This noona romance just floats my boat. It makes me giddy and it hurts my heart, in all the right ways. Why, Show, why do you hurt so good? And more importantly, am I ever going to watch a drama where Lee Jong-seok gets the girl? Say it's this one, even if you're lying to me.
SONG OF THE DAY
Jung Yup – "Why Did You Come Now" from the OST [ Download ]
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EPISODE 5: "Words that can't be trusted"
After being arrested for beating up Min Joon-gook, Su-ha pleads with the cops to listen to him—that man is going after the person who testified to put him away. When they ask for proof that the reformed ex-convict is doing anything of the kind, he starts to confess that he can read minds…
But thankfully Hye-sung busts into the room to stop him. She thinks at him not to do anything stupid, and says that she remembers him now.
She signs him out as his guardian, but the cops are skeptical about the hammer (she tells them he brought it to fix her door), and their relationship since she's neither family nor teacher.
She quickly says he's a dongseng she's known for ten years and they're practically family. The cop who answered their emergency call the other night confirms it: "They live together." Ha.
He says he even saw Su-ha leave the place in the morning when he came back around on patrol. They both freeze at that, but she thinks quickly and throws her arm around Su-ha and thinks: "Quick, act like we're close. Call me noona."
He squirms, and then complies in a teeny tiny voice: "Noona…" Heeeee.
Cranky Cop smacks Su-ha on the head and asks if he's even sorry for what he did, and Hye-sung has to stop him from blowing a fuse. He listens to her and apologizes, and then when the cop goes to hit him again, this time Hye-sung grabs Cranky Cop's wrist in mid-air to block him. Badass.
Nice Cop offers them a ride home, which is awkward since they don't actually live together, but there's really no getting out of it now that they're supposed to be roomies.
On the way there, Nice Cop says he thought they were brother and sister when he first met them over the cell phone case because Su-ha freaked out and begged him to do something because Hye-sung was so scared she couldn't sleep at night. Aw.
He asks what their relationship to Min Joon-gook is, and she answers truthfully and matter-of-factly: he killed Su-ha's father and she witnessed it. That shuts them up pretty quickly, and they offer to investigate Min Joon-gook further, with the reminder for Su-ha to let the cops handle it.
They drop them off and tell her that she's responsible for Su-ha now, so she throws her arm over his shoulder again and they pose for the cops as he very begrudgingly calls her noona again. But the cops just stand there and smile back, not leaving until the pair of them head inside. Sleepover it is!
This time Su-ha notes the men's shoes she keeps in the doorway, and he asks if someone else lives here. She says that's why she put them there—so that it looks that way. He notices two bowls of delivery jajangmyun too, and realizes she orders two bowls on purpose for the same reason.
She offers to make him food if he calls her noona, which he refuses to do. He lies that he isn't hungry even though his stomach is growling like crazy, but it's really her thoughts that get him to stay: "What if Min Joon-gook comes back?"
As they eat she asks why he didn't tell her who he was right away. He reminds her that he said his name but she was the one who couldn't remember, and when she gets defensive that no one would after ten years, he says he knew with one glance.
She thinks to herself what his deal is—is she his first love or something? Eep. I suddenly want to crawl under the table. He answers that she's nothing of the sort, and lies that he just doesn't like living with a debt.
She comes out in the middle of the night and her thoughts drift back to Su-ha running in to rescue her, and the things he said to Min Joon-gook. She sees the thumb he smashed trying to fix her door, and sits down to re-bandage it.
He wakes up and watches with a smile as she patches him up, and shuts his eyes before she can see he's awake.
He stares at his bandaged finger for a while, and it brings him back to that day he was left at the amusement park. He sat alone in the office till nightfall, and then climbed a tree to get at the one balloon that got left behind when his uncle ditched him.
He fell out of the tree and his thumb started to bleed, and that's what opened the floodgates for the tears to fall.
In the morning, Hye-sung comes out dressed very casually for work, with an umbrella strapped to her back on a sunny day. He reads her mind and realizes this is all in case the killer comes after her, and he decides to show her a few self-defense moves. While getting handsy, naturally. Mrawr.
She asks if he read the killer's mind, and he confirms that Joon-gook was behind the cell phone stalking. She's clearly freaked out, but he assures her that the killer can't do anything right now with the cops patrolling. "And I'm here."
They head out together, and then Min Joon-gook steps out from around the corner. Augh, creepy. He decides that he can't do anything about Hye-sung yet with Su-ha stuck to her side, and then peers down at her mom's chicken shop poster in his hand, wondering if this is the better route. Eek. Don't you touch World's Best Mom!
At the bus stop, Hye-sung gets a call from Mom asking if she wants to set up that blind date, and Su-ha perks up at that, suddenly panicked that she's going on blind dates. Mom starts to describe the guy, but Hye-sung cuts her off to ask, "But how's his body?" Pffft.
She's suddenly very keen to make a boyfriend who can defend her, which is hilariously practical and totally ridiculous at the same time. She tells Mom that her number one criterion for boyfriends now is a good body, not money.
Thinking quickly, Su-ha asks for her phone and then sets up their phones to track each other. She watches curiously and when he explains what it's for, she lights up: "So if something happens to me, you can come find me?" She calls him "smart like CSI," which cracks me up, and he points out that he's not smart; she's just behind the times.
Pretty the Paralegal plays exposition fairy to catch us up on the Twin Stabbing case. First, both twins insisted that they did the stabbing, and now (with Hye-sung and Kwan-woo representing each twin), both are saying that they didn't stab the clerk.
Kwan-woo meets with Twin 1, the one with priors on his record and a gambling problem. He says bitterly that his younger brother is doing this to get rid of him, always having hated him for being the black sheep.
Hye-sung meets with Twin 2, the smart twin with the puppy and the academic awards. He says his hyung was always a little bit jealous of his life, and Hye-sung asks if that includes his girlfriend. He nods.
Lawyer Shin and Pretty walk back with coffee and see Kwan-woo skipping down the street to catch up to Hye-sung. He stops to freshen his breath and then jumps behind her thinking he's being cute, but she screams and goes to town on his unmentionables with her combat umbrella, just like Su-ha taught her. HA.
She refuses to apologize, even with Pretty getting upset on Kwan-woo's behalf that he might not be able to have children anymore. She finally barks an insincere apology and runs off to eat lunch alone.
Do-yeon sits down across the table from her in the courthouse cafeteria, and Hye-sung looks up in surprise, asking if they're close enough to be eating together. Do-yeon gets sickeningly sweet with her, which is really suspicious.
She plays nice and even concedes that she might've been wrong about the twin case, and Hye-sung says she isn't dumb—what's she trying to do? Do-yeon asks if she doesn't believe her, and Hye-sung points out that no one could when she's wearing that expression on her face.
That's Do-yeon's point, apparently, because she says that both twins wore that insincere expression on their faces when she questioned them. Her plan is to have them both go down for murder.
Hye-sung spins in her revolving door to think it over, as usual. Su-ha texts her to ask when she's done so he can pick her up, and then she remembers that Gum-wad could help her out with the case.
He's texting back and forth with her in the middle of class, and jjang (er, ex-jjang) Choong-ki's enough of an ass to rat him out to Teacher, which gets him stuck at school till late that night, and without his phone too.
Adding embarrassment to insult, the teacher accuses him of using class time on his love life, which gets the class oooohing. Sung-bin is the only one who doesn't look too pleased.
It actually does rain that day, and Hye-sung pats herself on the back for having an umbrella. Kwan-woo runs out just behind her and catches up… but then thinks twice and stays behind her the whole way back to the office, getting soaked.
She's surprised to see him when they arrive, and he says sheepishly that he didn't want to scare her (and be attacked) like earlier, and this time she concedes that even though it was his fault, she's sorta kinda sorry she hit him. Heh.
He notes that she seems a little nervous lately like she's being chased, and she tells him it's nothing. They go over the case together, and he asks if she's friends with Do-yeon. She jumps to say no, calling her fingernails-on-a-chalkboard kind of hateful.
He thinks the prosecution doesn't have anything to go on, and says in a reassuring tone that everything will be okay, and that Do-yeon is just waving the red cape at her to get a reaction.
She thinks in her head that that metaphor makes her the bull, which should make her angry… "Why am I not angry?" She wonders to herself if after her eyes went crazy her head went crazy too, and reaches out to touch his face.
She realizes what she's doing and grabs his cheek to pinch it and thinks up a jokey jinx excuse (that she was thinking the same thing he was) to cover for her momentary slip in sanity. That he buys it is funnier than her crazy move.
She waits outside for Su-ha, but he doesn't answer his phone, so she figures she'll just have to go it alone. Kwan-woo runs out and decides to put away the umbrella he brought, and asks if they can't share hers.
He offers to drop her off at home before borrowing the umbrella for himself, which she happily accepts.
Su-ha is stuck at school and every attempt to sneak out gets shut down by Teach. Sung-bin watches and decides to help, screaming that she has a sudden stomachache and needs to be taken to the nurse.
Both Choong-ki and Su-ha run to her side, but she shoves Choong-ki away to have Su-ha take her, totally enjoying the ride in his arms before he puts her down in the hallway. She even pick-pocketed his cell phone for him, and he thanks her for helping him play hooky and runs off.
He tracks her phone and sees that she's nearly home, so he heads over to her place.
As Kwan-woo chatters on about the case, Hye-sung wonders how she's going to say goodbye to him at her door, thinking everything seems either too friendly or too formal. She gasps when he says they should meet tomorrow before the trial to "match lips," clearly thinking of kissing, while he's talking about getting their stories straight. Heh.
Su-ha arrives just outside Hye-sung's building, when Sung-bin calls to ask if his first love is that lawyer unni. "Do you… still like her?" He brushes it off like that's ancient history, and says he's just repaying a debt is all.
She's relieved to hear it, and he asks if that's why she called. Sung-bin: "No. I called to say that I like you." He laughs and says he knows, not taking it very seriously.
She means it sincerely though, and starts to confess, but right at that moment he looks up at Hye-sung's rooftop and sees her with Kwan-woo.
His umbrella drops to the ground with a thud and his phone just hangs at his side as he looks up at them, and it's a great moment of realization that's underscored by Sung-bin's confession to him, which he doesn't even hear:
Sung-bin: I really like you a lot. I realized it today. I know you don't like me back. It's okay if I just like you on my own. But… you seeing someone else, thinking about someone else, liking someone else… it's strange… that's not okay. Just thinking about that makes my heart lurch. It hurts, like it's sinking. I think I might like you a lot.
As she talks about her heart, he clutches his own while looking up at Hye-sung. Augh. He pulverizes my heart, this kid.
Kwan-woo leaves skipping, and then calls Hye-sung's mom to say that he's going to have to turn down that blind date with her friend's daughter that she was setting him up on. Ha, is he rejecting a blind date with Hye-sung because he's interested in Hye-sung?
Mom sighs, and comes clean to her friend that she was trying to set him up with Hye-sung on the sly, and even shows her a fortune she had read to ensure they were a good match.
Su-ha comes home soaking wet, and just brushes past Hye-sung without a word. She gabs away through the closed door, wondering why he didn't call and why he got rained on, and if he can come to her trial tomorrow because she's got this really tricky case.
He just stands in the dark room trying not to go berserk, and then comes out just as she's reaching for the salt on a shelf way above her. He reaches up to get it for her… and then puts it up one shelf higher. HAHAHA. So petty.
He fires back at her that he DID call but she's the one who didn't answer, and he's busy so he can't come tomorrow. She looks at her phone and realizes belatedly that he called her twelve times.
In the morning, our two cops go to see Min Joon-gook, and find him packing up to move. He says that he wronged Park Su-ha a long time ago, and that living nearby will only cause him more pain.
He says he's moving far away, and even asks them to apologize to Su-ha if they ever see him again. Urg. Nice Cop wonders if they should keep investigating the cell phone incident, but Cranky Cop says nothing was taken from the house, so it's not worth pursuing.
Of course as Hye-sung gets ready that morning, she discovers that something is missing after all: one of mom's chicken shop posters. She doesn't think much of it, but now we know where Joon-gook picked it up. Also, the thought of him creeping around in her room is making my flesh crawl, so thanks for that.
She stands outside Su-ha's room (well, the spare bedroom that's become his room), and asks in her nicest tone if he can't come to her trial today because she really really needs him, and because she needs to see his eyes to feel at ease.
She suddenly realizes that wording sounds weird and tries to take it all back, only to find his room empty. She's relieved, until she heads outside and finds him waiting at the front door. She asks again and he says no, enjoying that he has something to lord over her.
The cops come by to tell them the good news that Min Joon-gook is moving far far away. Who's ever even heard of cops this naïve? Is there no crime in your district?
Su-ha asks in a panicked voice if they got his new address, but she holds him back from starting any more trouble. They assure her that they'll never see Joon-gook again. As they walk away, she asks him, "Can I believe those words?" Su-ha: "No."
And then the killer goes straight to Mom's chicken shop, and smiles at the Help Wanted sign looking for a deliveryman. Nooooooooo. He greets her under a fake name, having already called about the job opening.
Hye-sung runs to catch the elevator in the courthouse, and when she shoves her arm in first, Do-yeon jabs the button for the door to close about a thousand times. I love that they're all equally fifteen, emotionally.
They have another elevator snark-off, and Do-yeon asks if she's done her homework on double murder trials. Hye-sung names the case histories, and Do-yeon points out that the last one, where two suspects both served sentences for murder, was presided over by the same judge they'll be seeing today.
Hye-sung shares her concern with Kwan-woo outside the courtroom, where they notice a group of students being given a tour of the courthouse. She turns to him: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" He pinches her cheek to say jinx. Hee.
The judge tells his colleagues that they'll just get this hearing over with, only planning to give it his cursory attention and just go with the single trial for both twins. But when he enters the courtroom, it's filled with bright-eyed kids, and suddenly his demeanor changes and he goes into teaching mode.
It's amusing, but only if you don't think too hard about the fact that they needed this to feel like he'd give the defense a fair shot. Hye-sung just keeps craning her neck the whole time looking for Su-ha, and lights up when he arrives.
He scans everyone in the room, and she thought-beams him to ask if Do-yeon has any proof that the twins planned and murdered the clerk together, and he shakes his head. So Hye-sung confidently argues (as does Kwan-woo) that if each twin is insisting he isn't guilty, then they shouldn't be tried together for the same crime, because the prosecution has no evidence that they were acting together.
The twins are outwardly hostile to each other even during the hearing, but something about the look on Su-ha's face makes me nervous. So does the woman sitting behind him, who must be Twin 2′s girlfriend.
The judge rules that they should be given separate trials, and Do-yeon deflates while Hye-sung and Kwan-woo share a secret high five.
Hye-sung runs up to him after the hearing to ask if they should compare notes on the evidence and strategize together, but he says that now they're on opposite sides, so they can't go sharing evidence and stuff.
She frowns and tosses away the rubber thimble he gave her, only to go back and pick it up with a sigh.
Do-yeon comes up to her, livid that she threw away a chance to put a killer behind bars—now they could both end up acquitted. Hye-sung notes how little Do-yeon seems to care about the fact that an innocent brother would ALSO be going to prison just to put away the guilty one, per her arrangement.
Hye-sung: "Do you know who needs to be kicked out of the courtroom? A lawyer who always loses? A judge who always rules wrongly? Or a prosecutor who always makes mistakes in her indictments? None of the above. The person who makes a mistake and knows she's wrong, but stands by it—like you—is the biggest problem."
She gets up in her face to tell her to prepare her apology for Mom, and thinks to herself she was awesome yet again. She runs over to Su-ha happily and offers to buy him lunch.
They walk out of the courthouse together and she's on cloud nine about beating Do-yeon, and tells Su-ha all about the firework incident and being forced to leave school because of her.
She says she wondered sometimes why she became a lawyer, but she gloats that now she knows the answer: "When I saw Do-yeon's face just now I knew. I became a lawyer for that moment. To see that expression on that girl's face."
He sighs the whole time as he listens, and as they cross the street he asks if she's that happy, and why. "Because I'm right, and she's wrong!" Su-ha asks carefully, "And if she's right and you're wrong?" Uh-oh. She stops in the middle of the street.
The twins head back on the prison bus, sitting on opposite sides of the aisle and not speaking a word to each other. But when they enter a tunnel, we see their reflections doubled up in the window, and they're smiling. At each other. Oh crap.
Su-ha gives it to her straight: those twins planned and murdered that clerk together.
Her step falters, and he has to catch her from walking into traffic. She repeats his words as they sink in, and then she grabs him by the tie, screaming, "You're lying, right? TELL ME YOU'RE LYING!"
COMMENTS
Oh I look forward to Hye-sung having to eat her words. Do-yeon can be hateful, but so can Hye-sung, and what she said (about not admitting when you're at fault) is not only true, but coming back around to bite her in the ass like an instant karmic boomerang. Now we just have to see if she'll live by those words, even if it means swallowing her pride and admitting her mistake to the one person in the whole world she'd never want to look weak in front of. I see a glimmer of hope in Do-yeon too, so maybe she'll end up being more complex than just a heartless girl who's spiteful for spite's sake. Something about their very teenage rivalry endears her to me—like the elevator button thing, which smacks of petty childish feud, not horrible irredeemable villain.
I like that the cases of the week continue to be interesting, mostly because they're written in a clever way to showcase the character relationships and the heroine's personal growth, but also because they're serious enough (murder, manslaughter) to keep us on edge about the consequences. This is life and death we're talking about, not petty misunderstandings. Between that and our killer on the loose, the stakes remain high, which anchors us in the real world despite superpowers and rom-com situations. Murder and mayhem and flirty roommate shenanigans don't normally go together, but everything about that combo works for this show.
Yay for the love triangle kicking into gear, as unconventional as it is. But that's also why it appeals to me. And narratively it still works the same way, in forcing feelings to the surface and making jealousy cut through the denial smokescreen. My heart already bleeds for the Noona Love That Cannot Be setup, but when he looked up at her with Kwan-woo and clutched his heart today, I just about died.
Thank goodness for hapless cops and flimsy excuses for cohabitation hijinks. I really like that their relationship takes on so many different characteristics over the course of the show, and even over the course of one episode. Sometimes he's the protector; and sometimes she's the noona or the mom; other times he seems like a friend or an oppa that she leans on. They each take turns fluctuating wildly between teenage tantrums and surprising moments of adult behavior, and from petty arguments to running to each other's rescue when it really matters. Basically, they just make my day.
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