Twenty Five Twenty One: My Favourite Lines From Ep.13

twenty five twenty one: my favourite lines from ep.13

while we leave baekdo to make out in the snow, i’m coming to you with an attempt to analyze all the lines that made me fangirl in this episode. is my brain as melted as the snowflakes between hee do and yi jin’s lips? absolutely; so this post should be extremely fun.

“is this kind of love unacceptable?”: right from the start, hee do delivers this gut-puncher with her signature honestly and emotional intelligence. i love how this line continues the earlier discussion of what baekdo’s relationship means to both of them, and encapsulates hee do’s current feeling of having done something to overstep, of being too much or not enough.

min chae’s physical presence in the past narrative is breathtaking enough to deserve a place in this post about words. the level of theatrical staging, dramatic irony of the future towards the past, brain-tingling uncanniness, and simple comedy raised the bar for art in any form.

“kiss”: this tiny word-playing scene does a brilliant job of showing hee do’s state of mind, and parallels yi jin’s visually shown reliving of the kiss. while the translations of their feelings are seemingly opposite (words vs image; external expression vs internal disguise), they are of one mind throughout the episode.

“this is my love”: weaving this line as a narrative thread throughout the episode, the show lets hee do process all her complex feelings and still choose to fight for the relationship. while yi jin buries his feelings with the notion that they would lead to disaster, hee do’s open expression of her suffering is her signal that disaster is already happening, and yi jin is the only one who can stop it.

“damn you, alcohol!”: it’s only right that yi jin’s drunken confession reaches jiwoong first, allowing the narrative to bring him to the same level of suffering that he’s causing hee do. his level of dramatics during the drunken confession, down to his phrasing (“and yet, i waver” okay sir may i direct you to a jane austen adaptation casting), is a perfect expression of his character. as we’ve seen from episode four, alcohol makes yi jin honest, and that’s something he knows well enough to try to avoid hee do even more urgently in the second scene where she waits in front of his house.

“liking someone means i can learn about myself”: i want this line framed and exhibited in the louvre because it’s so accurate and still somehow felt like it’s never been acknowledged before. hee do continues to blow me away with how well she understands and represents real aspects of being in love, and the line can be interpreted in both a psychological and physical way, which makes it all the stronger.

“is it because you understand me that you love me?” vs “i don’t understand you. i simply accept you.”: hee do is again hitting the nail on the head with her questions, and you can tell how much courage it takes for her to state the fact of him loving her. there is uncertainty there, informed by yi jin’s current behaviour towards her, but there is also the power to return yi jin’s hidden emotion to the surface by calling it by its name. yi jin’s response is both beautiful, with its meaning that he doesn’t have to get or relate to every facet of hee do’s self to appreciate it, and a reflection of the present situation, where he doesn’t understand why she keeps turning up at his door but accepts her presence as the strange wonder it is.

“i’ll either get it all or lose it all”: once again a brilliant summary of how it feels to take the next step towards the other without knowing if they’re there to catch you. all through this episode, hee do is in free fall, but she keeps her eyes open the entire time, and trusts that she knows who she is falling towards. it’s yi jin who thinks he’s strong enough to stop gravity, and it’s her who proves him wrong.

“you wrote this, didn’t you?”: the fact that hee do knows him well enough to immediately recognize his hand at work speaks volumes, just like his expression when he was looking at her respond to a bully, freak out over stickers, and replay the fencing match to spot her mistakes. there’s something so intimate about this scene, because he sees her as she is when there is no one to be for but herself, and loves her in her wisdom, her joy, and her tenacity.

“we were capable of anything”: including making me cry because it’s such an apt summary of how much their relationship has endured and how far it has come

“i can’t lose it”: what a beautiful way to weave the recurring question of what kind of love they both feel together with hee do’s gambling metaphor before wrapping up both. hee do spends the entire episode losing, but each loss comes after the gamble of a kiss, a confession, a question, a confrontation, an action; and each loss becomes a step towards the tower of self-doubt where yi jin tried to imprison his feelings. like a hero from a fairy tale, hee do had to try to win her true love’s heart three times, each time turning up at the foot of the tower where he lives, and being stopped by a blue wall of thorns. using her words as a weapon of honesty and persuasion, on the third time, she wins.