What Comes After Love: Episodes 1-2

by Dramaddictally

Coupang Play’s new beautifully shot and acted drama What Comes After Love hit my screen and my heart this weekend, leaving me floating and ready for more. With a mix of Japanese and Korean dialogue, gorgeous leads that set off sparks, and a breakup that already burns, I have officially found my way out of my drama funk.

 
EPISODES 1-2

I love it. I’m terribly hooked and needing more. And if this drama wanted to make me feel the high of love followed by the power of withdrawal, right along with its characters, it has done a damn fine job.

Our story starts five years in the past. It’s 2019 and our heroine, CHOI HONG (Lee Se-young), has just moved to Tokyo. She’s fresh out of college, with a shiny new degree and no idea what to do with it. But going to Japan is less about running toward her future than it is about running away. There’s an emotional disconnect between her and her MOM (Lee Il-hwa) — and Hong doesn’t even tell her she’s leaving Korea.

In narration, Hong says that Tokyo was a bit of an accident. She didn’t choose it. She just has a friend there that’s willing to split the rent. And so, she goes. However, we later learn that she lived in Japan as a child and speaks perfect Japanese.

And that’s the first beautiful thing about this drama: it’s half in Japanese. The language and setting give us a distinct feel from most of the drama fare we’re used to (although, the aesthetic is giving me a little Ahn Pan-seok vibe for its low lighting and realistic shots). And our hero, when he appears, is also adorably out of the norm with a slight awkwardness that makes him irresistible.

When Hong arrives to Tokyo, she’s trying to get through a turnstile with her luggage, which ultimately scatters her belongings all over the ground. A man rushes over to help her pick up her things. She sees him — in slo-mo — and is struck (as am I). He looks shy and cute, with a dimple and underlying dorkiness. And this moment crushed my heart, unearthed a smile, and sold me on this pair at only three minutes in.

The man is our hero, AOKI JUNGO (Sakaguchi Kentaro), who speaks no Korean and is looking for a part-time job. He needs to pay his tuition as he studies Japanese lit, so he can become a writer, and say all the things he’s unable to speak out loud.

But Hong is looking for a job as well. And after the two part ways in the street that first day, they run into each other again while applying for the same server position at a ramen shop. Again, it’s instant chemistry and I can’t keep the lunatic smile off my face. They compete for the role, trying to humbly one-up each other, but in the end, Hong gets the job, after a customer criticizes her (impeccable) Japanese — and Jungo stands up for her.

All is not lost, though, because Jungo lands a spot at the hot dog truck just across the street from the ramen shop. This gives our pair lots of chances to stare and flirt and make eyes at each other. And finally, he asks her on a date.

They go out for drinks and get pretty tipsy (well, mostly Hong) and she opens up about not knowing what to do with her life. Will she stay in Japan? Or is she just passing through? She wants to go to grad school (she studies literature too) and she can’t bear to go back to her mom. Still, it’s all up in the air right now.

Already, it’s clear he has a crush on her. They’re adorably flirty without meaning to be. Everything about their attraction feels natural. And he just laughs and smiles at all her antics. The alcohol has made her pushier than usual, but he goes along with whatever she wants — like more coins for the claw machine, please!

They begin to walk home in the pouring rain under a shared umbrella, and even this is not the regular over-romanticized image we see in dramas. He’s not trying to be knightly. He’s just being himself. And everything about this scene works. When she asks, “Do you believe that there’s love that doesn’t change?” He responds that it must be out there somewhere. And with that, she drunkenly decides to stay in Japan.

It’s not too long before the two are dating for real, and it’s all cherry blossoms and ear-to-ear smiles. The first Korean word that Jungo learns is “yeppeuda” — so he can tell her she’s pretty. (Mmm, if you’re not squeeing right now, you have no heart!) But, in voiceover, Hong tells us that it was the first and last spring of her life.

We skip ahead five years to the present day and Hong is back in Seoul. The tone is somber and she still regrets her love with Jungo. We don’t know what happened, or how they broke up, and that is the mystery that begins to be teased out slowly for the rest of the episodes. As the story unfolds in 2024, it’s supplemented with lots of long flashbacks to fill in the blanks. But whatever occurred, it killed the optimism she used to have inside her.

Hong now works at a publishing house and is engaged to the safe-bet male friend who always pined for her. Her fiancé, SONG MIN-JUN (Hong Jong-hyun), clearly adores her, but Hong is just going through the motions. When she thanks him for remembering her family anniversaries, he tells her not to say thank you because it makes her feel distant. And we can see that she is. There’s no way she feels a deep love for this doting guy.

One day, since Hong is fluent in Japanese, she’s asked to go the airport for the publishing company to pick up an international author. They’ll be promoting his new book and they need an interpreter for the interviews and promos. As you might guess, Jungo is said author, writing under a pen name. When they see each other, she wishes she hadn’t come, and he starts to believe in fate.

Throughout the day, they act like they don’t know each other, as he gets his photos taken and sits through interviews while she translates. But it’s painful for both of them. In an interview, it comes out that their relationship was the inspiration for his novel, but in it, he wrote them a happy ending. (Jeez, I’m about to cry just saying that.)

So, with him discussing the inspirations for the book, we get to see what their life was like together in the past. She moved in with him in Tokyo and they developed a close, warm, lovely-to-look-at relationship. They’re cuddly — always kissing, hugging, touching each other’s faces, or petting each other’s heads. They call each other Yun-oh and Beni (what his name would be in Korean and what hers would be in Japanese). And it’s all really sweet and natural.

But we also see the moment of their dissolution. It wasn’t just a gradual decline. There appears to be an event that causes her to leave him. He remembers the tortured look on her face as she screams at him — the one that “scarred his heart with regret” — and we see the note she left when she’s gone for good. In it, she writes that “a love that never changes” didn’t exist between them. It doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. And she closes with, “I’m going back to where I belong. If I don’t leave this place now, I’ll probably end up resenting you for the rest of my life.”

In the present, the interviewer has no idea that the woman he’s talking about is the translator sitting next to him, and our former couple can barely look at each other. In the final scene, Hong is in her car, leaving after the interviews are done, and Jungo runs out in front of the car to stop her.

Wow. I haven’t been this excited for a story all year. It’s reminding me ever so slightly of Tell Me That You Love Me, but sweeter and breathier. Since this is only six episodes, it’s moving at a decent clip and I think they got the pacing exactly right. It’s got me eating out of the palm of its hand and I just want to know every detail of what happened between them. The flashbacks have me falling in love, and the present scenes are painful — but not as painful as they might be later when we actually know what went down.

And I love that it’s mostly in Japanese. Having a cross-cultural couple that only speaks one language to each other makes it feel authentic. Also, there’s a moment where she mentions that she’s lonely, and he doesn’t quite get it because she’s with him. She tells him that everyone living outside their home country feels that way. And I can’t help but wonder how or if this plays into their problems later. I think the reason that dramas based on novels often speak to me is because the relationships are so complicated (I’m remembering The Interest of Love, which also destroyed me).

Well, great hook. I wish I could sit down and binge the whole story in one feel-good (or bad) moment. Plus, did I mention the leads are off-the-radar gorgeous and incredibly natural together?

 
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