Finally finished Episode 2 of Fight for My Way! I’m still figuring this whole recap thing out, so bear with me. For instance, I should probably have way less photos. Hopefully, as I continue to recap, my editing eye will start to kick in. I like giving a lot of detail though, so hopefully, I’ll find a good balance.
The last episode was all about Aera’s very bad day and this episode is all about Dong-man’s very bad day. In episode 1, we saw how Aera dealt with adversity (her rage comes out) and how Dong-man stuck up for her; well know it’s Aera’s turn to reciprocate. This episode we learn how Dong-man deals with adversity (he is the opposite of Aera!) and we get to see Aera stick up for him. This writer has really delved into our characters and is helping us better understand them and their situations. So far I feel like we are in good hands.
EPISODE 2 RECAP
We start the episode in the past with Sul-hee, Dong-man, and Aera playing on the rocks on the coast in Seosan (which is on the west coast of Korea). Dong-man is in his own world as always. He is just sitting on the rocks and playing with some seashells while in his Taekwon-do uniform. Sul-hee and Aera are playing house together. Sul-hee is the wife and Aera is the husband who is also a broadcaster, complete with necktie.
It is hinted from their appearances that Aera might come from a poorer family than the other two. Possibly a very poor family. Unlike the others, Aera’s clothes are ragged and old looking. Her face and hair are unkempt. It is as if she has been working all day and finally has a break. Sul-hee and Dong-man’s clothes are crystal clean and ironed. Their hair is combed and cut into nice kid-friendly styles and they just look well taken care of all around. It makes sense because they talk about Dong-man’s father having a successful business. I don’t think they’ve talked about Sul-hee’s family though.
Sul-hee and Aera get into a little argument, as kids do, but it doesn’t last long as Aera wants to keep the peace between then. Aera says “Sorry, sorry,” just like she did in episode 1, so Sul-hee will stop crying.
Cut to the present and we see Aera dropping off all of her recycling for Dong-man to take to the garbage. She tells Dong-man her signature “Sorry, sorry,” while Dong-man looks at her like she must be the laziest person on the face of this earth.
Sul-hee pops out of Aera’s place with a suitcase for Joo-man (he forgot some things for his trip). Aera still calls her “Honey/Baby,” which is really adorable. “Make a lot of money Jahgi.” She calls Dong-man Jahgi as well, but he isn’t as receptive to the notation.
Later, Dong-man and Aera leave their respective homes at the same time, which I think might happen very often since they are on the same wavelength, and Dong-man is immediately shocked at Aera’s appearance.
They friendly argue back and forth as Dong-man tells Aera he gets to witness human evolution living next to her. Aera quips back (with an Aegyo voice) that she is having a hard time because she keeps getting prettier. Dong-man isn’t the quickest bird on the block so he doesn’t have a sharp comeback. Instead, he just walks off and says she gives him stress.
They move their conversation to the bag Dong-man bought Aera, which is important to note because I feel like this bag might continue to hold significance in this story. Dong-man asks if she really likes it and she tells him she does, it’s a really great bag. He then asks her if she wants Oppa to buy her another one (Aw, it looks like he might want to buy things for her). Ever quick on the reply, Aera responds smartly in her Aegyo voice, “Does Oppa want to buy Aera a bag?” which probably hit too close to home since he does want to buy her a bag.
He reverts to their playful nature and puts her in a choke hold. But Aera being Aera is not the one to easily give up, even when outclassed, and finishes Dong-man with a nice elbow to the ribs knocking some pain into him.
Cut to Joo-man and Sul-hee’s workplace. Joo-man is an ace at his job, the last dish he recently recommended sold over $200,000 of Tteok-bokki in 5 days and each package cost around $20. So yeah, a lot of money.
Yet his reward is a measly 200 bucks. At his desk he see’s two tickets for a movie and gets a call from Sul-hee.
He meets Sul-hee at their secret location (elevator 8 on the 1st floor) and they have a nice little moment.
The moment is broken up when three young happily chattering women enter the elevator. One of them (Yejin from the 1st episode) looks happy to see Dong-man and tells him she heard a certain movie was great.
It is clear that she has a crush on Joo-man and bought the tickets for him, and to make matters worse, she actually looks like a wonderful and completely nice person. Sul-hee later overhears from the girl’s friends that Yejin does have a big crush on Joo-man.
Cut to Dong-man’s cleaning job. Dong-man and his manager are standing behind a vacuum getting criticized by their supervisor. It appears that the vacuum is broken because it wasn’t cleaned properly and just not being taken care of in general.
The manager puts it all on Dong-man, but the vacuum was actually the managers. Dong-man tells the supervisor it wasn’t his. But the supervisor listens to the manager instead.
Dong-man looks incredibly hurt that someone could just blatantly lie like that. He confronts his manager about it, but the manager berates Dong-man saying Dong-man doesn’t know how things work socially and tells him to just quit if he wants to. He then tells him to clean up.
Dong-man looks hurt and like he really wants to say something, but just doesn’t have the words, or perhaps something is just holding him back. In this regard, he is very different from Aera who always has a sharp reply. I love how the cinematography in this scene sometimes looks like we are a fly on the wall during their conversation.
We later see Dong-man happen upon a couple kids arguing over who gets the last hit on a punching bag game. Dong-man tells them that with one hit he will get them some extra punches. He does his signature spinning kick and scores a high point total on the game sending the kids to a bonus round and makes the ajumma who mans the store upset. But the kids are ecstatic.
Dong-man looks happy as well as if that one kick released a lot of pent-up emotions. It might actually be the first time he has kicked anything in years because he shakes his legs and smiles as if he just got some rust off.
Right at that time, he gets a phone call from a friend and heads off to meet him
Meanwhile, Aera is a guest at Choon-sook’s wedding. Remember the invitation from the first episode? Looks like she decided to attend. She walked all the way there in the shoes Dong-man bought for her and then slips into some vibrant yellow high heels.
She looks tired, her hair is all sweaty, but her swagger is still there as she struts into the wedding hall. Aera is confidence times a million.
As we guessed from the last episode, Choon-sooks husband is much older, more homely than handsome, and very bald. Even so, Choon-sook still looks genuinely very happy to be getting married. It makes me think she might not be as materialistic and superficial as she comes across? Perhaps there is a little part of her fiance that she loves?
Aera sneaks in the back and sits by her old college friends, though it looks like they are frenemies instead of friends. Her college friends looked uncomfortable to see her, but they played it off well.
Meanwhile, Dong-man is across town meeting the friend who called him out for a favor. It looks like his friend works for KBC and they needed someone to fill in for a quiz show participant who canceled at the last minute.
His friend assured him that they wouldn’t ask him any questions, they just needed someone to stand there to fill the empty spot.
Well, sure enough, he gets asked a question. The question is a proverb that everyone in Korea should know. It is an amazingly simple question. But Dong-man uses his own logic about the question (comparing it to the housing situation in Seoul right now) and gets it completely wrong. At least his friend sticks up for him a little and says Dong-man isn’t a bad person.
The next question is a logic question and the person who answers it is the super smart kid from Dong-man’s high school, Moo-bin. Dong-man peers at him, he knows he recognizes him from somewhere…
Next, we see Dong-man walking through the cafeteria and low and behold, we have our answer as to who the mysterious woman was at the end of the last episode. It is the beautiful, and now divorced, anchorwoman Park Hye-ran. She is on the TV in the cafeteria and looks fabulous. Dong-man takes a moment to look at her, but thinks better of it and keeps walking.
While in line at the cafeteria, Dong-man gets behind Moo-bin. In a hilarious throwback to the first episode, the cafeteria lady asks Moo-bin to take his coffee milk and Moo-bin says he doesn’t drink coffee-milk. Lol. He must have felt so burned by all the coffee milks he gave Borum. To make matters even more hilarious, Dong-man asks if he can have the coffee milk instead, which Moo-bin agrees too. So even ten years later Dong-man is still taking Moo-bin’s coffee milk!
The coffee milk jogs something in Dong-man’s brain and he recognizes Moo-bin as his high school classmate! Dong-man tries to get Moo-bin to recognize him, but Moo-bin doesn’t remember him. It’s a cute scene because Dong-man is immediately chummy and playful with Moo-bin as he tries to get Moo-bin to recognize him.
Finally, when they are sitting at their table, Dong-man brings up the Taekwondo competition (by loudly acting out the scene of him taking off his jersey with Moo-bin’s shirt underneath) and a light clicks on in Moo-bin, he recognizes him. But he still plays it off like he doesn’t.
Dong-man’s friend feels a little bad that they can’t give him the gift certificate because it is in the name of the person who canceled at the last minute. To make it up for him he gives him cash instead. Dong-man doesn’t want to take it, but his friend is persistent. So now this is two episodes where someone is giving Dong-man cash. He asks Dong-man if he knows that contestant from earlier, but Dong-man reluctantly says they aren’t close.
This is a big reversal because the last time Dong-man saw Moo-bin, he was the one winning a big competition; this time is was Moo-bin. Dong-man looks like he feels like a nobody as he looks down at the money with his back resting on the wall.
To make matters worse, his ex shows up looking well taken care of and happy. The sight of her freezes Dong-man in his tracks. All he could do was quickly turn around. He comes to his senses after a moment and quickly walks away.
Meanwhile, at the wedding, Chan-sook is having a hard time because the MC of the wedding, an international Korean broadcaster living in Hong-Kong, can not make it. Everyone thinks it is bad if the bride MC’s her own wedding. And her Mom was bragging about having an international broadcaster, so it looks even worse.
Aera is sitting in the bar area and taking underhanded comments from her friends about not being able to afford their get togethers. Her friends aren’t extra bitchy and actually seem like they might be nice, but they do make Aera uncomfortable for not having enough money. Aera held her own just fine, but she decided, in the end, to get up for a breather. She didn’t want to leave because that would mean that she was running away. But she definitely needed some space.
While getting a breather Choon-sook finds her and begs her to pretend to be the Korean-HongKong MC of the event. Choon-sook promises that their friends won’t blab that Aera is not the Korean-HongKong Broadcaster.
Aera is like “Hell to the naw,” she wants no part of it, but once she sees the dress, she is sold. I love how Aera is a pitbull of a person, but she is also a girly girl when it comes to pretty things.
Aera puts on the dress and looks absolutely show stopping. All eyes are on her as she walks through the tables. But her eyes are only on the mic. She approaches the mic as if it is the best thing in the world.
She is definitely in her comfort zone with the mic in her hand. She is hilarious and engaging. One a hilarious thing she did is that when she first started talking she sounded like she was making an announcement at the department store (monotone dry voice). Lol, but then she switched, her voice gets livelier; in the end, she is an excellent MC.
Choon-sook granted Aera permission to wear the dress if she gave her one wish – to let her sing at her wedding, and for it to look like it was a surprise.
Aera grants her wish, but Choon-sook is horrible and sings a very inappropriate song for a person who just got married (체념 | 빅마마- 박찬숙 Big MaMa– Park Chan-sook). Everyone is aghast and second hand embarrassed.
Aera manages to salvage this ridiculous and extremely uncomfortable situation by telling the crowd a little bit about Choon-sook from college.
Everyone thinks Aera is going to say that Choon-sook really got around, but actually Aera is very complementary and says Choon-sook was so innocent. (Her mother is so surprised, she spits out her drink, lol). Aera then turns it over to the Aunt to sing her song (she makes a funny remark about the aunt being the secret heavy-weight in the family, like Korea’s former presidents’ friend, so everyone laughs). (새타령 | Sae Ta Ryung: a Korean folk song about birds).
When Aera sits back at the table, Choon-sook looks so happy and squashes whatever beef they had between them. Their other college friends are happy as well and even want Aera to do their weddings.
Moo-bin is also at this wedding with three guys. They are taken by Aera. They compliment her aura and they all think Aera walks on water. It looks like they would like to have someone like that on their arm.
Across town, Dong-man is waiting for a bus and looks pretty somber. He is holding a gift, which we quickly find out is for his mothers 60th birthday.
While at home, he and his parents are sitting quietly at a small dinner table. The mood looks uncomfortable, so to lighten the mood, his mother makes a big deal about Dong-mans’ gift, but his father tells her to be quiet about it.
Now it’s on as Dong-man and his father start to get into it about the gift (how did you afford it?) and then about Dong-man’s jobs (does he even have one?) and then about taekwondo (just get a job as a coach!). But Dong-man just yells that no one will want him as a coach because of the incident that happened ten years ago.
He says he just takes each day as they come. It’s hard to live because he doesn’t know anything but taekwondo. He yells that he will never do taekwondo again even though he really wants to do taekwondo. Even though all he knows in life is taekwondo, even though he is good at nothing else but taekwondo, still, he will never do taekwondo again.
Dong-man is so upset that he switched to his Chungcheong-do saturi (accent) as he continues to yell. Whereas when he was calmer, he spoke with a Seoul accent.
He continues yelling that he wouldn’t have had to enter that tournament if Father’s company hadn’t gone under. He also yells at his father about Dong-hee. Why didn’t they give Dong-hee attention? Why was all the attention on him? Dong-man is so upset that he can’t speak anymore and just hangs his head as he tries to get control of his emotions. His mothers 60th is basically ruined.
It seems like Dong-man has a sister who was overlooked because all the attention was on Dong-man? The sister is apparently sleeping right now, but it isn’t clear. She might be hiding because she doesn’t want to see Dong-man.
The conversation ends and we cut to Dong-man looking depressed with his head against the bus window on his way home. His mother lovingly packed all the food up, and then some, which he is carrying in a paper bag on his lap. He looks at the food and then covers his face as if he regrets going off on his father.
I feel for Dong-man. So far today has been horrible for him. He embarrassed himself on TV, he embarrassed himself by not being remembered by an old classmate, he saw his ex who burned him and he hid from her, he got yelled at by his manager for something he didn’t do, and he just got yelled at and went off at his father. Yesterday was horrible for Aera and today is equally or even more horrible for Dong-man. But he is different from Aera. Instead of puffing his chest out and attacking, as Aera would, he grows quiet. He is a much more internal person.
Cut to Aera having a wonderful time at the wedding. Her friend is very thankful to Aera for saving her and bought her bucket loads of alcohol as a thank you gift. Choon-sook was going to sit there and drink with Aera, but her new husband pulled her away to say their goodbyes to their guests. Choon-sook told the guys from earlier to please keep Aera company.
It looked like Aera was ready to go, but she decided to stay and have some drinks with the guys. She stylishly makes them bombers. They get her to drink a lot, but Aera has a very high tolerance, it doesn’t even look like she is the slightest bit buzzed. Moo-bin is the only one who isn’t drinking, but when the other guys’ pressure Aera about who should be her Black Night and drink her last drink, she smartly picks Moo-bin. The men say Moo-bin can’t drink, but Moo-bin quickly drains the drink in a series of big gulps.
The story switches back to Dong-man who is standing outside his coaches gym. He stares at the doors to the gym when he receives a text from his Mother. It is probably not the kind of text he wants to receive at that moment, but he opens it anyway.
His mother asks him to call and talk to his father because everyone is sad at the way Dong-man left. Dong-man just sighs and continues looking at the gym.
Inside the gym, coach-nim and two fighters are watching an MMA match. The fighters think the guy fighting is good, but the coach says he isn’t really that good. The fighters say coach doesn’t think anyone is good compared to coach’s first love, Dong-man. They reference the wall behind them, which still has Dong-man’s pictures all over it.
The big fighter asks coach-nim if Dong-man is better than him and the coach tells him that the big fighter is a dog who thinks he is a tiger, but Dong-man is a tiger who lives like a dog. He then hits him and berates him for getting into street fights.
Right at that moment, Dong-man comes in (his ears must have been burning). Everyone is surprised. For Dong-man, it looks like he had to get up a lot of courage to go inside his old coach’s gym.
Dong-man unloads all his mother’s food and tells them to eat to their delight. His coach tells him this is the first time he’s come see him even though his coach opened a restaurant forever ago. (We tried to tag some of the food with their proper names. It looks so good!)
One of the fighters looks amazed that Dong-man is there and says he heard Dong-man’s kick was legendary. The other fighter looks jealous and asks Dong-man to fight in a friendly sparring session. He adds it is because he wants to learn from Dong-man.
Dong-man isn’t interested and playfully laughs it off, but the big fighter persists. He said he heard Dong-man was sooo great; their coach never stops talking about him. He really wants to spar with him. The scene gets serious when the fighter quips, “Oh right, you don’t just fight right? How about $100?”
The coach tells him to go away because he is drunk. But that last remark got under Dong-man’s skin, so he agreed to the sparring session.
Dong-man’s coach is so happy, his smile takes up his entire face and he even pulls out Dong-man’s old taekwondo gear with this thousand watt grin. Seriously, his coach is stupid happy. It’s really adorable.
He is about to be in for a big letdown though, because when they start sparring, Dong-man is absolutely horrible. He gets caught by a jab and then falls when he tries to do a spin kick. All the while the fighter is making smart remarks about how Dong-man is supposed to be sooo great. Dong-man keeps getting caught by the fighter and isn’t able to return any blows of his own.
Dong-man ends up in the corner and is taking hit after hit until coach-nim says “Enough!” and stops the fight. This isn’t the Dong-man he knew. After stopping the fight He angrily tells everyone he is going out to sell soondae and leaves. While walking out he says that Dong-man is all washed up.
Dong-man is left alone, his head down, defeated. He just yelled at his father that he was the best at Taekwondo. Maybe he has always had it in his mind that he may not be smart or observant or whatever, but at least he has taekwondo. But now, it looks like he doesn’t even have that anymore.
After some time passes he walks out to his coaches soondae truck and asks for a ride home. His coach is still upset and says he doesn’t go to Dong-man’s neighborhood anymore. Instead of leaving Dong-man just says that he gets it, he’s all washed up. But he really liked it, he liked getting hit. It felt so refreshing to be hit.
His coach looks bewildered. For all this time he has been trying to get Dong-man to fight again. Tonight he gave up on Dong-man ever fighting again, but now Dong-man wants to fight again. His coach looks so angry-confused. Dong-man looks like he wants to melt into the ground and disappear forever.
Back at the wedding, Moo-bin and Aera are together in a bathroom with Moo-bin throwing up. Moo-bin may be great at numbers, but he is a super lightweight when it comes to drinking. After throwing up, Moo-bin tells Aera to not go with any of those guys.
He shows her their group text conversation from earlier and it is not pretty. Basically, they found out that she is not the Chinese-Korean broadcaster and wanted to get her back by seeing who could get her in their car and then to a hotel. But they said she wasn’t high class enough for a hotel and changed it to a motel. They bet money on each, $1000 to get her into the car and $200 to get her into their bed.
While reading the text conversation, Aera looks hurt, betrayed even. She was going to take them up on their offer to take her home, but now she feels embarrassed. She washed her face to cool off and starts crying. She immediately calls Dong-man, “Ya, I want you to come get me.” She continues saying that she feels so humiliated and can’t leave by herself. Dong-man doesn’t take her seriously at first, but when he hears her voice crack, he quickly leaves to go to her.
His coach just looks at him leaving and shakes his head. “The only one who can wake up the sleeping hulk is “microphone booral chingu” (불알 친구 = booral chingu = balls/testicle friend)
Jus a side thing to note, it looks like coach is familiar with the two of them and calls Aera Dong-man’s “mic-testicle friend”, which is hilarious because in Korea if a man has a friend who they have been friends with since childhood they call them their testicle friend because they were close enough to play together naked when they were kids, so they would all see each other’s balls. You know how little boys just jump in the water naked or something? It’s funny because guys call that to other guys, but the coach calls Aera Dong-man’s booral chingu because she is more like a man than a woman. It is also really funny because she probably also always carried around a microphone.
Back at the wedding, Aera has finally emerged from the bathroom. Her face is wet and she looks serious. The men keep bothering her about taking her home and they each show her their expensive cars as if that were enough to lure her in.
Aera takes note of each man’s car then the music kicks in as crazy Aera takes over. She goes to each man’s car and starts to destroy their rear view mirrors. She breaks them all off with her feet and her elbows to the point of breaking the heel on her shoe. This girl is so badass.
She then told them her real name was Choi Aera and to come find her at the Information booth of Lucky Mall and she will gladly pay for the damages to their cars. She tells them she will give them the $1000 that they love so much. She picks up the bag Dong-man bought her as they call her a wacko. She tells them if they ever meet again she will show them what a real wacko is. “Let’s bet $1000 on it and definitely meet again.”
She turns to leave but one of the men grabs her. Moo-bin tries to pull him off but he isn’t aggressive enough. The man says she can’t behave this way. She yells back that he is a pathetic loser of a guy who can only get a girl to sleep with him by paying them. The guys’ ego is bruised and he reacts by slapping her to the ground.
At that moment Dong-man walks up and sees Aera get slapped. Everything stops. It is as if he is taking a moment to process what just happened. That dude didn’t just hit Aera did he?
When the man raises his hand again a fire of rage builds inside Dong-man as he yells, “YAAAAAA!” Now his music kicks in.
Dong-man’s eyes are fire as he slowly walks with deeply focused rage to the man who slapped Aera. Aera knows this look in his eyes, the Hulk has arisen. All of a sudden all of her rage disappears as she tells the men to hurry up and lock themselves in their cars and call the police. This is serious.
Dong-man is not messing around as he cracks his knuckles into a fist and then runs and jumps off a car to attack that guy. The bastard quickly grabs a chair but Dong-mans flying kick obliterates it. Instead of reacting, Dong-man just lands like he does that every day and slowly confronts the bastard. *SLAP*….*SLAP*
The fool says it hurts and Dong-man says, “That’s right, getting slapped hurts, so why did he slap her? Why did he hit a woman?” *SLAP*. The guy tries to attack Dong-man, but Dong-man easily blocks his punch and elbows him in the head Ong-bak style (which is hilarious!).
Dong-man keeps asking why this jerk hit her and kicks him in the leg. I is kind of scary because he looks so calm and clear-headed while still looking like he wants to kill that man. It is becoming evident that Dong-man is not going to stop. He may be quiet when he gets emotional, but when his rage comes out he is like a tiger that has been unleashed (just like his coach said).
Aera doesn’t look particularly happy and has seen enough; she pulls Dong-man off of him. They start to head out, but the bastard starts to talk smack again. Aera looks concerned for the jerks safety and tells him to shut up if he wants to live, but the guy just keeps talking and says a crazy woman like Aera should have some sense slapped into her.
Dong-man calls him a crazy bastard and runs right back to finish the job.
Cut to the police station where all three of the men are badly banged up while Dong-man is sitting in the jail cell without a scratch on him, as calm as can be. The men want “justice” and start making up all kinds of lies about what happened. Aera speaks up to correct all of their lies and Woo-bin chimes in as well (when the lies involve Aera, hmm someone has a crush). The policemen say it wasn’t a fair fight because Dong-min is a black-belt level Taekwondo master so he is literally a lethal weapon. Because he is considered a lethal weapon, he automatically gets charged with attempted murder even if it is just a single punch.
Coach-nim shows up and Dong-man immediately apologizes for having to call him, but he had no one else to call. Coach-nim isn’t listening and goes straight up to the men.
But instead of apologizing on Dong-min’s behalf, coach-nim just looks at their bruises in amazement and asks them if it hurts a lot and whether their teeth are loose or their ribs are cracked.
The police are like, “Who are you? Where did you even come from?” And coach-nim hilariously shows them his tattoo that basically says martial artist forever.
He then talks about how Dong-man still has it and proceeds to tell them all Dong-mans fighting stories about how he broke three ribs once with one kick and loosed two teeth with a hook. Everyone is like, “Huh?”
The jerk guy stands up and says he wants Dong-man locked up. He says all these hurtful things like how Dong-man is just some crazy has-been nobody athlete. That’s when crazy Aera shows up. She pushes coach-nim out of the way like he weighed nothing and proceeds to tell the loser guy that she is a wacko and she will follow him the rest of his life and his children’s lives to say what a loser this guy is. She will show up at his job and his wedding and his kid’s colleges with signs to tell everyone exactly the type of loser man he is. “So let’s go. Let’s do this until we die.”
Everyone looks afraid and coach-nim whispers to Dong-man, “How do you have such strong backing?” Dong-man looks like this is the one moment he’s been happy all day.
Dong-man is released, but instead of being happy, he looks miserable. He walks several paces behind Aera and stops when she turns around to confront him about it. “Why are you walking with your head down?” he says he will pay her back but she just tells him she had to pay for the mirrors anyway so it’s alright.
Dong-man still feels really bad about it though. It must have been a lot of money and Aera must have been saving it for a long time because Dong-man tells her she was going to use it when she got married. Aera just responds that she won’t get married okay? Let’s eat. I’m hungry.
The next scene is amazingly gorgeous as they are sitting under the cherry blossom trees eating their kimbap which is a really cheap meal in Korea. It is kind of like a hot dog in the US, but much healthier. They talk about their day with Aera saying she got to touch a mic again for the first time in a long time and Dong-man got to let his legs fly again.
It looks like it will be a nice moment, but Aera’s mouth suddenly hurts from that slap. Dong-man inspects it, concerned, and says he should have just killed them. He really wants to look all inside her mouth but she just shakes him off. “You’re the one who is so quiet, so why are you interfering in other people’s affairs.”
Dong-man isn’t having that and yells, “Are you just anyone?” He tells her that he may be an embarrassment, but she shouldn’t live that way and to not look down on herself.” She looks at him as if he is speaking nonsense and says, “How are you an embarrassment?”
Dong-man looks like he is on the verge of tears and like he doesn’t want to bring up what is bothering him or he might start crying, but he brings it up anyway. He tells Aera that what that guy said earlier was true, he is some nobody has been.
Aera gets serious and tells Dong-man that he is not some scarecrow of a man (someone who looks like they are something but is actually nothing; like how a scarecrow looks like they are a man, but they are really just sticks). He will succeed, she knows it. He responds that he is just some expendable foot soldier, not a general. She immediately responds back that she has known him for 20 years. There is no one in the whole wide world who knows him better than her and to trust her, not anyone else. He will definitely succeed.
She continues to pump him up saying that he is still young. He can do it! She knows he can do it. She then says, “Let’s go, I want to eat some chicken feet.” lol.
But what Aera said had a big impact on Dong-man. Dong-man has had the absolute worst day. His old high school classmate didn’t remember him and everyone else today has told him he was worthless. His boss, his coach, his father, that jerk at the jail, even the TV show…they all looked down on him today. Aera is the only one who has told him that he is worth something and she said it with enough passion for anyone to believe it. Dong-man is really touched.
As Aera gets up to leave, Dong-man suddenly hugs her around the waist. She looks shocked, “What are you doing?”
His voice cracks as he says she made him cry. She always hugs Sul-hee when Sul-hee cries, so she should do the same for him.
Now Aera is the one who is oblivious. She is like, “For real? Are you crying?” He just hugs her tighter and tells her he was really hungry today and she was the only one to feed him. She is still shocked and responds, “Are you really crying?” he tells her to hurry up and pat him like she does Sul-hee.
She reluctantly does and he spends the next several moments getting the love and care he really needed that day. When he is feeling better he asks if his arms are around her hips. She laughs and responds they are around her waist on her love handles.
He then tells her in a serious-playful way to stop playing around with men or his bad temper will keep coming out. It hasn’t even been that long since she cried over that other guy.
She has heard enough and hits him in the head. But he isn’t done.
“You hit so well, why do you go around getting hit? Don’t get hit! Don’t go around crying and breaking mirrors….”
Dong-man takes a few deep breaths as if he is thinking about whether to say what he wants to say next. Then he says, “…Just play with me instead….Just play with me and I will play with you.” It feels a lot like a confession.
They are quiet for a tender moment as Aera tries to figure out if Dong-man is serious or not. She takes the safe way out and asks if he had been drinking.
It did seem like it is a confession, but instead of taking it further Dong-man just yells that they can go and eat chicken feet. His treat! Chicken feet and soju!
They happily walk away as a song from the OST starts playing and we switch to the Epilogue of them when they were kids.
Dong-man is getting beaten up by some other boys and Aera chases them away. He tells her he is like a useless foot soldier, not a general. But Aera tells him that even though he is like some tiny finger that wets the bed, even his tiniest finger can form a fist to punch those jerks. If he puts all of his strength in his punch then he will win.
He says he still won’t marry her and she’s all like, “Did I ask you to?” and hits him in the head. I love them as kids!
That is the end of the recap! I know, it is super long. Did you read to this far? If you did then I love you. We are going to try and do a live recap of episode three (in like two hours, where did the night go?) so check it out if you are awake! From that live recap, I will continuously update the post and add pictures for 24-48-72- hours. We’ll see how it goes.
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I love your recaps and how it has additional infos too 🙂 After seeing this episode, I guess it’s Dongman who has feelings for Aera first? Although it went unnoticed for a long time, but seeing him burst out like that if Aera’s in trouble/crying tells me so. And also, that was definitely an in-direct confession. A Dongman-style confession.
The coach in this episode is hilarious too. And Aera is the true winner of the episode after all, after being so brave!
Thank you for the recaps~
You’re welcome Anon! Thank you for following along. I agree with everything you said! And yes, that was definitely a Dong-man style confession.
I am so glad you like the recaps. It is taking me longer to put them together (because of all the additional information with the cultural references and stuff), but I think it’s important because it is way more fun when we are all in on the jokes the writer has in store!