Just Between Lovers Ep 9

They said meat, vegetables and such are food for the stomach. Then companionship, friendship and love must be food for the soul. Run all you want, but I will hunt you down.

 

Just Between Lovers Episode 9:

KangDoo hides from MoonSoo and JooWon as JooWon tells her how he doesn’t like her thinking of another man when with him. MoonSoo just stares back, wondering what he’s trying to say and why he’s being so possessive when Dad appears and saves her from actually asking those uncomfortable questions.

She introduces her father to JooWon and something about him stuns JooWon as his eyes go red with barely-held tears. He watches them through the glass doors as they lovingly ask after each other inside and KangDoo turns to go, trudging back home alone without letting anyone know of his presence.

 

MoonSoo asks Dad about KangDoo, since he was supposed to be here but obviously isn’t now, and Dad demands to know what their relationship is. He warns MoonSoo to stay away from KangDoo because he’s got too burdensome a story behind him and MoonSoo points out the hypocrisy that he shares with Mom. She notes that by reminding her repeatedly to find someone normal, it means that they’re telling her that she’s not normal and she doesn’t let her dad off the hook by adding that them always asking her to find a normal man means that they think she needs a normal man to hide behind to be seen as normal.

MoonSoo: “It’s fake you know.”

Dad: “So what if it’s fake? The living have to keep living.”

MoonSoo: “Then what about Dad? Even dad, you, can’t live like that.”

Disappointed, she heads out, just as KangDoo sits at the docks and scrolls through pictures of MoonSoo. He ruminates over JooWon’s possessive words from earlier when YooJin calls him about work. But it’s off-work hours now and he doesn’t want to talk about it, so she offers to talk about personal issues and asks him if he’s okay after what happened earlier that day. He doesn’t reply and she says she wants that promised drink together now.

 

MoonSoo finds her way to KangDoo’s place but he’s not in and SangMan asks if KangDoo hasn’t apologised to her yet. She’s surprised why he has to when she’s the one who’s supposed to and SangMan takes her by the hand when she sighs that KangDoo’s not at home, eager for the two to make up regardless of whose fault it was.

YooJin drives to KangDoo at the docks with a huge bottle of expensive liquor in her hands. She takes a look at KangDoo and tells him to “take it off”. WHAT?!

SangMan’s brought MoonSoo to the bridge overlooking that same port and shows off the weights he wears on his legs and backs which add up to a total of 20kg. He happily says that when you take them off, you really feel so light you could fly and MoonSoo tells him to do just that so that he can keep feeling light.

SangMan: “Ei… you don’t know. You have to feel heaviness in order to feel lightness well.”

Sitting on his jacket, YooJin takes a swig right from her bottle and offers some to KangDoo but he rejects it, telling her to drink it with some good friends. She sighs that she has no friends though, asking if it’s not obvious. She mutters to herself that dumped people must all be the same and KangDoo protests being grouped together.

YooJin knows he’s bluffing because you can’t hide love and asks him why he likes MoonSoo. He just throws the question back at her with regards to JooWon and she lists all his conventionally good traits like smart and handsome. But most importantly, he always took her side and was her only and closest good friend. KangDoo scoffs about JooWon having it all while he has nothing and admits that the comparison makes him feel really bad about himself.

SangMan spots KangDoo and happily points him out to MoonSoo. A very wide smile splits itself into her face, but then disappears the moment she sees YooJin beside KangDoo. Deflated, she walks away without another word even though SangMan tries to stop her, since apologies can’t be late.

YooJin gets annoyed that her feelings for JooWon don’t fade and KangDoo commiserates in that sorrow, admitting that JooWon’s a good guy too. So YooJin asks KangDoo if the idea of such a good guy coming to like MoonSoo would scare him and KangDoo at least admits that it would. She tells him not to run away then and to go after MoonSoo since she’ll be cheering him on but the stubborn bull has already decided that he’s not good enough for MoonSoo and will be running away. Gimme that bottle of expensive alcohol you’re taking a slug out of. I need it too.

 

MoonSoo ends up in WanJin’s house declaring that she’s angry. Heh, WanJin sends a perplexed Keyboard Warrior out and asks MoonSoo why she’s constantly angry. She doesn’t know though and WanJin yells at her to just let it out instead of bottling it up. Pfft, MoonSoo phrases her replies around “that guy” possibly getting disappointed in her and WanJin grins to realise the real reason.

She’s the one disappointed in “that guy” and if she’s disappointed even though he hasn’t done anything obviously wrong, then she likes that guy, WanJin suggests. WanJin demands to know who that is and we cut to KangDoo huddling under the covers in Grandma’s bed, moaning and coughing, as she complains about the kid drinking and ending up like this when he can’t even drink. HA.

Keeping the book she was reading, she forces him to take some medicine for his ailment so that he can “live like a person” and giving into her smacks, he gets up just to eat it then goes back down for another nap.

Granny heads to her shop front table, tidying up matters after a long day and after a short beat, writes a letter to KangDoo.

YooJin spent the night in her brother’s office and surprises him when he comes in talking about Bank Manager. Apparently, he’s got Bank Manager fired from his job or something and YooJin wonders if he has to go that far. She takes issue with him meddling with a small fry like KangDoo too and Director Jeong snarls that she’s able to do good work only because he’s doing all the dirty work, so don’t she dare act all high and mighty, saying that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. YooJin bites back that it’s because they’re related that she’s trying so hard to be careful because otherwise other people might lump her with her brother and orders him to stay out of KangDoo’s affairs because she’ll be taking care of it herself.

But the order’s already given out and KangDoo finds himself being fired and even accused of theft by Project Manager just because there’ve been things going missing and because his father had a history of stealing. But when he exits the site office, Site Manager tells him not to go anywhere, since he’ll call him back the moment an opportunity arises, clearly on KangDoo’s side.

 

KangDoo stands alone outside the office and MoonSoo does the same outside a photo studio, waiting for this boy who’s forever late. Sometimes he doesn’t even notify anyone that he’s not coming, like now. Unable to wait anymore, she heads inside to meet with the owner of the photo studio whose wife passed away in the collapse.

He reads their proposal for the memorial and signs without another word, agreeing with anything that would help people remember his wife. MoonSoo guesses that he’s about to move, seeing the state of his studio and he just smiles that he’s going to close it down, since he has to enter the hospital again.

He shows her his head scar and she gapes, but he’s more concerned about something else. He brings a photo of his wife with their furry dog to MoonSoo and introduces it as MoongChi, short for “fur ball”. He tells her that he only recently realised how companionship can bring such comfort after having to go through his illness alone and reveals that he bought MoongChi for his wife since they didn’t have success when trying for a child but ended up fighting over the dog when she came to dote on the dog too much. He finds himself ridiculous for getting jealous over a dog, and barely holding his tears back, he narrates that the day he lost his wife, they had a huge fight and his wife had left with MoongChi, the dog he resented. But the fact that MoongChi was with her at her last moment gives him strength to endure whenever he feels the pain from his loss.

 

Saying that MoongChi was a victim of the collapse too, he requests that MoonSoo add MoongChi’s name next to his wife’s in the memorial. With all the strength he has left after trying to contain his emotions, he asks MoonSoo if MoongChi will still be waiting for him to join them when he leaves this world, adding that he wants to thank MoongChi for being by his wife’s side and to apologize for hating it before. Understanding, MoonSoo just says that she had a dog before too and asks for more pictures.

While MoonSoo does her work, KangDoo goes to find Bank Manager at his office, only to find his hands full of his personal belongings. Bank Manager asks KangDoo if he’s trying to argue when KangDoo says that he got fired in reply to Bank Manager’s admission that he got demoted but KangDoo takes him aback by apologising for yesterday since his father did do wrong.

Seeing that sincerity, Bank Manager apologises for his part too and comes clean that he wasn’t angry at KangDoo per sey but rather at the situation. He was livid that he still had to bow and cower under the company that caused his father’s death.

He tells KangDoo that his father was a worker at the construction site too and shares that MoonSoo was there earlier to demand that he apologise to KangDoo. Earlier, she’d called him out for taking his anger out on KangDoo just because KangDoo is powerless and didn’t relent when he admits that much, calling him insignificant. That just makes her blood boil and she says straight to his face that KangDoo’s going round meeting the bereaved, soothing hearts and doing things the proper way even though it takes much more time than just planting some memorial in the ground and repeats her demands for him to apologise.

 

That story makes KangDoo run all the way to the photo studio in search of MoonSoo, while Bank Manager’s words about how he must have been a good person if he’s got such a good friend run through his mind.

JooWon has lunch at MoonSoo’s Dad’s place and asks pointedly if Dad doesn’t remember him, but all Dad remembers is seeing him yesterday after he dropped MoonSoo off. Dad’s confused to learn that MoonSoo’s working on the site of the mall’s collapse and when he leaves, JooWon recalls that moment from years ago when his father left the press conference after taking responsibility and MoonSoo’s father had come to shake him by the lapels. And later that very day, young JooWon happily skips into his father’s office, only to find him hanging from the ceiling. OH DAMN.

The memory hurts him so much that he actually ends up vomiting in a bathroom.

Worse still, just the sight of him sends MoonSoo running to avoid him though he never notices.

 

When she gets home, she suddenly asks Mom if they should get a dog, thinking about MoongChi. Mom just lists the times she brought home a dog and left it alone after just caring it for a week and tells her to bring her CEO home if she’s so lonely. Mom.

MoonSoo sighs as Mom gushes over him and daydreams about having him as her son-in-law while MoonSoo looks over the edge where KangDoo stands, just out of sight. Overhearing Mom’s fervent praises for JooWon, this stupid child leaves without letting MoonSoo know that he came, already decided that he’s not worthy of her.

MoonSoo’s a determined girl though, and she chases him all the way up the bus, based just on gut feeling that he was there.

Surprising him awake, she asks him why he didn’t come earlier at the photo studio, but he never answers and just tells her that she’ll have to do all the work regarding the memorial herself from now on. MoonSoo guesses that he’s being disappointed in her for not taking his side in the fight earlier but KangDoo just says that she’s not the one at fault since the one really at fault is his father. Plus, he shouldn’t have kept that from her and calls himself a coward for not confessing earlier.

MoonSoo doesn’t know what to say to that complete and total self-blame and fidgets uncomfortably in her seat. She follows him off the bus too and he just tells her to go home before turning to go to his home.

Upset about his coolness, MoonSoo smacks him on the back and tells him to at least tell her to go well before leaving. She takes his hand and asks that he take her home like he used to instead of acting cold like this even though he’d said that she had no reason to be sorry but he just pulls her hand off and tells her to go home.

But she should go home with JooWon, he says, and this foolish child lists all of JooWon’s good qualities, already deciding for MoonSoo that she should go with the “better” man. MoonSoo cuts him off, upset that he’s deciding who she’ll be with for her (Yes!) and states that she won’t go just because he wants her to. But for now, she’s going because she’s too upset by him and she turns, willing him to come with every step she takes. Only… he goes.

 

Unbelieving, she yells after him, demanding to know why he held her hand, stroked her head and hugged her if he was just going to leave her anyway. But no matter her angry cries, KangDoo resolutely walks away, even though it looks like every step stabs him in the heart.

Unable to stop him, MoonSoo waits for her bus alone, holding her own hand when just a few days ago, she was holding KangDoo’s and confessing her deepest fears to him. She stares at the empty seat beside her forlornly, recalling how he’d told her she wasn’t a bad person and interlocked his fingers with hers. He never comes to the end, so she boards the first bus that comes alone.

Now without a job, KangDoo tries to get whatever work he can at the local part-time agency, but he ends up pushing another guy for the one last job when it looks like he needs it more. JooWon finds him right there and takes him out to breakfast, offering him another position at the other site his company is working on.

KangDoo doesn’t want to take it up though, even if he has to owe JooWon $18,000 (from the broken memorial). JooWon isn’t even thinking about that, but KangDoo only requests one thing from him – that he leaves MoonSoo to complete the memorial job alone. JooWon doesn’t understand why he’s making MoonSoo do it when each meeting would obviously just remind her of the pain she went through because of the collapse and KangDoo slaps his own broken leg, saying that he once told his doctor to just cut it off since it was too painful when they were trying to fix it.

KangDoo: “The doctor then told me, “If I wanted to heal the broken parts, compared to the pain that caused the wound, a pain bigger than it has to follow. That’s the only way the wound will heal.”

In other words, even if it hurts her, MoonSoo has to go through the process before she can fully heal from the trauma.

KangDoo just tasks JooWon with helping MoonSoo by her side and pays for his breakfast before leaving even though JooWon told him to leave it. KangDoo just tells him not to treat him too well since he’s preparing to get used to his misery again. What.

Helper Ajumma finds MoonSoo fervently scrubbing the tiles in their bathhouse and chases her out. Unable to do anything, MoonSoo just sits, staring into space, too many thoughts on her mind.

 

Madame brings Granny a hamburger for breakfast like she’d asked the night before though she remembers nothing about it and is surprised to see Granny still in bed. Granny grumps that she should have let her sleep more since she just dreamt about her dead husband coming to fetch her. She sighs over how warm his hand felt and Madame laughs at that pure love.

Granny tells her to just find another man but Madame has had enough bad experiences and feeds Granny her hamburger and soft drink breakfast.

Heh, Director Jeong ambles down the alley to Granny’s place, kicking litter all over the place and looks on intrigued as he spots Madame feeding the cats. That little moment of vulnerability and softness emanating from her is something he’s never seen before, but when he turns his head, she’s gone. Wondering where she left, he creeps to the cat, only to fall over backwards when it leaps at him. HAHAHAHA.

He finds his way to Granny’s store and tries to cut the queue, only to be sent to the back of the line with a simple prod by one of the customers. He mutters that he’s on a different level as them but falls in place anyway, and he ends up sleeping while waiting for her like a kid.

Granny wakes him and he takes her to a Chinese restaurant where he gapes at her oily food choices. He tries to persuade her to sell him the piece of land that his father gave her in exchange for clearing off his debts, adding that it doesn’t have good market value. It just backfires on him though, because Granny picks up that it must be important if he’s willing to pay extra money for something he considered has little market value.

He tries to get Granny to sign the land transfer deal when she agrees that she has no use for the land, but then she blurts out that she gave it away already and she was just humouring him. What? And HA! Granny: “Aren’t you eating? You’re the one paying for it though?”

 

MoonSoo’s hard at work on her models and JooWon comes in to see her progress. He tries to tell her to take her time accepting him, but she’s already made up her mind and tells him that his words make her uncomfortable. She adds on that he’s really nice and capable and his words actually made her feel like she’s an okay person too… and JooWon says that’s enough for today, only for her to say that’s it’s all she feels for him.

She truly only thinks of him as a senior she looks up to and JooWon looks crestfallen as he tells her that rather than a good senior, he wants to be a good man to her though. MoonSoo just apologizes and almost offers to leave the company but he stops her from saying it, telling her not to make him out to be such a bad guy. He can’t accept her rejection now though, and mutters that he’ll still try to win her heart while trying not to make her uncomfortable this time, since it took a lot from him to confess to her too.

MoonSoo’s appalled to hear that KangDoo’s fired from his job when she tries to find him at the site office and when she tries to contact the punk, he doesn’t pick up.

He’s at his ex-boss’s place, annoying the guy out by sitting there constantly. Haha. His ex-boss complains that there’s no job for him here and KangDoo snaps that it’s just because Ex-boss keeps bringing in cheap foreign labour. Ex-boss whines at him to understand, please, because he has no other choice with storage fees and distribution fees going up.

“Yeah, right, everything in this country is expensive, huh? People are the only cheap commodity, dammit.”

Heh, that outburst has ex-boss offering him a place on a fishing boat, sure that they’ll take him in considering how young, strong and fit he is. It’s cod they’re going after, that deep-water fish (gaaack) and it’ll just take him 11 days out at sea.

MoonSoo lingers outside Granny’s place and she’s excited to see her. Granny brings out the blue pills that she gives KangDoo as painkillers and shows them to MoonSoo, pointing out that they’re powerful stuff that trick the brain into thinking there’s no pain. He used to keep asking for them but now, after hanging out with her, Granny shares that he doesn’t look for them anymore.

 

MoonSoo hangs her head as she laments that he won’t go around with her anymore, guessing that he must be disappointed in her but Granny, as the person who knows him longer, corrects that thinking – KangDoo’s not disappointed in her. He’s just avoiding her because he thinks he’s not good enough.

Granny tells her that KangDoo really doesn’t know how to handle his feelings and so is deathly afraid that he’ll ruin her. So the fact that he’s avoiding her means that he treasures her so much that he doesn’t want to hurt her.

Granny hilariously complains about him thinking so highly of himself, like he’s actually got the ability to ruin other people’s lives all on his own. She checks with MoonSoo whether she falls so easily and confident, MoonSoo says no. Satisfied, MoonSoo gifts Granny two cans of peaches, but Granny pops a blue pill instead. Halmeom!

YooJin calls MoonSoo and only gets her agreement to meet when she mentions KangDoo.

 

Speaking of KangDoo, he’s back home packing up for his fishing trip. SangMan is there pouting at him, seeing though him and accusing him of running away instead of just needing to work. KangDoo glares at him but SangMan insists that he at least meets MoonSoo before he goes then, adding that she saw him with the pretty Noona the other time and got so sad.

Stupid KangDoo says that it’s for the best and SangMan just snaps that he’s going to regret this.

YooJin treats MoonSoo to some fine tea and informs her that she’d asked him to continue work on the memorial but he’d turned her down. She guesses that it’s all because of MoonSoo but that just confuses MoonSoo because to her, they’re not fighting. So YooJin asks her to convince KangDoo, since she finds them perfect candidates for this work – both are victims of the collapse, both lost loved ones to the collapse; and still, they work perfectly fine without betraying any of their pain.

YooJin continues to say that KangDoo’s a really strong person to have survived all that and still come out okay, but MoonSoo’s already stopped listening to her long ago, fixated on the new knowledge the KangDoo was a fellow survivor just like her.

She sits stonily in place long after YooJin has left and suddenly, she cowers from the glass beside her, hallucinating that it’s shattering. Memories of that glance they shared as teenagers while the glass shattered between them, memories of her feeding him water under the rubble, memories of him digging, crazed, into that mud wall, memories of him laughing about his lost dream of being a soccer star… memories of him asking her if he doesn’t know Bulldog Mansion… memories of him singing to her under the rubble, the first time their eyes met under the rubble, the first time he clutched her desperately at the stairwell… the time he breathed, relieved that at least, she was okay.

All those moments come rushing back to MoonSoo as she finally recalls KangDoo, the boy, the man, and she cries, scared that she lost him when she runs to his room and finds it empty of his belongings.

SangMan pops in from behind, and she asks him where KangDoo is.

Out at the docks, that’s where, and without another moment, MoonSoo dashes all the way there.

The sun sets, and KangDoo helps load boxes onto the ship. He sighs, thinking that this is end of his relationship with MoonSoo, but she comes from behind, screaming his name.

Their eyes meet, hers relived, his pained.

And he steps on to the boat that leaves while she watches helplessly from shore.

“My life that might be even more tangled in the future… if I’m going to be ruined, it’s better to be alone. Therefore… I’m running away.”

 

Comments:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! CAN’T THESE TWO HAVE A MORE THAN A MOMENT OF PEACE AND HAPPINESS??? Must you break them apart just because they held hands?! I hate you show. But I love you. Hng.

This episode, I got so upset so many times – not angry upset, more like sorrowful upset. Not at KangDoo but because of KangDoo’s actions. His insistence on running away, his self-concluded idea that JooWon is better for MoonSoo than him, his basic inability to think himself worthy of anything, much less happiness…Sigh. I think of this broken boy and I just can’t help but sigh. Usually, when presented with this noble idiocy, I become livid because the one running away is taking agency away from the other party by deciding what is best for him/her without giving him/her a fair chance to decide for himself or herself. There is absolutely no reason at all for the angst but for this foolish thinking that one can control what happens with one’s own one-sided actions. Who are you to predict that your life will get more tangled? What kind of god do you think you are?

But the thing with KangDoo is, I totally understand where he’s coming from. It’s not just a lack of material things nor a lack of capability. In any confident person, even if they lack those, they can just work or study hard. They soldier on towards their goals. They believe that they can achieve those goals, they think they are worth it. But KangDoo, on the other hand, gives up even before he started just because he doesn’t think that he has the right to be happy, to anything good, since he’s stolen that from SungJae by leaving him to die alone. He’s been too bereft of anything substantial for a while already and now finds hope in nothing. That goddamned survivor’s guilt. For all his blustering and suave moves, he’s a hurt puppy inside and despite what a good soul he is, he doesn’t believe he’s one just for the single fact that no one’s ever told him that he is good, save for maybe Granny but that’s like your Mom telling you that you’re smarter than Einstein. No one believes. The one time someone believes so wholly in him, he overhears her mother dreaming about pairing her up with some other man.

And besides being unable to accept that he has the right, that he has possibilities, he’s afraid that if he opens up again, he’ll be disappointed and cast aside away again like he thought MoonSoo did to him and he’s just rejecting all goodwill simply because it’s easier on the heart to reject than be rejected, it’s easier to expect nothing than be disappointed. Gimme that alcohol. I hate his actions but they make too much emotional sense and I currently can’t blame him for them even though I really want to. Thankfully, MoonSoo likes him too much to leave him in that pit of his own making.

Regarding the Yoo-Seo family, I can only say that it’s JooWon’s right not to accept MoonSoo’s rejection as long as he respects her decisions and doesn’t push it, that YooTaek is such an overgrown child, innocent and naïve but given too much such that he can’t handle it and is childishly using his power like he’s playing King (I cannot believe he actually defended his firing of KangDoo by saying, “I am in the position where I can hire people and fire people the next day when the position’s not needed!”) and that YooJin has her hands full trying to handle both man-children.

Have I ever talked about how much I love the women in this show? Yeah, maybe Mom and Dad can be unreasonably hypocritical and upsetting in their sorrow, but what parent isn’t when it comes to their kids? To every parent, rather than someone else, rather than 10 other someone elses, a hundred, a thousand someone elses, they will only wish for the best for their kids even if they have to be cruel or selfish to achieve it. Because no other child will mean more to a parent than his or her own child. That’s the miserable fact of life.

Still, I love all the women in this show, the quiet but confident, caring and determined MoonSoo, loud and smack-happy wise old Granny, jaded but still childish Madame, the cheery Helper Ajumma, sharp and intelligent YooJin, the happy-go-lucky WanJin, cheeky and youthful SoMi and even Mom who, despite all her sadness, still manages to live each day. They are not perfect, and sometimes they’re unbelievable, but in this episode where the men are in serious denial, let us raise a toast in their names.