Motherly Love Interference
Episode 10 of Now, We Are Breaking Up begins with a clash between Hye-ok and Jung-ja. Hye-ok gains the upper hand with the news of Soo-wan’s death, instructing Jung-ja to restrain her daughter. Meanwhile, the couple in question reaffirms their love. Do-hoon – looking dapper in a tailored suit with his hair gelled back as per CEO Hwang’s advice – makes another foray into The One’s office to give Chi-sook a flower bouquet. She’s dazzled by his new appearance and agrees to a date. Young-eun visits Jae-guk at his studio. With a running customer count of zero, he’s decided to charge each customer only 5,000 won for unlimited pictures. Mi-sook, feeling time slipping away, forces her crying daughter to learn to dress herself without help. At the same time, Soo-ho meets with Min-kyung and realises that she’s more concerned about the impact of his absence on her job than on her heart. That night, Do-hoon takes Chi-sook on a date to the Namsan love locks. He tells her that, while she can keep viewing their relationship as a contract, he plans to continue his unrequited love for her in earnest. After adding a love lock to the fence, Do-hoon gives Chi-sook the key so that she can remove the lock when she ends their relationship. Jung-ja visits Young-eun at her apartment, pleading with her to end things with Jae-guk. Young-eun explains that the hardest part of her relationship with Soo-wan was ending things before her heart was ready and she can’t fathom doing it again. Nevertheless, Jung-ja continues her lecture. The next day at The One’s office, Young-eun meets with a domestic fabric vendor and offers him a business proposal. Young-eun visits Jae-guk’s studio to find that he has gone out to get lunch. Yoo-jung uses the opportunity to harass her and only leaves after Jae-guk returns. Jae-guk follows Yoo-jung to her car. She tells him that she wants Young-eun to feel the pain of losing a partner without having caused that loss. Jae-guk reveals to her that Soo-wan was speeding through the rain on the night he died to break up with Young-eun. In a flashback to their phone call, Soo-wan tells Jae-guk not to be a coward like him. Later, Young-eun and Chi-sook take Mi-sook to Jae-guk’s studio since Mi-sook wants to get her picture taken before she loses more weight. The three friends have fun, laughing and dancing together as Jae-guk takes their photos. That night, Jung-ja finds Young-eun and Jae-guk at the studio. She warns Jae-guk away from Young-eun, saying that an illegitimate child like him has no right to upend her daughter’s life. Jung-ja leaves the studio with an outraged Young-eun right on her heels. Hailing a taxi, Jung-ja threatens to go back and hound Jae-guk again if Young-eun doesn’t get in. Chi-sook has Do-hoon meet her at the love locks again to announce that she wants to date for real. She kisses him and throws away the key to their lock, ready to jump into their relationship and live without regrets. The following day at The One’s office, we learn that the fabric vendor accepted Young-eun’s proposal. Her proposal is shown to have been an advanced payment to resolve the problem of fashion brands lowering the amounts they offer for domestically produced fabrics, preventing domestic vendors from committing to high quality. Young-eun reasons that, if Sono continues to purchase from overseas fabric vendors, they will have to continuously raise the price of their clothes until customers are better off buying direct from overseas fashion brands. With the added security of constant quality checks, CEO Hwang enthusiastically agrees. Jung-ja serves Taek-soo with divorce papers, saying that she doesn’t want to waste the rest of her life being his caregiver. After work, Young-eun goes to see Jae-guk at his studio. She gets angry at him for not complaining about the way Jung-ja spoke to him. When he tells her that he’s let people comment on his birth all his life, she gets angry at him for that too. She then fumes about the way he causally downgraded his career for her. Jae-guk is moved that she cares enough to badger him when no one else has before. He thinks to himself that he has finally met his true love and then says as much. Young-eun warns him that she’ll keeping getting angry and he assures her that he’ll keep loving her anyway. Young-eun has a flashback to the day she went to Hye-ok’s house for lunch. Hye-ok proclaims that the guilt Jae-guk will feel once she removes herself from his life will be on Young-eun’s head. She asks if Young-eun thinks they can be happy with this hanging over them. Back in the present, Young-eun returns Jae-guk’s declaration of everlasting love.
The Episode Review
Jung-ja is now tied with Hye-ok for the worst-mother-of-the-year award. She trauma dumps her life regrets on Young-eun (when she really should be taking them to a therapist) and makes every conversation about Young-eun’s relationship about her instead. With Young-eun choosing to pursue her love anyway, we can only hope Jung-ja doesn’t do something completely out of line in the episodes to come. Yoo-jung finally got a taste of her own medicine. After spending ten years blaming Young-eun for Soo-wan’s crash, Yoo-jung must now grapple with the fact that he was driving away for her sake and not Young-eun’s. Why Soo-wan didn’t think to tell Yoo-jung this before he took off is beyond basic reason. Reasonable or not, hopefully this brings Yoo-jung’s self-righteous meddling to an end. The culmination of all this melodrama into another declaration of love between our leads came with a heaped serving of the usual blank stares. So, it’s not surprising that the most exciting part of this episode was Chi-hyung deciding to call So-yong by her name when they’re alone.
