Just Between Lovers Ep 12

Cute puppies abound, but pain still lingers around.

Just Between Lovers Episode 12:

“I definitely told you to go. If you don’t leave now, I’m never letting this hand go.”

KangDoo looks straight in MoonSoo’s eyes; challenging, daring.

Slowly, MoonSoo pulls her hand away and KangDoo’s face betrays disappointment and resignation.

But instead of his worst fears, she does something much better and cradles his head in her arms, pulling it to her bosom as she rests her head on his, protective. And finally, in her warm embrace, the dam breaks and KangDoo lets himself cry. Not once, does she let go of him.

 

Later, MoonSoo fixes the light as KangDoo sleeps and when he comes to, he catches her lolling head just before it falls. He looks at her, amazed and grateful, and asks why she didn’t leave. Her simple reply was that she didn’t want him to wake up alone. He has no words.

MoonSoo gets up to leave but makes him stay and sleep more. He’s not about to let her leave just like that though, and he reaches out to grab her hand, thanking her for being with him. She smiles as her fingers curl around his, saying that she can be with him whenever he wants, just as long as he isn’t being horrible.

She smiles on the bus for a long, long while before succumbing to fatigue on her way to work. In the meantime, sun rays spill into Granny’s room and KangDoo cleans her room with renewed vigour. Finding the book that Granny used to read titled “Strange Stories About The Afterlife”, KangDoo flips it open to a dog-eared page, and reads:

“My poor children. Sadness is your strength. Suffering, resentment, regrets. They are all your strength. With those strengths, please live, somehow, this ugly and scary life. Somehow…”

That’s so Granny-like, as KangDoo notes, and it seems like Granny just cheered him on from the otherworld.

MoonSoo washes up at work and finds JooWon flipping through her memorial park designs. He asks if her design isn’t too open since some people would like to grieve and mourn in private, and she replies that people should be able to express their sadness without having to hide them. That thought triggers JooWon’s flashback to MoonSoo’s father shaking his father by the lapels, angry and anguished. Knowing what happens after that, he challenges MoonSoo on her thinking that victims only feel sadness. “Victims too, can be perpetrators.”

He urges her to think about the kinds of people who will really use the garden like an architectural designer rather than a victim and leaves before his emotions can betray him.

Director Jeong looks on nervously as KangDoo reads through the contract selling his land as YooJin smiles amused, breathing only when he picks up his pen and signs it. Hehe, KangDoo makes sure that the payment comes in that day in one lump sum and asks when he can continue working at the site office, leaving cooly after that as Director Jeong tries not to bust a gut while holding in his infamous temper.

 

YooJin follows KangDoo to ask if he was really close to Granny and how she left land to him. But KangDoo returns that she won’t be able to understand any explanation, given how her family’s so calculating even between themselves.

She offers to tell MoonSoo that he’ll be coming back to work on site but he stops her, wanting to be the first one to do so, making YooJin envious of MoonSoo for having someone who thinks so much of her. KangDoo says that he’s just going to go ahead with MoonSoo, so YooJin can do whatever she wants with JooWon, but she sighs that the lug won’t respond anyhow and KangDoo advices her to either give him up or run away. Oi.

He thanks her for helping him with the changes to the contract (I knew it!) and later when he appears at the site, his immediate superior skips ecstatically towards him. Over a drink, he complains to KangDoo that he really had it tough without him and whines that he was really scared alone too because of the rumour that things walk around at night thanks to CheongYoo just burying everything after the collapse without doing a proper search and rescue.

 

Immediately, KangDoo returns to 10 years ago when SungJae and himself were under the rubble, recalling how he picked up SungJae’s amputated leg. Terror shot through him as SungJae grabbed his leg and begs him not to go because he’s scared and in the present, KangDoo dashes out of the site office, heaving.

MoonSoo’s at work thinking over JooWon’s words.

When she leaves, she gets a call from KangDoo who asks why she called. LOL. She takes issue with him just eating “enough” and he tells her that he’s taking a walk… and missing her. She stops, he stops. She asks where he is, and he looks around and finds her standing just opposite him. Hee.

They get a huge bun from a roadside stall which MoonSoo shares with KangDoo, purposely giving him the smaller piece. Heh. But all he has eyes for is her and she laughs when he calls her cute. She asks for more food and he just looks like she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him, laughing when she drops a bun that’s too hot. He chirps that it’s a good thing they met today, and she returns the sentiment.

 

Later when walking, he takes her cold hand in his, their fingers interlocking.

Slowly unable to hide his smiles, he lifts their held hands to the sky and brags to Granny that he’s happy. Happiness doesn’t take much after all, he learns.

He sends her home and Ajumma watches gleefully as MoonSoo cheerfully waves him goodbye. She doesn’t hide that she saw that scene when MoonSoo passes her dumplings and assures MoonSoo that even if she thinks her mother won’t like it, she can’t be anything but happy if she saw the blissful glow of happiness on her daughter’s face.

Contrary to that picture of happiness, Madame has to deal with Director Jeong who’s called for all her girls during the peak hours even though he’s not interested in them at all. She wonders why he’s wasting his money and their time like this and YooTaek just complains that she won’t see him otherwise, angry that she didn’t meet him nor pick up his calls.

Madame folds her arms and tells him that he can just apologise to solve the problem between them but he refuses, saying that he only knows how to do things with money. This man-child needed a Granny in his life.

Helpless, she takes the furthest spot from him and sits, back facing him.

YooTaek grumbles that he knows that no one really likes him because he’s not very nice (you can repeat that again) and even if people bow in front of him, they all cuss him out behind his back.

Madame thinks that it’s good for him that he knows, but says huffily he doesn’t have to care since they’re all under him. He agrees, then tells Madame that he signed the contract with KangDoo today. That gets her attention and she finally turns to him, but he just does that flaily-angry thing and pitches a fit over KangDoo acting all high and mighty in front of him.

Hahahaha, even Madame can’t help but laugh at that display of childishness and YooTaek laughs to finally see her laugh. Madame asks if he likes it because she looks even more like his first love and YooTaek agrees that she does, but adds that he likes her not because of that.

 

He mumbles to himself that his first love was really bad, fooling him with things like love and all that. Instead, Madame is very certain with her likes and dislikes and is straightforward. And that’s why he likes her. He asks that she’ll go bird watching with him, right, and the two laugh, the anger between them buried.

Ha, Assistant finds WanJin’s house in a huge mess and WanJin looking no much better. She groans at all the bad reviews her Manhwa’s getting even though she worked really hard on it, wailing that she’s going to quit and Assistant loudly wonders what else she’s going to do then. He tells her that doing the thing you love even though you get cursed out is still happiness and WanJin snaps back at him to remember the time he chewed her out by leaving terrible remarks.

Chastened, he says that he did it because he was jealous that she got a chance to do what she loved and yet still complained, but he apologises for the personal attacks. That doesn’t bring her out of her funk so he puts his hand on her head and they connect over some comic phrase. Displaying his deep dimples, he tells her to just rest for today and WanJin freaks out over how cool she just thought he was. HAHAHA.

 

KangDoo shows JooWon evidence that he got permission to change the location of the memorial park and lets slip that he even managed to get his job at the construction site back. JooWon’s a little flabbergasted at the thought that his step-brother actually acquiesced to KangDoo’s requests and wonders what happened. KangDoo just says that an opportunity came up and so he grabbed it, adding that he likes MoonSoo. Pfft. So random. That added information confuses JooWon and he continues to ask why he decided to come back to the site and his expression hardens when KangDoo declares that he did it for MoonSoo.

“I thought I wouldn’t be as good a person as you so I gave up early on. But then I thought that if I tried really hard, I could be good to at least one person.”

GOOD BOY!

Now free, KangDoo pops by MoonSoo’s office and tells her that the location for the park’s changed to somewhere with more human traffic. She seems a little apprehensive but he assures her that she can continue doing what she wants and hands over a little notebook that his father used to write in everyday about work at the mall.

He gets up to leave, but makes sure that she makes time to meet him later, since he’s planning to be very cool.

Cut to him and SangMan trying out suits. Whoo! They look really good dressed up!

After trying a few sets, SangMan asks that they leave, since the place looks expensive and they have no money. KangDoo assures him that they do and tells him to go choose some shoes. Excited, SangMan does as told then picks a few more suits and hands them over to KangDoo to buy. HA.

 

OH, the totally cool thing that KangDoo had to do was pay off his debts. Hee, the two of them set down a caseload of cash and strut out of the loan shark’s den like bosses. KangDoo feels the thrill of paying off his debts and revels in the power of money, laughing incredulously at how the gangsters who used to abuse him just tried to kiss his ass. SangMan says he’s hungry and asks expectantly where they’re going to eat.

MoonSoo flips through KangDoo’s father’s notebook, already finding out discrepancies in building methods from just a few pages. She asks her team leader if he has the original blueprints for the mall and requests him to get it for her when she’s told that JooWon probably has it.

HAHA, KangDoo and SangMan find themselves in front of a roadside stall eating fishcakes and SangMan suggests that they buy over the whole cart now that they have money.  But KangDoo vetoes, explaining that the money is not his and promises to live well to pay Granny back. SangMan suddenly says that there must be a god.

He says that since KangDoo had it really hard, He must have sent Granny to him as compensation. KangDoo just looks at him, muttering that God must have really felt bad. Then he adds quietly that God must have sent SangMan too though SangMan doesn’t catch that and the two of them share ddeokbokki.

 

MoonSoo pops by KangDoo’s place later but finds neither SangMan nor KangDoo there and SangMan’s mother complains about the two of them disappearing for so long. She sends MoonSoo up to KangDoo’s room first as she calls the two excited boys home for dinner.

So MoonSoo sits in KangDoo’s room alone, and remembers JaeYoung’s plea to bring her the blue pills that KangDoo takes. She searches his room and swipes some of those pills, the same one that Granny once showed to her and hides them just before KangDoo appears in the doorway.

She’s surprised by his dress up and asks what special occasion it is. He calls it his rebirth as a person in society and asks if she isn’t going to congratulate him, stepping closer and closer, even snaking his arms round her and pulling her close. But just the moooooment before they seal the deal, SangMan comes barging into the room, wanting to show off his new threads. HAHAHAHA. MoonSoo looks like she’d like to bury herself while KangDoo has his head in his hands.

But MoonSoo can’t stay longer because WanJin called and she’s surprised to find WanJin getting a perm at her house when she sounded like she needed urgent help. Mom says that WanJin just ran away from a man, ha, and tells WanJin to just go for it since she’s young and interested. Passing everything to MoonSoo to wrap up, Mom goes off and the two ladies share a bath inside, where WanJin shares her fear for falling for Assistant and causing workplace harassment. LOL.

MoonSoo thinks that Assistant likes her though, but WanJin won’t be convinced and turns the topic to MoonSoo and KangDoo. MoonSoo won’t spill anything, so WanJin splashes water at her in retaliation.

That noise attracts Mom who came to leave a change of clothes and at first she smiles at the friendly water play, only to imagine her younger daughter in the bath with her eldest doing the same and grief overtakes her as she cries miserable heaving sobs outside.

 

She drinks the whole night through, so much that MoonSoo can’t even wake her up. MoonSoo passes water to WanJin to wash her painkiller down with and she asks what colour her painkillers are. KangDoo’s are blue.

“Why, is that important?”

“No. It’ll be good if it isn’t important.”

Later, she passes KangDoo’s blue pills to JaeYoung and tries to ask about KangDoo spending days with a corpse, something JaeYoung had mentioned the last time they met. JaeYoung tells her to hear it from the horse’s mouth though since it’s sensitive information that even she feels uncomfortable about sharing even if they’re siblings.

MoonSoo then meets with KangDoo to visit another bereaved, this time, the wife of a man whose body was never even found. They see that she lives in a big house and MoonSoo wonders if she’s a snob since she feels relieved that the lady at least got to live well like that.

They meet with her, but before she speaks, the lady sends her son in, since her son believes that the man he calls his father is his biological one. Alone, she tells them that she’s not in much position to decide whether to agree or disagree with their memorial park, since she’s cut off all ties with her previous husband’s family.

 

She wonders if she comes across as too cold and explains that because not even a bone of his was found, it feels like her ex-husband just up and left to another place, having run away to someplace else instead of having passed on. No matter how she thought, no answer came to her so she decided that she would just forget it all, since without memories, there would be no pain.

MoonSoo and KangDoo get it, so they take their papers and prepare to leave, but the lady gets a glimpse of her lost husband’s picture among the papers and reaches out for it, seeing him for the first time in many years. She says to herself that she just wanted to forget the difficult things. But now, she can’t even remember the good things too and she breaks down.

KangDoo and MoonSoo walk out, but MoonSoo stops and asks if doing this project is okay for him as a victim. He throws it back at her and she muses that she really doesn’t know what the right answer is. He gives her a loaded look, then says that there’s no such thing as the right way when doing something like this and holds out his hand so that they can go together.

At the bus stop, he nags at her to just get a taxi but she refuses, since it’s peak period now and there’s a direct bus to the office. She shivers in her thin coat but forbids KangDoo from taking his off for her. So her just goes behind her and wraps her in his coat-embrace, giving her a very warm back hug. She smiles, complaining that he’s heavy, but he tells her to just endure it, saying that she smells nice. Hee!

Madame takes Director Jeong to MoonSoo’s dad’s place for dinner and he complains that his trainer told him to avoid gluten. She thinks he looks fine but he whines about his wife and then suddenly apologises, pointing out that they are kind of dating when Madame says that it’s fine since they’re not.

He tries to get Madame to buy some land around the area since he’s sure that he’ll be buying it all back and redeveloping it all for a higher price. That funny talk has Dad looking at Director Jeong and suddenly he remembers where he’s seen that face before – at the press conference by CheongYoo. He’s the man from the company that took his daughter away.

 

Livid, he dumps Director Jeong’s noodles to the ground and orders them out, furious and unreasonable. Madame only barely manages to pull Director Jeong out before anything worse happens and once alone, Dad slumps in despair.

At work, MoonSoo has a terrible case of the colds. Her team leader comes in to hand her a copy of S Mall’s blueprint, wondering what she needs it for when his team tore it apart years ago and found nothing wrong.

MoonSoo questions why the previous CEO committed suicide then and SoMi notes that it doesn’t make sense too. MoonSoo calls him irresponsible for committing suicide after just a word of apology.

She suddenly has a coughing fit and JooWon, who was at the door, sends her home.

He reels from her harsh words in his room, unable to tell anyone that her father was the one who sent his father into the arms of suicide.

KangDoo reports for work at the site office when his knee pains him. Instinctively, he reaches out for the blue pills but for whatever reason, he decides to forgo them and just chew on some gum instead.

 

He lights up when the door opens only to have the smile completely wiped out when he sees SoMi.

Ha, SoMi grouses at him for not knowing that MoonSoo was sick since he was out playing with YooJin and KangDoo calls MoonSoo that night, worried for her. MoonSoo complains that her throat really hurts, so much that she can’t eat a thing. But when KangDoo asks, she guesses she wants ice cream, which is when Mom comes in and calls her out for dinner.

So she leaves her phone behind and goes. But she just picks at her food, her throat too painful to eat anything. Downstairs, KangDoo tries to call her to no avail and yet, he’s too scared of MoonSoo’s mother to try and knock on the door.

So the smart boy climbs the pipes that lead to her window. PFFFT.

Thus, when she calls, she hears his phone ringing from outside her window and nearly pushes her boyfriend off the second story. Grabbing him just in time, she pulls him through the window and gapes at his stunt. She locks the door and asks why he’s here, unable to believe that it’s all because of ice cream.

Ha, her mother suddenly tries to get into her room and KangDoo has this smart idea to hide outside the window. MoonSoo pulls him back, saying that it’s too dangerous, and hides him under her covers instead while she deals with Mom.

Heh, Mom hands her a cup of tea but refuses to go until she sees MoonSoo tucked in bed and KangDoo nearly has a heart attack to see her climb in.

Mom finally leaves and MoonSoo tries to call him out but he doesn’t respond, so she pulls the covers off him and gets surprised to see him so close, face to face. At such a close distance, KangDoo can’t hold himself back anymore and kisses her.

She almost melts into it, but then jerks back, worried that she’ll pass him her cold.

He smirks, totally unconcerned at all and says that he’ll just have to take it all away then and gives her a good long kiss, and this time, she gives in.

 

Sometime later, she peeks outside her room but Mom’s lying there like a guard dog and she worries about how KangDoo’s going to get home like that. That’s no problem for Spiderman and he climbs out the way he came in, popping up for a quick peck before hopping down. He nearly sprains his ankle, but the besotted fool only smiles for MoonSoo and waves her goodbye.

Alone, MoonSoo tries the ice cream that KangDoo bought and giggles. Then she chuckles. And then she full out wriggles from overflowing happiness.

The next morning, she’s full of energy, which Ajumma doesn’t miss.

In his bed, KangDoo shakes too… from a wracking cough. PWAHAHAHAHAHAH!

MoonSoo feels so good that she walks out the house without a muffler despite Mom’s nagging. She just misses Mom reading a pamphlet for the new mall that CheongYoo’s working on and just misses her mother’s confused look, eyes drowned in perplexed misery.

At the site, Site Manager informs JooWon that they found a pillar from S Mall and wonders if they should treat it specially. But JooWon tells him to just treat it as waste. And outside, Mom watches like a wretched woman as MoonSoo runs up to KangDoo and fixes his lapels affectionately.

Comments:

THANK YOU, DRAMAGODS. Thank you for the cute, the sweet and the plain hilarious. KangDoo in love is a glorious sight to behold. He’s like such a giddy child and his innocent dates with MoonSoo are just pure beauty. Seeing MoonSoo light up is electrifying too and it’s like watching two little puppies playing with each other, like two goofy teenagers experiencing this heady thing called First Love. May this last a long, long, loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time. I like kisses. A lot of kisses. And hand holding and walking together and eating together and giggling together. Granny did say that she is very patient you know.

And KangDoo now seems so much freer, so much more confident and has so much more conviction thanks to Granny’s presents of love for him. In a capitalistic world, money speaks and perhaps for the first time in a long while, KangDoo feels power, being able to dictate terms and influence his future instead of having to accept situations helplessly. He gets to control his life for once instead of being ordered around. And while that sum of money really helped KangDoo’s confidence, I think Granny really did right by him by NOT giving it to him while she was alive. Now that she’s passed on, he can’t owe her money, and can only repay her by living a good life, and at most, doing good deeds in her name.

I chuckle to learn that YooJin totally helped KangDoo get the terms he wanted even though it would inconvenience her brother and I love their camaraderie. They’re like comrades in arms, able to bounce their problems off each other with the assurance that they’ll get cool, rational responses. There is no emotional baggage between them unlike their ties with other people and both respect each other’s capabilities and opinions and are better for it. Although I don’t like KangDoo’s suggestion that she run away. Oi. No running away from anything.

With the two puppies finding peace and happiness in each other, I am left worrying only over JooWon. He’s been keeping his emotions inside with no avenue to vent and now with this new discovery that MoonSoo’s father is the one who pushed his father over the edge into suicide, I really hope he can find someone he trusts enough to lean on before he breaks down. And now that MoonSoo has KangDoo’s father’s books, I really hope that the real reason for the collapse can emerge and bring peace to all that it has broken. JooWon really needs that peace and closure soon.

The way Mom and Dad looked so confused and anguished respectively really broke my heart because it’s clear that they’ve been carrying their grief for way too long and probably never really accepted their loss and moved on. They’re stuck in time. Just like KangDoo said, healing sometimes has to be more painful than the initial hurt to work, but the two of them have gotten so used to running away from pain that they cannot handle their emotions healthily. Somehow, I just want them to explode at each other, tear at each other, hurt each other and then comfort each other. They are being so unfair to MoonSoo right now. They need to get the blaming and the guilt aside before they can prepare to accept the pain, and they need to do that if only for themselves, because scars are better than wounds that remain open even after a decade.