Temperature of Love: Episodes 35-36

by LollyPip

Things begin to pick up in the romance department for our couple, but the universe always finds a way of creating a balance. For everything that’s given, something is taken away, and I can’t help but worry that they’re not done suffering for their desire to be together at the exclusion of everything else.

 
EPISODE 35 RECAP

Hyun-soo rushes to catch Jung-sun before his flight to Hong Kong, but she seems to realize that she’ll never make it in time. She pulls over and cries, then turns for home. When she gets there, a tap on her car window surprises her, and she looks up to see Jung-sun looking down at her.

She rolls down the window and starts to say she was scared she’d never see him again. But she doesn’t even finish the sentence before Jung-sun dives through the window to kiss her.

They end up at Jung-sun’s place, still kissing, and they tumble together onto his bed. They stare at each other for a long moment, touching each other’s faces. Jung-sun buries his face in Hyun-soo’s neck as they hug, and then they’re kissing again.

A long time later, as they’re still cuddling in bed, Jung-sun says sleepily that he missed Hyun-soo terribly when he went to Paris after they broke up the first time. She tells him that she won the writing contest but still wasn’t happy even though it was what she wanted, because he wasn’t there.

Jung-sun says that he got through those years in Paris by keeping his train ticket from the trip they took taped up in his locker, and thinking of her whenever he saw it. He’s surprised when Hyun-soo admits that she went to Paris to look for him.

In the morning, Jung-sun makes breakfast then wafts a cup of coffee under Hyun-soo’s nose to wake her. He watches her closely as she eats, then tells her that he won’t go to Hong Kong if she asks him not to go. She says pitifully that she doesn’t want him to go, and he just pats her head and smiles.

As Jung-sun is walking Hyun-soo out, they run smack into Won-joon in the restaurant, who stares at them, slack-jawed. Hyun-soo slinks out the door with Jung-sun right behind her, leaving Won-joon laughing.

Kyung calls Jung-woo to ask if he’s seen Hyun-soo, worried that she hasn’t come home. Jung-woo rushes right over, but Hyun-soo arrives home just a minute later. Jung-woo stares at her, seeming to suspect something.

He goes to Good Soup, and when he sees Jung-sun, he just turns and walks away. Jung-sun follows him out and Jung-woo asks why he isn’t in Hong Kong. When Jung-sun says something came up, Jung-woo leaves.

Hyun-soo confesses that she was with Jung-sun, and Kyung feels bad for calling Jung-woo. Feeling a bit guilty herself, Hyun-soo checks her messages and finds one from Jung-woo, so she tries to call him but he doesn’t answer.

Hyun-soo’s mother recieves a gift of a hat from Jung-woo (to cover her surgery scars), and she pouts to her husband that she really likes Jung-woo. She wishes he would marry Hyun-soo, but her husband reminds her that that’s Hyun-soo’s decision.

Meanwhile, Jung-sun meets with Chef Song to explain why he didn’t arrive in Hong Kong as expected. He’s honest about his reasons, saying that he was afraid he’d lose the woman he loves if he left. Chef Song doesn’t understand, since he’d only have been gone for six months and would have made frequent trips home to check on Good Soup.

But Jung-sun says that he already lost her once and wasn’t willing to risk it again. Chef Song is incredulous that Jung-sun is willing to give up his career for love, but he smiles and says he’s not surprised.

Jung-sun picks up Hyun-soo that night to take her on a date. He pitches a tent and they sit by a fire, enjoying wine and a fancy picnic. Jung-sun serves the same wine he served when he first had Hyun-soo try truffles, and she recognizes the taste.

When Jung-sun says that he’s not going to Hong Kong, Hyun-soo asks if that’s okay. He says that normally it’s not, but that if he left now, he’d lose the most important thing in his life.

He adds that they still haven’t solved the problem that broke them up, and Hyun-soo says that couples often break up repeatedly for the same reasons. So he says they should decide their ending first, and asks Hyun-soo for her promise that they won’t break up again. After thinking for a long moment, she agrees.

Jung-sun’s mom comes home to find a breakup note from Daniel, saying that he’s breaking up with her in a note because he’s afraid of her, and that he’s leaving because she kept asking for money. She stares at the note, then throws her drink glass against the wall, muttering that he never even gave her any money.

Over casting discussions for Hyun-soo’s show, Joon-ha gets frustrated when he hates every combination of actors that she and Kyung pick. He complains that he’s getting nothing from them even though he shaved his beard, only to get teased for it. He deflects by asking if Hyun-soo has good news, and she blushes as Kyung reveals that she and Jung-sun reconciled.

Joon-ha says that they’ll probably break up again, since that’s what happened to him. He huffs indignantly when the ladies make fun of him, and Kyung tells him that nobody cares for him as much as they do.

He slams his hand on the table and gets right in her face, snapping that he shaved his beard for her. Amused, Hyun-soo squeals that Joon-ha wants Kyung to kiss him, so Kyung shoves him away with a hand to the face, LOL.

Joon-ha heads to Jung-woo’s office to ask him to call the actors they’re interested in, but Jung-woo just grumbles that he’s always asking him for favors. Jung-woo suddenly goes still and asks, “Hyun-soo… why did I think she was mine?”

Joon-ha says that Jung-woo treats love like a business and waits for the right timing, while Jung-sun asked Hyun-soo out the very day he met her. He says that if Jung-woo had gone after Hyun-soo back then, things may have turned out differently.

It makes Jung-woo think about the first time he met Hyun-soo, when Joon-ha brought her to his office. She’d refused his job offer and his handshake, and we see now that Jung-woo had followed her to the building’s lobby to say that she was rude.

Hyun-soo had objected to his speaking banmal to her, and he’d argued that he spoke informally because she rudely refused his handshake. She had apologized, saying she’d had a bad day. Jung-woo had been impressed by her willingness to apologize and adapt.

Hong-ah and Director Min also hold a casting meeting, where Director Min argues that everyone Hong-ah wants is in high demand. She’s not worried, saying that the actors will want to be in the best drama, obviously considering that to be hers.

She goes to see Jung-woo, only to learn that he’s canceled all of his appointments and gone to his home in Daegu. She stomps off to her car in a snit, and on the way out of the parking garage, she nearly plows right into another car.

While folding napkins with Soo-jung, Won-joon gets a call from Hong-ah that she’s at the hospital, and he runs out in a panic. He arrives at the ER to find her perfectly fine, and when she says that she never said she was hurt, he heaves a huge sigh and walks out.

Hong-ah follows him, but Won-joon is a thousand percent done with her manipulations. He says that she’ll never treat him with sincerity, and she whines that he’s the one who started liking someone else, so he asks if she was ever planning to return his feelings.

Hong-ah says that Won-joon was like food to her, something you can’t live without, but he just hears it as her habit of taking him for granted. He says that just being near her used to be enough for him, but now it’s not enough, and he wants to be loved in return.

While he’s trying to rest at home, Jung-woo wearily accepts a call from CP Yoo, who nixes Joon-ha’s request to outsource a camera team. Next is a call from his secretary with a publication rights question, and he snaps at her to tell the network that he’s out of the country and buries his face in his hands.

After the restaurant closes, Jung-sun makes a nice meal for himself and Hyun-soo, and when she shows up, he plays a movie on the wall with a projector. During the movie she gets a call from his mother, and this time she asks him what she should do. Jung-sun says she should answer if she wants to. She does, and when Jung-sun’s mother says she needs a friend right now, Hyun-soo promises to call right back and hangs up.

She tells Jung-sun that his mother thinks they’re still broken up, so it’s likely that she does just need a friend and isn’t trying to get to Jung-sun somehow. Jung-sun says that he always gets frustrated when he talks to his mom, and he’s taken aback when Hyun-soo says that she can talk to her easily because she’s not family, so there are no grudges or history to overcome.

She says that she’s just beginning her relationship with his mother, and that it’s fine so far. With a good-natured grin, Jung-sun wonders how long that will last.

 
EPISODE 36 RECAP

Hong-ah crashes a meeting between Hyun-soo and her team, and she’s upset to see that they’ve offered a role in their show to an actress she wants for her drama. She accuses Hyun-soo of having no ethics and threatens to stop being friends with her, whining that Hyun-soo is getting special treatment from Jung-woo.

When Hyun-soo tells her to stop, she doubles down instead, saying that Hyun-soo was cruel to Jung-woo by rejecting him. Hyun-soo tries to see Jung-woo, but he’s still not showing up to work. She calls him, but he’s asleep on his couch at home.

Worried, she goes to see him, but he just says that he’s been working nonstop and needed a break. She offers to make him something to eat, but he laughs and does the cooking himself. She’s impressed by Jung-woo’s cooking skills, and when he wipes sauce from her lips and licks it off his finger, it makes them both laugh.

Jung-woo tells Hyun-soo that he lived here until his father’s business failed, when he was twelve. He says he remembers creditors coming to put red seizure stickers on everything, but he was still happy. Hyun-soo figures it was because his family was together. Jung-woo just says that he thought trust was more valuable than love.

Hyun-soo volunteers to do the dishes in return for the meal. While she’s at the sink, Jung-woo slowly approaches her and puts his arms around her neck, laying his cheek on her hair. She doesn’t move, and he closes his eyes as a single tear tracks down his face.

… And then he wakes up. He finds his phone ringing with the call from Hyun-soo, who asks him to meet her at the batting cage to talk. She tries to get him to hit some balls, but he asks her to get to the point.

They sit, and Hyun-soo confesses that she lied when she said Jung-woo wasn’t her type, and she wonders out loud what would have happened if she hadn’t met Jung-sun again. Jung-woo thinks about all the little moments they’ve shared over the years, and back at home, he also remembers the way he’s treated both Hyun-soo and Jung-sun recently. Just for a minute, he allows himself to cry.

The next day, a diner shows up at Good Soup with a giant chip on her shoulder. She’s a food blogger who’s known for being mean, and she’s been to Good Soup before and raked them over the coals. Soo-jung is friendly towards her, then warns Jung-sun to take extra care with their food. Later, the blogger leaves after her meal without paying, telling the cashier that her next column will be on Good Soup.

Jung-sun’s mom meets with Hyun-soo, sighing and moping as she says that she and Hyun-soo have a lot in common because she and Daniel broke up. Hyun-soo hesitantly tells her that she and Jung-sun got back together and that he’s not going to Hong Kong, which is news to his mother.

She seems genuinely upset as she says that she was trying not to show how sad she is about her breakup, thinking that Jung-sun was in Hong Kong. Hyun-soo says that they still have something in common—they’re dating younger men—which means that Hyun-soo is in the unique position to offer her comfort. Jung-sun’s mom marvels at how good Hyun-soo is with words, and Hyun-soo says that she is too, and that Jung-sun got it from her because she can never win an argument with him.

Mom complains that things were fine with Daniel, until she got his note. It had said that he was scared to break up face-to-face, and that he was annoyed that she kept asking him for money. Hyun-soo thinks that she shouldn’t want to be with someone who gets angry over money, and Mom wonders what’s so great about money that people are slaves to it.

Hyun-soo tells her that she made a pittance when she first started writing, and that her sister would nag her about it constantly. She says that money beats even family, and when Mom hilariously responds by asking who’s paying for coffee today, Hyun-soo offers to pay with a smile.

Jung-woo gets himself back to work, where he finds Joon-ha waiting to beg for that special camera crew. Joon-ha even invokes Hyun-soo’s name in an attempt to get special treatment, but Jung-woo holds firm with his refusal, saying that he’s tired of picking up after them both.

Jung-sun’s mother finds him at home and asks why he didn’t let her know that he didn’t go to Hong Kong. He says they’ve never shared the details of their lives, but she argues that this isn’t just a detail. She asks if he stayed because of Hyun-soo, and when he says he did, she flops down at the table and pouts that Daniel left her.

She asks if Jung-sun really likes Hyun-soo enough to give up a big career opportunity for her, and he says he does. She asks tearfully why she can’t find someone like him, when she’s always done what the men in her life wanted.

She wails that he even went back to Hyun-soo when she broke up with him, but men always leave her. She declares that she’s staying the night and stomps off to Jung-sun’s room, sobbing.

Joon-ha is beside himself at being treated so dismissively by Jung-woo, and Kyung wonders if this means he won’t help them get the actors they want. Sure enough, it looks like the actress they’re both interested in is strongly considering Hong-ah’s drama, so Hong-ah goes to talk to Jung-woo. But she learns that the actress has already signed onto a drama by another writer entirely.

When she asks Jung-woo what to do, he tells her to work hard and stop pestering him. She asks why he’s being like this, but he just says that in entertainment, they make products that make other people happy, but that lately he’s been thinking about how he’s been treating himself.

Won-joon shows up late to a date with Soo-jung, and she says it’s time they made a decision about their relationship. Won-joon is surprised, having thought that they were already dating, and that she only said that about dating for a month to take the pressure off him.

She says that he’s been great, but that she won’t date him, because she can see how hard he’s trying. She explains that that’s the problem—some things should come naturally. Won-joon promises to stop trying, then he hears how ridiculous that sounds and hangs his head sheepishly.

Soo-jung laughs, but she says that it will never work with Hong-ah in the picture. They both agree to keep working at Good Soup, and Won-joon even promises to leave if things get awkward for her. They shake hands and reintroduce themselves, this time just as friends.

That night, Jung-sun’s mom can’t sleep, so she gets up to take a sleeping pill. Exhausted, she decides to take two instead.

Jung-sun ends up at Hyun-soo’s place, saying that he’s avoiding his mother, and he gives a cheeky wink when Hyun-soo asks where he’ll sleep tonight. They try to sneak into Hyun-soo’s room, but they keep making noise and waking Kyung. Finally Jung-sun gives up when his phone rings with a call from Mom, and he heads home after all to check on her.

He finds his mother half-unconscious on the floor after overdosing on the sleeping pills, and he runs to her. He settles her on the couch and she explains that she just took too much medicine trying to sleep. She says sleepily that she really does want to fix herself, because she’s tired of living like this.

She tells Jung-sun that her life was good until she was thirty-five, and asks if he remembers her then. Jung-sun says he does, and that she was the best mother back then. His mom apologizes sincerely, and Jung-sun says that he wishes he could make her happy, but that he can’t do it for her.

The next day, Jung-woo calls him and says it’s time they settle the debt between them. He goes to Good Soup during their afternoon break and tells Jung-sun that when he owns something that suits someone else better, it’s hard for him to keep it because it reminds him of that person. Jung-sun remembers him saying this before and quips that it still sounds corny.

Jung-woo says that it’s time he gave Jung-sun the beating he owes him, and asks if he’d rather talk before or after getting hit. Grinning, Jung-sun decides he’d rather talk first and try to avoid being hit altogether. Jung-woo smiles, and the two friends both laugh.

 
COMMENTS

I know I’m supposed to be happy that Jung-sun and Hyun-soo are back together, and a large part of me is, really. But I have to say, I’m on Chef Song’s side on this one… I don’t understand why Jung-sun had to give up on the Hong Kong opportunity completely. I think he acted emotionally rather than logically when he decided to stay, instead of trying to find a way to make the situation work for him. He wouldn’t have been gone but a few months, and would have been home often. He and Hyun-soo could have seen each other when he visited and eased back into their relationship without all the pressure they’d been putting on each other.

I think it would have been a perfect solution—Jung-sun could have worked on his career while Hyun-soo focused on her drama, and they would have seen each other once a month or so instead of feeling like they had to give up something important to spend time with each other. Now they’re right back where they started, without having talked about what went wrong or how to fix things, and they risk falling right back into that “you aren’t giving me what I want” trap. Maybe I’m just soured on Hyun-soo after her recent behavior, but I see her asking Jung-sun to stay as another selfish move on her part. If she were truly thinking about what’s best for them both and their relationship, and not just what she wants right this minute, she would have told him to go and that they could work on their relationship problems slowly.

Not that Jung-sun is off the hook completely, because he seems to have thrown all of his level-headedness out the window when it comes to Hyun-soo. He kept groveling for her approval while they were together, doing things that weren’t good for his career or his emotional health, just because she demanded it. And it was never good enough, so he even proposed, even though he’s admitted that he’s not ready for anything so serious and permanent. So to throw away such a good career boost, that would have had him right back home after only a short time commitment, seems a terrible decision. Even he admitted that they still haven’t solved the issues that caused them to break up, so I don’t think he’s oblivious to the fact that this gamble may not have been the smartest, but he’s willing to make it anyway.

On the other hand, I’m incredibly impressed at the maturity with which Won-joon and Soo-jung handled their “breakup.” Soo-jung could tell that Won-joon was putting too much effort into something that should have been easy, and even he had to admit that he wanted to like her more than he actually liked her. But they talked about it calmly, parted amicably, and started over as friends. Now that’s how you do it. I just hope it doesn’t mean that Won-joon is going to end up with Hong-ah after all this. She would have to do some serious changing as a person before she deserves a great guy like him, and he’s pretty disgusted with her right now. I just have a sinking feeling that that’s where we’re headed.

And Jung-woo seems to be having an attack of common sense as well, which I’m really happy to see. I never disliked Jung-woo, only the way he was behaving. But it’s as if Hyun-soo’s confession was exactly what he needed to hear—as if knowing that he was someone she could have loved is enough, and that knowing that, he can let go of his iron grip on her. I think that he finally realized that he was the one to blame for not trying hard enough when he had the chance, and has decided to stop treating the two people he loves most as things he possesses instead of people with their own minds and hearts. Luckily they’re both very forgiving people, and if Jung-woo truly changes and lets go of his obsession with Hyun-soo, I think they can get their friendship back. In the meantime, I truly am glad to see Jung-sun and Hyun-soo doing everything they can to be together… even if I don’t agree with their methods, their devotion to each other is beautiful.

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