The secret office romance is revealed in our penultimate week, leaving our leads with no one to count on but themselves. As the walls come crashing down around them, they find strength in each other and begin to grow — realizing that even teachers sometimes need to learn a few lessons.
EPISODES 13-14
We slide back into our story with Hye-jin, the Gray Witch, and Seung-hee making power plays around a table. Last time, it seemed like Hye-jin had the upper hand when she forked over all her teaching materials and said she didn’t need them anymore. But things turn around fast when the Gray Witch reveals that she knows Hye-jin’s secret: a Mr. Lee Jun-ho.
On the reveal, Hye-jin looks knocked off balance and it’s not long before she gets up and leaves the restaurant while the two older women continue to discuss their next steps. Seung-hee had no idea about the relationship but now that she does, it’s fodder for her plan to crush Daechi Chase. First, they’ll spin a story about how Hye-jin seduced her pupil (adding that he was still underage). Then, they’ll get someone to spread the gossip around the neighborhood. And lastly, they’ll turn the other teachers against Hye-jin and Jun-ho and convince them to leave the hagwon with Seung-hee. And then poof! No more Daechi Chase.
And that well-laid plan pretty much comes to fruition throughout these episodes. It’s a process that’s both drawn-out and fast-happening, and Hye-jin, Jun-ho, and Director Kim find themselves on the opposite side of a fence from everyone they’ve worked with for so long.
But with all these events twirling in the foreground, our leads find themselves forced to rely on each other like never before. When Hye-jin tells Jun-ho “we got caught,” he asks how she wants to handle it. She says she wants his permission to just tell everyone the truth. He responds that it wasn’t his idea to keep it a secret in the first place, and so, of course it’s okay.
But Hye-jin feels guilty about what is going to happen to him when the truth comes out. He’ll be gossiped about and face harsh criticism. Before she can go on, Jun-ho stops her, seemingly feeling patronized, and says, “Just say that you love me.” And this line sticks in Hye-jin’s head, guiding her actions when the world she’s built starts to crumble around her.
In one of the only uplifting scenes this week, Hye-jin and Jun-ho sit down Director Kim to tell him the news, but before they say a word, he’s already angry that they got caught. They’re shocked. He knew?! How? He says he could see the sizzling tension between them from the beginning, “Like a cauldron of desire.” Haha. It was obvious they were going to get together.
Director Kim wants them to deny the rumors and for Jun-ho to move to another hagwon. But Hye-jin — moved by Jun-ho’s simple request to say she loves him — refuses that plan. She’ll take the heat. She’s not going to keep him a secret anymore.
These episodes are mainly filled with conversations. The hagwon employees talk about which side they’ll align with (Seung-hee or Daechi Chase). The students’ parents discuss pulling their kids from the hagwon and requesting refunds. And Hye-jin and Jun-ho are confronted by colleagues left and right.
In the best and most tense of these conversation scenes, Hye-jin tries to reason with a long-time co-worker, YOON JI-SUK (Jang In-sub) — whom we’ve seen take Hye-jin’s side on all matters since the start of the show. He’s just learned about her relationship with Jun-ho and wants to verify it’s true before deciding whether or not to ally with Seung-hee.
Hye-jin begins by trying to quell the mistaken idea that Jun-ho got preferential treatment at work because of her. But Ji-suk doesn’t care about that part. Actually, he’s jealous. He’s always had a crush on her and now he feels stupid for pursuing her when she had her mind on someone else. All the nice and friendly behavior we’ve seen was really a low-key come on. And so, he’s going to side against her — because his ego is too bruised.
It’s these slight but realistic moments that pull the drama along this week, showing how little it takes to turn people against each other, especially in this cut-throat atmosphere. But the one outlier is Chung-mi, who remains a solid friend, after seriously considering her options.
In another great conversation scene, Chung-mi asks Seung-kyu for his advice: what should she choose? Ambition or loyalty? He tells her to achieve her goals — she can’t save her friends or herself by choosing loyalty. And yet, when she asks what he’ll think of her if she chooses ambition, he’s not sure he wants to be taken out to eat with money she earned in a shady way. And she’s not so sure either. So, when push comes to shove, Chung-mi chooses loyalty — but mostly to herself. She’s not one to give up her values just to earn more money.
While we saw our leads at odds with each other last week, this week they’re pulling closer than they’ve ever been. On a snowing night, just before all hell breaks loose at the office the next day, Hye-jin finally tells Jun-ho that she loves him. She just needs him to love her, and she’ll love him back, in order to survive this mess.
Hye-jin takes the brunt of the storm at work, and when moms start arriving to the hagwon in cliques, attacking her character and demanding refunds, she breaks down in tears afterward. Chung-mi comes into the conference room to comfort her and I really feel for Hye-jin in this moment. We know how independent she’s always been and how much she fought off this relationship from ever happening. And the second she lets down her guard for love, she loses everything else she cares about.
As an act of protest at the office, Jun-ho leaves a love note on Hye-jin’s desk so that anyone passing by will see it. When Hye-jin returns and finds it, it touches her and seems to give her strength. She keeps re-reading it and smiling. And when Chung-mi sees Hye-jin behaving in this way, it makes her rethink her priorities. She’s always thought dating and love were useless in life (just like Hye-jin used to), but now she’s seeing you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. As such, she calls up Seung-kyu, invites him to a noraebang, and tells him she’s ready to give dating a fair shake. (Cue adorable handholding.)
We end with our hero in tears. He and Director Kim are at the local pub, and the director is asking him to leave the hagwon in order to pacify the staff and parents. Jun-ho refuses and begins to cry. For the first time in his life, he’s scared. Barely able to get his words out, he says that everything Hye-jin has done in her life is breaking down all at once. He can’t think of a way to fix it. What should he have done differently? “I’m a fool who only thought about fulfilling my own interest.” And just then, Hye-jin walks in to witness him in a puddle of tears before the credits roll.
Well, this kid just grew up. Jun-ho is finally understanding what Hye-jin tried to tell him at the very beginning. The jokester we met in Episode 1 who took everything lightly and wanted to jump right into this relationship is disappearing and now he’s seeing the consequences that she tried to warn him about.
At the same time, Hye-jin is finally taking Jun-ho seriously — and she does it before he has this breaking-point moment. She says she loves him, moves closer to him, and trusts him enough to tell the truth and not keep him a secret. Now that she’s turning toward love — and he’s learned the last lesson that his teacher tried to apart on him — I wonder what the finale has in store for this all-grown-up couple.