3 ideas
After turning away from hospital treatment, Yunjae's mother drills him in explicit if-then rules for emotion: if someone gives you something, say thank you; if they laugh, smile back. These scripts let him pass as ordinary without feeling anything, but they falter in situations the rules never covered. His understanding grows further through close contact with people like Gon, Dora, and Dr. Shim.
The novel argues that people who can feel but look away from suffering in front of them, or turn distant tragedies into spectacle, fail at empathy more deeply than Yunjae does. His inability to feel, joined to a deliberate choice to stay present and act, produces more real care than their unused capacity. On this view, empathy is judged by approach and action, not by internal sensation.
Because Yunjae cannot be frightened or provoked, Gon's rage finds no reaction to feed on, and Gon's cruelty stops working as a way to push people away. Seen this way, the absence of a defensive emotional response can be the very thing that lets someone remain beside a person everyone else flees. Two boys, each labeled a 'monster', meet through what they lack rather than what they share.