Seasons of Blossom: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by mistyisles

Summer draws to a close, and so does our story. As we prepare to say goodbye to our characters, they must also prepare to stop dwelling in the past and move on into the next chapter of their lives.

 
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP

The photo of So-mang with a student after hours (Jae-min, but his face isn’t visible) spreads. Her head teacher is frustrated, but understands what was really going on. He urges her to explain everything to the disciplinary committee so she won’t have to sacrifice her entire future career, but So-mang refuses to let Jae-min’s name be attached to the scandal. Instead, she resigns.

The teacher who told the ghost story before wastes little time in expressing his satisfaction at her getting “comeuppance” for talking back to him. His rant makes the whole class uncomfortable, and finally Jae-min can’t take it anymore. Jumping to his feet, he takes the teacher to task for speaking so cruelly of both So-mang and Ha-min, and when the teacher doesn’t back down, he comes out with the rest: the student from the story was his brother, and So-mang was the only person Jae-min could talk to about said brother. Then Jae-min storms out of the classroom before the teacher can stop him.

Seeing that Sun-hee wants to bolt after him but can’t, Bo-mi secures permission slips for both of them to leave school once that class period ends. She extends them as an olive branch, which Sun-hee reluctantly accepts.

The ice broken, Bo-mi explains that although she thought she was giving Jae-min up out of consideration for Sun-hee, she now realizes her feelings for him simply weren’t all that compelling — but her feelings for Jin-young are. When she worries that Jin-young might not like her back, Sun-hee rolls her eyes. She knows perfectly well that Jin-young feels the same.

Sun-hee’s confirmation is all the push Bo-mi needs. She runs to meet Jin-young (who was on his way to find her anyway), but they take so long building up to the confession that Bo-mi’s bus arrives before she can get the words “I like you” out. Jin-young seems to know anyway, and tells her with a smile that she can say it tomorrow.

Despite how often people in this show have regretted letting something important go unsaid, this time it works out just fine. The school bully drops by their classroom to make horrible “jokes” about Jae-min and Ha-min, sprinkling in insults against Bo-mi, Sun-hee, and Jin-young when Bo-mi stands up to him. That gives Bo-mi the chance to declare her feelings for Jin-young in front of the whole class as the three of them take the bully down (quite literally). Afterwards, Jin-young waits for Bo-mi with the biggest smile so he can officially tell her he likes her, too. They’re ready to be together for real.

Jae-min goes to find So-mang, feeling a bit freer now that his secret is out. But as they broach the subject of the night Ha-min died, a terrible realization crashes over him. That night, Ha-min had been waiting for him to come home, but he’d gone to Sun-hee’s house instead.

Being kids, she’d asked offhand if he ever wished he didn’t have a brother, and he’d admitted that the way their parents treated him because of Ha-min sometimes made him feel lonely. Someone had been standing nearby, and only now does Jae-min realize that person must have been Ha-min himself. Although little Jae-min had followed up that he loved his brother regardless, Ha-min had already left.

The next day, Jae-min doesn’t show up for school. Worse, no one, not even his father, knows where he is. So-mang joins the frantic search, and finally finds him on a rooftop near Ha-min’s grave. Whether he was contemplating jumping off or not, he’s ashamed of having found reasons to blame everyone else for Ha-min’s death when (he now believes) it was his own fault.

Through tears, So-mang corrects him: it was everyone’s fault, and no one person is to blame. But if there’s one thing she knows, it’s that Jae-min was the most precious person in the world to Ha-min, and what he wanted most was to protect him. So-mang gives Jae-min the hug she wishes she’d given Ha-min, promising to remember and feel sorry toward Ha-min together so he doesn’t have to bear it alone.

As summer comes to a close, So-mang visits the art classroom one last time. There, she returns Ha-min’s journal to Jae-min and also gives him a picture she drew of him and Ha-min — both in their high school uniforms — with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Jae-min gives her an unopened letter he found in Ha-min’s room.

Once Jae-min leaves, So-mang pictures Ha-min appearing before her, and her younger self running into his arms. Though they look like their high school selves, they speak as though they’re actually reuniting after the long separation. So-mang wants to believe he’s in a much happier place now, but she’d also like to know he regrets his choice, at least a little.

Speaking of the night he died, Ha-min says the sky was so beautiful that he thought it might be the one place he could breathe more easily. But now he hopes his loved ones can find the courage he lacked to reach out for help from others. He apologizes for turning a beautiful moment in time into heartbreaking memories, and asks her not to read his final letter. Instead, he wants her to truly move on with her own life.

So-mang, in turn, thanks him for the good memories that made her who she is today. With a farewell kiss, the image of Ha-min fades. As she wipes her tears, So-mang bids the summer — and along with it, Ha-min — goodbye.

If I have one complaint about this finale week, it’s that the transitions between the So-mang/Jae-min/Ha-min storyline and the Bo-mi/Jin-young/Sun-hee one felt a lot more jarring than usual. Both coming to terms with grief and learning to communicate one’s feelings are important — even interconnected at times, as with Jae-min — but it felt like I had to keep reeling back in the heavier emotions to focus on the lighter scenes in between.

With that said, though, I did enjoy the present-day students’ storyline in its own right, and I think it becomes stronger when viewed alongside So-mang’s journey. As So-mang came to understand about Ha-min’s death, the breakdown in communication among the present-day students wasn’t necessarily any one person’s fault, either. Rather, they all had to learn how to both express themselves honestly and listen with intent to understand what the others were trying to say.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel once I reached the end of the final episode, but now that we’re here, I think it’s just a general sense of closure. Seasons of Blossom and the emotions it evoked — bitter, sweet, and otherwise — is what it is, and I mean that in a very fond way. Like So-mang, I’m content to dry my tears, take one last look around, and close the door on this particular season.

 
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