Twenty Five Twenty One: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by mistyisles

Well, we’ve reached the end of the road. Our characters have all grown, some together, some apart, and it’s time for us to say goodbye. It’s been quite the journey, and there are still a few tear-stained twists and turns to navigate before it’s all over, but if there’s one thing Twenty Five Twenty One has taught us, it’s that nothing stays the same forever – and maybe that’s okay.

 
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP

To wrap up last week’s conflict, we’re given two important conversations. First, we see that Yoo-rim was indeed the one who asked Yi-jin to frame the news of her going to Russia in terms of chasing money instead of her father’s accident.

Far from blaming him, Yoo-rim had likened it to winning fencing tournaments – sure, she may feel sorry for defeating her opponents, but she’d never apologize for it, because it’s part of the job.

Hee-do understands this, too, and when she sees Yi-jin weeping at the tunnel, she cradles his face and wipes his tears Together, they scrub the graffiti away, and Hee-do asks Yi-jin to share everything with her – happiness, misery, fear – instead of trying to shoulder it all on his own.

Time starts moving faster, finally carrying us into 2001, where he’s 25 and she’s 21. Through chipper emails to Yoo-rim, Hee-do catches us up on everyone. Ji-woong starts up a fashion inspiration website, which years later he turns into a successful fashion business. Seung-wan goes to college and is almost immediately elected class representative. And Yoo-rim’s also making new friends in Russia.

But then the upbeat tone fades into silence as Yoo-rim slowly stops reading Hee-do’s emails.

The two are poised to face each other at a huge competition in Madrid, and face tremendous pressure to win over each other: Yoo-rim to show up everyone who spoke against her, and Hee-do to fulfill a sort of patriotic duty. To make matters worse, the media twists their words into insults against each other.

Scared her resolve to win will waver, Hee-do refuses to speak to Yoo-rim once they both arrive in Madrid. That brings us to the tense, emotional match we saw a glimpse of last week. The girls are neck-and-neck throughout, and at one point Hee-do even challenges the ref’s call, just as Yoo-rim did years ago.

Ultimately, though, Hee-do wins the final point. Unlike other matches, she doesn’t celebrate, and when she finally takes off her mask, she’s crying. And so is Yoo-rim. And so are their friends and family watching from home. And so am I.

Hee-do opens her arms, and that’s all it takes. They cry in each other’s arms again, their friendship fully restored, both understanding why the other was avoiding contact.

And I’m so happy to report that the friendship lasts throughout the rest of their careers and beyond. Yoo-rim is the first to retire, and opens up a fencing club back in Korea, training the next generation of fencing stars.

Hee-do continues fencing for a bit longer, but ultimately decides to retire, too. And when Hee-do gives her last press conference, Yoo-rim is there with flowers, arriving just in time to hear Hee-do say the most honorable moment of her career was being Yoo-rim’s rival.

But back to 2001. Yi-jin gets permission to transfer departments, and aww – he gets to work with his mentor sunbae again! And double aww – Sunbae knows exactly why Yi-jin transferred, and is super supportive, even calling Hee-do to join them for drinks so she can cheer Yi-jin up after a particularly hard evening.

Yi-jin’s new department keeps him far busier than sports did, and he and Hee-do have to get a little creative and sacrifice a lot of sleep to spend any time together. He carefully sets aside the days surrounding their anniversary so they can go on a trip together, but it’s not to be… because it falls on 9/11.

Yi-jin is put on the next plane to the US so he can report live from New York as rescue workers try to locate survivors of the attacks. Once there, he’s overwhelmed by the devastation. But then he helps a woman spread the word about a missing colleague, and realizes there is something he can do.

The ordeal takes a huge toll on him, plaguing him with nightmares and beating him down day after day. Still, he clings to the hope that his work can accomplish something good for the world, and that hope keeps him in New York much longer than he’d intended.

Days turn into weeks and then months, and Hee-do can do nothing but watch from the other side of the world as the emotional distance between them grows. She sees the end of their relationship coming a mile away, even as she wants desperately to stop it from happening. But when Yi-jin applies and is accepted to be stationed in New York as a foreign correspondent, she knows it’s time.

What it really boils down to is that they can’t be what each other needs anymore. Yi-jin can’t bring himself to burden Hee-do with the trauma he’s experiencing, so she gets shut out and can’t give him any comfort – or receive any from him when she’s down.

But as she tries to explain this, they both get so worked up and defensive that they end up saying horrible things they don’t quite mean, with enough painful truth mixed in to devastate them both.

Deep down, they both know they had to break up, but also that it should never have happened in the way it did. So on the day of Yi-jin’s flight back to New York, they race to find each other and say a proper farewell. At first, it seems they might miss each other in passing, but they finally meet at a bus stop, where they say their tearful goodbyes and officially let each other go.

We get closure on everyone else’s next steps, too. Seung-wan becomes a variety show PD, and potentially gets together with Yi-jin’s brother. Hee-do’s mom recommends Yi-jin to replace her as anchor when she retires, and he’s able to reunite his family under one roof. Ji-woong enlists the help of Yoo-rim’s students to help him propose, and the two live happily ever after.

Hee-do gets married… to someone. Presumably with the surname Kim. And if the present-day storyline hadn’t existed in the first place, I’d probably be completely satisfied.

But it did, and I felt like it undermined its own message just a little. After the heartbreaking but, in my opinion, satisfying closure that was the bus stop farewell, Hee-do apparently carries so much regret and dissatisfaction that she has to have a similar moment again years later – and only after Min-chae gives her the missing diary wherein she had written what she really wanted to say to Yi-jin and he had done the same. It felt redundant and one-sided. And if her conclusion was that the one thing they got to keep forever was “that summer,” then why make it a point to say a few weeks ago that she didn’t remember that summer?

Still, on the whole, I loved Twenty Five Twenty One a lot, so I’m going to ignore the present-day segments and focus on the good memories that I’ll carry away from it. Which, in a way, was an important point the story of Hee-do and Yi-jin made: life has both beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, satisfaction and unresolved longing for what could have been and yet can never be.

Sometimes, what we need in one season of life isn’t what we’ll need, or have, forever. But having what we need when we need it – like Hee-do and Yi-jin helped each other get through the lowest points of their lives and learn to soar on their own – gives us the strength and hope to face whatever life may throw at us next.

And sometimes, despite our best efforts, life beats us down and shatters our dreams for no reason at all. When that happens, all we can do is try to pick up the pieces and make something new. And while that new thing won’t be what the old could have been, it can be beautiful and meaningful in its own right, even if it’s not quite what we wanted.

 
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