I Need Romance 3: Episode 5

by girlfriday

It’s finally Monday, and time to find out what happens when universes collide and secret identities are exposed. I’m scared for Sweet Potato but excited for the rest of us, because in exchange for fessing up to his lies, he gets to move into the house and prove that he’s a man worth taking seriously. It’s more of an uphill battle than he realized, but we wouldn’t want it to be too easy now, would we?

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Kim Ye-rim – “널 어쩌면 좋을까 (What Am I Going to Do With You)” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 5: “No matter how trifling you think my feelings are”

Joo-yeon sets the table for Sweet Potato’s birthday breakfast, but Allen walks through her door calling her Shing-Shing. She still doesn’t fully grasp what’s going on, and refuses to believe that they could be the same guy. Joo-yeon: “Who…are you?”

Wan: “I said I’d return a man.” He points out that no one else in the world would call her Shing-Shing and smiles: “It’s me, Wannie. Joo Wan.” Joo-yeon thinks to herself: “That dirty, ugly Sweet Potato?!”

She thinks back incredulously to how he still wore the wrong shoes on the wrong feet till age seven and couldn’t ride a bike till age nine. “That dummy?! How could he change this much? This. Is a miracle.” LOL.

He asks if she still has his baby tooth, and she growls that she threw it away, which he hardly believes. He tries to skip right to breakfast, but then she slams the brakes and demands to know what the hell that kiss was about. “Did you have fun messing with me?”

She whaps him upside the head and yells at him for hiding who he was just to play with her, and he scoffs: “Am I not Allen?” She of course says the thing he’s expecting: “If I had known it was you…”

He finishes the thought for her: “You would have treated me like a kid and never considered me a man.” She’s still reeling from the embarrassment though, and asks if it was fun to play with her and watch her wait for his call.

He sighs that she really did get messed up in seventeen years, and she spits back that she’s become a realist, that’s all. He leans in close and asks if deciding that he played with her is the realistic answer.

She doesn’t have a retort, so she deflects to breakfast and turns cold and business-like. He blows out the candles before she’s even done lighting them, and says he’s not especially happy about being born right now. She has no desire to live with him, but she also knows that his mother gave her mother the money needed to buy this house, so she’ll consider this repayment. Yay, roomies!

She notes with some surprise that his Korean is really good. Wan: “Dramas. Hallyu. Do you not know what they are?” He tells her she’s sexy when she glares at him like that, and she growls back calling him Sweet Potato. He cuts her off: “If you call me that one more time, I’m going to kiss you.”

Just when you think he’s won the really petty fight, she takes a pause and then declares, “You’re a bad kisser.” Ha. He points out that she has no leg to stand on because he overheard her phone conversation, and she shrinks in mortification to remember that she said she felt like she was falling in love just from one kiss.

He gets all puffed up about it, wondering if she fell so easily when he’s got so much more to show her. Rawr? He leans close and wags his finger, “Want me to show you? C’mere.” Yes please.

He asks if he makes her uncomfortable because her heart is racing, and she cuts him down to size with one swift: “All I see is Sweet Potato.” Now it’s his turn to get all flustered and angry, demanding to know why he was a man to her that day and not now.

He swears he’s really quite humble, but then lists all his good qualities like his height, his looks, his kissing, and with success to boot, to prove that he really is quite the catch. She doesn’t argue, but turns it around and asks why a man like that would like her.

She asks if he thinks his feelings are normal, not comprehending why and how and since when he’s liked her. He argues that this is why he kissed her—because she tries to think love instead of feeling it with her heart. “You knew that day.” She counters that he was the one thinking and plotting to hide his identity, and they leave it at that for the morning.

She heads out for work, but he follows her and insists on driving her, asking cutely for her to get in his car and count it as his birthday present. She gets in, and he gets all smiley as he belts her in and asks expectantly if it makes her tense that they’re so close. She acts totally unfazed and tells him to move his face. Ha.

Now that Min-jung knows that her hotel guy moved in next door, she can’t just leave for work whenever she wants, and crouches at her front door waiting for the right time to slip out undetected, sighing that if she were twenty she’d call this fate, but at her age it’s an inconvenience.

She bolts back in when he comes out at the same time, and jumps into a stranger’s car to avoid running into him in the garage.

Joo-yeon pretends to sleep on the way to work just to avoid talking to Wan and he calls her out on it, noting that she really is messed up—she doesn’t believe it when someone says he likes her, she avoids anything that makes her uncomfortable, and treats him like a kid.

He asks if she’ll believe him if he finds the answer to her question about how and why and when he began to like her. She still pretends to sleep, so he gets close and says he’ll kiss her, at which she flinches and admits to being awake.

She struts out of the car with her head held high, but winces to herself that he makes her uncomfortable. On her way into the office, she comes across Wan’s magazine shoot and interview, where he talks about his complicated feelings toward his first love.

She reads it and gapes, calling first love a ridiculous fantasy for children, like a fairytale about a sweet potato growing up to be a prince. She shakes her head in horror at the realization that it was just Sweet Potato that she kissed, and she declares that he completely shattered whatever fantasy was left in her head.

Tae-yoon finds her in a daze, and when she asks if she’s really that messed up, he immediately answers yes and assumes she heard her co-workers talking about her. Ha. When prodded, he says they call her an emotionless robot.

She finds it weird that anyone would want her to be warm in the workplace, and Tae-yoon admits that as her boss, he prefers her to be cold and good at her job. He tells her that she’s selfish and rigid enough to be cursed at behind her back but… and he asks her to turn around and face the wall before he says the rest.

He adds that she’s pretty, and I love that she just nods yes, wondering why that’s news. She cracks me up. But then he says that sometimes when she smiles brightly at him, she’s so lovable that it surprises him, and it makes him happy to think that he knows a side of her that no one else does. Eee!

He says it and walks away, and she feels a little flutter. She chases him down, but he just goes right back to work talk like nothing happened, and she needles him to say it again because it made her feel weird. She’s adorable.

Wan tries to find the answer to the when/why/how question, and thinks back to the moment he found her drinking alone after their run-in at the club, when she told him that nobody loves her.

He narrates that it sent a wave of goosebumps over him, and when they passed, it left heat and it felt like pain. “And that face cut through my rib and entered my heart.” As he walks behind her, he narrates that she always appeared in front of his eyes wherever he went from that moment on, always off-kilter that way.

“I think that’s the moment I began to love you, but why? Why then? That you made my heart hurt isn’t a reason to love you. That I stole a glance at the pit of your loneliness isn’t the thing that made me fall in love. Why is it you? Why is it you? Will I be able to find the reason?”

She comes home that night and stalks upstairs to silently hand him a pair of headphones, but instead of getting the passive-aggressive message to keep it down, he trails behind her cheerily to ask if she ate dinner.

She tells him she likes it best when she’s alone and starts to walk away, so he says he thought about the answer to her question. But he says he couldn’t find the reason he likes her. “There is no reason. But I think because there’s no reason, it’s love.”

He says that it must be right, because if there were a reason and that reason disappeared, his feelings would change too. “I like you without a reason. Because… you’re you.” Swoon. She’s silent for a moment, but then scoffs in his face, and he gets angry that she’s belittling his sincerity.

She emails his mother and lies that they’re getting along swimmingly just like siblings, and when he takes issue with her reporting to his mom, she points out that she’s always done that since he was little, and that’s why she doesn’t like him, because he reminds her of how hard it was to take care of him and how she’d always wished he’d go home.

It stings when he always thought of this house as his home, which she takes literally, adding that of course it’s all his, and her whole family was on pins and needles to make sure the young master never got hurt because he was her family’s lifeline.

She takes out the journal he left last time and says his memories are wrong. To her, the three hours they spent making a snowman were freezing cold. She cut her hair because he put gum in it. And that piggybank he gave her for her birthday was his mother’s that he stole, after which she was accused of stealing it. Yeouch.

Tears brim in her eyes as she recalls the memory, and it stuns him. He flips through his journal upstairs with a long face, wondering if he had it all wrong.

He heads out and remembers his mother telling him that he was a fussy baby and would cry through the night, so Joo-yeon would take him out for walks and only then would he finally fall asleep on her back.

He follows imaginary Joo-yeon through the neighborhood all the way to the playground, and starts to see her in a new light, realizing how hard it must’ve been for her as a young girl. He looks over at her, begrudgingly realizing he was a nuisance, and worries that the girl in his imagination isn’t dressed warmly enough for the cold. Aw.

Joo-yeon eats the dinner he left out and texts him to hurry back home so he doesn’t catch a cold, making sure to couch it with a “and if you’re sick then I have to suffer!” He asks if he should buy some sweet potatoes and then immediately regrets bringing up the association. She tells him to buy some, “that look like you.”

She opens up the bag he brings back and frowns that they’re chestnuts, not sweet potatoes. Wan: “There’s no way there are any as good-looking as I am.” HA. He apologizes for being a terrible kid, and for only remembering things the way he wanted to. She tells him if he’s really sorry he should stop liking her, but he doesn’t answer that.

It’s enough to smooth over hurt feelings, and they eat chestnuts without arguing anymore. Wan thinks to himself that he hopes she’ll ask him when he started to like her more and why, because this time he’ll know the answer for sure:

“Today. Because I was sorry, I understood you a little more. And as I understood you, I came to like you more.” He hopes that someday in the future she’ll understand him now just as he understood her twenty years in the past.

Hee-jae and Woo-young enjoy a soju break on the roof after working late for the millionth night in a row, and Hee-jae breaks down when her boyfriend calls asking to see her, admitting that she’s grown so weary of her relationship where she’s always holding back, scrimping, and saving.

She’s exhausted from having to work so hard at work and at dating, and Woo-young suggests she take a breather and go easy on herself. He wipes her tears away and tells not to hold back and just cry, and then gets caught up in the moment and kisses her.

It’s a peck on the lips, but then she goes in for another kiss. The next morning she tells Joo-yeon and Min-jung, thinking she went crazy. She worries over the guilt, wondering what to do. Min-jung’s big question: was it good?

Woo-young walks in and Min-jung blurts that Hee-jae kissed someone last night and she liked it (hee), but then plays dumb about who the guy was. Ha, that’s a nice way to play it.

Woo-young mutters that there are no secrets in this office, and Hee-jae asks why he kissed her last night. He corrects her that she’s the one who came back for seconds, but she runs to the bathroom before he can say it aloud.

The team goes after a designer they want to sign for their brand, but find that Se-ryung is already there, sealing the deal without them. They’re technically all working for the same thing but clearly feeling competitive about what they bring to the table, and Joo-yeon fumes.

She wonders why no man can refuse a request from Se-ryung, and Min-jung adds that the men who fall in love with her are worse off, recalling Tae-yoon’s year of misery post-breakup. Joo-yeon does a double-take, because it’s the first time she’s ever heard that he dated her.

Min-jung says it was back when she was on the same team as Tae-yoon before he was promoted, and Se-ryung dumped him to move up in the world. He went crazy and left work for a whole year afterwards, and his boss barely managed to bring him back. Joo-yeon is left stunned to hear about their past.

Min-jung goes straight to the hotel to meet (okay, fine you get a name now) Min-seok, enjoying another round of almost-anonymous sex.

Tae-yoon finds Joo-yeon digging into Hee-jae’s soju juice box stash that night, and she asks if he’s the one who leaked their list of designers to Se-ryung because she’s his ex. She asks if he knows what kind of rumors there are about her and how she slept around to get her success, but stops herself before she says too much.

She can’t help but get one last dig in though, and says she’s disappointed in him for loving someone like her, making her think less of him. Ouch. She really has a talent for the biting insult.

She regrets saying it when she gets home, not that it changes the fact that she said it. She finds a note from Wan that he won’t be coming home that night, and wonders where he is.

Min-jung asks her not-a-boyfriend Min-seok if he likes his new apartment, and he says he likes it, but he has a weird neighbor who keeps avoiding him. He says the other tenants call her an old hermit, and she cringes, muttering that those neighbors are mean people. Heh.

It adds insult to injury when he happens to find a white hair on her head, and she has a mini freakout, after lying to him about her age (among other things).

Tae-yoon returns to that bar and finds Se-ryung there waiting for him. She tells him honestly that she wants to start over, but he rejects her flatly and says he has no intention of rekindling their relationship.

She realizes he’s still mad, but admits that it gives her hope, “because there’s no hate without love.” She asks him to just continue hating her at least, and she’ll be okay with that.

The guilt niggles at Joo-yeon and she finally calls Tae-yoon to apologize for going overboard with that last statement of hers, but then the bartender is the one answering his phone, saying that Tae-yoon is passed out.

Wan returns early the next morning, pleased with himself for the breakfast that apparently took him all night to get. He walks in with a skip in his step, that is until he notices the pair of men’s shoes parked in the doorway.

Joo-yeon’s surprised he’s home so early, and he demands to know what man those shoes belong to. “No matter how trifling you think my feelings are, don’t you think this is a bit much?”

She doesn’t make the misunderstanding any better when she asks why he came home when he said he wouldn’t, and then Tae-yoon comes out of the shower in a bathrobe. Omo.

Tae-yoon: “Who are you?” Wan: “And who are YOU?” HEE.

 
COMMENTS

Aaah, I love rom-com hijinks like this. They’ve only been living under the same roof for a day, and already jealousy is afoot. I really like the banter between Joo-yeon and Tae-yoon, and though I’m not really rooting for him as a second lead because he’s obviously still hung up on Se-ryung, I enjoy their chemistry as friends and find the witty flirting really cute. I wouldn’t mind them playing that dynamic out, because both Wan and Se-ryung could use a taste of their own medicine, just because they’re both so smug about how awesome they are (which they are, no doubt, but it never hurts to take them down a peg or three). I especially want Se-ryung to seethe a little, because so far she’s consistently had the upper hand with Joo-yeon.

I hope they keep Hee-jae and Woo-young light and fun, because she cries a bit too much for my liking, and I much prefer her in the work setting when she’s got the stiff upper lip and is always struggling to keep up with her sunbaes. Maybe when her romantic troubles turn into a dilemma over which guy to choose, it’ll be less dire overall. I like her, but I feel like her relationship troubles are wearing thin, maybe for her and for me (for me mostly because the conflict is one note and not changing). Who knows, perhaps Woo-young’s kiss was timed just so for the same reason, and will be the fun twist her character needs.

I’m glad that we’re shattering pristine fantasies for both Joo-yeon and Wan, and that they are consistently opposite when it comes to how they see the world. He remembers his first love as a sweet memory, while his arrival actually shatters any last notion she had about fantasies and romance, because to her that’s the worst possible thing that Allen could turn out to be—the kid she grew up resenting. It was a harsh dose of reality when she corrected his happy shiny memories as terrible ones for her, but was so touching when he sucked it up and thought about it from her perspective, and how much she sacrificed to take care of him. It’s going to be that that wins me over in the end—piecing together a new picture of each other that isn’t based in the past, but understanding each other bit by bit, day by day.

 
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