Weightlifting Fairy: Kim Bok Joo Part 3

Bok Joo is still blind to having feelings for Joon Hyeong, or resistant to it, preferring to hold on to the lingering traces of obsession that persist towards the charming doctor. So, although she tells Joon Hyeong that she is almost over it, and we hear her thoughts telling herself she has passed it, that it was beautiful, that her heart did a good job, life can throw a curveball that causes emotional regression. The sudden appearance of her doctor fantasy just as Bok Joo is about to give her best and look her worst at a weightlifting competition almost derails her attempt to complete the task.  Thankfully, her professionalism, hard work, and preparedness for the match save the situation.  Bok Joo performs well and completes the final lift to win the much-coveted gold medal.  Those unaware of the crisis of femininity she is experiencing will put it down to the pressure of lifting the heavy weight.  Only Jung Joon Hyeong, turning up at the conclusion of the lift, understands why, instead of beaming in pleasure, Kim Bok Joo looks distraught and close to tears.  His gaze follows Bok Joo’s, and he finds his brother in the audience.  The tears he knows she will shed are all to do with her vanity as a woman.  The man she obsessed over, lied repeatedly to, confessed her falsehoods to, and experienced shame at the exposure, has witnessed all the things she told Jung Joon Hyeong she would hate someone whom she likes or who likes her to witness: the sweat, the facial contortions caused by exertion, the belly fat spilling over the support belt from the pressure of lifting the weight from floor level, the grunting effort to hold it over her head for the prescribed period.  Jung Joon Hyeong, who one must assume, turned up at the last minute perhaps by design (or not), did not witness those vulnerabilities. Even though he tried to assure her during an earlier conversation that what a person who loves her will see are her not the things she worries about, he knows Bok Joo wasn’t convinced. It’s an irony of sorts, because the one that loves her indeed did not see the things she fears, whilst the one that saw those things does not love her, nor does she love him (having acknowledged her interest in the doctor was a fantasy).

Joon Hyeong knows his words will make no difference this time, but he goes to her, anyway.  Standing impotently, he does not interrupt the heart-wrenching crying he witnesses. It’s easy to see how connected Joon Hyeong has become to Bok Joo.  He certainly appears to be as upset as she is. It’s shared misery, but for different reasons.  Finding that his brother is about to breach the sanctuary Bok Joo has created to isolate herself and her tears in, his sadness for Bok Joo turns to anger, his usually calm nature cracking as he berates and calls his brother out for his lack of sensitivity, lack of awareness, and carelessness towards this woman whom he sees only as a patient.  It’s unfair and also unreasonable.  The accusations are harsh as well as untrue.  The truth? We are watching Jung Joon Hyeong releasing his own frustrations towards his brother.  Love has made him change his soft loyalties (not his filial loyalties) in his emotional need to defend and protect Bok Joo.

Joon Hyeong has fallen hard for Bok Joo.  He can’t stop stealing glances at her and spontaneously slipping into contented smiles whenever he catches sight of her.  It’s the smile of people in love.  Perhaps it was easier for him because that emotion started back in elementary school.  As someone who holds onto his feelings, both good and bad, his feelings for Bok Joo would likely have gone into hibernation but not faded in the intervening years.  She saved his life, and he saved hers.  How often is this level of debt balanced?  She is open and frank about her obsession with his brother and other matters in her life.  He is seemingly as open about his attraction to her, though in more ambiguous language.  She blurts out to her uncle that, about her, Joon Hyeong has already seen everything there is to see, including those he shouldn’t have seen.  Misinterpretations aside, it is the truth.  Bok Joo has kept nothing hidden from him.  Understandably, then, she becomes the key that helps unlock Joon Hyeong’s ability to face the life miseries suffered over the past ten years, against which he has developed a shell, a fake personality to protect his heart.  Joon Hyeong repays the trust compliment with secrets of his own. He, at last, is able to unload his emotional burdens and face the psychological trauma that has been threatening his swimming future.  First, he does so to his therapist.  Then to Bok Joo. 

No budding relationship in dramaland can be completely drama free.  There is always at least one major argument aside from the miscellanea of misunderstandings that arise.  She's angry because he exposed her crush on the doctor to him. He can't tell her why he did so, nor why he was so angry on her behalf. The argument they have threatens to go off the rails if he can't explain his actions. When she accuses him of making fun of her, his own anger explodes. If she had been calm enough to listen to his words, Bok Joo would have heard him express how he feels about her. Feelings which, the viewer can see, are greater than the meaning of the words he poses as a question: Do you think, he asks her, that “when I lied for you, spent money to cheer you up, berated my brother because of you, that I did it all for a bit of fun?”  The last is particularly pertinent in that Bok Joo went against his brother for the first time ever. Theirs is a household of quiet contentment. He has never had cause to argue with his brother, but he responded to Bok Joo’s pain, her unhappiness, her embarrassment, and he converted it all to express his own insecurities within a family that has never shown him anything but love. His therapist recommends that he face the emotional conflicts he has been hiding deep in his heart because of the secrets he dares not tell -- the biggest one being the knowledge that his mother abandoned him with no contact, and that the annual postcards and gifts he receives in her name are from his aunt and uncle, now his parents. Love for someone else turns out to be the trigger that enables him to tell them the truth. In doing so, one layer of guilt will have been shed.    

In response to Bok Joo’s accusations, Joon Hyeong forces her to look within herself and face her own insecurities.  He ends with an accusation of his own, telling her that if she is embarrassed about who she is, how can she expect anyone to love her? Jung Joon Hyeong tells Kim Bok Joo to put her reaction to his brother seeing her weightlifting into perspective. After all, what does it matter? Why does she feel so ashamed?  The courage that had always awed him about Bok Joo has been replaced with irrationality and female vanity.  This new image is not good for Bok Joo if she is to continue to excel at her sport; it’s not admired by Joon Hyeong, who needs someone strong and confident in themselves as a partner, even as a friend. As slavishly as he defers to Bok Joo, he has his limits.  We’ve seen that temper before. When his ex-girlfriend first told him she wanted them to start dating again (after dumping him on the day he was experiencing one of his greatest crises), Joon Hyeong didn’t hesitate to both raise his voice and state the facts. When it’s unleashed, that temper hiding behind a clown’s façade, is uncompromising, blunt, the meaning behind his words crystal clear.  That’s enough, he’s saying.  It tells you, too, that there is a limit to what he will endure in the name of love.  Bok Joo, then, should take note.  Of course, she’s too wrapped up in her own misery to read the headlines never mind the small print.

It is a universal truth that we very often hide from the things we don’t want to confront. A truth that is difficult to face does not, however, always relate to things we do not want to acknowledge.  Joon Hyeong shows us that the opposite can also be true.  When his roommate asks him whether he is dating, it takes him a little time before the truth dawns on him.  Yes, he is dating. Isn’t he doing the same as Bok Joo -- living a fantasy of unrequited love?  Only more successfully. As his memory flashes back to all the ‘dates’ he’s had with Bok Joo, put into perspective if not into context, he was, indeed, on a date each time:  the meals, the club, the beach, the quiet moments together, the calls late at night, the secret meetings even later at night, the small but special gift she gave him.  This one in particular is a measure of their dating if one recalls he told Bok Joo that a handmade gift tells the recipient how much they have been on the giver’s mind. He repeats what she told her uncle.  Namely, Jung Joon Hyeong himself has seen everything there is to see (i.e. know) about her. 

He's the first person called when Bok Joo is sad, happy, worried, or just needing to let loose and have fun.  Joon Hyeong has carried a drunk Bok Joo to safety and home.  The viewer might have noted that whilst he was feeding her alcohol to help her destress and forget her sorrows, he was drinking non-alcoholic drinks.  For Bok Joo, a real foodie, giving up the precious abalone her father worked so hard to find, tells an important story, as her uncle points out.  They even have that one place they always meet, the place where, if they head in search of the missing partner, is the most likely place to find them.  It’s the fountain where the brown toad lives.  It’s supposed to be a place that bestows luck on competing athletes.  It’s where Bok Joo always makes wish contributions, where she prays for the health of her father, and her success in weightlifting.  More recently, she has added Joon Hyeong to those prayers.  So, yes, he is dating.  But our Joon Hyeong is in touch with his emotional side.  He is highly aware, highly astute, on the ball at all times.  As a result, he is also honest when he says the dating is one-sided, him alone.  He doesn’t seem worried.  One assumes that Joon Hyeong has seen the gradual emotional shift in Bok Joo towards him.  Jung Joon Hyeong appears to have more than hope; he seems confident that the gentle ripple of interest will eventually turn into waves of feelings, and then mutual affection.

If Joon Hyeong can't stay upset with his ex-girlfriend, there's no way the tiff with Bok Joo will endure. So when she 'goes missing', we see his resolve to cut her out of his life following their argument crumble and panic take hold. After all, not wanting to see her is not equivalent to ‘not wanting to see her’. No one can find Bok Joo, and although Joon Hyeong knows by now all her secret hideouts, she's at none of them. It had to be him that eventually finds her, because he's the most desperate and expending the most energy. His relief is palpable and the harsh words about making people worry quickly softens into a description of his heart clenching with fear that he might have done something to cause the situation.

Bok Joo's tears are what triggered him to act out of character towards his brother, and now faced also with her words of despondency, despair, and clear evidence of depression, Joon Hyeong doesn't hesitate to hug her tightly. He knows those symptoms, has navigated them alone for the past ten years. A happy family life or not, the two or three deep knots in his heart means he knows what she is suffering. His comforting arms and words help her face her father with her dilemma: she doesn't want to do weightlifting any more. In fact, she doesn't want to do anything right now. She's a pitiful sight for sure. True to his character, Father of Bok Joo reacts accordingly to protect her. A break from all training is agreed upon. Only, the routine of training is so deeply ingrained that Bok Joo quickly becomes restless and bored.  

What to do with all those empty hours, Kim Bok Joo? Make a bucket list is what: Learn to play the piano; get a part-time job; list all the things a perfect date would include.

Action starts with the ones she has control over:

Enquire about piano lessons. Check.

Get a job. Check.

The rest of the bucket list? A boyfriend is needed for those entries to happen.

Jung Joon Hyeong loves Kim Bok Joo.  Only she still can’t read the messages he’s sending out in bold script, or rather, heavy hints.  When he spends all his spare time with you, he’s smitten, and his heart is yours to possess.  In response to you taking time away from training, and therefore from school, he’s anxious because he won’t be able to see you or be with you.  His solution: Call him all day, every day, before everything you do, after everything you do, and then at the specific time of 7.00 o’clock.  Joon Hyung finishes the instruction by checking that Bok Joo knows how he feels.  She doesn’t, because, again, she’s listening but not hearing.  When Bok Joo doesn’t contact him as promised, Joon Hyeong seeks her out and turns up where she has taken a temporary job to fill her empty hours.  Our cool as a cucumber ‘flower-boy’ turns into a jealous lover.  Possessive lover-to-be doesn’t even want Bok Joo to speak to the co-worker she’s planning to have a meal with. Towards the “slimy salamander”, Joon Hyeong is rude and belligerent.  The conversation he has with Bok Joo is soundless, but my imagination fills in the silence: 

Her: What the F do you think you are doing?

Him:  I’m more worried about what the F you are doing with him.

Her:  Cut it out right now!

Him:  Never mine me; get rid of him right now.

Her:  What the Heck!

Nuking that dinner plan, Joon Hyeong and Bok Joo end up on their own.  As it naturally does (!), the conversation somehow turns to weddings.  He wants, he says, for her to stand by his side when he gets married.  Thicko misses that message as well.  Bok Joo mocks him, reminding him that only the bride can stand beside him at the wedding. Joon Hyeong retreats behind his usual jokey cover and changes the subject.  Dropped clue.  Missed it.  Dropped clue.  Missed it. I mean, the delaying tactic of prolonging time together by asking her to walk him to school then he’ll walk her back when he’s already near home is elementary dating strategy 101.  Slow is no longer an appropriate word for just how clueless this young woman is.  This time, just this once, let’s blame it on her depressed mood.

Kim Bok Joo now has a boyfriend, albeit that when it does happen, the realisation of mutual affection dawns on her almost as an afterthought.  In response to the threat of another man’s interest in Bok Joo, Joon Hyeong confesses his feelings and seals the event with a kiss.  Bok Joo is shocked but not resistant nor displeased.  She tells him, however, that she’s never thought of him as a man in that sense.  Jung Joon Hyeong's suggestion of a one month trial on a keep-or-return basis is inspired. Indeed, we all, without exception, view new relationships this way. Joon Hyeong voicing it adds madness, comedy, and daring to the truth. He's either a fool or a confident fool. Time will tell. 

In the usual way of dramas, the bucket list has to fall into the right hands to propel things forward. So it is that those hands belong to Jung Joon Hyeong.  The heavens are blessing him for his patience.  When Bok Joo drops her wallet, fate deposits it right at Joon Hyeong’s feet.  Shamelessly rifling through the content, he finds what he was intended to find: Bok Joo's dating bucket list. This is too easy to call it anything but staged. The tools are only half what's needed to get the job done, however. Ultimate success still relies on Joon Hyeong's ability to win Bok Joo's interest. That our hero is no fool we've seen again and again. Towards Bok Joo, his fluctuation between confidence and doubt is so graphically expressed in his body language and visually portrayed on his face, it's a delight to watch. It helps, also, that our heroine is not too astute and her awareness lacking, otherwise she might have stymied Joon Hyeong's attempts to seduce her at the first attempt.

Leonora

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