Hyo-shim finds herself in the middle of a very unwanted love triangle with the two cousins who have begun openly competing for her affection. Tae-min loses all good will when he escalates to an enraging degree and kisses Hyo-shim against her will. She lets him have it for his gross entitlement, but he STILL doesn’t get what he did wrong and has absolutely no remorse or respect for her feelings. He was already teetering on the edge but now he’s a full-on antagonist in my book. Tae-ho, at least, treats her like a person who deserves to have her own feelings. After kindly listening to Hyo-shim’s drunk sobs about her mom stealing her life’s savings, he walks her home. Then, once she’s sobered up, he asks her out. She turns him down flat because she’s got too much on her plate to think about romance and she’s not about to lose her job for a man. He doesn’t give up right away, but he does back off when she directly asks him to stop “hitting on her.”
The only person not making Hyo-shim’s life more difficult right now is Hyo-sung. He brings her lunch and slips her some cash to help pay for Hyo-joon’s settlement. Hyo-sung tells her to always come to him, regardless of what their mother says, when something happens in the family. Making his big brother rounds, he then pays a visit to Hyo-joon and gives him some money too, reminding him to be kind to Hyo-shim who has been forced to fill the head-of-household role since their father left.
It’s almost like the mothers in this drama are trying to be terrible – being that bad looks like work. Hyo-shim’s mom steals Hyo-do’s expensive watch to pay off Hyo-joon’s debt in Hyo-shim’s name. (At least she did something for Hyo-shim this time.) But Sook-hyang wins for most terrible parental advice when she boldly utters this gem to Tae-min upon hearing he has a woman he loves: “What’s the problem? You can cheat after getting married!” No wonder all these kids are a mess. I can’t wait for Hyo-shim to make good on her threat to leave her family to fend for themselves and see how they survive without their fixer.