Like Flowers in Sand: Episode 12 (Final)

by missvictrix

In its final episode, our drama wraps up the investigation (past and present), and then lets us get to the real heart of the matter: the characters we have come to know and love. It’s a beautiful, satisfying ending to an equally wonderful drama.

 
EPISODE 12

Mi-ran, alone in the dark in the coffee shop, is confronted with the murderous ajusshi who is revealed to be the rice cake shop owner. I’m totally okay with this since he wasn’t very likable, and when we see flashbacks of both “accidental” murders — and how he laughs over them in the present — we realize this guy is a psycho that needs to be locked up. While he’s grabbing Mi-ran by the throat, across the town Doo-shik recalls her childhood memories and remembers that very rice cake shop guy. The whole crew rushes to Ran’s Coffe, and it’s cute and terrifying at the same time. Luckily she is okay, but the bad guy escapes for now and Doo-shik calls in an APB.

With the investigation officially over, Doo-shik and Hyun-wook are back in Seoul before we know it, and Baek-du is left running his endless laps and prepping for the next championship. He’s moody like only Doo-shik makes him moody, and he thinks about how her coming back felt like a dream.

She returns briefly for dinner with his family, but afterwards the two have a seaside conversation and he tells her he’s not going to ask her to stay. She should go to Seoul and fulfill her dreams.

Speaking of childhood dreams, our sweet-hearted and late-blooming Baek-du is next up, and — rightfully so — the camera finally turns its full attention back on our boy and what’s in store for him. In another heartfelt conversation with his dad, we learn that he (like Jin-su has also said) saw something in Baek-du: the makings of a real champion. Dad’s gentle encouragement is enough to make you cry; he tells Baek-du that some flowers bloom later. And if that isn’t the very core of this story, I don’t know what is.

Before the championship, Baek-du and Jin-su also have a great friendship moment when Jin-su challenges him to the third round of the match they never got to finish. They wrestle right there in the gym, and Baek-du wins. They’ve both given it their all, and they’re sweating and smiling ear to ear.

Gosh, these two make my cheeks hurt from smiling! Their complex friendship was one of my favorite elements of this story, and though this concluding episode gave me a lot of what I wanted, I’m greedy and want more of them.

It’s time for the championship, but much like the last time, no one turns up to cheer for Baek-du (but for different reasons). The entire flippin’ town is in a tour bus trying to get there, but are delayed on the road. They listen to the radio broadcast of the fight, and it’s a pure delight to watch them reveling in Baek-du’s quick wins bringing him to the final tier.

Another important figure missing from the championship is Doo-shik. Baek-du made her promise to attend, but right before the game, she and Hyun-wook went to personally collect Rice Cake Ajusshi from where he was hiding out. But of course Baek-du doesn’t know this — he just knows she’s not there.

Nevertheless, our boy is determined to win, and he even tells his final opponent — cutie pie Dong-seok — as much. (Gah, these two are another set of characters I just love together, and their sportsmanship is a joy to watch.) So, even though Doo-shik is notably missing, we see Baek-du give the final fight his all. We get to watch all five rounds, and it’s positively nail-biting. How this drama got me to shed tears over ssireum I don’t exactly know, but seeing Baek-du screaming in victory, and then kneeling on the sand in a moment of overwhelm and gratefulness — what a transcendent
moment.

And so, Baek-du did it! He’s a ssireum champion in a house of ssireum champions, and he did it purely based on his own determination, and a newfound understanding of how to fight playing to his own strengths. In other words, he wins because he finally blooms into the fighter that’s been growing in him all along. And does he strut around like a hotshot champion afterwards? Nope, instead he makes a fool out of himself (his friends’ words, not mine) on national TV, shouting about Doo-shik and their promise — this boy will always be like this, and that makes me happy.

After his big win, Baek-du is still brooding over Doo-shik and her lack of replies to his messages, and is even hanging out in her abandoned yard. But when he finally pops out of the gate to head to the celebration at Mi-ran’s cafe, who’s sitting out front but Doo-shik?

She explains why she couldn’t attend the championship, and then reveals accidentally that she did see his post-victory TV appearance, LOL. When Baek-du notices her bloody lip, though, that’s when she calmly tells him that she caught the murderer herself. It’s a quiet moment, but it’s also a full one: we know how much this has meant to both Doo-shik and to Mi-ran, and how much Doo-shik needed to be the person to get the case sorted for good.

Baek-du’s eyes are understandably drawn to Doo-shik’s red and puffy lips (only K-dramas can make getting your lip ripped into something this romantic), and the conversation turns to the fact that she’s supposed to answer his confession. She does this in the usual Doo-shik way: aggravation and exasperation. But in the affirmative. Baek-du is about to die from happiness, and when she confesses again, more seriously, he leans in and kisses her.

The show wraps up with a scene at Mi-ran’s cafe where all our grown-up kids are hanging around acting like the kids they still are inside. The years may have passed, but the dynamics are the same. We then close with a scene of them all running along the shore, and there’s a beautiful bit of narration from Baek-du to pull everything together:
 

Sometimes I thought about how even though I was over 30 before I knew it, I was still like an 11-year-old kid on the inside. I thought I’d never have those bright, happy, shining days again in my life, and I even tried not to recall them. But life is unpredictable. It turns out that the brightest and happiest time of my life is this present moment.

What a special drama. Going into Like Flowers in Sand, I expected a K-drama sports story that would move my emotions and create some great characters, but I had no idea how beautiful the storytelling would actually be. The story’s reliance on a childhood occurrence and childhood friendships added a persistent later of nostalgia to the whole thing — and it was never sentimental or saccharine. Instead, it drew out the simplicity of this story and gave us a benchmark to know our adult-aged characters by.

Though I wish we had more time with our grown-up kids to watch them interact a little more, I loved every moment that we got with them, and for 12 episodes, the directing was sensitive enough – and the writer deft enough – to give us lots of great character moments with minimal time. Even tertiary characters like Dong-seok, Baek-du’s hyungs and parents, and the townspeople, were full of color and warmth; the entire cast never stopped impressing.

There aren’t many dramas that you can feel the world of when think back on them, but I think Like Flowers in Sand is one of those dramas, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. And very likely, a spot at the top of my Best Dramas of 2024 list, too.

RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Like Flowers in Sand
• Jang Dong-yoon blossoms Like Flowers in Sand
• Jang Dong-yoon rekindles his dreams in Like Flowers in Sand
• Jang Dong-yoon enters the ring as ENA’s Sand Flower
• News bites: November 8, 2023
• News bites: April 22, 2023
• Jang Dong-yoon
• Lee Joo-myung