I don’t if it was intended this way, or faulty subtitles but I was confused about many things while watching If We Were a Season. Why did she tell him no when she obviously had feelings for him?

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    I was so frustrated with that special! I wanted to beat the writer into the ground!!

    For a good cry, try “What’s The Ghost Up To?”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n22E0wEROOk

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      I’ve just finished Dancing the Waltz Alone. Now moving on to What’s the Ghost U to? seems like a sad night tonight lol
      thanks for the recommendation ^^

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      I don’t know if it’ll change your mind about the drama special, but see my comment below!

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    For a second there I was certain this was that scene from TLAHL and got mighty confused by the faces and uniforms 😛

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      I’ve always been meaning to see TLAHL but never did!

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    The way I see it, it’s linked to her discovery of her dad’s affair. To her, her dad is constant presence she trusted and never questioned, and the affair was a rude shock to that. So she was afraid of yet another relationship that she unquestioningly comes to rely on (her friendship with Kiseok) crumbling under a change (from friendship to romance).

    Of course, rejecting him did change their friendship. But that’s where Kiseok’s growth comes in, he decides to be there for her in the way she needs, and not the way he wants (i.e. to be her boyfriend).

    That’s why there’s the sequence of the red thread at the end. I don’t know if you know about the East Asian myth of the red thread of fate, but it’s said that two people who are fated to be together are tied to each other with a red thread. This story suggests that it’s not all up to fate, though: like Kiseok, you can symbolically tie back a thread that had gotten broken by reaching out to that person again.

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      Well put *thumbs up* I did figure it had something to do with her father’s affair and him saying I couldn’t help it. But later I didn’t know if she was using her father’s words just to throw Kiseok off or if it really triggered something in her vis-a-vis the other boy.
      The fact that he gave her a warm hug at the end just as she wanted suggests that their love is still to be continued.. I wouldn’t mind seeing them again 🙂

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        I think it was just easier for her to let herself believe her father’s words, because then she wouldn’t have to face the affair as an active choice that her father made. We never really know if she went on to date Dongkyung, but we do see that she was straining to rationalise her decision to not meet Kiseok that day when he was going to confess.

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        Oops I clicked post too fast ^^” I actually loved the semi-open ending. It’s pretty amazing how it fleshes out that detail of Haerim telling Kiseok she likes this kind of ending. It’s not just like “Oh, he cares enough to remember something small like that”, but I think ties to something deeper about Haerim’s worldview that Kiseok was able to detect.

        The drama special was only an hour, so an unambiguously happy ending in which they end up together would’ve felt like it closed the story. But with that hug and Haerim going away, it’s like the story is continuing even after the credits roll, and I love it when a storyworld is treated as though it were larger than what the viewers see.

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