Plus Nine Boys: Episode 6

by LollyPip

Memory is a funny thing, and it’s fascinating how two people can remember the same situation in two completely different ways. This episode is a good lesson in why communication is important, because when you make assumptions about what your partner is feeling in order to make yourself feel better, you can ruin everything if your assumption is wrong. Hopefully it’s not too late for our boys and their ladyloves to learn that lesson, and start talking to each other.

Track 6: “We love aliens”

The morning after texting Se-young his apology, Jin-gu stares forlornly at his still-unanswered messages as he heads in to work. When he gets to his desk, he finds that she’s erected a fortress of books and tissue boxes on top of their cubicle divider, so that they can no longer see each other. Se-young tells him that he needs to print out their pictures from the trip, her voice all business.

Jin-gu sighs to himself that the figurative wall between them is sturdier than the Great Wall of China. Se-young snubs Jin-gu all day, leaving the room whenever he enters and refusing to sit next to him at lunch.

Kwang-soo’s boss yells at him for phoning in his duties at Sponge, complaining that the ratings are down, and Kwang-soo promises halfheartedly to do better next week. It turns out that his main writer has disappeared, and Young-hoon jokes about how all the women run away from him.

Kwang-soo grumbles that she just disappeared without a word, but Young-hoon insists that there must have been signs that he didn’t see, because there are always signs, and guesses it was the same with Da-in. He says that his wife told him a woman’s words always mean many different things, and Kwang-soo says that women should just say what they mean. Young-hoon advises him to learn to understand women when they speak if he ever wants to get married.

Kwang-soo thinks back on conversations with Da-in where she had seemed disappointed and on the verge of saying something. He could tell something was wrong by her expression but no matter how often he urged her to tell him, she always said it was fine and said nothing more, so he took her words at face value. He thinks to himself now that women’s language has always baffled him.

Min-gu’s friends give him bad advice on how to figure out if Su-ah likes him, but he insists he doesn’t have to play those games because she’s his destiny. After posting another self-indulgent selca online, he waits for Su-ah outside her tutoring academy to give her another milk and coo a cheesy “I love you” pun in English at her. Gag. She goes in without a word and he calls after her that they’ve been dating ten days now, which just earns him an eyeroll.

Su-ah cringes to her friends over Min-gu’s behavior, and one of them laughs along with her while the other defends him for at least being cute. Su-ah whines that even his cuteness can’t make up for following her everywhere, always acting like he’s in a drama. She won’t dump him though — she has a plan to make him leave on his own.

Jin-gu is raked over the coals by his boss, who’s angry that the TV dating show that their dating vacation package was based on got canceled due to scandal. He blames Jin-gu for putting the package together based on the show, though Jin-gu respectfully reminds Director Jo that he’s the one who instructed him to do it.

This goes over about as well as you’d imagine, and Jo just yells at him to fix it then turns on Se-young next for having already printed the pamphlets. Is he actually mad at her for not procrastinating for once? He starts to get personal about how she’s always slow at meals and in the bathroom, and Jin-gu cuts in to defend her.

He raises his voice and insists they couldn’t predict a scandal, and Jo gets back in his face about his attitude. Jin-gu tells Jo that he’s responsible for everything, just like he said, and that Se-young had nothing to do with it. Jo mocks them for being all lovey-dovey on the trip and not working, just taking couple photos (you mean like they were instructed to do?), and orders the two of them to work late and fix the situation.

Dong-gu acts out a romantic scene in class with Baek-ji, and he’s so bad that even Baek-ji cringes. The teacher brings in Min-joon who totally nails the scene, earning himself a pint-sized admirer in the process.

Min-gu intercepts Su-ah again after her class, and she asks when he’s going to stop all this. He says this is forever because it’s destiny, and she asks how he knows that. He says he just feels it, and she counters that she’ll believe it when he can prove it, and asks if he’s seen the movie Serendipity.

Min-gu watches the movie later with his friends, focusing on the scene where the lead characters test if they’re meant to be together by getting in two elevators, and seeing if they choose the same floor. His buddies argue that it makes no sense since it’s just probability, not destiny.

One of his friends correctly guesses that this is just a ploy to get rid of him, and guesses she’ll choose the first floor to throw him off. Min-gu admits that if he fails the test he’ll stop following Su-ah around, but then ruins the one respectful thing he’s said by assuring his friends that he won’t fail. Because it’s destiny dontchaknow.

Kwang-soo and Young-hoon go out for drinks and wonder what happened to Kwang-soo’s head writer, and Young-hoon repeats that it’s futile to try to understand women. He advises Kwang-soo to just go apologize, but Kwang-soo says he didn’t do anything wrong, and she’s the one who disappeared like that. Young-hoon says Da-in must have also run away because of this attitude of Kwang-soo’s.

Se-young and Go-eun meet with Da-in at her cafe, where Go-eun dreamily sighs over how Jin-gu came to Se-young’s defense against Director Jo. She says he’s hard-working which is hot, and Da-in counters that hard-working men may be hot but it’s hard on their girlfriends. She says she once dated a TV producer who was very busy all the time.

She remembers going on date after date with Kwang-soo where he yawned and nodded off constantly, and says that at first she felt sorry for him but after a while she became disappointed in him. Then there was a time when he was supposed to meet her friends and he was late, and when he finally showed, he was sweaty and unkempt. She was glad he came, but upset that he hadn’t made an effort for her friends.

Go-eun takes Da-in’s side, saying the guy should have tried harder, but Se-young defends the boyfriend. Perhaps he’d come straight from work, and anyway at least he didn’t dress up and flirt with her friends. Da-in says she tried to be understanding, but that she had said “It’s okay” so many times, he started to think it really was okay.

Now a few shots in, Kwang-soo argues with Young-hoon and insists that he did his best for Da-in, pulling all-nighters and drinking energy drinks nonstop. We see the same dates from his perspective, where Da-in smiled at his sleepiness and laughed, which made him feel energized. The time when he met her friends, he had to skip work and run through traffic to get there, and nearly got fired for it.

Da-in tells Go-eun and Se-young that all she wanted was a text or call now and then to reassure her, and again Go-eun eggs her on while Se-young says at least that’s better than a guy who gets texts from other girls constantly. Da-in says they broke up because of “that day.”

Young-hoon is still trying to figure out why Da-in broke up with Kwang-soo, but Kwang-soo insists there was no reason for it and storms out. But as he walks down the street, he wonders if there really were signs that he missed.

At acting school, Dong-gu overhears Min-joon asking Baek-ji to be his girlfriend. He promises to play with her, and ride bikes, and buy her things. She agrees and they walk off hand-in-hand, as Dong-gu reels in shock and thinks how he spent a third of his life with Baek-ji. So cute.

At the end of the work day Jae-bum offers to help Se-young finish the work Director Jo ordered, and Jin-gu scowls at them even though she declines. They’re both hard at work hours later, having not said a single word to each other over the Great Wall of Tissue. Finally Jin-gu asks if she wants to eat but she curtly says she’s not hungry, though he catches her scarfing down a bowl of ramyun when he comes back in the office.

They get kicked out of the office when the cleaning woman comes to clean, and stand in the hall in uncomfortable silence. Later Se-young calls tech support rather than just asking Jin-gu for help, and he silently fixes the problem for her and goes back to his desk unthanked.

At breakfast the next day, all three brothers let Mom drag the recycling to the door, and she orders Kwang-soo to take it out. Dong-gu sadly asks if he can go to a different acting school, but she reminds him that all the famous child actors went there and that he can see Baek-ji there. Wrong thing to say, Mom.

Kwang-soo takes out the recycling, still in his underwear, and his ears perk up when he hears Da-in’s voice. Luckily Jin-gu sees her first, knowing her from her cafe, and they talk while Kwang-soo tries to figure out how to disappear. Jin-gu spots Kwang-soo trying to slink away and calls after him, forcing him to stop, and physically drags him over to “meet” Da-in.

They try to pretend they don’t know each other (and that Kwang-soo isn’t obviously standing there in his underwear in front of her again) while Jin-gu obliviously plays matchmaker. Jin-gu heads to work and Kwang-soo tries again to talk to her, but Da-in simply says he’s looking good and runs off, leaving Kwang-soo to mutter to himself about the fact that he’s in shorts. Awww.

Later at work, Young-hoon dissects Da-in’s comment that Kwang-soo looks good, while Kwang-soo is still stuck on the fact that he was caught in his shorts. Young-hoon has decided that Kwang-soo got dumped because he publicly surprised Da-in with the proposal without preparing her for it, but Kwang-soo still doesn’t think that’s it.

Min-gu’s friends have come up with a plan to give his destiny a little boost, which involves bribing the guard and monitoring the elevator CCTVs to see which floor Su-ah chooses. Min-gu decides that you make your own destiny, and this is just his way of assuring Su-ah that she belongs with him. Yeah, this can’t possibly go wrong.

Upset, Se-young makes another cheesecake run to Da-in’s cafe at lunchtime. She hotly denies that she’s angry and uncomfortable with Jin-gu, insisting that he’s just a colleague and there’s nothing to discuss with him. Go-eun joins them and asks Da-in for the end of her story, and she tells them how she and her boyfriend never took a trip together because he was so busy.

They’d planned a trip to Jeju Island and he had run late, then finally called to say he couldn’t make it. Da-in again told him it was okay, but this time she’d cried all the way home. She decided it must have been a one-sided love, because the more she loved him, the lonelier she felt.

She’d meant to talk to him about the issue, but that was the night he’d taken her to the TV show and publicly proposed. She’d tried to get his attention but he wasn’t listening, so by the time he proposed, she was just done, and ran away. She says that he was always sorry but he still never listened to her, and she thought she’d always be lonely if she stayed with him.

Min-gu waits for Su-ah, massaging his hand to calm his stomach, while his friends wait in the guard room to text him which floor Su-ah chooses. Su-ah is all business when she arrives, reminding him of the rules, and confirms that if they get off on the same floor that means they’re officially dating but if they don’t, he won’t bother her again.

They get in their elevators and Su-ah chooses the ninth floor (of course), and Min-gu’s buddies text him so that he chooses it, too. Despite how ridiculous this all is, the beat where Min-gu and Su-ah both check their hair in the mirror is hilarious — it leads me to believe that despite all the silly dramatics, they actually are pretty well-suited for each other.

Everything is great until Min-gu’s elevator stops on the seventh floor for the water delivery guy, who takes his sweet time despite Min-gu’s urging him to hurry. So when Min-gu gets to the ninth floor, Su-ah isn’t there, and his friends find him to tell him she went back down. Disappointed, Min-gu wonders why girls need confirmation of love, and can’t just love first and confirm it later.

As Da-in drives her daughter home from school, she remembers the day when Kwang-soo had pounded on her door, frantic to apologize, asking over and over what he did wrong. She had stayed inside, crying as his pleas grew more desperate until he was literally screaming for her to talk to him. At the same time as she’s driving, Kwang-soo sits in his room listening to music, and the bleak expressions on both of their faces are eerily similar.

Working late again, Jin-gu tries to talk to Se-young about work and gets only the curtest of answers. He asks how long she’s going to keep this up and she only talks about the project, and accidentally knocks over her Tissue Box of Protection. She takes great care setting it back up (even fluffing the tissue to hide her face, haha) and Jin-gu bursts out that she’s being childish.

He says he wants to talk and gets ignored, and he says she’s making things even worse by acting this way. Se-young says that he always does whatever he wants, so why can’t she do what she wants? Jin-gu asks what about all the time they spent together, and whether it means anything to her, but she just answers that he made things this way and she leaves.

Se-young holds it together until she gets to the elevator, where she breaks enough to drop her stony expression and her eyes well up. It’s raining hard and she has no umbrella, so she starts to walk to the bus stop in the pouring rain. Suddenly there’s an umbrella being held over her head and we see that it’s Jin-gu, protecting her from the elements while he stands in the rain getting soaking wet. That is so sweet and sad.

Se-young doesn’t speak when Jin-gu tells her to take the umbrella, but she just starts walking again and he follows, still holding the umbrella over her and letting himself get drenched. He finally calls out, “I’m sorry!” and she stops, and Jin-gu says he knows he should have said that first. He was so sorry that he just kept making excuses, and he admits that everything she said was right.

Jin-gu says to a still-silent Se-young that he doesn’t want to lose a friend because of his greed, and that people say they just go together like related search words: Ma Se-young and Kang Jin-gu. He agrees with them, and declares that he can’t do without her. He says hesitantly that he’d like to go back to being friends like before, and that’s as far as he’ll take it. He tells her not to build that wall anymore starting tomorrow, and leaves her holding the umbrella.

On the bus home, Jin-gu thinks to himself that this might be the right distance to keep between them. Se-young keeps her eyes looking out the window while Jin-gu steals small sad glances in her direction, but then we see that this time they’re not riding the same bus, and Jin-gu is only imagining her there. That is so sad.

All the way home, Jin-gu remembers their fun rides when he’d pretended to live in her neighborhood just to ride the bus with her, and Se-young looks sadly at the umbrella he gave to her. At the same time, Kwang-soo remembers Da-in hitting him with the flowers after his proposal and says in voiceover that the reason men and women have always fought is because they speak different languages.

We see each of our boys at their lowest moments — Kwang-soo begging at Da-in’s door, Min-gu exiting his elevator to an empty hallway, and Jin-gu alone on his bus looking forlornly at the spot where Se-young isn’t. Min-gu tells us that in order to be a good guy, he must catch every word and facial expression she makes. Jin-gu sums it all up: “We’re all in love with aliens.”

COMMENTS

So now we know all the secrets from the past, and I find myself sympathizing pretty strongly with some while really, really not buying it from others. Knowing what we know now about what Jin-gu did to Se-young in the past, I can fully understand her strong reaction to his kissing her again, because on the surface he doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. From Se-young’s perspective, Jin-gu is still a flirt and a player who chases girls for fun, and I don’t blame her for being strongly opposed to letting him hurt her again. She came pretty far by forgiving him enough to be friends, but it’s obvious that she still has feelings for him. If she didn’t, she would have just laughed the kiss off like she does when he flirts with her, but her extreme negative reaction shows that her feelings for Jin-gu back in college haven’t been buried all that far under the surface.

And it’s not like Jin-gu has spent the last two years trying to show Se-young that he’s changed. I think it’s his defense mechanism against being hurt, to keep things light and flirty and not seem too serious. But he’s gone too far in that direction by still being flirtatious with other girls, so I can’t blame Se-young for not believing his words when he says he’s different. She’s with him every day and she hasn’t seen it, and he’s known for being good with words. Poor Jin-gu is going to have to do a lot more than just say some nice words in order to have Se-young trust him again, much less trust that his feelings are sincere.

As for Kwang-soo and Da-in and their history, I’ll admit that I’m finding it difficult to feel much sympathy for Da-in if this is her whole story. I agree that having a boyfriend who puts work above your relationship, who is always canceling plans, and who shows up late and unprepared (if at all) is absolutely worth being upset about, and maybe even breaking up over. I just can’t agree with her tactics. It’s simply unfair to tell him over and over, every single time, that it’s fine and you’re not upset, then just dump him with no explanation and no closure.

It’s all about communication, or more specifically, lack of communication. As long as Da-in was telling Kwang-soo that she wasn’t upset when he canceled plans, he had no reason to believe otherwise. He even asked over and over if she was sure, if she was really really sure, and she assured him that she was totally okay. And it’s not exactly fair to say that he never listened to her, when she never tried to actually talk to him about it — and when she finally did, he only didn’t notice because he was so excited to be proposing. So to suddenly snap and just disappear, without even the courtesy of an explanation, was wrong of her. She was hurting too, I’ll give her that. But in my opinion, the way she handled the situation, like letting him cry and beg and scream outside her door and refusing to talk to him, was deliberately hurtful. I can’t see her behavior at the end of their relationship as anything but cruel.

Because despite what Da-in thought should have been obvious, Kwang-soo really did have no idea why she just up and left him without a word. He believed her and trusted her when she said she was okay, and he was running himself ragged to give her everything he had left after long days at work. It’s interesting that he remembers her on their dates as being happy and teasing and smiling, while she only remembers feeling miserable. I have no doubt that the truth is somewhere in between and they’re remembering their feelings, and not what actually happened. But regardless of what actually happened, when you’re in a serious relationship with someone and you decide for whatever reason that you’re done, you handle it in an adult fashion and you treat the other person with respect. People deserve at least that much. So in this case, I hope the show doesn’t gloss over Da-in’s behavior as, “Oh he wasn’t attentive enough to me,” and give her a pass on how she broke up with him. Because what she did was Not Okay, and I want to see her acknowledge that.

 
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