What sounds like a typical love story between a runner and a translator turns out to be quite atypical in this first episode of Run On. The cold rich boy is actually a crazy person, and the spunky poor girl is a loser. However, these characters are much more than their labels, and as their paths cross, it feels inevitable for them to fall for each other.
EPISODE 1 RECAP
Team ace KWON YOUNG-IL (Park Sung-joon) comments on Sun-kyum’s photos from the festival with Ji-woo. He calls him a slang term for attention seeker, but his criticism falls flat since Sun-kyum doesn’t understand him.
The three of them watch the movie Woo-shik wanted to see, and just two seats down the row is Mi-joo’s empty chair. Once the end credits roll, Mae-yi takes a picture of the screen with Mi-joo’s name listed as the translator.
Though she missed the first screening, Mi-joo doesn’t regret her decision since she saw Ji-woo, and she’s content with the photo Mae-yi took for her. However, her good mood sours when Director Han Suk-won casually greets them, and she wonders if he forgot about how they broke up.
Contrary to Mi-joo’s hostility, Suk-won appears to have no qualms about chatting with his ex and her best friend. He complains about one of her translations in his movie, and Mi-joo scoffs, defending her creative choices. Unfortunately for Mi-joo, their meeting doesn’t end there since she has to see him again at the after-party.
Sun-kyum looks up the word Young-il used earlier and frowns at the results. He shoves his phone in his face, wordlessly demanding an explanation, but Young-il just sighs and feeds him more food.
After one too many drinks, the professor rambles on about movies, and Mi-joo blurts out her desires to go home. He gets offended and orders Mi-joo to pour him a drink. She suggests ending for the night and points out that he can’t even stand properly.
The professor flings a glass of water into her face and then lambastes all female translators for relying on their looks. To everyone’s shock, Mi-joo grabs a bottle, but instead of attacking the professor, she pours even more water over her head.
She demands an apology and derides him for his Joseon-era comment. The professor argues that she humiliated him first since she said it couldn’t stand up. He flails around, causing his toupee to soar through the air and land in Mi-joo’s hands.
As the others erupt into snickers, the professor threatens Mi-joo, but she’s had enough and storms out. She chucks the toupee to the ground, but picks it up again since littering is bad. Hearing a crash behind her, Mi-joo makes a run for it, and she bumps into Sun-kyum who’s standing in the street.
Her belongings scatter to the floor, and Sun-kyum helps pick them up. When he grabs her gun, she explains that it’s just a lighter, and he replies, “I didn’t ask.”
Suk-won is surprised to see Mi-joo still at the festival since the professor took over her role as interpreter for his interviews. Swallowing her pride, Mi-joo stands outside the professor’s hotel room door with his cleaned toupee and asks to talk—unaware that no one is inside.
The professor and his wife find her leaning against their door, and he spares her a few minutes in the hallway. She pleads with him to let her act as Suk-won’s interpreter, and the professor agrees… if she can time travel.
She asks if he’s implying to the days when he had hair (pfft), and the professor nearly has a stroke. What makes her comment worse is that she’s sincere, and the professor shouts that he’ll never forgive her.
Mi-joo vents her frustration to Mae-yi and regrets her actions last night, especially losing her gun. She wonders if she should have brought something to the professor when she apologized, and Mae-yi scolds her for going empty-handed.
The next day at training, the coach praises Sun-kyum for lowering his time, and he scolds Gyu-duk and his friend for getting worse. The team moves on to weight training next, and Woo-shik arrives to the gym with a bandage on his face.
Connecting the dots, Sun-kyum follows Woo-shik to the locker room and shares his theory about what happened. He knows the coaches are careful with the athletes and Young-il only cares about himself. As for other sports, no one even knows who Woo-shik is, so that only leaves two people on Sun-kyum’s list: Gyu-duk and his friend.
Sun-kyum lifts up Woo-shik’s shirt, revealing bruises on his body. He presumes that the abuse has been ongoing since the three of them went to the same school, but Woo-shik denies it. When his lies fail, he blames himself for what happened and begs Sun-kyum to keep this a secret. Though frustrated with Woo-shik’s response, Sun-kyum simply advises him to see a doctor and take pictures of his wounds.
The professor scolds Mae-yi for never visiting him after she started her own company, and she tells him that she felt no need to see him since she never learned anything from him. Caught in the middle, Mi-joo looks toward her friend then at the professor, and she jumps to her feet.
She screams at the professor, but it’s only to apologize for her behavior. She begs him to let her take over for the rest of the interviews at least, and he asks if she really wants the job that much.
Sun-kyum’s dad, Assemblyman KI JUNG-DO (Park Young-kyu), talks with the professor about an interpreter for his son. He requests for a poor individual since they usually don’t cause problems, and the professor says that he has someone in mind.
Mi-joo thanks him for the help, but Sun-kyum asks her to forget what she saw. He then asks if Young-hwa’s stuff is fine, and Young-hwa shows them his unscathed thermos. They’re all so weird.
Since the problem has been resolved, Sun-kyum takes his leave, but the police arrive just then with their guns blazing—quite literally since they think Mi-joo’s model gun is real. She grabs Sun-kyum before he disappears and pleads with him to help her.
Despite his aversion to being caught up in this mess, he ends up at the station with Mi-joo and writes up a report. He asks if her gun might actually be real since there are perverts in the world who like breaking the law. She says that she isn’t a pervert, and he says that he didn’t call her one.
On his way home, Sun-kyum looks up what a “John Wick” is and discovers that he’s a killer. As for Mi-joo, she tells Mae-yi at home that she believes in destiny, especially when the guy is handsome. As if fate did exist, an unknown number calls her, but to Mi-joo’s dismay, it isn’t Sun-kyum.
The next day, Mi-joo arrives at the meeting place for her part-time job and stops to gape at an advertisement with Sun-kyum as the model. As his beautiful face stares back at her, she mutters, “Dang it. He’s not for sale.”
Dan-ah and Secretary Jung find Mi-joo loitering outside their building, and when Mi-joo introduces herself as the interpreter, Dan-ah gives her a quick scan. She thought the new hire had bought their way into the position, but one look at Mi-joo shows that this isn’t the case. She asks if she’s the gofer of the gofer then, and invites her out to coffee.
While they drink at a nice café, Mi-joo calls out Dan-ah for her rude behavior, and Dan-ah doesn’t refute it since she was mad about the situation. Mi-joo admits that she probably is the gofer’s gofer, but Dan-ah shouldn’t take out her anger on her.
Dan-ah agrees and tells Mi-joo not to worry about the job since they have interpreters at their company. Realizing that she just got fired, Mi-joo begs her to reconsider, and Dan-ah gasps at her sudden change in attitude. Dan-ah comments on how Mi-joo looks like she might even kneel, and then points to the grass. When Mi-joo stares at her in shock, Dan-ah laughs and gives her the job.