One More Happy Ending: Episode 7

by LollyPip

Nothing goes well when feelings get messy, and it’s time for everyone to get real with themselves, and decide what they want. Everyone is confused and upset, and it’s impossible for anyone to have a healthy relationship in that kind of atmosphere. But denial and confusion are running rampant, so it’s anyone’s guess as to who will be the first to stand up and declare their intentions.

EPISODE 7 RECAP

Soo-hyuk, Hae-joon, and a pretty girl go out drinking with their college dance team. Hae-joon surreptitiously fills the girl’s shot glass with water when nobody is looking, but she barely notices — she only has eyes for Soo-hyuk. Over time, her relationship with Soo-hyuk grows, and Hae-joon is left to watch them sadly.

This is Min-woo’s mother, Seon-soo, and sure enough, she soon has news for Soo-hyuk. They’re expecting a baby. She’s angry with him for not being more careful, and begs him to tell her that he’ll take care of her and to trust him, but he’s downright terrified and can’t say the words. They decide to have the baby, and for Soo-hyuk, it’s love at first sight when he sees his tiny son.

Hae-joon, now a medical student, visits Seon-soo in the hospital and finds her on the floor writhing in pain. The doctors work hard to save her life, but there’s little they can do.

Soo-hyuk drops to his knees in shock to hear that Seon-soo is dead. All he can think of is that he never could assure her that he would take care of her, that he never was the man she could put her trust in. He starts to panic and screams Seon-soo’s name, and Hae-joon holds him while he cries.

Later Seon-soo’s brother nearly beats Soo-hyuk to a pulp, screaming that her death is all his fault. Soo-hyuk does nothing to defend himself, only repeating that he’s sorry.

Soo-hyuk is left to raise a newborn baby alone, but he can hardly even take care of himself. Hae-joon begs him to wake up for his son’s sake, or his baby could die. That seems to get through to Soo-hyuk, and he admits that he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to live with this guilt.

Hae-joon says that it will get better over time, and it’s obvious that he’s speaking from experience — he’s grieving for Seon-soo just the same as Soo-hyuk. He tells Soo-hyuk to go to the States to be with his family, and to come back when he’s feeling stronger.

In the present, it’s happening all over again — the two best friends are falling for the same woman. Soo-hyuk does the honorable thing and tells Hae-joon that he’s sorry, but he can’t hide his feelings any longer. He likes Han Mi-mo, and if that makes him the bad guy, then he’ll accept that.

Hae-joon says that he’s not just getting involved, he’s jumping between him and Mi-mo with a bomb. It won’t end with him just being the bad guy, but Hae-joon and Mi-mo will be hurt, too. If Soo-hyuk cares about Mi-mo, then he’ll keep his feelings to himself and suffer alone, and let her be happy with the person she likes.

Hearing this looks like it physically hurts Soo-hyuk, but Hae-joon doesn’t back down. Soo-hyuk is left standing alone, and when his phone rings with a call from Mi-mo, he doesn’t answer. Hae-joon makes it back to his office before he finally starts to shake, and he takes out his phone to make a call, but instead smashes it on the floor.

Soo-hyuk is considering returning Mi-mo’s call, but Yeon-soo speaks up from behind him and asks if he wants to go get some coffee. Oh right, I guess they would know each other. She apologizes for eavesdropping on their conversation, but Soo-hyuk is a little dazed. He thinks he may have gone a bit nuts — he just suddenly was standing in front of Hae-joon, saying those things.

Yeon-soo can see that he’s feeling something very strong to have come and said those things, acknowledging his one-sided love. She says that Hae-joon could never get into a complicated situation over a woman, and that he’s also never had his heart broken. But Yeon-soo encourages Soo-hyuk to follow his heart, because you never know… his feelings could be the ones that mean something to Mi-mo.

Mi-mo is also thinking about the events of the previous night, when Soo-hyuk had made his feelings known. She asks Da-jung if she thinks Mi-mo could have maternal instincts, and muses that this could be what fulfills her hope of the last five years.

Thinking of Soo-hyuk, she thinks that he must have wanted so badly to be comforted, so he fell for the first person who comforted him. No, don’t talk yourself out of it! Mi-mo texts Soo-hyuk asking him to come to her office, because she needs to talk with him.

Ah-ni volunteers to go on an out-of-the-country stakeout, passive-aggressively stating that someone needs her out of his life for a while. Ugh. She admits to Soo-hyuk later that she had planned to blow open the Seul-ah story, but she lost her nerve. She asks if the woman he likes accepted his feelings when he confessed, but he doesn’t answer, just thanking her for not publishing her story.

Ae-ran arrives home from her solo honeymoon to find Dong-bae waiting for her like nothing ever happened. He still wants to live together and have an open marriage, but Ae-ran is having none of it. Does he actually think that insulting her looks will make her agree? Has he seen her??

She ends up back at Dong-mi’s looking for a place to stay, but Dong-mi tells her to go to Mi-mo’s — she’ll be happy to have someone around. Ae-ran claims to be scared of Ppoppo, because he’s so wrinkly and she’s scared of things with wrinkles, so Dong-mi threatens to get an even wrinklier dog, ha.

She goes on a date with Oven Guy (whose name is actually Wook, oops), who’s all sweetness and light while with her, but his face goes flat the moment he turns away, hmm. His phone goes off several times so Dong-mi answers it, to find herself talking to his wife. I knew it. Wook comes back to the table and panics when he hears her talking on his phone, and struggles to explain.

Ae-ran smells something fishy about this guy, telling Dong-mi that he seems like a scammer. Dong-mi defends him hotly, since Wook told her that the call was from an EX-wife about his kids. He’d sold her a sob story about her demanding child support that he can’t afford, and she’d fallen for it.

Soo-hyuk waits for Mi-mo at her office, and he overhears a female client on the phone saying that she doesn’t want to marry a man with kids. Her words land hard, and he leaves before seeing Mi-mo. It’s Hae-joon who’s waiting when Mi-mo gets off work, but her smile seems a little forced.

During dinner he teases her about his supposed loan some more, and he finally admits that he’s just pulling her leg, and it will be paid off in two months. Her reaction (or lack thereof) disappoints him, and he tries to draw her out by asking about the volunteering, but Mi-mo doesn’t feel much like talking.

Da-jung’s husband Geun-hak packs a suitcase, and he runs across an old CD of the Angels’ album. He remembers those days, when he’d been involved in the promotion of Angels, and had taken particular notice of Da-jung. He’d asked her to autograph his CD, and gotten her attention by only asking for her autograph and none of the other members.

When Da-jung comes home from work Geun-hak reminds her of his business trip, and she invites him to talk. She agrees to the divorce and only asks for the apartment, asking him to move out when he gets home from his trip. Oof, they both look so sad, it’s heartbreaking.

Hyun-gi monitors Soo-hyuk’s drinking at a pojangmacha that night, and Soo-hyuk slurs that he wanted to be honest about his feelings, but nobody wants to know about them. Hyun-gi asks what he likes about this woman, and Soo-hyuk laughs that he doesn’t even know.

Poor Soo-hyuk, it’s eating him up so badly that he couldn’t just be honest from the beginning with Hae-joon. Hyun-gi says that Soo-hyuk just waited too long to start dating again, and forgot how. He urges Soo-hyuk to find his courage, but Soo-hyuk says he’ll just look like a jerk if he does.

He remembers Seon-soo’s brother berating him for her death, telling him not to even try dating again or he’ll kill that girl, too. Damn, he’s been carrying a lot of guilt around for thirteen years, it explains a lot.

After dinner Mi-mo asks Hae-joon about Soo-hyuk, and what he was like in school. She says that she might have been wrong about him being immature, and she feels bad thinking how lonely he must have been.

She asks what kind of woman Soo-hyuk likes, saying that at least she should match him with a woman who will love Min-woo. Every word seems to stab Hae-joon right in the heart, and he finally stops her and kisses her right in the street. It’s a tiny little peck, but he says that he only wants her to talk and think about him from now on.

He hugs her and says that he sulks easily, and that he’ll get sulky if she keeps talking about Soo-hyuk. Mi-mo returns the hug, but she looks unsettled.

When Mi-mo gets home, she decides to return Min-woo’s bank book, but nobody’s home at Soo-hyuk’s place. He’s outside, drunk and still beating himself up internally, and he opens his eyes to find Mi-mo blinking down at him.

Just looking at him reminds her of the emotionally charged moment the night before when he’d asked her not to touch him, and she starts to say something about it. Soo-hyuk goes overboard trying to pretend it was no big deal, which just makes it that much more obvious that it was a very big deal. He notices Mi-mo’s expression and swears it wasn’t his intent to make her heart flutter, which she hotly denies.

She gives him Min-woo’s bank book and tells him that his son visited her. But she says not to just find anyone for the sake of not being lonely — he should wait for someone wonderful. She offers to help him, and tells him that after her failed marriage, she realized that your own happiness is the most important thing in life. If you’re happy, then those around you will be too, and she says that Min-woo really wants him to be happy.

Yeon-soo runs into Hae-joon drinking alone and joins him, expressing surprise to see him actually upset over a woman. She asks exactly what worries him: that he’ll lose Mi-mo to another man, or that the other man is Soo-hyuk? Hae-joon admits that it’s both.

We flash back to Seon-soo’s collapse from a rare childbirth complication, and he’d been the first to hear the news that she couldn’t be saved. Soo-hyuk had been attacked by Seon-soo’s brother, both physically and verbally, and he’d only been able to apologize tearfully over and over, on his knees.

Hae-joon growls to Yeon-soo, “Why did he have to do it again?” She doesn’t know what he means by “again,” but she remembers that when she divorced him, he didn’t even try to stop her. She wonders what Hae-joon would do if, instead of Soo-hyuk taking her, Mi-mo actually chose him — would Hae-joon try to stop her?

Soo-hyuk tenderly tucks in a sleeping Min-woo and kisses his forehead, then pulls out the bank book. He remembers giving it to his son, and how he’d told him to use the money for something he really wanted. He’d started with 100,000 won (about $100), but the account has grown tenfold since then. Remembering Mi-mo’s words that Min-woo wants most for his father to be happy, Soo-hyuk cries.

In the morning, Soo-hyuk demands a big old dorky hug from his son before school, but even his formidable aegyo isn’t enough to convince Min-woo to hug him. Min-woo goes out the door, but Soo-hyuk just waits with arms outstretched… and Min-woo runs back in for his hug. These two are killing me.

Mi-mo is so fixated about Soo-hyuk saying he wants to take her hands, that she’s starting to imagine him grabbing her hand even when she’s working. He comes to see her for real and asks if it’s possible to find someone that will love him and his son, and she puts him to work filling out forms.

He balks at all the paperwork, but she reminds him that they didn’t see each other for twenty years. She asks if he’ll take responsibility if she matches him wrong, and the phrase “take responsibility” (which also can be used to imply marrying someone) makes them both freeze for a moment.

He silently starts filling out the form, and as Mi-mo watches him, her face changes. Again she thinks of him tenderly taking care of her that night, and breaks the mood by fussing at him when he writes his ideal type down as “someone with faults.”

He adds the word “lovely” and she says that he and Hae-joon are just alike, neither of them ever giving a straight answer. She instructs him to be specific, but it backfires on her when Soo-hyuk readily complies, describing her exactly.

Dong-mi runs into an old boyfriend while waiting for her date, and the guy is a real jerk. He tells her she hasn’t changed, his tone making it an obvious insult, and tells her to at least get some work done or something. Wook shows up and throws an arm around her, and Dong-mi takes great delight in introducing him as her boyfriend.

Dong-mi is now giving Wook money for his supposed child support, and he makes a big show of it hurting his manly pride, but takes the money anyway. And then he sings a song to her, which is really bizarre.

Ae-ran takes some of her clothing line to her old agency to try to sell them, and runs into an old frenemy from their idol days. Their relationship is still pretty toxic, only now her rival has the upper hand, still being a celebrity herself.

Ae-ran’s sales are dropping and she jumps through increasingly desperate hoops to try to sell them, but nobody’s interested. She’s finally let in when she visits an aging fanboy, who has an alarming number of Angels posters in his apartment. He has all of the old Angels memorabilia, and is even wearing an Ae-ran t-shirt. But Ae-ran is so glad to find someone who still likes her, she bursts into tears and hugs him. Oh dear.

Mi-mo brings Soo-hyuk the portfolio of a woman who meets his specifications, but he just pouts at her and rejects the woman without even reading it. She complains that it’s difficult to find a woman like he wants, but he’s completely uninterested.

Dong-mi takes the “designer” scarf that Wook gave her into the store, as it’s growing a lot of fuzz, and the sales clerk informs her that it’s a knockoff. She tells her friends, who all say there’s something weird about the guy, especially since the child support he claims to have been ordered to pay is pretty high. Dong-mi gets defensive and they back off.

Mi-mo grudgingly tells them that she and Hae-joon finally kissed, but the best she can say is that it was “fine.” Ouch. She admits that something felt missing, but she can’t quite put her finger on what.

Ae-ran shows them the photo cards from their bread promotion that her superfan gave her, and they all joke about burning Seul-ah’s. All but Da-jung, who looks at her old picture and starts to cry, and they rush to console her.

Mi-mo has lunch with Hae-joon, but she’s preoccupied with Soo-hyuk’s blind date today. Hae-joon is sick of hearing her talk about it, but she doesn’t take his hint and just keeps going on about it. He finally slams down his utensils and says they should go, as she’s obviously not interested in eating.

He calls her inconsiderate, and says it feels like Soo-hyuk comes on all their dates because she can’t stop talking about him. She tries to convince him that she’s just letting him know how his friend is doing, but he says that he’s already asked her not to do it anymore and she still continues.

Mi-mo realizes that this is why he kissed her — to stop her talking about Soo-hyuk. He admits it was, and she’s upset that their first kiss was a “shut up” kiss. She says it was disrespectful, and Hae-joon raises his voice, but says they should go before they get in a fight. Mi-mo corrects him… they are in a fight.

Dong-mi gets a bucket of swamp water poured over her head at work, from a woman I can only assume is Wook’s wife. Wow, she’s terrifying.

Yeon-soo runs into Hae-joon on his way back to work, and asks him to check if there’s something in her eye. Mi-mo’s decided to go to him and work things out, and she sees him right up close to Yeon-soo’s face. Taking advantage of the moment, Yeon-soo asks if she was as distant as Hae-joon when they were married, as he claims. She says bluntly that she wants him back, and Mi-mo witnesses the whole thing.

She thinks to herself that she forgot that there was someone beside him, someone who could be a threat.

COMMENTS

Well, I wasn’t expecting that, but now that I think about it, it’s not really a surprise that Yeon-soo wants to try again with Hae-joon. She’s been giving him longing looks for a while now, and her “helpfully” telling Mi-mo that he’ll never care for her as much as she cares for him can’t have been anything but a calculated move to undermine Mi-mo’s confidence (not to mention how she encouraged Soo-hyuk to go after her). I’m not sure what this will mean, when our love triangle transforms into a square, but I’m interested to see what happens next.

I’m glad to finally see some emotion from Hae-joon, because I was starting to think that he literally wasn’t capable of feeling strong emotions. This is probably up for interpretation, but I felt that when he destroyed his phone instead of making a call right after his fight with Soo-hyuk, he was fighting himself not to call Soo-hyuk and take back what he’d just said. But I don’t really blame him for being angry — after all, he did once step aside and let the woman he loved go with someone else, and his best friend at that. That’s got to be one of the hardest things for a person to do, and I’m positive there’s a large dose of “It’s my turn this time” in Hae-joon’s attitude now. And to make things worse, Seon-soo didn’t even get to live a happy life with the man she loved, as was Hae-joon’s intention. Instead it got her pregnant at a young age, she never got to marry the father, and she died of complications from childbirth. It’s no wonder that Hae-joon hates messy love triangles, and no wonder that Soo-hyuk’s threat to create another one now infuriates him.

It’s interesting how Soo-hyuk went barging in there to declare his intent to go after Mi-mo, but was convinced to step down so quickly and easily. Seeing the details of Soo-hyuk’s past, and the death of his first love, makes it a lot easier to understand why he’s so timid about relationships even now. Aside from Seon-soo’s brother saying that he’ll just kill anyone he loves, which would screw with your mind in a major way all by itself, his one experience with love was a bad experience from start to finish. There’s still more to learn about what happened between Soo-hyuk and Seon-soo when they found out about the baby, but it’s pretty clear that she wanted him to take responsibility (marry her) and take care of her, and he didn’t have the confidence to do it. Because of his self-doubt, he couldn’t reassure the woman he loved that everything would be okay. It’s not his fault she died, not by a long shot, but I can see how someone as sensitive as Soo-hyuk could convince himself that if only he’d done things differently, she might not have died.

It explains why Soo-hyuk breaks down every time he realizes that someone cares for him, because he’s spent so much of the past thirteen years keeping people at arm’s length. But it hurts him, being such an emotional man who feels obligated to impose so much loneliness on himself. It’s especially sad when he says to Hyun-gi that he wants to tell people how he feels, but nobody is interested… that just broke my heart. So when someone that means something to him, like Mi-mo or his son Min-woo, lets him know how much they care about him, it’s almost too much for him to handle. But I love how in touch with his emotions Soo-hyuk is, and that he lets himself cry and doesn’t try to deny when something affects him deeply.

But I hope that Soo-hyuk’s decision to just step back and take the easy way out doesn’t last long, because it’s time for him to stop feeling sorry for himself, and start fighting for something. And nothing is more important than the person you love. At the very least, Mi-mo is feeling something pretty strong for Soo-hyuk as well, and she needs to know how he feels. Because regardless of the men’s opinions about who “deserves” her the most, in the end, it’s ladies’ choice.

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