I Love This Man. He Breaks My Heart Every Time.

I love this man. He breaks my heart every time.

I wanted to talk a bit about how TCF is the kind of story where you have to pay attention.

For example, Cale is almost always described as uncaring. Stoic. Almost all his smiles are scammer smiles.

And yet...

Mary said this:

And from Mary >>> She shared her honest thoughts about Cale. She said it in an innocent way because she was an innocent person. ‘That person is always looking at everything.’ He was meticulously caressing all of his group’s pains. He may come off as indifferent, but it was always done in a gentle way. His heart seemed to be as tall as a mountain. He had healed Mary’s pain that way as well.

We saw this even earlier, though I'll cut the irrelevant parts to make it more clear:

Cale nodded his head at Hans’s statement while observing Choi Han. He had a nostalgic look in his eyes. ...

Cale started to frown as he called Choi Han over. “Choi Han.” “…Yes?” “Hurry back.” .... “Yes sir. I will be right back.” Cale motioned as if he was annoyed, but Choi Han bowed before quickly starting to walk toward the village with Hans. Cale, who preferred this focused Choi Han to the one who had a blank expression, continued to watch him before suddenly starting to frown.

Cale is always paying attention to the people around him, and even when he says he doesn't care, he's always paying attention to the people around him. To their moods and needs.

Which they see and recognizes. Mary's not the only one who has said something about that.

Or who mentions Cale's facial expressions when dealing with death. They can tell that Cale does everything he can to preserve life, and even when it's enemy dead, even when he chose to fight, it still noticeably affects him. Like here, after he led the fight at sea against the northern invasion.

Choi Han called out toward Cale as the representative. He could see the ocean that Cale was currently looking at. There were corpses floating up next to the debris. Choi Han slowly approached Cale. He could see the frown on Cale’s face. ‘…He really has a soft heart.’ Cale started to speak. “How peaceful.” His voice sounded tired. Fatigue was evident in every word he spoke. Everybody became quiet after hearing Cale’s tone. Although he had said something nice, the weight and sorrow in his voice made them all shut up.

I also suspect Cale isn't nearly as good at controlling his facial expressions, as at least one character indicated he was an open book.

Or maybe that's just when Cale isn't trying to scam someone or hide his feelings.

Part of what I find fascinating about this story is that there's all these little things indicating that the primary impression is... Only part of the story.