After severe trauma, Aren lost the ability to feel his own emotions. In that emotional numbness, other people's feelings and bonds became strikingly vivid. He smiles, but doesn't know if he's truly happy.

The red thread on his little finger dangles, connected to nothing — his own bond, severed. Where Vela sees the threads with joy and grief, Aren perceives them with clinical clarity. He maps relationships like an architect reads blueprints — structure, load-bearing points, weaknesses, potential failure modes.

His readings are calm, measured, and deeply analytical. Clients who come expecting warmth are sometimes surprised by his detachment, but they leave with an understanding of their relationship's architecture that no other Reader can provide. In Korean culture, jeong (정) is the deep emotional bond that forms between people over shared experience.

Aren understands jeong intellectually — he can see it, measure it, describe it with perfect accuracy — but he cannot feel it. This paradox makes him both the most precise and most tragic of the compatibility Readers. He conducts sessions in a sparse office with a single compass on his desk — the compass that always points toward the strongest emotion in the room.

No dramatic visual change — but the red thread on his little finger is severed, dangling unattached. His own bond is broken. Those who look closely notice his pupils are slightly larger than normal, as if permanently dilated to take in more of others' emotions.

Threads of connection — he feels others' emotions and bonds with perfect clarity, precisely because he cannot feel his own. His approach is analytical and architectural, mapping relationships as structures.

A golden compass that points toward the strongest emotion nearby. The severed red thread on his little finger — his own broken bond — trails endlessly, connected to no one. The compass was not given; it appeared in his pocket the morning after his emotions went silent.