Warm and Cozy: Episode 13

by girlfriday

On the one hand, it’s a huge step in maturity for our hero to stop being selfish and actually become a noble idiot entirely for someone else’s benefit. On the other hand, this in no way has advanced his emotional maturity when it comes to romance. His idea of professing love still involves saying the opposite of what he means and picking fights, which would be fine if you weren’t running out of time! At this rate, you’ll be hyung’s age by the time you get around to saying what you really mean!

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Midnight Lamp – “너 없이도 괜찮아” (I’m Okay Without You) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 13 RECAP

Now that he’s decided to suffer in silence and leave his family, Gun-woo watches Jung-joo from far away and says quietly to himself, “Will you go with me?” But instead of asking her, he walks away with tear-filled eyes.

Jung-joo looks over at Mayor Wook and starts to have second thoughts about being with him and checks her forehead again, remembering Gun-woo’s insistence that she was still burning hot for him.

Wook asks if something’s wrong, and Jung-joo says that she isn’t hot, which he takes as a good sign that she isn’t sick. But she explains that when she’s with Wook it’s really comfortable, and when she’s with “him,” she aches… because she burns hot. She needs to confirm something and runs off, leaving Wook all alone.

Jung-joo heads straight to the pantry to look for the thing that Gun-woo left up on the shelf for her, but it’s gone. Gun-woo shows up and points out that she caved after all. His words say that he’s playing games with her again: “Lee Jung-joo, you lost.” But his face looks like he’s on the verge of crying.

She can tell something’s wrong and that he doesn’t mean it, but he keeps pressing for her to agree that he’s bad and just playing with her feelings again. When she offers to listen to whatever is on his mind, he argues that she should be raging mad at him right now: “Do you have no pride? Do you like me that much?! You have to get mad… otherwise I’ll make you go somewhere with me again, no matter what you do. Are you going to fall for it again?”

She says that she won’t, and he looks disappointed, even after having asked it in the most backwards way possible. He says it’s not fun anymore and that it’s time to stop, and once he’s alone he fishes the necklace out of his pocket.

Poong-san comes over to Wook’s table and is happy to hear that Jung-joo and Gun-woo are probably together. Wook says that his niece is on her way over, and Poong-san smiles in anticipation to hear that this family member looks just like him too. We’re all anticipating another Wook-in-drag, but Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun walks over instead.

Poong-san’s jaw drops and he sees her bathed in goddess light as she approaches. She’s ready to leave because she missed her chance to meet uncle Wook’s new girl, but Poong-san quickly comes up with a plan to move the party to Warm & Cozy.

He begs Jung-joo to stick around so that the pretty niece doesn’t leave, and Wook is in much better spirits when Jung-joo joins the party and says that she’s an idiot for wanting to check on something that wasn’t there.

Gun-woo returns, worried that Jung-joo is crying again because of him. But when he walks in, she’s busy laughing and playing drinking games with Wook and his friends. Gun-woo acts like he doesn’t care when Wook drinks for Jung-joo when she loses, but when the others call for a kiss instead, he stops in his tracks.

Jung-joo and Wook protest, but his niece sees an opportunity and pushes Jung-joo right into him, causing her to kiss him on the side of the head. Gun-woo gets jealous and announces that it’s no fun if you don’t do it right, “Like this…” and he leans down to kiss her on the lips properly.

The whole group is stunned into silence, and he says, “If you’re going to do it, do it properly!” and walks out. Jung-joo runs out after him and calls him a petty player, and he scoffs, calling her the player for partying just minutes after being with him. She tells him not to expect her to be hurt because of him, and he spits back sarcastically that it’s so awesome that she’s so strong.

She finally calms down and asks if he’s jealous, and remembers that he acted this way when she went to go see flowers with Wook. She guesses that this is his way of hanging on, and says, “If you want to hang onto me, say it now properly.” He says he’s done with all of that now, and announces that he’s leaving Jeju and quitting Warm & Cozy.

Wook comes out sometime later to find Jung-joo brooding alone, and tells her that her black knight (Wook) hasn’t been blown away by the wind (Gun-woo). She says that the wind won’t be blowing anymore because he’s leaving. She wonders, “Why is he doing that? I thought that even while he was shaking me around, he was holding onto me. But I must really be nothing to him.”

Wook asks shakily, “How can you be nothing? You’re all I see.” Awww. She bows in apology for making things harder for him, and he cuts her off so that she can’t finish whatever she was going to say.

Gun-woo’s father asks Mr. Gong to finalize the deal so that he can buy Hae-shil’s house, and plans to disappear again. He overheard Gun-woo’s desire not to have Dad show his face, and despite Mr. Gong’s offer to bring Gun-woo by so that he has a chance to talk, Dad seems resigned to letting his son hate him.

Nosy the Novelist tells Gun-woo’s noona about his father, Jin Tae-yong. He was a businessman, and Mom found out after a while that he had lied about his success. They had a drunken fight, and she drove off in a car, and he chased after her in a second car. That’s when he hit a young fisherman and drove off, leaving him to die on the side of the road. He was caught and sentenced to 15 years, and Mom was already pregnant with Gun-woo.

Noona realizes now why Mom had been so harsh with Gun-woo on his birthday. She told him cruelly that his father was trash—a con artist, liar, and murderer—and that he should never go looking for him. Noona warns her friend to stop the novel, and she agrees. But Ji-won is outside the door and has overheard everything.

Gun-woo looks around the empty restaurant and thinks back wistfully to all the happy memories he’s made here with Jung-joo. She comes downstairs and remains quiet as she pours herself some tea, but is so busy looking at Gun-woo that she pours the hot water right onto her hand.

Gun-woo quickly brings her to the sink and runs the cold water, and then insists on holding her hand to ice it himself. He says that it has to cool down, and when she asks when he’s leaving, he says, “Should I wait till you’ve cooled down first?” He checks her forehead again and asks if she’s still hot.

She tells him not to joke around and asks him again if he’s really going. Gun-woo: “Jung-joo-ya, will you come with me? …Can you tell whether what I’ve just said is sincere or not?” OH MY GOD. What the ass are you even saying?

She argues that he’s always confusing her, but he says that if he asked her for real, there’s a chance she’d turn him down and it would hurt too much. Dude, tough cookies! That’s life! He admits to protecting himself with jokes just in case he gets rejected, and argues that she’s not answering that she’d go with him either way, so she’s playing it safe too. He decides that her hand has cooled enough and plops the ice pack on her head.

Jung-joo makes plans to take over that other restaurant, using her house as the down payment. But at the same time, Gun-woo tells Mr. Gong that he’s leaving town and gets him to tell Poong-san and Jung-joo that Warm & Cozy will be sold, torn down, and turned into a love motel. Ha.

Just as he planned, Jung-joo and Poong-san come running to Gun-woo and offer to keep running Warm & Cozy, and Jung-joo offers her house as collateral. He agrees, though when Poong-san tells him that they’ll take great care of it for whenever he wants to return, Gun-woo says he won’t be coming back.

Jung-joo apologizes to Wook for passing on the other restaurant that he arranged for her, and admits that it scared her to think that if Warm & Cozy disappeared, she’d never see Gun-woo again.

Wook in turn admits that he wanted her to run the other restaurant to get away from Gun-woo, and that he knows it’s pathetic but he’s happy to know that Gun-woo’s leaving. He says that he’s going to remain by her side, though right now he’s standing behind her, which is safer so that he’s not rejected outright.

She muses that if you only stand in safe places and give safe answers, you get hurt less and only suffer wounds that heal quickly: “Safe is good, right?”

Jung-geun complains about having to order four shaved ices timed to Hae-shil’s arrival because she didn’t return his text messages (or you could order when she gets there?), and then complains that she doesn’t show enough affection in her texts. He’s hilarious: “I’m not asking for emoticons! Just a squiggly or eye-smiles here or there!”

He’s appeased when she promises to do that from now on, and then tells her about his plans to show her his house up in Seoul, because he wants her to move up there with him once he’s done with his work in Jeju. But Hae-shil says that she has no plans to leave Jeju.

Jung-geun can’t stand the idea of a long-distance relationship, and broods over what choice that leaves. There’s really only one if she won’t go up to Seoul, and so he decides he’ll have to stay in Jeju forever.

He takes his secretary to Warm & Cozy and tells him to plan a wedding here and not invite any of his chaebol relatives up in Seoul. He talks to Gun-woo about setting a good date, but Gun-woo tells him to do it elsewhere because he won’t be here. He plays the part of the wayward brother and says he’s bored and wants to travel, and will send a congratulatory text from the road.

Jung-geun can’t believe Gun-woo would skip his wedding, and asks why he didn’t show up to the dinner last time. Gun-woo lies that he has a bad relationship with Hae-shil, and when Jung-geun argues that she’s going to be his sister-in-law, Gun-woo says that they aren’t even really brothers. Aw, Gun-woo, why you gotta go hurting your hyung like that?

Jung-geun asks if he’s really not going to come to his own brother’s wedding, and Gun-woo says that him not being there won’t affect the wedding at all.

Ji-won’s ex-fiancé shows up wanting to get back together, and offers to take her back to New York with him. She finds Gun-woo nearby contemplating two plane tickets, and he does exactly what I want him to: He tells her to move it right along.

She chooses to sit (ugh) and tells him that she’s left him behind many times, but he’s never once held her back. She doesn’t want him to change for another girl when he didn’t change for her, and asks him to not to hang on desperately. Gun-woo: “Then I should hang onto her, because I am desperate.” Yes! Go do that!

He leaves Ji-won to stew on her own, and she returns to her ex to say that she’ll be going to New York, but not with him. The man she really wants to go with won’t ask her, so she plans to play it safe and go there first. Guh, she has the resilience of a cockroach, this one.

Gun-woo returns to find Wook offering to help Jung-joo clean up, and holding her hand after accidently spilling soup on it. Gun-woo gets all pissy again and refuses to help her since she can just use Wook from now on.

She follows him upstairs and spies two plane tickets sitting out on his bed, but he quickly covers them up with his jacket. They continue arguing and he accuses Jung-joo of having Wook fill his shoes the minute he told her he was leaving, and she scoffs that it’s a lot better than Gun-woo, who had to be dragged around like a cow to help out.

He mock-sympathizes with her for having to drag the cow everywhere and tells her to have a nice life with the mayor, and she tells him to leave now if he’s going to go. He sighs to himself that he’s supposed to be hanging on and asking her to go with him.

Later he comes downstairs and quietly starts helping her dry the dishes, then suddenly moos. Lol, he literally goes, “Moooooooooo,” and says he’s a cow and that he must’ve been crazy to say that stuff earlier.

She tells him she doesn’t have the energy to argue tonight because she has to get up early to go plant a tangerine tree at her house (per Wook’s suggestion), and she says that by the time it bears fruit in two to three years, she’ll have fixed up her house and be ready to leave Warm & Cozy.

She figures he’ll be away so she won’t see him, and offers to make jam from the tangerines and send it to him. He deflates at that and retracts what he was going to say, and adds that he doesn’t like tangerine jam. She stops him to ask why he’s leaving, and he says that he can’t ever tell anyone.

He admits that he was going to ask her to lose at rock-paper-scissors to him without asking any questions, but he tells her to go plant a tangerine tree instead. In a callback to their first parting years ago, he muses that by the time it bears fruit, she’ll become an impressive person. He contemplates her plane ticket and tucks the necklace inside, but tosses them aside on his nightstand.

Gun-woo’s dad plans to quietly leave town now that Hae-shil’s house has been bought. Jung-geun overhears her talking to the other ajummas about Jin Tae-yong, and she tells him that it’s the man who killed her late husband. Jung-geun quickly changes the subject and asks if she’ll live with him now that she sold her place, and she repeats that she won’t go to Seoul. Jung-geun: “Who said I was going to live in Seoul?”

She points out that they don’t need to live together to date, and he replies, “Who said I wanted to date? Kim Hae-shil-sshi, will you marry me?” He takes out a diamond ring, and he doesn’t even end up in the pool this time.

Noona is aghast that Jung-geun wants to have a small backyard wedding at Warm & Cozy: “What’re you, Lee Hyori? Won Bin?” He says all that’s left to do is sit Gun-woo down for a talk to find out what’s really going on with him. Noona wonders if it has to do with his father, and hands over a flash drive of the stuff that her novelist friend dug up.

Dad stops one last time at Warm & Cozy, and Gun-woo smiles and invites him in, thinking he’s just a patron. But Dad just shakes his silently and turns to go, and Gun-woo wonders if it might be his father.

He confirms it with Mr. Gong, who asks if he doesn’t want to stick around in Jeju. He promises to stay quiet, but Gun-woo doesn’t know how he’d face Hae-shil now that he knows the truth. Mr. Gong sighs to himself that it’s probably better for Gun-woo to leave, because if it might’ve happened the way he remembers it, it’d be even worse.

We flash back to the night of the accident from Mr. Gong’s point of view, and he remembers seeing Dad fight with Mom for her keys, saying that she couldn’t drive in that state. So then Mom’s the one who gets into the black car that caused the accident, and Dad follows her in the white one. Mr. Gong wonders if they swapped cars on the way. Um. ORRRRR, it’s the obvious other thing??

Jung-joo finds Gun-woo looking upset and puts a hand on his shoulder to ask what’s wrong. He takes her hand and declares that he’s going to hang on. But a$%#&^ he doesn’t ask her right away—he has to go see hyung first, and asks her to wait for him here.

Meanwhile, Jung-geun checks the flash drive and discovers the connection between Gun-woo’s father and the accident that killed Hae-shil’s husband. By time that he joins his siblings, Hae-shil is there, and Gun-woo is making excuses to leave early.

To everyone’s surprise, Jung-geun lets him go and looks at him with sad eyes. Hae-shil feels awkward and offers to leave instead, but Jung-geun holds her hand and says that he can’t let her go. Both brothers know that they’re talking about Gun-woo leaving Jeju and not his room, and Jung-geun apologizes to Gun-woo for sending him away like this. Gun-woo fights back tears and says it’s okay—everything will be fine if he leaves.

He puts on a smile and says he was planning to go anyway, but he looks like an abandoned puppy as he walks out alone.

Jung-joo remembers seeing two plane tickets, and wonders if Gun-woo is going to ask her to go with him. She asks her reflection in the mirror if she’s going to say yes if he asks, and her reflection smiles and nods back.

She runs out when the door opens, thinking it’s Gun-woo, but UGH—it’s Ji-won. She’s here to announce that she’s leaving Jeju, and makes Jung-joo think that she’s going with Gun-woo. Thankfully Jung-joo knows what a rat she is and calls her out on the lie, and says that Gun-woo asked her to go with him.

But Ji-won asks if she even knows why Gun-woo is leaving, and says that it’s because of his father, questioning why he’d ask Jung-joo to go with him without even telling her why. Ugh. Ji-won says that she told Gun-woo she’d go with him no matter what, and guesses that Jung-joo didn’t do the same.

She leaves Jung-joo reeling, which is how Wook finds her when he stops by. At first he turns to go, but then he stomps over to her and says that it’s okay if she didn’t run out to greet him—he’ll come down to her.

He sits down next to her and gently puts his arms around her so that she can lean on him, and comforts her sweetly.

Of course that’s when Gun-woo arrives. He sees them together and his face falls, and as he turns to go, he tells himself, “It’s okay. I was going to go alone anyway.”

 
COMMENTS

But! You’re the one who keeps telling her she’s hot for you and you alone! Pick a thing and go with it! Yunno, for a guy who’s leaving, Gun-woo sure does linger a long time. Can’t we skip to the part where he goes to the airport so that someone does something about it? All this talking about going while staying in place does nothing for me. I thought we had gotten past the denial of feelings, only now it’s been replaced by a different denial, and ’round and ’round we go. The reasons why they aren’t together are starting to wear seriously thin, even for someone as obtuse to his own heart as Gun-woo. I thought we’d be in a better place after the boy who cried wolf discovered he’d have to rebuild trust after crying wolf one too many times, but I don’t really know why Gun-woo hasn’t asked Jung-joo to go with him, other than to drag out the conflict for another episode.

It did pinch my heart when Jung-geun found out why Gun-woo was leaving and just let him go, especially because Yoo Yeon-seok plays that moment with the perfect amount of hope and disappointment. He’s still hoping at the end of the day that hyung would say it’s okay and stop him from making that needless sacrifice—that’s what I’m hoping the entire episode. But when he caves and just lets Gun-woo leave knowing that he’ll be adrift again, it’s so much sadder than when he was just being the noble idiot and taking responsibility for his father’s past on his own. This time it feels more like he’s actively being abandoned by the only family he knows, and watching it happen helped to explain a lot of his deep-seated fear and abandonment issues.

It’s just frustrating that it’s all moot if Dad’s not the one who’s responsible for the accident. If it’s Mom who was driving that car and Dad took the fall for her, it makes all three siblings’ mother the real monster. To think that she gave Gun-woo such a complex about his father in order to protect herself just makes my blood boil. And the fact that Gun-woo tried so hard to be the opposite of his father by being faithful to Ji-won? That makes me downright ragey! I just hope that Jung-geun comes through for his brother and doesn’t let him carry this on his own, even before they get to the part where they iron out the truth. Besides, I don’t think he’s giving Hae-shil enough credit to work through the past and stand by his side.

But more than anything, I’m annoyed because the family conflict has no bearing on Gun-woo’s relationship with Jung-joo, and it seems like he’s reverted to hiding his feelings when he KNOWS that she’d gladly go with him. I get the half-joking way he asks everything instead of being serious and sincere—it’s safer to just pretend you were kidding in case you get rejected—but that’s a quick way to get nowhere and have no one by your side. After crying wolf so many times, isn’t it his turn to put his heart on the line and just ask the question? He doesn’t even have to be all that brave to do it, given how obvious Jung-joo has been about liking him all this time. It speaks to how little he’s ever risked in life if he can’t even do that, and while I’m sympathetic, I’m also like, GET OVER IT. Wook is totally out-manning you, dude, and stealing a kiss here or there isn’t going to be enough if she really does cool down while you’re busy being a fraidy cat! (And seriously, what will it take to put Ji-won on a plane to Antarctica? Because I will pay.)

 
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