Lucky Romance: Episode 15

by LollyPip

With everything that’s been happening to Su-ho both personally and professionally, and the fortuneteller blaming Bo-nui for everything, it’s no wonder Bo-nui’s reaction is to panic. It’s terrible that her first instinct is to blame herself, but years of conditioning can’t be dispelled that easily. Su-ho may have finally come up against a wall he can’t easily break down.

 
EPISODE 15 RECAP

When Bo-nui sees Su-ho waiting for her across the street with flowers and a giant smile, she decides to put away her superstitious fears and trust in him. They run to each other, but a car screeches around the corner and bears down on Bo-nui. Su-ho sees it first and shoves Bo-nui to safety, putting himself in the path of the vehicle.

Bo-nui can only see Su-ho’s bloody hand, and she backs away and runs, too scared to look closer. As she flees, she thinks, “It’s because of me. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have done that… I shouldn’t have loved him. I was wrong to love him.” We see Su-ho lying unconscious in the street, and Bo-nui stops running when she hears an ambulance rushing to the scene.

Su-ho is taken to the hospital, and eventually Bo-nui works up the courage to go check on him. She arrives at his room to find him gone, and she leaves the symbols for “frog” and “snake” on a piece of paper under his pillow.

She leaves just as he’s being wheeled back into the room, only letting herself look at him for a moment. She goes back to her dark apartment and kneels in front of her pictures of Su-ho, tears filling her eyes.

Su-ho wakes the next morning, and before he even opens his eyes he’s calling for Bo-nui. But it’s Amy who answers, and she tells him that he’s bruised all over, but his only serious injury is a broken arm. She avoids his questions about Bo-nui, and only says that she got a call last night and came to be with him.

When Su-ho seems determined to get out of bed and go looking for Bo-nui, Amy finally admits that she was the one who called her. She asks what’s going on between them, but Su-ho looks distraught, as if he already knows what Bo-nui is thinking.

When Amy leaves Su-ho sits up and finds his phone, but Bo-nui’s phone is turned off. He starts to leave his room but his parents arrive, frantic with worry, and Dad is especially attentive which is sweet. Su-ho tells them that he just got hit while crossing the street, deliberately leaving out the part about Bo-nui.

He tells them to go home, that he’s fine alone, and his mother complains that he said the same thing when he went to the States. Now she thinks she shouldn’t have let him go, thinking he would be okay all by himself. She apologizes for that, and for pushing him in math.

Su-ho looks like he’s going to say something important, but instead he just says that he’s not dying. Dad still looks uncomfortable and wants to leave now that they’ve determined that Su-ho is fine, but he does tell his son to be careful from now on.

Touched, Su-ho haltingly says that he shouldn’t sell the fishery. Dad agrees that probably nobody would want it anyway, so Su-ho softly tells him to keep it, since he likes it. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a huge step for father and son. Mom follows her husband out, and catches him wiping away tears.

Su-ho keeps trying to call Bo-nui with no luck, so he leaves her a message. It’s a struggle for him to sound cheerful, but he reassures her that he’s not very hurt at all, so she shouldn’t be worried. He tells her to hurry and visit so she can write her symbols on his cast, saying that he misses her, and looking like he’s going to burst into tears.

Bo-nui sees all the calls from Su-ho, and she calls Dal-nim to check in. Unaware of what’s happened, Dal-nim asks how the proposal went, but Bo-nui just asks her for a favor — to clean out her desk and throw away all of her superstitious talismans. Her contract is over, and she’s quitting her job at Zeze. Dal-nim asks again about the proposal, but Bo-nui only repeats that she’s leaving and promises to explain later.

Bo-nui tells the sleeping Bo-ra that it’s happening again, just like last time… she waited just a few minutes too long, and Bo-ra ended up this way. This time too, she wanted just a few more days with Su-ho, and because of her greed he got hurt.

Ryang-ha gets adorably nervous when he sees Dal-nim approaching, then totally dorks up his greeting. Dal-nim is too worried about Bo-nui to notice thank goodness, and she tells him that Bo-nui is planning to leave. She knows that Bo-nui and Su-ho agreed to extend her contract, not to mention the planned proposal the day before, so something is definitely wrong.

She gets all up in Ryang-ha’s face while explaining, which shorts out his brain and he doesn’t hear a word she says, hee. She suddenly notices their proximity and starts to stammer, but Ryang-ha suddenly realizes she mentioned a proposal and squawks that Su-ho would do such a think without talking to him first.

Dal-nim starts to leave, and Ryang-ha pretends to have just gotten a text from Su-ho just to get her back. He claims the text says “don’t go,” then “what are you doing after work,” and turns it into an invitation. So. Cute.

Gary and Amy meet with an interviewer, who asks about his involvement with IF. Gary says that though the release has been delayed, he still believes in the game, and he even mentions how it helped him find his father. He’s full of praise for Zeze Factory, and says that he hopes Su-ho returns soon.

Afterward, Amy is curious why Gary agreed to the interiew, and he says it’s because Bo-nui invented the game for Bo-ra. He knows that her quitting their agency was a trade-off for them dropping the charges against Zeze, but she swears she did it purely out of friendship for Su-ho.

She asks what’s going on with him and Bo-nui, but Bo-nui was happy the last time Gary saw her. Amy tells Gary about Su-ho’s accident, and that Bo-nui called her to visit him, but she looked so upset Amy didn’t ask any questions. She wonders what’s wrong, but Gary says to let them handle their own problems.

Despite his words to Amy, Gary is concerned as well, and he grows even more worried when he sees moving boxes outside Bo-nui’s apartment. He finds her inside and reminds her that she’s stayed here all this time waiting for Bo-ra to wake up, and he tells her that he knows about Su-ho.

Bo-nui says that it’s only right that she leave after causing Su-ho to lose everything. But even though Gary also shares some of her superstitions, he insists she’s not responsible for what happened to Su-ho. Bo-nui says that she saw him get hurt right in front of her eyes, and she doesn’t want to see that again. She’s already done it for Bo-ra, and she can do it again.

Ryang-ha wails over Su-ho’s injuries, and when he collects his feelings he asks what happened. He mentions Bo-nui quitting, which is news to Su-ho, and he jumps out of bed and runs out of the hospital in his pajamas. When he finds his car he’s in so much of a hurry that he nearly hits a pedestrian, and the near-miss shakes him.

As he speeds to her place, Bo-nui and Gary (in Gary’s car) pass him going the opposite direction. He finds her apartment cleared ofher belongings, and it hits him that she’s really gone.

Bo-ra is also gone from her hospital bed, and all her nurse knows is that Bo-nui had her discharged that morning. We see that when Bo-nui had said goodbye to Bo-ra’s nurse, she’d asked her not to tell Su-ho where they’re going, even if he comes back over and over.

Stunned, Su-ho haunts the hospital hallways, remembering his last phone call with Bo-nui when she’d sounded so upset. He seems to realize something and goes to see Bo-nui’s fortuneteller, who doesn’t look surprised to see him.

He asks in a too-calm voice what he said to Bo-nui – he needs to know, so that he can lift her curse. “The knot was tied, here, so I need to untie it here.” The fortuneteller says that he can’t tell such a secret and that he only speaks what he sees. What a person does after hearing his advice is all on them.

Scoffing, Su-ho asks what he sees and hears, then… “Will I die if I’m with her?” The fortuneteller says that he feels badly, and he feels bad for Bo-nui, but he’s never prayed for anything bad to happen to her.

Su-ho doesn’t buy that for one second, and snaps that if he wanted Bo-nui to live, he should have given her ways to live. But instead he told her she was a source of bad luck, and his words have put her life on a dangerous path. He tells the fortuneteller, “She is my everything,” then turns to go. When he gets back to his hospital room, Su-ho finally sees the paper with the protective symbols Bo-nui left under his pillow.

Bo-nui chatters cheerfully at Bo-ra as she settles her into her new hospital room, but Bo-ra can tell something is wrong with her unni. Bo-nui says that she’s thankful and happy to be with Bo-ra again, and assures her that everything is fine.

The Zeze team all wonder why Bo-nui is quitting, especially since Su-ho is unemployed (they don’t know Bo-nui left Su-ho), but Dal-nim keeps quiet as she packs up Bo-nui’s desk. They get a new bet going that Bo-nui and Su-ho are starting a new company together, and finally Dal-nim screams, “Stop!” She fusses at them for all the bets they’ve made on Su-ho and Bo-nui.

She mopes down at the coffee shop, even turning down Ryang-ha’s offer of juice. Ryang-ha complains that Bo-nui has now left Su-ho twice, and Dal-nim asks if Su-ho is having a hard time. Ryang-ha admits that he’s doing well enough, but that worries him more than if he wasn’t.

Dal-nim defends Bo-nui, saying that she must be hurting a lot too, but Ryang-ha argues that she shouldn’t have left him if she cared that much (preach it, friend!). Dal-nim and Ryang-ha agree that the two should just forget everything and be in love, and Ryang-ha seizes the moment, asking Dal-nim if they can be in love, too.

Su-ho calls all the hospitals he can looking for Bo-ra, but gets nowhere. He tries to hide it from Amy but she sees his notes, and he has to admit that Bo-nui left and took Bo-ra with her. Amy pouts that he never looked for her this hard when she disappeared… poor Amy, nobody gets her jokes, heh. She takes part of his list and offers to make some calls.

The first person she calls is Gary, who says he’s too busy to talk. He grows oddly vague when Amy asks if he’s heard from Bo-nui, and he’s busted when he’s not surprised to hear that Bo-nui took Bo-ra out of the hospital.

Sure enough, he’s at Bo-ra’s new hospital, delivering some clothes for the sisters. He worries when he realizes that Bo-nui is running a fever, though she convinces him she just needs to rest. But that night she develops a cough, sleeping on the floor of Bo-ra’s room.

Su-ho texts Gary asking him to call him, because he has a favor to ask.

Ryang-ha brings Su-ho the things he left at Bo-nui’s place, along with the news that the hacker has been caught. He calls the hacker a “sly raccoon,” determined to sue him within an inch of his life, but Su-ho tells him to just settle. He doesn’t have anything to sue for, anyway.

Gary calls Su-ho, who meets with him at his apartment. He tells Su-ho that Bo-nui is alright, though he gripes that Su-ho made her cry and he couldn’t refuse to help her when she was crying. He thinks she’s still crying on the inside, without Su-ho. He tells Su-ho to go see her, and do something about this.

The Zeze team worry about Su-ho, and decide to visit him even though he said not to. But Ryang-ha tells them he’s been discharged, and he seems optimistic as he says that time will heal everything.

He calls Dal-nim out to the hall and asks after Bo-nui, but Dal-nim can’t reach her either. Ryang-ha tells her that Su-ho really wasn’t well enough to leave the hospital, worried that he might do something dumb over Bo-nui. Dal-nim tells him to just take care of Ryang-ha, but he leans close and says that he wants to take care of her. Awww.

Bo-nui sees Su-ho waiting for her outside Bo-ra’s hospital room, but he’s just in her imagination. She sees him several more times, but it’s never really him, and she grows used to seeing his image everywhere. She sits on a bench next to another image and apologizes for not being there for him, and thanks him for letting her see him like this, healthy and whole.

He smiles sweetly and fades away, and Bo-nui sighs and goes back inside. She doesn’t see the real Su-ho, watching her from around the corner.

He finds her later, and she just stares at him while he speaks. He says he’s not here to make her come back to him, or to be clingy. “I’m here to say goodbye. I’ll break up with you.” What, nooo!

He steps closer and asks why she left without talking to him first, calling her mannerless. She’s the one who said the last memory of a person is the most important, so he wants to break up properly.

They walk together slowly, Bo-nui slightly behind Su-ho, and he says they should walk together until the end of the path. They step over a path of stones over a stream, and when Su-ho holds his hand out to help her, Bo-nui takes it. They stop to rest on a bench, and Bo-nui asks Su-ho if he was in a lot of pain.

He says he was, a little, and asks after Bo-ra. He admits that he’s not skipping meals and he’s sleeping well, and he asks if he can keep the flowers she’s been carrying.

Neither of them looks at the other during this entire exchange, and soon they reach the end of the path. Su-ho tells Bo-nui that she said everyone she loves leaves her, but he’s not one of them. “So come find me. Whether it takes one or ten years, it doesn’t matter. Cheer up, and come to me.”

Su-ho grabs Bo-nui and hugs her, whispering one soft goodbye. Without looking at her again, he walks away, and Bo-nui’s tiny goodbye goes unheard.

A year later, Su-ho wakes in Bo-nui and Boss Won’s old office by rolling off the couch where he’s been sleeping. He still has Bo-nui’s lucky cactus on his desk, and though the office is a little run-down, at least Su-ho now has a home and a new business.

He and Ryang-ha meet with some investors, where he explains that he hasn’t been working on games for the last year, but instead created a computer vaccine and distributed it for free. The investors worry that Su-ho’s hiatus will have him behind on the latest gaming technology, but Su-ho confidently tells them to look at his proposal and see for themselves.

After the meeting Ryang-ha wonders how they can work up a proposal this fast when even the Zeze team had trouble, but Su-ho is all What’s wrong with my team? HAHA, his “team” is Chicken Ajusshi and Boss Won, who mostly just eats.

When Su-ho tells everyone that they need a game proposal, Boss Won chirps that Bo-nui is the best at presentations. Mention of her name makes Su-ho grin widely.

Bo-nui visits Bo-ra, who is in a wheelchair, but she’s up and alert and complaining about homework like a normal teenager. She’s still in touch with Gary, and she says that Bo-nui’s smile sometimes makes her sad. Bo-nui says that there’s a shooting star expected in a few days, and tells Bo-ra to think of a wish to make.

Bo-nui sits alone after dark looking at the stars, remembing how Su-ho once turned her rooftop into a starry wonderland and asked her to trust in him. That same night Su-ho stays up late working on the proposal, stopping ocasionally to look at his lucky cactus.

The next day Bo-nui gets all gussied up, and Su-ho paces his office looking nervous. Smiling and anticipatory, they both head out to meet with someone.

Epilogue. Su-ho says his final goodbye, and leaves Bo-nui standing alone. This time we see his face as he walks away from her, tears streaming down his face.

COMMENTS

I had a feeling that Bo-nui was never the “raccoon” that was making Su-ho’s life difficult, and I don’t think that Ryang-ha’s calling the hacker a “sly raccoon” was a mistake. His problems started when his ex-employee messed with his original game, and everything bad that happened to Su-ho professionally could be traced back to the hacker’s actions. I won’t be surprised if finding out that the hacker is the raccoon that Bo-nui’s been thinking was herself, will be the reason Bo-nui will trust herself to accept Su-ho again, though a large part of me hopes it won’t be. I would much prefer she break out of her superstitions herself, without another twisty oops-I-interpreted-wrong explanation from the fortuneteller.

I am officially angry with Bo-nui. I hatehatehate nobly idiocy, especially when the Noble Idiot doesn’t even bother to explain to the person they’re leaving what’s going on. It angers me on multiple levels, not the least of which is that it takes all the agency from the other person to make their own decisions in a relationship, and assumes that only the Noble Idiot knows what’s best. It’s stupid, but even worse, it’s disrespectful. It takes two people to be in a relationship, and while it only takes one to decide to end one, I believe that it’s owed to the other person to at least explain your reasoning and give them a chance to respond.

Those are my feelings about Noble Idiocy in general — specifically to Bo-nui and Su-ho, it’s selfish of her to ignore what he did by risking his own life to save hers. It’s NOT her fault — and even if it were, Su-ho loved her enough to take the risk, and he deserved the right to at least a conversation. It bothers me that Bo-nui kept telling herself to trust him, but when it really came down to it, she went right back to her old, superstitious ways. I understand that she’s got years of conditioning and fear backing up her actions, and I don’t blame her for her reaction to Su-ho’s accident. What I do blame her for is the way she behaved afterward. I know that she told herself that she left for his own good, but there was no reason to do it in such a cruel manner, as he lay in the hospital recovering from injuries he sustained while saving her life.

On the other hand, it’s just another of the many reasons to love Su-ho, to see him let Bo-nui go with dignity (his). As Bo-nui said, he doesn’t know how to give up, so to let her go that way must have been harder for him than if he’d tried to hang onto her. But I understand that for him, at some point he had to stop fighting her dependence on superstition and realize that nothing he ever does will make her change… if she’s going to change, she has to do it on her own. His hanging around her will only make her dig in her heels and won’t do any good, and as much as it looked like it was killing him, breaking things off cleanly was the best thing that Su-ho could do, for both of them.

But he also left that door open for Bo-nui to know that he’s not leaving her, he’s just backing off so that she can come to him when she’s ready. Unlike her, he’s putting his future in her hands and giving her all the decision-making power. He’s telling her that his love won’t change, that he’s here and he believes in her, and that he believes that she’ll come back to him when she’s ready. He’s the opposite of the Noble Idiot — he’s just noble.

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