The story of Twenty Five Twenty One was always about Hee-do’s daughter experiencing her mother’s vitality through her diaries, seeing her love for fencing, and thereby renewing her own love for dancing. The story was never meant to be about getting together with your first love… it was just packaged that way. So, how could this story have been more palatable for the majority of us, and still be true to the writer’s intention?
Enter my diary.
I don’t have a literal diary. I’ve always found the exercise cringeworthy knowing that in five or ten years I would read it and be entirely embarrassed at my naiveté, judgmental behaviors, or immaturity. It’s best not to relive that. But I still have my memory, which gets rekindled now and then with the help of K-dramas like Twenty Five Twenty One.
Here’s some insight from my own experiences to help us understand the Twenty Five Twenty One conclusion.
Dear Diary, how could I date a would-be journalist?
We were well-suited for each other with similar beliefs, musical backgrounds (having jam sessions with his family was the highlight), and a similar work ethic. We looked really good together too! He was the first boy to really be attracted to me and I to him. My friends and his friends got along well and hung out together. Oh yeah, he was half Korean. Seriously, how perfect were we?
I remember driving in flooded streets to see him at the news station after visiting my parents three hours away. It was sometime before the 10PM news (tell me you’re from the mid-west without telling me you’re from the mid-west). He had just finished putting together his piece for the night. I gave him dinner and spent all of five minutes with him. The rain was torrential and I could have died driving. Later, I drove another two hours to see him when he was doing an internship in another state. That was that last thing I remember doing for him.
We were not willing to give up anything for each other. He was at arguably the best journalism school in the nation. I was in medical school, going into the military. Our lives were on diverging courses, and neither of us had the time, patience, or love strong enough to wait for our courses to come back together. We were so exhausted trying to become what we were going to become that putting time into a relationship was not our priority. It would have been at least six years long distance for us to stay together. So, we broke up. This was one year before 9/11. (See how my timeline is basically the same as Twenty Five Twenty One and why it affected me so? But don’t worry, I actually met the love of my life after this, and that’s the point I’m getting at.)
Dear Diary, am I the selfish one?
As much as I liked my real-life reporter boyfriend, we were too selfish and self-centered to be together. And this is where I think Twenty Five Twenty One should have had more development.
Hee-do needed someone to put her first, because no one in her life had done that. When things got busy at the station, both her mother and her boyfriend left her for something more important: their careers and themselves. Hee-do scraped and suffered all on her own. It makes sense in theory that she needed someone else… but who is he? I’d like to think it was the “oppa” fencer that got Yi-jin so jealous he was about to fly away with the table umbrella. My point is that if we had seen Hee-do’s husband even with just two seconds of storyline, we may have made peace with the ending.
Dear Diary, does fate exist?
What if we actually saw an even more perfect person for Hee-do? Someone like who I ended up marrying? Because that two-hour drive I took seeing Mr. Future International Reporter at his internship was about one hour from Mr. Future Husband, whom I had met during military training a couple months before. He met me for coffee to talk about our next steps in medical training and in the military. He knew I was there to visit my boyfriend. That was the beginning of the end for Mr. Reporter, and the beginning of the beginning for Mr. Ally.
Where Mr. Reporter just took my support and hardly gave anything back, Mr. Ally always supported (and supports) me. The line from Twenty Five Twenty One that resonates with me the most is when Hee-do told Yi-jin that their relationship was a fair-weather one that became too burdensome when either of them needed support. That sentiment is carved into my heart. That’s when I realized I had that kind of relationship once and it was exhausting, and ultimately, empty.
In contrast, the story about how my husband and I met, how close we grew up geographically, and all the missed encounters we had (even how he had a crush on my best friend in high school without even knowing who I was), is even more fated than a K-drama.
Why didn’t the drama bother to show us the man Hee-do chose to marry, for closure? In my version of the drama, a montage of the oppa fencer could have revealed him to us throughout the drama, lingering in the background of the scenes we are all so familiar with.
He could have been on the plane where the other fencer made googly eyes at her (he was seated just a couple rows down — introverted, but observant). We could have seen him at the training gym where Hee-do struggled, being chastised by the coach while Yu-rim was placed on a pedestal. We could have seen him just outside the press conference during the gold medal scandal, picking up Hee-do’s medal after she ran out. We could have seen him cheering for Hee-do during her competition, missing his male teammate’s match just to see hers. The drama could have even shown oppa fencer supporting Hee-do when she lost her best friend to Russia, or buying her a snack after she stayed up to talk to Yi-jin in New York.
All of these instances could have been shown to us, illustrating what a caring and unselfish person he was. Because that’s what Hee-do needed. And then, after that montage that ties it all together and identifies him, the show could have concluded with him coming back to see his daughter’s comeback dance performance with Hee-do.
We could have had the satisfaction that Hee-do made the right decision in choosing her husband while simultaneously reminiscing on her first love.
I could have cheered that. In fact, I would have loved that.
