A standoff, a confession, and a wildly well-done fight scene, our penultimate week fills in all the details we’ve been missing. As our lovelorn leads continue to pine for each other in silence, our heroine makes a final decision about what she wants.
EPISODE 5
We left off last week with our male leads head to head. When we drop back in, Min-jun asks Jungo to step outside the book signing, where they have a lengthy discussion in English. Min-jun asks Jungo to stay away from Hong and reveals that he’s her fiancé.
Jungo says there’s nothing between him and Hong, it’s just that the novel is about her. And then he asks Min-jun to promise to never make Hong feel alone. Min-jun is contemptuous and says that’s an easy one. This seems to strike Jungo right where it’s meant to and he gets red-eyed and excuses himself.
Afterward, we get to hear the contents of the letter that Jungo wrote to Hong the month after she left Japan. He keeps asking himself why he didn’t understand how lonely she was and he regrets leaving her alone. “I used to think that we were together the whole time, but you were by yourself for so long.” This prompts him to begin writing in earnest, and he hopes that by the time he finishes his book, he’ll see her at the end.
Hong doesn’t rush right out and look for Jungo after reading the letter, though. In fact, she avoids him when she realizes he’s signing books at the publishing house where she works. But later, when Jungo is invited to dinner with her colleagues, she decides to attend. It’s his birthday and she buys the cake he always wanted but couldn’t afford when she lived with him in Japan.
At the dinner, one of the employees asks what happened with the woman in the novel. Jungo says he wrote a happy ending, but in real life it didn’t turn out that way. He failed to see she was lonely, so she left for Korea without a word.
In flashback, we see that when Hong got a call from her sister that their dad filed bankruptcy and the family was in dire straits, Hong tried to reach Jungo at his office. He doesn’t pick up and she thinks to herself, “What am I doing here?” Although we’ve seen variations on this theme a few times, here is where she hits the end of her rope and the scene that follows is an epic fight.
Jungo comes home and gives an excuse about why he’s late and never called. A writer at their company passed away that day and it was hectic. Hong argues that it’s no excuse for him not to call and tell her what’s up. And worse, can’t he ever apologize for what he does?
As they continue to argue, Hong says it’s clear he doesn’t care about her anymore. He has no idea what’s going on with her at all, everything is about him. He broke his promise to show up for dinner that night and she’s sick of being the only one who waits.
After keeping his voice steady until this point, Jungo finally lets loose, “This isn’t easy for me either!” He yells that they see each other at home, he’s busy, and he can’t always keep his promises. Why can’t she be more understanding? The moment has immediacy as the camera is positioned directly in front of each actor, so we’re seeing them head on, like we’re the person they’re yelling at.
After Jungo says these final lines, Hong asks quietly, “Are you saying it’s my fault?” And then she starts screaming at the top of her lungs in Korean, finally saying all the things she’s been holding in. Except, Jungo can’t understand. He can only see her contorted face as she belts out, “It’s your fault! You were the one who neglected me and left me alone. How many times do I need to tell you not to leave me by myself? I’m in a foreign country and I’m all alone without you. Why do you leave me by myself and make me feel lonely?!”
She’s sobbing and shaking as she yells all this and by the time she finishes, she’s just letting out cries into the air, like she’s been waiting to express all that poison for a long time. Jungo walks toward her and tries to hug her, but she moves away to cry alone.
Then she switches back to Japanese and starts to tell him that she received some news that day. But instead, she says she thinks they should break up. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t live like this anymore.” And she walks out.
Both actors are excellent in this scene but Lee Se-young’s dialogue is especially well written and she delivers it amazingly. The fact that she switches to her native language so she can say what she needs to say authentically is just soul crushing. And then how she continues to scream into the air afterward, breathing it out, had me in genuine pain right along with her.
That flashback scene is the story Jungo is telling at the dinner table in the present (or at least some version of it). And Hong asks if Jungo’s failure to understand her loneliness meant that his love changed. Jungo says no, his love has never changed. Hong looks a little startled and then excuses herself from the table to go meet Min-jun.
Min-jun is waiting at a high-end restaurant, where he gives her the news that he’s been accepted into a training program in the US. Does she want to go with him? “You’re all that I need. I promise I’ll never make you feel lonely.” At those words, Hong begins to cry. Min-jun thinks he’s being very touching and moves closer to her and takes her hand.
But Hong pulls her hand away and apologizes, saying she’s just not sure. Min-jun asks if things would be different if he had told her how he felt about her before she went to Japan. Hong responds that even if they were dating, or even married with three kids, before she met Jungo, her heart would still drop whenever she sees him, like it did this time.
She wants Min-jun to know she’s being honest because she truly “likes” him. (In English this doesn’t carry the same weight, but the point is: she’s not saying “love.”) He says he never knew the word “like” could sound so cruel. She apologizes and leaves. And my god this scene was brutal.
Right away, Hong drives to Jungo’s hotel with a bouquet of white roses, thinking about the pain on his face when he saw her at the airport that first day in Korea. She finds him in the hotel bar — with Kanna, which stops her dead in her tracks. Kanna sees Hong and the episode ends with the two staring at each other from across the room.
I really didn’t see that coming at the end. In fact, as Hong comes around the corner and sees Jungo at the bar, I was thinking about how amazing it feels when you reunite with someone you love and the feeling is mutual. And I was getting it all built up in my head just as Kanna comes into the frame. Damn. I was as surprised as Hong. Good job, Show.
Still, we know how Jungo feels (or doesn’t feel) about Kanna, so any misunderstanding could be cleared up if Hong approaches. I really hope we don’t have that kind of tragedy on our hands, where these two miss each other because of something so ridiculous as this. Worse, if they don’t reunite, right after Hong crushed Min-jun, the levels of tragedy will be a bit much for me to survive. On the other hand, if they actually do reunite, I’m not sure I’ll survive all the cuteness of seeing these two beauties back together either. Death by cuteness is definitely preferable, though.