1% of Anything: Episode 15

by Laica

Our leads struggle to suppress their heartbreak as they try to get back into the swing of their lives without each other, which is much easier said than done. They pretend that their hearts are healing, but the people who love them are difficult to fool. The question is, can the two of them admit their feelings to each other before it’s too late? And even if they do, will they be able to overcome the obstacles that have stood between them all along?

 
EPISODE 15: “I Love You: The true feelings he revealed too late”

Jae-in sits and drinks with Lawyer Park at a bar, wishing he could get drunk. His friend assures him that things will get better with time, but Jae-in tells him that’s a lie — he doesn’t believe in things like that.

Later, Jae-in sits at home, looking at the pictures in his phone and reminiscing about all his moments with Da-hyun. Tears run down his face. “Nobody can make me forget her,” he says out loud. (Ahh, my heart!)

Da-hyun and Hyun-jin attend Ji-soo’s performance at the mall, cheering him on with placards. In another part of the mall, Jae-in follows his sister Soo-jung as she shops for clothes. He warns her that she has to go back to Canada if her audition doesn’t go well, and she pouts, asking why he can’t just support her. He pats her on the head and tells her that she did well, echoing Da-hyun’s words to him as Da-hyun ironically spots them just then from where she stands on a balcony.

Da-hyun watches in shock as the two head off, noticing Soo-jung clinging to Jae-in’s arm. Hyun-jin sees what she’s looking at and immediately starts cursing Jae-in again. She tells Da-hyun that she’ll set her up on as many dates as she wants, but Da-hyun declines, saying she’s not over all this yet.

In his car that night, Jae-in looks at his hand and remembers Da-hyun giving him her “Good job!” stamp. He remarks to himself that there’s nothing there now — not that he did anything to deserve it. In her apartment, Da-hyun looks at the stamp and says that if she had known it would be like this, she would have dated doing everything that others do so that she wouldn’t have any regrets. But then she shakes her head: “No. I shouldn’t have made any memories with him at all.”

Still in his hospital bed, Grandpa gets the report about the couple’s breakup from Employee Kang, who calls Jae-in scary. However, Grandpa approves of how Jae-in keeps his business and personal life separate.

Da-hyun gets through her days by volunteering at the orphanage, taking English classes, and by finally taking those driving lessons she’d been talking about (she’s terrible at it, haha). She spends her days smiling, but sighs when she’s alone. Jae-in, too, takes moments out of his busy workday to look at Da-hyun’s picture on his phone.

Employee Kang reminds Jae-in of his lunch date with a chaebol’s daughter, and asks if he really plans to marry right away. Jae-in says he’s the only Lee descendant, so his grandfather won’t stand for him to be single. Employee Kang tells him to consider his options carefully, but Jae-in says his hands are tied.

At lunch with the young woman, Jae-in calmly tells her they’ll both have to sign prenups as well as a contract to merge their two companies before they get married. She’s a bit offended that he’s speaking so bluntly about all this, and says that after all, marriage isn’t business. He counters that she should know by now that in their world, marriage is strictly business. He tells her it’s best that they stop here, since neither can fulfill the other’s expectations.

In the Lee household, Jae-in’s mother asks Employee Kang if her son went home last night, but he responds that Jae-in didn’t because he’s been pushing himself far too hard lately. Grandpa says not to worry, since the work won’t kill him. Jae-in’s mother hesitatingly asks her father-in-law if she did well, but he says that Jae-in and Da-hyun broke up because they only liked each other that much. It’s no one’s fault but their own, he adds, so she shouldn’t beat herself up too much. She seems unconvinced, and later watches Da-hyun from a distance as she sends her students home for the day.

At a restaurant, Hyun-jin and Sun-woo talk up a handsome Oriental medicine doctor they’re planning to introduce Da-hyun to, and she seems willing to meet him. Afterward, they go to Hyun-jin’s boutique, and she tells Da-hyun to buy something to commemorate her breakup; it’s on her. As her friend chooses clothes, Hyun-jin watches her sadly, and Sun-woo wonders why — doesn’t Da-hyun laugh and eat well now? Hyun-jin says that Da-hyun hates cream spaghetti (implying that she forced herself to eat it earlier).

True to Hyun-jin’s words, Da-hyun seems to have indigestion when she gets home. She starts to type Jae-in’s name into her phone, then stops. Her mom calls to say that she’s set her up with Dad’s hoobae, and Da-hyun agrees to meet him just as it starts to rain. She watches from her window with a sigh.

At home, Jae-in takes out a bottle of the alcohol Da-hyun drank and thinks of her drunken confession as he drinks and listens to the rain.

Da-hyun goes to her blind date, but she’s distracted the whole time and declines his offer for a ride afterward, citing her recent illness as an excuse for her inattention. As she walks out of the hotel, Jae-in arrives with his entourage, and they both stop short and stare at each other longingly.

Jae-in looks away first to speak with his female guest, so Da-hyun turns and walks away. He turns and looks at her departing back, but he has no choice but to follow his guest inside. By the time Da-hyun reaches her bus stop, she’s in tears.

Jae-in sits in his office and wonders if Da-hyun lost weight when she was sick. He picks up his phone and almost dials her number, but stops himself.

Oh, this should be good: Hyun-jin goes to SH Mall to confront Tae-ha. She introduces herself as Da-hyun’s best friend — that girl he kidnapped, in case he’s forgotten. He bristles and says he’s actually the one who saved her, but Hyun-jin moves on to her real business. She points out that the now broken-up couple were really good together, and suggests that she and Tae-ha help them out. He’s uninterested in getting involved and walks away, leaving her cursing after him. Now, she’s determined to find Da-hyun a new and better man.

On their way to a hotel café, Jae-in and Tae-ha stop when they see Da-hyun on another date. Jae-in watches them for a moment, and Tae-ha asks if they should move somewhere else. Jae-in agrees, saying that it’ll be uncomfortable for both of them if they stay.

Once they’re outside, Tae-ha stops, hesitantly addressing Jae-in as “Cousin.” “I told you to call me ‘Hyung,'” Jae-in interjects. Tae-ha grumbles that they’re only seven months apart but gives in anyway, adding that this is the first time he’s seen Jae-in be considerate of anyone. “I have a debt to repay to that woman,” Jae-in says.

Later, we find Tae-ha at Hyun-jin’s store as he lamely tells her he’s done all he could. Hyun-jin calls Jae-in a stubborn bastard, although Tae-ha says his hyung — ahem, his cousin — simply holds himself back too much. Hyun-jin reflects that apparently Jae-in just doesn’t love Da-hyun as much as she’d thought, but she supposes it’ll be easier for her friend to move on this way.

She thanks him, and Tae-ha simply tells her not to expose anything about contracts or kidnapping to the media, as Jae-in can be quite scary. (Ha, did she threaten him to get him to come here?) Hyun-jin tells him not to worry as she never intended to do anything of the sort, and he’s adorably offended at her deception. She slaps his chest playfully and says that she was just desperate, but he holds his hand to his heart, looking flustered.

Sitting at his desk at work, Jae-in detaches the keychain Da-hyun got him from his car key. He considers deleting a photo of her as he thinks of her on her date, but he’s unable to go through with it. He’s even distracted during his meeting and cuts it short, surprising his team.

Da-hyun’s date drops her off at home and asks her if he can contact her again. Holding onto the necklace Jae-in gave her, she hesitantly says yes. But when she goes up to her apartment, she finds Jae-in waiting for her. She walks silently to her door as he asks, “Do you like that man?” He asks if that’s why she agreed to meet him again, and she says it’s time for her to properly meet people now too, so she can get married—…

He suddenly pulls her in for a hug and tells her not to talk about other men. She pushes away from him, saying it’s none of his business, but he pulls her back and kisses her. “What—?” she says in consternation. “If you can bear it, Da-da, than so can I,” he says. She just stares at him.

Jae-in: “You’ll have to quit teaching. You’ll always have bodyguards, and reporters will bother you constantly. I won’t be able to be with you every day like other men. My mother is on my side, but she might be mean to you. But you can just ignore what everyone thinks. I might not be able to do anything for you. Are you okay with that?”

Da-hyun asks how she could possibly be okay with that, but Jae-in asks her to give in just this once, for him — in return, he promises to be good to her when they’re old. “Nothing has changed for us,” says Da-hyun. “Can we really start over?” He says it’s a relief if nothing has changed before he declares, “I want to marry you.” (Omo!)

But she says she doesn’t have the confidence to say yes and disappears inside. With her back against the door, she fingers her necklace again and calls him terrible for showing up just when she’s trying so hard to forget him. She slides to the floor and sobs.

The next day, he shows up at her school and drags her by the wrist to come with him. As they drive, they ask each other whether they’re seeing anyone else, and both say no. She doesn’t believe him though, and points out how she saw him happily shopping with another girl. He doesn’t realize what she means at first but then laughs, asking if she didn’t also see them going into a hotel room together. She sighs and tells him to pull over, but he finally tells her that it was just his younger sister.

Jae-in takes her hand and asks her for her answer as they walk along a pier, but he then backtracks and says her answer isn’t important — he’s going to marry her no matter what anyone says. She protests that they can’t get married just because the two of them want to. He knows, he says, and she adds that it’s not exactly a simple problem.

He asks he if she really wants him to marry another woman, and when she looks offended, he says he doesn’t want that either. “I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t okay at all,” he says. “I wasn’t okay either,” replies Da-hyun, her voice wobbly.

Jae-in says that she should stay by his side, then: “Other people break up because they don’t love each other. I don’t understand why we have to break up even though we love each other.” Da-hyun stares at him and asks what he means.

“I love you, Da-hyun,” he says. She starts to cry and smacks him as she replies, “You jerk! Why are you only telling me that now?” He holds her close as she sobs. She finally tells him that her job is important to her, and that he’d better get his family’s blessing. She’s okay with everything else he mentioned, but not those two things.

“Then… you’ll marry me?” Jae-in asks her. She nods. He asks if she’s sure, then hilariously adds that now that she’s said yes, she can’t take it back. She nods again, and they embrace tightly. “I love you too,” she says tearfully.

When he takes her home, he asks if he can spend the night, but she says no. He complains that they’re going to get married anyway, but she says they don’t know what might happen in the future. He gets all offended, asking if she’s not going to marry him after all, but she says they need to get their families’ blessings first.

He says he’ll take care of that and pulls her close, saying that he hasn’t slept a wink all this time. She tells him to go home and sleep then, but he says he needs to be near her so he can sleep, and slyly uses her finger to unlock the door. Inside, she calls out from the kitchen that he’ll be uncomfortable since he has nothing to change into, only to peek into the bedroom to find him completely passed out on her bed.

He wakes up when his phone rings, and when she goes to give it to him, he pulls her onto the bed, wrapping her in his arms. “It really is you,” he says with a smile. “I thought it was a dream this time, too.”

She touches his face and and says, “It’s not a dream.” He kisses her: “Yeah, it’s not a dream. What a relief.” She smiles at him, patting his back lovingly as he drifts off to sleep.

 
COMMENTS

It’s the home stretch for our couple, who spent the majority of this episode longing for each other and enduring a rough separation, which was definitely hard to watch. It was interesting to me how their coping mechanisms differed — for Jae-in, it was his stubborn refusal to forget his Da-da, although he was willing to do whatever his family and the business needed of him, even if that meant a marriage of convenience.

Da-hyun, on the other hand, tried to believe that he didn’t actually love her that much, and tried to convince herself that she was forgetting him and moving on even when it was obvious to us watching that she was very far from succeeding. A particularly telling sign of this was how she continued to wear Jae-in’s necklace after they broke up, even on her dates, and how she actually clutched it when she agreed to see her last date again. It was as though her body was protesting what her head had convinced her to do.

In the end, that date was the breaking point for Jae-in. Perhaps it was because he was able to endure the separation with the abstract reasoning that it was better for Da-hyun, but when faced with the reality of seeing her with another man and imagining her future with him, it was just too much. Even though he was pushier about his proposal than I would have ideally liked, I appreciated that he laid out exactly what she could expect as his wife, and that he asked her to marry him despite those things rather than make unrealistic promises he could never fulfill. To me, that shows that he doesn’t just love her — he respects her and believes in her. Jae-in’s honesty is one of the qualities I’ve liked in him from the start, even when he was being a jerk, and it’s one of the things their relationship needs if they are to successfully navigate the unique challenges they’re going to face as a couple.

I found Jae-in’s backhanded confession of love at the pier both sweet and funny. On the one hand, it was so obvious that he assumed she already knew he loved her, and on the other hand, it was obvious that it was the one thing Da-hyun was waiting to hear from him this whole time. It’s consistent with the difference in their communication styles all along, where he’s so matter-of-fact about his emotions hat one might blink and miss his declaration. Whereas for Da-hyun, it takes a lot of time and courage to make herself vulnerable enough to admit her feelings. But now that they’ve agreed to get married, we can only hope that their families will see that they’re made for each other and give their blessings right away.

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