My Dearest Nemesis: Episodes 5-6 » Dramabeans Kdrama recaps
My Dearest Nemesis: Episodes 5-6
by Unit
We’re halfway through our show and ~feelings~ have finally come into the mix. But nothing is ever straightforward in romance land, so we get denials, mixed signals, and unhelpfully helpful friends attempting to prevent our resident dragon and his strawberry from finding out that they’re each other’s first loves.
EPISODES 5-6
After Ha-jin calls Soo-jung not to come to her restaurant due to Black Dragon’s presence, Soo-jung grabs the dragon himself Joo-yeon and flees. Ha-jin cannot believe that Black Dragon is Soo-jung’s director at work, and when she carefully probes into the director — that Soo-jung once tagged a psycho — Soo-jung is all… well, he’s not so bad now that I’ve gotten to know him. Ha-jin brings up the possibility of Black Dragon growing to become a decent person like the director, and Soo-jung shuts it down immediately. “Even if he won the Nobel Prize, he’s still a scammer to me.” Ouch!
After a chance sighting of Shin-won and Joo-yeon, Ha-jin learns the duo are close, and she raises her concern about the Black Dragon × Soo-jung × Joo-yeon situation. Through Shin-won, we learn that Joo-yeon started focusing on becoming the perfect successor after Soo-jung broke his heart — and this leads our secondary couple-to-be to bicker over who the faulty party was in the heartbreaking first love story. Heh. Shin-won and Ha-jin soon realize that Soo-jung and Joo-yeon’s budding friendship might bloom into a romance — which is sure to crash, burn, and spark up World War Yongsung if they figure out the identity of their first loves. So, Shin-won and Ha-jin team up to tear Soo-jung and Joo-yeon apart in order to prevent this war.
To prevent a war, one could: a) get the warring parties to extend an olive branch to each other; b) threaten to impose sanctions if they go ahead with the war; c) just lie to one party about the other one. Shin-won goes with Option C, and he tells Joo-yeon that Soo-jung is interested in someone at work. But rather than kill Joo-yeon’s interest in Soo-jung, the lie further sparks his interest. In fact, our narcissistic dragon assumes that he’s the someone Soo-jung is interested in. *Facepalms in What’s Wrong With This Chaebol* But Joo-yeon’s bubble bursts when he sees her on a “date” with Shin-won. Pfft.
In reality, the “date” is Soo-jung calling Shin-won out for poking his nose into her affairs (the task Joo-yeon assigned to Shin-won in Week 1), but our jealous dragon can’t bear the sight of them together. Thus, he shows up at Soo-jung’s house, and I guess it’s “meet the family” time. Just kidding, he’s here to whisk her away for another Egg Drop date. Over the sandwich PPL, Joo-yeon attempts to dissuade Soo-jung from falling for a player like Shin-won. Soo-jung clarifies that she’s not romantically interested in Shin-won, but “what if I was?” she asks. Joo-yeon replies that he’d stop her until she loses interest, because “I just don’t like it.” Ouuuu. Is that a confession? You gotta speak plainly, dude. We do not do hints in this household.
Over the weekend, Soo-jung visits a countryside farm to convince the owner to market her products at Yongsung department store. Joo-yeon trusts Soo-jung with handling the deal, but he tags along for moral support. On arrival, they learn that the farm owner hates chaebols, and a quick-thinking Soo-jung introduces the chaebol-looking Joo-yeon as her younger brother. Not as a work colleague or a boyfriend, but a younger brother? Pfft. Needless to say, Joo-yeon is pouty about his newest title, and he almost noona-s Soo-jung to death. Lol.
The farm owner is a firm — but really sweet — grandma, and she couldn’t be any more different from Joo-yeon’s grandmother in the way she loves her grandson. She’s also very charitable and donates a chunk of her money to taking care of sick kids. Soo-jung and Joo-yeon spend the day alternating between farm work and convincing Farm Grandma to sign with Yongsung, and they’re forced to sleep over after they mistake makgeolli for Farm Grandma’s newest product. Hehe. We obviously can’t have a countryside trip without the sleepover trope.
Over more makgeolli, Soo-jung and Joo-yeon learn they share a few things in common: they both work so hard to prove a point to others, and they both got hurt by their first loves. After clicking glasses and cheering to the worst first loves in the world, Soo-jung excuses herself to take Ha-jin’s call. Joo-yeon overhears her telling Ha-jin that she doesn’t think of him as a man — ouch! — and frustrated with the kid brother zone he has been stuffed in, he pulls her in for a drunken kiss when she returns. Oops!
Sadly, we do not get the only one bed trope with this too. What we get is Soo-jung spending the night tossing and turning, and by morning she concludes that Joo-yeon kissed her because he likes her. Back to their business on the farm, Farm Grandma decides to sign with Yongsung thanks to Joo-yeon’s honesty (he admits that he’s the Yongsung successor-to-be, and promises to invest in her hospital charity through the Yongsung foundation) and Soo-jung’s idea (to convince Farm Grandma to sign with them through charitable deeds).
On arrival in Seoul, Soo-jung brings up “last night’s incident,” and Joo-yeon waves it away by calling it a mistake. An offended Soo-jung presses on for an apology, but Joo-yeon doesn’t understand her request for his apology when he’s the one being magnanimous enough to forget her mistake. Pause. Rewind. It turns out that while the “incident” in Soo-jung’s brain is the kiss, Joo-yeon’s incident is Soo-jung leaving him out on the bench to suffer from the cold and mosquitoes. Pfft. Not him kissing her and forgetting all about it!
But Joo-yeon doesn’t forget that Soo-jung doesn’t think of him as a man, so he tries to show off his manly appeal by: 1) building muscles; 2) debating on manly hairstyles in the shower; 3) consulting people in similar situations; 4) treating his employees to a luxury buffet — which everyone fawns over, except the one person he wants to impress. LMAO! Soo-jung alternates between denial that Joo-yeon is nothing more than her boss, and hope that their kiss meant something to him. When he doesn’t react to the news that she’s going on a blind date (cameo by Hong Jong-hyun), she marches to his house to confront him for sending mixed signals. But the ensuing back and forth just ends up hurting both of them. Jeez, guys, clear communication is the key!
Joo-yeon’s grandmother decides to expose him to the media as her grandson in her baby steps to making him the official successor. The succession plan means Joo-yeon needs to put in an extra hundred percent focus on work and nothing else — but he’s already got another focus: Soo-jung! Joo-yeon visits the rock club to enjoy the outside world for one last time before the succession is official, but for the first time in forever, clubbing is not fun. Thoughts of Soo-jung linger on his mind until he finally remembers the kiss!
Via the power of the plot, Joo-yeon teleports from the street to the department store — where Soo-jung is on a second date with her blind date. He pulls her into a changing room, and she is alarmed to see him out in the open dressed in his rockstar getup. “I know this is crazy, too, but I remember everything. That was my first kiss,” Joo-yeon says to a shocked Soo-jung. Now what? Are they going to have a second kiss? Confess their feelings? Get caught in the changing room? I guess we’ll find out next week.
In the meantime, our second leads have gotten closer while scheming to break our lead couple apart. But Ha-jin is still firmly not interested in a relationship, and Shin-won would have to work extra hard to get enough brownie points to win her heart.
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