Our show goes full throttle as it advances into its second half. The chaos is chaos-ing, the tropes are trope-ing, the romance is romance-ing, and the stakes are rising. It’s really ROM-COM at its finest this week, and boy am I having a blast!
EPISODES 7-8
We resume with Hae-young, Ji-wook, and Woo-jae being dumped in a hotel after getting royally wasted the previous night. Cue: a freak out session when they wake up in bed together. Lol. Afterwards, Yi-lin comes to get her husband and share the good news: Woo-jae will be coming onboard Hae-young’s team and Ji-wook will be assigned to work under him. Awesome! What could go wrong with the trio on the same team? Aside from, you know, the fact that Woo-jae knows how Hae-young behaves when she’s in love, and in close quarters, he’s bound to notice that her marriage is fake. To worsen matters, HR discovers that some employees have been misusing company benefits, and they launch an investigation into all the employees. Welp!
Our fake couple activates full time honeymoon mode to shake off suspicion, but Ji-wook is a natural at skinship and sweet talking and Hae-young.exe begins to malfunction. Still, she suggests that he moves in with her to properly sell their marriage, and thus their cohabitation era begins. Yasss! Welcome to the penthouse rooftop apartment of Hae-young’s house, Ji-wook. Make yourself at home. Oh, wait! This was once your home. Lol. My guess is that Hae-young was off in college when high-school Ji-wook — sporting yet another hairstyle! — lived here, and that’s why she doesn’t know that he’s one of Mom’s foster kids.
Anyway, Ji-wook is welcomed back home for a reunion with their foster cat — and a meet and greet with Hae-young’s box of sex toys that scandalizes him into declaring that his body is his own, and he won’t do anything his mind goes against. Okay, virgin. Pfft. To further cement the realness of their marriage, Hae-young throws a housewarming party and invites Ha-joon. CEO Gyu-hyun is not invited, so he tries — and fails — to snag an invitation from his volunteering bestie, Ji-wook a.k.a Lucifer. Gyu-hyun leads with the “what are we?” angle, and Ji-wook almost spills that they’re half-brothers until Gyu-hyun clarifies that he meant that they’re volunteering brother-like friends. “Call me hyung.” Lol. If only he knew.
At the party, Hae-young learns that Ji-wook was super popular among the ladies during the new recruits’ training. This makes her apologize to him because their fake relationship makes him unable to date. “Do you want me to have flings and go on dates?” Ji-wook asks, and Hae-young replies in the affirmative. But her body language betrays her true feelings. “I can do that now if that’s what you want,” Ji-wook continues, as he inches closer to her. The tension rises and Hae-young closes her eyes as he leans in to… pick up the keys behind her. *Exhales* This guy knows what he is doing to Hae-young. To me. To all of us!
Ji-wook heads up to his apartment, but before we can say kimchi, Hae-young appears on the rooftop to kiss him! But after spending 24 hours alternating between kicking my feet and scratching my head at the dead-fishness of the kiss, Episode 8 begins and I see that Hae-young kissed Ji-wook because Woo-jae was watching them from downstairs. Ugh! That dude is a roach who just won’t die. Ji-wook is equally upset that his first ever kiss was a dead-fish Woo-jae repellant, so he shows Hae-young what a real kiss should look like. Omona! This man is smoother than butter.
Ji-wook drops multiple confessions and flirts with reckless abandon throughout this episodes until Hae-young surrenders. She asks if he can wait until she’s able to shake off the pressures of work before making things official, and he agrees. “I’ll wait for you so patiently, you won’t even realize that I’m waiting.” Wow! Hae-young and Ji-wook clearly did not get the K-drama contract couple memo. Because what do you mean they communicated directly and didn’t spend 2-3 weeks denying the feelings they clearly have for each other? I love it here in No Gain No Love land!
Moving on to our secondary romance, Ja-yeon drops by the orphanage she sent Gyu-hyun to volunteer at, and she ducks out of sight when she sees him with Ha-joon. Gyu-hyun — who already knows that Ja-yeon and Ha-joon are friends, and that Ja-yeon’s male lead is named Ha-joon because it’s the name of someone she likes — spots Ja-yeon hiding and clocks that she’d like to keep her erotic writer identity a secret. So he flings his oblivious secretary into the backseat and drives away before Ha-joon notices Ja-yeon’s presence.
Ja-yeon realizes that Gyu-hyun is Ggulbi Education’s CEO a.k.a Hae-young’s boss, so she withdraws the lawsuit, and pleads with him not to take it out on Hae-young. Gyu-hyun assures Ja-yeon that he will do no such thing, and he apologizes for hiding his identity. But as they’re about to part ways, Ja-yeon sights her abusive father from afar and she grabs Gyu-hyun and runs away. Gyu-hyun goes along with it, no questions asked — he sits with her as she cries, and sings to comfort her. Ja-yeon thanks him for lifting her spirits and for keeping her secret from Ha-joon, and at this point, they have started seeing each other in a different light. ~This could be the start of something new~
Still, Ja-yeon insists that they shouldn’t see each other anymore. But Gyu-hyun is completely smitten, and he’d do anything to see her again. Anything, including green-lighting Hae-young’s suggestion to launch Ggulbi’s new educational service at an orphanage. But Mr. Finished Man’s interest in the idea is not all about his romance with Ja-yeon. There’s also his bromance with Ji-wook, and he knows the orphanage outreach will make his bro happy. Awww. He’s so sweet.
Ja-yeon learns that Gyu-hyun has been re-rating and leaving new comments on her novel, and she’s impressed. But she returns to square one when Ha-joon flippantly confesses that he took over writing hate comments for his boss in return for getting an approval on his transfer request. Ah! Not the muse hating on his inspired work. To make matters worse, a comment on the episode Ha-joon took over from is the very comment that made Ja-yeon file the lawsuit. *Facepalm* Can this plot just die already? Seriously, Show, you wrapped up the reveal — and Hae-young’s acceptance — of Hee-sung and her boyfriend’s polyamorous relationship pretty quickly, so I believe you can conclude this hate comments arc just as fast.
The week ends with Madam Fangirl, Gyu-hyun and Hae-young finding out that Ji-wook is Chairman Bok’s secret son. *Stirs the thickened plot* Madam Fangirl is pretty ruthless when it comes to her son — she threatened to pull out investment in Ja-yeon’s audio drama while the lawsuit with Gyu-hyun was ongoing — and I cannot imagine what she’ll do now that a competitor for her son’s inheritance has shown up. Chairman Bok sucks for intentionally bringing in Ji-wook to serve as a rival for Gyu-hyun, and it’s worse that he doesn’t mind dragging Hae-young into the succession battle if it helps his unserious sons “come to their senses.” He’s so messy, but it’s more drama for me, so bring it on.
Speaking of drama, Woo-jae has not only found out that Hae-young’s marriage is fake, he also asks to get back together. It’s his shamelessness for me, really. I thought he married Yi-lin to advance his career, but he has now tasted the unpleasantness that comes with his wife making decisions about his career without discussing it with him first. Tsk. Yi-lin works with HR, she’s close with Madam Fangirl, and she already suspects that there’s something between Woo-jae and Hae-young. Oh dear! What could possibly go wrong for our heroine who’s right in the middle of this messy venn diagram?