Summary
“Hello, My Soul Mate” turns the drama up a little with some key developments.
This recap of Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 10, “Hello, My Soul Mate”, contains spoilers.
It took ten episodes, but “Hello, My Soul Mate” finally includes an acknowledgment of how Yeon-su and Ung feel about one another. Well, at least how she feels about him, though it’s easy to imagine that the feeling is mutual. That, to be honest, feels like more of a turning point than even the kiss was, and it presents some interesting possibilities going forwards. Now that the truth is out in the open, even if Ung himself didn’t hear it, it’s time to commit to doing something about it.
Our Beloved Summer season 1, episode 10 recap
Despite “Hello, My Soul Mate” containing this moment — and we’ll get to that — a large portion of it was devoted to NJ. She was given opening narration duties, and as well as allowing her to spend more time with Ung, we also get to see the cost of her fame, which is considerable. She makes for a sympathetic figure on several fronts; she’s mystified by Ung’s perceived failure to reciprocate her attention, when he finally does their “date” — she calls it that, he doesn’t — is undermined by nosy customers in the restaurant who’re constantly criticizing NJ and trying to take pictures of them, and Ung is clearly focused on Yeon-su. Or is he?
The thing with Ung is that it’s difficult to tell what he’s really thinking. Crucially, it isn’t him who opens up about his feelings for Yeon-su, it’s the other way around, so a potential romance between Ung and NJ is still on the table, even though Ji-ung still feels like more of a legitimate love rival in this tentative square. Thanks largely to Ung’s reticence, it’s honestly hard to tell quite how much faith Our Beloved Summer is putting in the NJ character, or whether it’s just using her as an excuse to lightly critique celebrity and idol culture.
Until Yeon-su’s big revelation, she and Ung are still pushing the idea of them just being friends, but it isn’t holding much water. Following on from the previous episode, Ji-ung is surprised to see Yeon-su at Ung’s place, but not too surprised. When NJ tries to whisk Ung away on their “date” after she has just finished filming her documentary segment, Yeon-su makes a point of saying she left something important at his place, just to let NJ know what time it is. And when Ung later returns her “precious” belonging, her pouch, it’s clear that they both want to spend more time with one another.
That time makes for the funniest and then most touching scene of “Hello, My Soul Mate”. Ung eats with Yeon-su’s grandmother and she absolutely eviscerates him, verbally, while also insisting he stay and eat so he can be fattened up. It’s classic grandma stuff, and it’s funny, but it’s also a little sad how much pain Yeon-su and Ung have caused not only each other but those close to them. Of course, Yeon-su never admitted it was her who broke up with Ung, but she’s forced to when her grandmother gets increasingly angry with him even after he has left. But this revelation comes at a cost — it means admitting she was wrong, and how she still feels about Ung even today. The hug Yeon-su shares with her grandmother is one of my favorite scenes of the series thus far.
And then there’s Ji-ung. The episode spends some time on his relationship with his mother, which is fraught, to say the least, and it’s also his birthday, so he’s mopier than ever. A seemingly nice gesture — his mother makes him a birthday meal — turns out to be a crushing reminder of her neglect, since it turns out she still can’t remember that he’s allergic to peaches, despite him almost dying in front of her after eating one. At the very end of the episode, it’s Yeon-su, who Ji-ung has just happened to encounter on the street, who he confesses this to, so where that conversation is going to go is anyone’s guess.
Also at the end of the episode, Ung, waiting for Ji-ung in the documentary editing suite, plays back some of the footage he has assembled… and it’s all of Yeon-su. It looks like Ji-ung’s secret is out.
