Plus Nine Boys: Episode 7

by girlfriday

It’s an episode dedicated to the change of seasons. The autumn blues hit our lovesick boys pretty hard, and they try their hardest to patch up their broken hearts by meeting other girls, throwing themselves headlong into work, or just rolling around in a bout of good old-fashioned denial. But the shift from summer to fall brings with it a change in attitude, and for some of our boys, it may be the start of something big.

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Izi – “응급실” (Emergency Room) [ Download ]

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Track 7: “September 19”

As we’re reminded of our boys’ most recent heartbreaks, Jin-gu narrates that this unusually hot and suffocating summer was especially hard on them. He catches us up on some changes in the past few weeks:

Dong-gu works hard to study acting, but he keeps getting cast in bit parts with little to no speaking lines—a background animal, a ghost, a slave in a sageuk (to Do Min-joon, the nobleman’s son). Min-gu seems to have his head on straight about judo and college, because lately he’s just been training nonstop and even eating vegetables.

“…And Uncle Kwang-soo… has gotten weird.” He suddenly agrees to go on blind dates, to Mom’s utter shock and glee, and throws himself headlong into the dating pool. Though mostly what happens is that he goes on a string of blind dates that are exactly the same—he runs out of things to say and asks his dates whether they like celebs Jeon Hyun-moo or Kim Jong-min, and gets disinterested looks. Teehee.

But the cherry on top is that Kwang-soo has even joined a hip-hop dance class with Young-hoon so that he can meet women. The dancing, it calls for at least two rewinds—take my word for it.

And as for Jin-gu, he says that things have gone back to normal for him and Se-young, at least in an official, outward capacity. They’re back to being friendly work colleagues, and he’s back to pining on his own. Jin-gu: “Our suffocating summer passed that way, and fall has finally arrived. But on September 19, 2014, another colossal day approached us…”

We start out on September 18: Kwang-soo goes on yet another blind date, and stares dumbfounded at the pretty woman sitting across from him who looks just like former weathercaster Park Eun-ji (Flower Grandpa Investigation Unit), and she laughs that she IS Park Eun-ji. That only makes him even more flustered and awkward than normal, if that’s possible, and he tanks the date.

Young-hoon rightly calls him a moron for not asking her on a second date right away, but Kwang-soo is so hard on himself that he refuses to consider that someone like her would be interested in an ajusshi like him. Young-hoon figures out that he’s been going on all these dates because of his lingering feelings for Da-in, but Kwang-soo adamantly denies any such thing.

Over at Jin-gu’s office, all the women fawn when Jae-bum walks into work dressed like the nice boy next door (sweater vests instead of black suits). They all wonder if he’s dating, and encourage him to be this sunny all the time. Both Jin-gu and Se-young look over and smile, and Jin-gu thinks to himself that Jae-bum had a tough summer too.

At their staff meeting, Jae-bum defends Se-young’s idea for a new tour, and they’re starting to look suspiciously coupley again. Director Jo is in a good enough mood to approve Jin-gu’s idea as well, and then tells everyone to clear their Friday night schedules for forced fun.

Jin-gu and Se-young share an awkward moment when they’re the first to arrive at lunch that day, and he feels Se-young’s wall of ice when he tries to engage her in conversation. They sit there staring at their phones, and it’s only when Jae-bum and Go-eun arrive that she relaxes again.

Later, Go-eun asks Se-young if there’s anyone Jin-gu likes, and she pretends not to know. Go-eun makes sure that Se-young isn’t secretly dating him, and seems relieved… which starts to niggle at Se-young.

Min-gu swears off girls and decides that the only destiny he cares about now is getting into college. Still, he looks up hopefully when his buddies see a girl who looks like Su-ah, but it isn’t her, and he goes back to pouring every last ounce of energy into judo practice.

Jin-gu goes to see his bar owner friend, Han Gu. He technically isn’t a bar owner anymore, since his chimaek place went out of business (he blames Korea’s terrible World Cup record because his bar was stadium-adjacent), and he now runs a little pojangmacha version in the street. Jin-gu sighs that maybe he’s got a case of the plus-nines too.

He sees that Go-eun is texting Jin-gu, and eggs him on to date her since she’s obviously into him. Jin-gu swears he’s not interested in her that way, but Han Gu tells him to take the path of least resistance instead of pining for Se-young.

Kwang-soo arrives home that night and is surprised to get a call from his blind date Park Eun-ji—she calls him oppa and asks him out to dinner tomorrow night, and he agrees, half in shock. He hangs up and stammers, “O-ppa?”

But he barely gets out of the car when Mom comes running towards him to order him to start his engine. He whines that he’s too tired to take her to the market, but then Da-in appears behind her with her daughter in her arms. Mom says the child is sick, and they need to go to the hospital.

Kwang-soo jumps into the car and speeds them to the hospital, and when he sees Da-in panicking in the crowded emergency room, he calls in a favor to a doctor he met while producing one of his shows. He carries her up himself, and the doctor mistakes him for the girl’s father, which Kwang-soo has to awkwardly correct.

After bringing her daughter’s fever down, they head back home, and Kwang-soo notices Da-in crying in the backseat. He insists on helping them upstairs, but when he tries to open his mouth to say something, again Da-in shuts him down with a formal thank-you. He lingers in the hallway for a long while, like he’s on the verge of turning back… but he doesn’t.

When he comes home, Dong-gu runs over to hand him a fortune cookie, and insists that he has to open his and read his fortune like the rest of them did. He cracks it open and it reads: “It’s good fortune to be with someone on the same frequency as you are.”

Jin-gu sighs that they all got the same fortune, except for Dong-gu, who got one that said he’s a person who shines. Mom thinks it’s a good sign for his fashion CF tomorrow, and Dong-gu practices his model poses.

On the morning of September 19, Jin-gu narrates that he doesn’t know if it’s good fortune or not, but a very big day was beginning for each of them. As he waits for the elevator, Kwang-soo primps nervously when he sees that it’s making a stop on Da-in’s floor. He looks up expectantly as the doors open, but it isn’t her today.

When he gets to the parking garage though, someone stops him, calling him oppa. It’s one of Da-in’s old friends, here with porridge for Da-in and her daughter. She immediately jumps to the conclusion that they’re back together, and doesn’t really let him get a word in edgewise.

But he learns curious things from this friend, who sounds really relieved that they’re dating again. She says that Da-in cried so much when they broke up, and even drank, which she never used to do.

This friend blames the breakup on Kwang-soo, and asks him to understand the fact that Da-in married another man briefly, making it sound a lot like she was just rebounding because she was so broken up over him. The encounter leaves him totally spun around.

Dong-gu goes to his CF shoot, only to find out that he’s going to be an underwear model today. He whines that it’s too embarrassing, but Mom tells him that Jang Geun-seok and Kim Soo-hyun did it, so he can too. This is your argument?

She tells him he’ll be a big star someday, which seems like a lie at this point, but Dong-gu eventually grits his teeth and gets over his embarrassment, deciding that he might not be a shining star right now, but he will be someday.

Min-gu doesn’t want to hang with his friends, and opts to stay late and get some more practice in. He walks home lost in thought, stopping in the middle of an intersection as if willing Su-ah to appear there.

But then as he’s walking along an overpass, there she is, coming right at him. They notice each other, but he promised to stay away from her and pretend not to even know her… so he forces himself to look straight ahead and keep walking. She can’t help but look back his way, and so does he, but they’re both out of eyesight. Min-gu narrates, “I can pry my eyes away easily, but not my heart.”

Kwang-soo spends the whole day in a haze, fixated on what Da-in’s friend said and what it might mean. Young-hoon introduces him to a new random-reply app (Is encouraging less human interaction really the thing you want to be doing?) and Kwang-soo asks it: “Could it be true?” His phone tells him it is, and that it’ll come true today.

He spends the rest of the day with nothing else on his mind but Da-in, and I love the way it’s illustrated: She’s the girl in the soju poster when he’s at lunch, and hers is the face on all the TV monitors at the station, filling every corner of his mind.

Jin-gu and his coworkers spend the evening getting dragged along by their boss for compulsory fun. At the noraebang, they just wait it out until Director Jo has his fill of song and drink, and as soon as he passes out on the table, they happily send him off in a cab. Then the real fun begins. Everyone takes turns singing, and Go-eun doesn’t miss the chance to get her flirt on with “Troublemaker.”

Su-ah leaves her tutoring academy that night and habitually scans the street, as if looking for Min-gu. She starts walking home, when she spots a familiar-looking silhouette with a gym bag hiding very conspicuously behind a tree.

Min-gu cringes and comes out with an embarrassed wave, and she smirks to herself. She asks what he’s doing when he said he’d never show up in front of her again, and he admits that he did promise that, “But honestly, where is there such a thing as destiny? I didn’t like you because you were my destiny—I just liked you the moment I saw you.”

He says he just said that stuff because he wanted to find reasons to keep talking to her, and asks hesitantly, “So whether or not destiny exists, can’t you just be mine?” Omg, why so cute?

Kwang-soo heads to his date with Park Eun-ji, though he might as well be heading to the gallows, with that look on his face. He’s stopped at a red light when suddenly he has an epiphany: “If for just one day, one hour, you go crazy… life could become a blockbuster.” He spins his wheel and makes a U-turn.

Da-in closes up shop in her café that night, and when the door opens, she assumes it’s her employee, back from taking the trash out. But she stands frozen in place when she looks over toward the door—there’s Kwang-soo, looking determined to have a conversation this time.

Jin-gu does nothing but steal glances at Se-young all evening, but she seems determined not to even look in his direction. I don’t know if she’s pretending not to hear or just forcing herself to pretend, but she completely ignores his emo rendition of Izi’s “Emergency Room” (posted above, from the Delightful Girl Chun-hyang OST, a song about regretting how he’s misunderstood by the one he loves and asking for another chance).

He belts his heart out and then leaves the room, and Go-eun follows to check on him, wondering if he’s dating someone because of the sad love song. She makes sure that he isn’t, and then surprises him with a kiss.

He’s so taken aback that he can’t speak at first, but she can tell by his reaction that he’s about to let her down, so she stops him and just says cheerily that he’ll come to like her someday.

Se-young leaves with Jae-bum and wonders where Go-eun ran off to, but he says he saw her with Jin-gu earlier. He throws his coat over Se-young’s shoulders despite her reluctance to take it, and when she asks about the song he sang earlier, he admits that he saw her online profile reading, “A riddle that can’t be solved,” and found that they were lyrics to a song. Agh, he’s trying SO hard, and has no idea that she probably wrote that about her feelings for Jin-gu. Poor buddy.

She tries to interject, but he says he already knows that he’s probably making her uncomfortable again. He says he tried to get over his feelings, but it didn’t turn out to be so easy. He knows that you can’t force your heart to feel something, and that he’s an awkward stick-in-the-mud sort of guy.

She protests that he’s a good guy, and he replies, “I’m going to become an even better man… to you.” Awww. He gives her a little pinch on the cheek to get her to smile, and she does.

In closing voiceovers, Min-gu says, “I didn’t want to keep looking for reasons.” Kwang-soo: “I didn’t want to keep regretting.” Jin-gu: “September 19. Our fall stories began like this.”

 
COMMENTS

If Kwang-soo doesn’t open his mouth in the next thirty seconds (of story time), I’m going to reach in and shake him. Thank goodness he finally had his moment of clarity, at least on the matter of confronting Da-in head-on. His inaction was starting to drive me nuts, but I feel like his trajectory in this episode showed some healthy signs of engaging with the world. We know that he can’t move on until he deals with the trauma that left him stuck in his ten-year-old breakup—I know she hasn’t made it easy for him to just ask, but politeness be damned, it needs to be asked.

He seems to literally think the reason they broke up was because she hated him, while the truth is likely the opposite—she loved him more and got hurt more, all the way until she just snapped. But whatever her reason was (or however frustrating her method of expression), it’s the lack of dimension in his perspective that has kept him in the dark all this time—he can only see love or hate, not the fact that she might’ve been more heartbroken even if she was the one who left him. I know he has debilitating self-doubt and hardly thinks a woman would want a second date with him, let alone mourn the loss of him as a boyfriend, but it’s pretty extreme that he never even considered that Da-in might’ve cried over him until her friend tells him so in plain words.

In any case I don’t think it matters much who hurt more or who cried more, since the point is just to acknowledge the fact that they hurt each other, if he’s ever going to get past her wall of icy politeness. His realization about one moment’s choice being the difference between his sad life and being the hero of a blockbuster was worth the wait—that one U-turn felt like it was 39 years in the making, and it feels like a big shift, regardless of the result that awaits him. There’s no guarantee that he won’t be heartbroken, but it would be nice to see him chasing after his love for once in his life, instead of just waiting for life to happen to him.

The opposite seems to be happening for Se-young and Jin-gu, because they’re settling into a denial zone that outwardly resembles their old friendship but is nothing of the sort. And while it is frustrating that Se-young is pretending like Jin-gu doesn’t exist, she’s SO fixated on not looking at him that it’s pretty much backfiring on her. I hope something comes along to shake her out of that soon, like finding out about Go-eun’s kiss. She might not think better of Jin-gu, but at least jealousy would force her to be a little more honest about her feelings.

Right now I feel worse for Jae-bum because he doesn’t know he’s the third wheel, and he keeps putting so much care and detail into impressing her. Honestly if I were Se-young’s friend, I’d encourage her to date Jae-bum, because he’s so sincere and he just wears his heart on his sleeve. In every practical way, he’s the better choice. But of course her problem is that she wants the most illogical and impractical and dangerous thing—the one guy who could really crush her heart. It’s a good thing there’s no shortage of love ballads about regretting how you treated a past love. Maybe at a song per episode, he’ll work his way up to that second chance after all.

 
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