u/Flaky_Connection3525 — reddlx

I’m reading The Foul and I’m kinda confused about the MC, so I’m hoping someone can help me understand his mindset.

At the start, he’s portrayed as smart and calculative, but as the story goes on, his decisions feel really contradictory to me. After discovering the wikileaks, he runs away from the ML and ends up going to the cousin, which leads to abuse. I get that it was driven by fear and survival, especially since he’s scared of the ML—but at the same time, he says he wants the ML to find him, is willing to hand over the wikileaks, and even thinks the ML treats him more humanely. So I’m struggling to understand why he ran in the first place if that’s how he feels.

When the ML finds him, the MC keeps degrading himself and calling himself a “whore,” like he’s internalized how he thinks the ML and others see him. He clearly wants love or validation from the ML, but then also pushes him away and gets angry at him for not saving him in the past. That part confuses me too, especially with their complicated history (his father kidnapped and almost killed the ML, and had that video where ml clearly tells he would take his revenge on the mc), even though the ML did save him from getting sold to a brothel.

Now with the videotape situation, the ML trades it for the Mega Float, and the MC seems willing to exchange the wikileaks for it too. What confuses me is that those wikileaks feel way more powerful—they could potentially destroy entire companies and if he handed it over to the cousin it can actually destroy the ML far more than just losing the Mega Float. So I don’t fully get why he’d give up that kind of leverage for something like money.

Am I misunderstanding his character? Is this all tied to his trauma or emotional state, or am I missing something important in the story?