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Julian Reyes and Minjae Lee

Julian Reyes and Minjae Lee share a bond that began as a filmmaker-subject relationship during the production of the documentary ''I Am Still Me'' and evolved into a genuine friendship marked by mutual tenderness, emotional recognition, and a depth of connection that neither fully anticipated. For Julian, filming Minjae's life confronted him with a mirror--a young man navigating a body that betrayed him in ways Julian understood intimately from his own experiences with focal epilepsy, cyclic vomiting syndrome, and chronic pain. For Minjae, Julian was "the nice one"--a quiet, gentle presence who waited for him to finish talking, never stared, and always asked before touching or filming. Minjae could not always remember Julian's name, but he knew when Julian was missing, and he cared deeply about Julian's wellbeing in the simple, unguarded way that defined so much of his approach to the world.

Overview

The relationship between Julian and Minjae exists at the intersection of professional ethics and genuine human connection. Julian approached the documentary with the reverence that characterized all of Resonance Films' work, determined to honor Minjae's full humanity rather than reduce him to a subject. What he did not expect was how profoundly Minjae would rearrange him--not through dramatic revelations but through the quiet, devastating honesty of a young man who experienced his life without narrative filters and saw no reason to hide any of it.

Their bond is asymmetric in form but deeply reciprocal in feeling. Julian brought professional skill, emotional attunement, and the ethical framework that governed every creative decision. Minjae brought unguarded trust, infectious warmth, and a willingness to be seen that challenged Julian to match it with his own vulnerability. The friendship that emerged from filming outlasted the project itself, with Julian promising to stay in touch and visit, and Minjae holding him to it with the earnest persistence of someone for whom connection is never casual.

Origins

Julian first connected with the Lee family through the broader network surrounding CRATB and the Fifth Bar Collective, following the viral response to Minjae and Minh's wedding in fall 2035. When the family was initially approached about a documentary, Joon refused, fearing exploitation, but Minseo insisted they ask Minjae himself. Minjae agreed on one condition: "Only if they show my music. Not just sick me. Music." Julian, who had founded Resonance Films specifically to tell authentic disability stories, was committed from the outset to making a film that honored Minjae's full humanity.

Kayla Rossi served as the first point of contact with the family, building the trust that allowed filming to proceed. When the small crew arrived at the Lee family home in Baltimore, Maryland for their first filming day, Minjae was beside himself with excitement, bouncing in his chair and squealing, "Movie! Movie's here!" He greeted the camera with unabashed delight--"Camera. Hi camera. Hiiiiii"--and introduced himself with the earnest simplicity that defined him: "I'm Jae. I play piano."

Julian's gentle, unhurried manner immediately set the tone. He never rushed Minjae, never raised his voice, and always asked before filming. For Minjae, who often encountered people who talked over him, stared at him, or treated him as less than whole, Julian's patience was remarkable and deeply felt. Minjae began calling Julian and the crew his "movie friends" almost immediately--a term of unguarded affection that reflected how quickly he folded them into his world.

Dynamics and Communication

Julian communicates with Minjae in much the same way he approaches all his subjects--with quiet attentiveness, deliberate pacing, and a refusal to condescend. He speaks softly, often in Mandarin when addressing Minjae directly, and waits as long as necessary for Minjae to finish his thoughts. His characteristic gentleness--"Hey, Jae," spoken low and carefully, followed by patience--gives Minjae the space to process and respond without pressure.

Minjae cannot always remember Julian's name. He knows him instead by feeling: the nice one, the one with the soft voice, who held the big camera but always asked first, who smiled but never stared, who knew how to wait. This sensory and emotional recognition runs deep. During a period when Julian was absent due to a cyclic vomiting syndrome episode, Minjae noticed immediately that something was wrong. He could not articulate what was missing--not in English, not in Mandarin, not in Korean--but he gestured toward the front door, making a vague shape with his hands like holding a camera, until Minseo understood he was looking for the film crew.

Their dynamic carries a quality of mutual recognition. Julian sees in Minjae someone living with a body that betrays him in brutal, unpredictable ways--the seizures, the spasms, the pain that arrives without warning and leaves devastation in its wake. Julian knows that experience from the inside. He knows what it is to lose consciousness and wake up not knowing what happened. He knows the exhaustion of fighting a body that will not cooperate. This shared understanding does not need to be spoken; it exists in the way Julian's face softens when he watches Minjae, in the steady calm he maintains during medical crises, and in the moments when he tells Minjae, with quiet conviction, "You're perfect, just like this."

Cultural Architecture

Julian and Minjae's bond bridges Puerto Rican-American and Chaoxianzu Korean-Chinese cultural worlds through the shared territory of epilepsy and chronic illness. Julian's Puerto Rican heritage—the lilt that surfaces in his English when he's tired or emotional, the Spanish that emerges under stress, the cultural inheritance of Caribbean expressiveness disciplined into his characteristically quiet voice—meets Minjae's Korean-Chinese identity across a gap that their shared neurological experience effectively closes. Both know what it means to lose consciousness without warning. Both know the exhaustion of fighting a body that will not cooperate. Both know the particular vulnerability of being brown and disabled in a world that medicalizes their bodies while diminishing their humanity.

Julian's documentary work with Minjae carries cultural weight that his Puerto Rican background makes him uniquely equipped to handle. As a Latino man with chronic illness, Julian understands from inside what it means to have your story told by people who don't look like you, don't live like you, don't know what your body does when the cameras aren't rolling. His insistence on telling Minjae's story without flattening it into inspiration porn or tragedy narrative reflects both professional ethics and cultural knowledge—the understanding that marginalized people's stories have been exploited by dominant-culture media for generations, and that the corrective is not to avoid telling the story but to tell it from a position of genuine recognition. When Julian says "He's not tragic. Just real. Brilliant. Funny. A husband. A musician. A person," he is applying the same framework he would want applied to his own story as a Puerto Rican man with epilepsy and cyclic vomiting syndrome.

The Lee family's acceptance of Julian—allowing a filmmaker into Minjae's intimate life—represents a significant departure from Korean cultural norms around privacy, particularly regarding disability. Korean families typically guard disabled members' dignity through concealment rather than visibility, the cultural impulse being to protect from public scrutiny rather than to invite it. That Joon-Ho and Nari trusted Julian with their son's story speaks to the trust he earned through his approach—his quiet consistency, his refusal to sensationalize, his willingness to be present during medical crises without exploiting them. Julian's Puerto Rican cultural grammar of showing love through showing up—the same estar presente that Caribbean masculinity demands—communicated reliability in a language that Korean cultural values could recognize and respect.

Shared History and Milestones

First Filming Day Crisis

Main article: I Am Still Me - Documentary

The crew's first major filming day was also the day that tested Julian's commitment to the project most severely. When the crew arrived at the Lee home, they found Minjae in the grip of a devastating medical crisis--violent spasming, screaming from pain that had begun at six that morning after a night of seizure clusters. Julian stood in the living room doorway and froze, confronted by the sight of Minjae collapsed in Minh's lap, his small body convulsing so violently it looked like he was seizing, tears and snot pouring down his face, wailing with a raw, guttural anguish that Julian felt in his own body.

Julian's immediate instinct was to put the camera down. "Don't film," he whispered to the crew, his voice shaking. "Not yet." He set his bag on the floor and knelt, staying close enough to be present but far enough to give the family space. He watched Minseo and Logan Weston coordinate Minjae's care with clinical precision, watched Minh rock her husband with steady, tear-soaked focus, and felt something crack open inside himself. He later described the experience as grief--not pity, but the devastating recognition of suffering in someone he had already grown to care about.

When Minseo later asked the crew to bring out their cameras to film the aftermath, Julian agreed somewhat reluctantly. He let the crew interview him first as a neurologist's colleague explaining the medical context, and then as Jae's friend--worn out, shaken, and quietly furious at a world that demanded disabled people justify their existence through suffering.

The Porch Conversation

One of the documentary's most significant scenes grew from a quiet conversation between Julian, Kayla, and Minjae on the family's porch, hours after a painful therapy session involving self-injurious behavior. Julian approached without cameras, carrying only a notebook as a show of respect. He sat down slowly on the step near Minjae's feet and asked gently, in Mandarin, if Minjae was up for talking.

The conversation that followed was characterized by Julian's careful pacing and Minjae's halting, honest answers. When Julian asked about the biting--whether Minjae would allow them to include it in the film--Minjae's response cut to the heart of everything Julian was trying to do: the boy considered the question with genuine concentration, tapping a stimming rhythm on his armrest, and then said, "You can show that part. But not the poop part." The moment was quintessentially Minjae--pragmatic, funny, and utterly unburdened by the kind of self-consciousness that might have made someone else hedge or perform.

Julian's throat tightened more than once during the conversation, but he held steady, meeting Minjae's honesty with his own quiet emotional presence. When Minjae said he liked showing because "it helps people get it," Julian smiled through an aching heart and told him, "You're very good at showing."

Jae Worries About Julian

During a period when Julian was incapacitated by a severe CVS episode and absent from filming, Minjae--despite being exhausted, sore, and nauseated himself--noticed the absence immediately. He could not find the words to articulate who was missing, but he grew restless and confused, making vague gestures toward the door and humming with rising distress until Minseo identified the source: "Julian-ge and Kayla-jie?"

When Minseo told him Julian was not feeling well, Minjae's concern was immediate and instinctive. He struggled to ask what was wrong, managing "He... he s-sick?" and "Wh-what hurt?" His hands attempted clumsy signs--bad head? sick belly?--reaching for understanding his language could not quite grasp. When Minseo admitted she did not know the specifics, Minjae whispered, "I-I... I wanna help." Unable to do more, he settled on a message: "Tell him... I say okay."

Minseo passed the message to Kayla by text: "Jae asked for Julian today. He didn't remember his name, but he knew he was missing. He said 'Julian sick?' and asked 'what hurt.' Wanted to help. And then he said 'tell him I say okay.'" Kayla, sitting beside Julian's barely conscious form in their hotel room, cried when she read it. She leaned close and whispered, "Jae's worried about you. He says 'okay.'" Julian, miserable and half-lucid, exhaled shakily--as though somewhere in there, he heard her, and it mattered.

The Goodbye

The last afternoon of filming stretched golden across the Lees' living room as the cameras were packed away for the final time. When Minjae understood that his movie friends were leaving, the realization hit him like glass breaking. His face crumpled, and he broke into big, raw sobs, clutching Minh's shirt: "N-no! M-movie f-friends... stay! Stay!" The room froze. Julian's hands went white around his bag strap.

Julian knelt beside Minjae's chair, his voice cracking but holding: "Jae... you're in the movie now. Forever. We won't forget you." He then asked if Minjae would like to stay in touch--if Julian and Kayla could come visit, not for filming, just to see him. Minjae's face split into a wet, hopeful grin, and he launched himself forward to wrap his arms around Julian's neck. His frame was small but his squeeze was strong and eager, full of everything his language could not yet say. Julian held him carefully, one hand resting on Minjae's back, blinking hard against the tears he could no longer fight.

When they finally let go, Minjae looked between Julian and Kayla with red but sparkling eyes and promised, "Next time, I play... p-piano for you." Julian laughed softly, voice thick with emotion: "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

In the van afterward, Julian sat in the passenger seat with his forehead pressed against the window and let the tears fall silently. He did not wipe them away. They slid past his nose, down his cheek, dampening his hoodie collar. After a long silence, he whispered, "This one's gonna break me."

"Don't Cut the Hard Parts"

In one of the documentary's final filmed moments, Minjae--wrapped in a blanket, pale and exhausted but alert--spoke directly into the camera in Mandarin: "Don't... cut the... hard parts. The... pain... the seizures. It's me. All me. Okay? That's... still me." Julian's voice, barely audible off-camera, cracked as he responded: "You're perfect, just like this." Then, quieter still: "Thank you... for letting us see you." Kayla's shaky breath could be heard behind the camera. This moment became the emotional and philosophical cornerstone of the entire documentary, and the words became its title.

The Premiere (March 2037)

Main article: I Am Still Me - Documentary

Minjae was unable to attend the documentary's premiere in Los Angeles due to illness, but Minseo arranged a livestream so that he, Minh, and the family could watch from Baltimore. Barely awake on the stream, Minjae waved and blew Julian and Kayla a kiss when the audience gave a standing ovation. The gesture--small, tired, and utterly sincere--encapsulated the bond between filmmaker and subject that had grown into something far deeper.

Emotional Landscape

For Julian, the relationship with Minjae touched something raw and personal. He saw in Minjae's suffering a reflection of his own experiences--not identical, but rhyming. The seizures that ripped through Minjae's body echoed Julian's own episodes. The way Minjae's muscles betrayed him, the way his voice faltered when exhaustion took hold, the way he fought to stay present even as his body shut down--all of it resonated with Julian on a level that went beyond professional empathy into something closer to kinship.

Julian's emotional processing of the documentary was largely private and delayed. He carried the weight of what he had witnessed internally, as he always did, letting it surface in quiet, devastating ways--the tears in the van, the whispered fear that this project would break him, the months of agonized editing where he lived inside Minjae's footage. His relationship with Minjae forced him to confront his own disability in ways he had not expected, not through direct conversation but through the mirror of watching someone else navigate what he knew too well.

For Minjae, Julian was simply a person who was kind to him--and that was everything. Minjae does not process relationships through the lens of narrative significance or professional legacy. He processes them through feeling: Julian was gentle, Julian waited, Julian asked first, Julian knelt beside his chair and spoke softly. The attachment Minjae formed was deep and immediate, the way all his attachments are--unguarded, wholehearted, and devastating in its sincerity. His grief at filming's end was not performative. He was losing people he loved, and his world was already shaped by too many goodbyes.

Intersection with Health and Access

Both Julian and Minjae live with conditions that create unpredictability, exhaustion, and the constant negotiation of a body that does not cooperate. Julian's focal epilepsy, cyclic vomiting syndrome, and chronic migraines meant that filming had to accommodate two sets of medical needs--Minjae's and his own. There were days when Julian was too sick to film, and Minjae noticed his absence with the kind of attentiveness that belied assumptions about his cognitive capacity.

Julian's understanding of medical crisis from lived experience shaped how he responded to Minjae's episodes. During the first filming day crisis, he did not panic or recoil. He knelt on the floor and stayed, not as a filmmaker but as a witness, because he understood that the worst thing about suffering in your own body was doing it while people looked away. His own body sometimes responded in kind--during the crisis, Logan's braced leg spasmed with phantom pain, and Julian's own nervous system likely echoed with the recognition of suffering that hits too close to home.

The practical logistics of filming required constant adaptation. Shoots were scheduled around Minjae's good days. The crew learned to read his rhythms, to pause when fatigue set in, to lower cameras when his body demanded rest. Julian, who understood intimately the cost of pushing through, was willing to wait--something that set the documentary's pace and became one of its most praised qualities.

Legacy and Lasting Impact

The relationship between Julian and Minjae extends beyond the documentary itself into an ongoing friendship. Julian's promise to stay in touch and visit was not empty--the bond between them became one of the project's most tangible legacies, alongside the film's impact on disability representation and advocacy.

For Julian, Minjae's willingness to be seen in his fullness--pain, joy, music, love, mess, and all--became the defining lesson of his career. Minjae did not ask to be a teacher or an inspiration. He simply let people in, because he could not imagine doing otherwise. That unfiltered openness challenged Julian to match it with his own vulnerability, both in the documentary and in his broader approach to storytelling.

For Minjae, Julian represents a kind of friendship built on genuine respect--someone who waited for him, asked before acting, and kept his promises. In a world where people often underestimate him, talk over him, or treat him as less than whole, Julian's patience and tenderness validated Minjae's humanity in ways that registered even when the words to describe them were beyond his reach.

The premiere blew-kiss from Baltimore, Minjae's promise to play piano for Julian next time they visited, and the ongoing connection between the Reyes-Rossi household and the Lee family all speak to a bond that outgrew its origins. What began as a documentary became something neither Julian nor Minjae had language for--but both of them felt it.

Relationships Friendships Julian Reyes Minjae Lee Documentary Disability Representation