Arcus // ATEEZ ✔

conceptualization of the arcus

SUMMARY OF WHAT GOES ON Σ(▼□▼メ)

Since this story has been quite convoluted and there may be some points missed throughout, I thought I'd like to break down the ideas and concepts I had for the story, to try and summarize everything.

~ Why Arcus as the title:
1. As mentioned in the story, 'arcus' is basically an anagram for 'carus', meaning deep sleep. Since Jinju was diagnosed with relapsing brain tumour and had a possibility of falling into coma (thus bringing her to dream of her time there), it sounded like a fitting title plus it sounds cool owo
2. In meteorology, arcus also means a low, horizontal cloud typically forming at the edge of a thunderstorm outflow. A sentence from the story is, "She has her head in the clouds, but eventually she will have to come down..." (I'll try to break this down later)
3. Coincidentally, Arcus is also the name of a company that does research on therapies for cancer, so (￣▽￣)ノ (well, for this one, I really had no idea until I searched it up so it was really a coincidence)

For the sake of simplicity I'll refer to the world where the realms exist as 'fantasy world = FW' and the world where Jinju was a cancer patient as the 'real world = RW'.

~ "She has her head in the clouds, but eventually she will have to come down..."

"To have (one's) head in the clouds" has quite a number of meanings but to conclude it, it can mean that:
1. To not know the facts of a situation.
2. To be unaware of what's going on from fantasies and daydreams.
3. To be out of touch with the everyday world.

Basically I was trying to foreshadow the situation Narae/Jinju was in: she's not aware of what's going on around her (from the loss of her memories as Narae) and she's out of touch from her real world (because Jinju is in coma). Plus, (while in coma) she's living in a world made up entirely out of her imagination. "Eventually she will have to come down" is just a continuation of that where Narae/Jinju would have to accept the fact that it was all her imagination and as this happened, that's when she'd have to let go of her life in both worlds.

~ In the description there is also a statement: "Ultimately she realizes that in the end, the price she has to pay is more than what she's willing to give, the answer that she's not ready to accept."

It was first stated that before Jinju fell into a coma she did not want to live, but after meeting Hongjoong, she changed and wanted to fight for her life. Inevitably she fell into a coma anyway, and her time in the FW was due to her trying to deny the fact that she'd eventually die. So when she got back her memories when she retrieved the 'Arcus', it was her being forced to come to terms with the fact that she'd have to let go of her life (in short, die).

Basically, the dream she had in the FW was her trying to hold on to her life she's not willing to let go. The idea is that Jinju falling in a coma equalled to her trying to stay alive, even if it meant living in a completely different world. In the end, by the time she found the Arcus, she realized the 'price she has to pay' and the 'answer she's not ready to accept' were her having to come to terms with her fate that her time was up, both in the FW and RW.

~ Characters in the FW

To put things into perspective, you could equate the characters in the FW (the royals, Serim, including everyone in the 'story') as actors. They're 'actors' who have to act according to the storyline Jinju had made (basically their lives were an ongoing 'drama' where they had to act). By the end of chapter 12, it seemed like they were all ganging up on Narae and had bad intentions towards her, when in fact, they were all simply conversing about their need to 'act' according to the 'script'.