My Love Eun Dong - Episode 2 (A SqueeCap)

Episode 2

It's 2015 again and famous actor Eun Ho stares into the distance while sitting under a tree, holding what looks like an engagement ring in his hand.
Is it mine? No? We'll see about that.

And then we're back in to the bicycle accident and the rain. They're both happy at having found each other again. Over dinner they catch up a little on the past. Eun Ho notices she's wearing a ring, and you can tell he's wondering if she maybe has a boyfriend. He tells her she's really beautiful and they get all shy and cute. He shares that he became an actor and she tells him she is a writer. But despite his misgivings, he is incredibly happy to have found her again.
Look at those adorable faces.  I vote for honesty, kids! It's the best policy.
They start to do all sorts of couple-y things like riding bicycles in the park and just being really happy and cute. Eun Ho finds out that her name is Ji Eun Dong (he hadn't known her surname before) and that she teaches older Koreans how to read and write at the local public service center.
It's so strange how they put it in the subs:  learning Korean.  I keep thinking that they KNOW Korean, what have they been speaking all these years? Anyway.  Not important, I guess.
I just looked up and apparently the older generation of Koreans had low literacy rates and this sort of teaching school was part of a government push to lower that rate. 
She's super clumsy when it comes to bicycle riding and of course he rushes to her rescue. Ah the tension!
Korean boys (in dramas) show love by getting angry when you hurt yourself.  Another thing that is hard to understand, particularly with the prevalence of wrist grabs.
At one of their meet-ups, they talk more about the intervening 10 years. She tells him that she was adopted, but her adoptive parents are really great. He explains that he was in hospital and couldn't come to her. He evades the question about how he got into hospital. They are both leaving out lots of details and trying to hide more serious things they want to talk about. You can tell they are not 100% comfortable with each other yet.
Well it makes sense, kind of, they had a brief (although) intense connection as CHILDREN...but that doesn't mean they do now.  Except they totally do.
He asks her if she has a boyfriend, but she doesn't really answer. SHE SHOULD HAVE SPOKEN UP. He assumes that her lack of answer means that she does, but he tells her he's determined to win her over and convince her he's the man she should be with. When his annoyingly popular colleague, who is a popular actor, says that you can tell that Eun Dong isn't his girlfriend, and that Eun Dong is totally his (the popular actor's) style, Eun Ho threatens him with some choice words.
This part was a little weird for me. He seems a bit strange, she seems a bit untruthful.
Eun Ho also tells his sister about Eun Dong. She also shares with him that she's met someone she wants to marry. She's a medical resident at the local hospital and it's someone she's met at work.
This drama is just chock full of actors I like. Little Sis is Kim Yoon Seo.
Eun Ho gets Eun Dong to ditch her prior appointment to meet him for a movie date. They both show up in their matching shoes. She cutely explains that her feet outgrew the old ones, but she bought a new pair to match. She's also wearing her old giraffe hair pin and he cutely compliments her on it like he did in the past.
The pair get awkward at the steamy, passionate romance of The Notebook, and the romantic tension as they leave the movie theatre is rather palpable. But he's so shy and awkward. She's left her hand within holding range, but he struggles to pluck up the courage to hold her hand.
It's funny (or maybe not) that they show The Notebook as the movie they see, because this feels a lot like that movie, in temperament and style. Right?!
As he finally grabs hold of her hand, they turn to each other and start talking. He explains that he's not really sure how far to push the boundaries because he's not really sure if she's given up on the other guy yet or how she feels. Just then it Yoon Do Hyun's "It Must Have Been Love" starts playing over the loudspeakers (music plays over the speakers everywhere here in Korea) and the rains comes down. They run towards a phone booth and stare at each other tensely. She pulls on his sleeve and tells him he can step it up. He leans in for a kiss and we cheer!
So there IS a guy, but she's made her choice.  Hmm.  Because he has had no mention of a girl, in fact, makes a point that he's been looking for her always...but she had a guy.
As Eun Dong dictates the seasons for her students to write, Eun Ho comes to the window and starts staring at her. She gets really distracted and the pensioners find the two lovebirds adorable.
Nope. It's not creepy at all.  WHY DOES SHE ALWAYS LOOK LIKE SHE KNOWS SOMETHING SHE WON'T TELL YOU? 
It turns out that perhaps Eun Dong's adoptive parents aren't exactly loving and she plans on running away. Eun Ho and Eun Dong take a new bus to where she's moving to. She takes out her Discman and puts the earphones in. He doesn't recognize the song and she's not so happy. She hints that it was a song from, you know, that first time... and he finally realizes that it's the song that was playing when they first kissed.
What?  When was their first kiss?  The other night?  Okay.
Time passes and they meet up. He kisses her and takes her hand and realizes she's still wearing what he thinks is a couple ring from her boyfriend. He gets really angry and tugs the ring off and throws it into the lake. It's only after that Eun Dong tells him that was her grandmother's ring. He immediately jumps into the lake to find it.
I laughed but I wasn't sure I was supposed to laugh. (I laughed too, don't worry)
Eun Dong rushes off to get some help (?) and he grabs onto her and tells her to come back. After she leaves, he looks over to his hand at the ring that he was able to salvage. He waits, and waits, and waits, but she doesn't come back. 
What WAS she going for?  Was it dry clothes for him, or a towel or something?  Oh look...he had the ring.  I guess that was the ring we saw up top.  I missed that first time around.
Unbeknownst to him, there's been an accident with a car and a truck and somehow Eun Dong is involved. She lies lifeless and bloody on the road as an ambulance arrives to carry her to hospital. As the paramedic reads her name from her notebook, her arm slips off the gurney and swings listlessly as if she's maybe already dead.
Meanwhile, he waits for her for hours.  Who does that?  No one, that's who.   Before, he didn't know her last name.  Now, he doesn't know where she lives.  Ask some QUESTIONS.  Jeez.
We're finally back to 2015 as actor Ji Eun Ho melodramatically tells the reporters that Eun Dong is his fiancee and he's going to find her. When a reporter asks him about his marriage rumours to Jo Seo-Ryeong, he dismisses them and says that they are just good friends. Of course, Jo Seo-Ryeong is standing and listening with a very disappointed face.
Crap.  Another actress I like (Kim Yoo Ri) but usually want to kill the character. But anyway, does this mean he DID have someone else while he waited?  Clearly a friends with benefits arrangement for him at least, but at least he hasn't been waiting for some girl he saw 4-5 times in 20 years. Because that would not be weird at all.  No.
Eun Ho leaves the press conference and heads off to the park where he last saw Eun Dong. He gazes into the past and sees happier times and stays there all afternoon lost in memory.
As long as he stands there, I can stare at his tush.  I'm good.
He then goes home to watch footage of Eun Dong on her bicycle on an endless repeat loop. I think he's a little obsessed. His adorably lovely manager then meets up with the mysterious writer, Seo Jung Eun who we saw earlier in the episode.
You think he's a little obsessed? Let's face it...he's crazy. But he makes it look really sweet.
 

Comments

I didn't love this episode as much as I loved the first one, but I still really liked it. I just want him to find Eun Dong and have a happy ending, but I am sure we are pretty much guaranteed some angst and heartbreak before we maybe get a little bit of happy at the end, right?
In the hands of lesser actors, we'd be expecting this to end in a mental institution - let's just be honest about that.  This is creepy stalker level obsession, but he's so sweet about it that we forget that. We forgive it, in fact, and talk about how devoted and sincere he is and how fated their love is.  We are such hypocrites, aren't we?  (But it's so much fun!)