a lot of shit and bad things we still do that we don’t tell anyone about. So, him keeping quiet isn’t the worst to me either ig…