The Love Poems
The second chapter of When My Love Blooms starts to show just how unlucky and sad Ji-Soo’s life seems to have been so far. The show has done a great job at building the different characters up with plenty of drama and emotional scenes already but there are still quite a lot of things not yet revealed. In true K-Drama fashion, I’m sure these will come to light in the upcoming episodes and give us some surprising twists and touching moments. Episode 2 of When My Love Blooms starts where the last one ended with Ji-Soo crying as she recognizes Jae-Hyun. He tells her he wished he had found her sooner but she replies that they ended their relationship, claiming not to remember the past very well. Talking about their children, he tells her not to worry about it and, unable to look at him any longer, tells him she has to go and leaves. However, he tells her to follow him to find her way back. In a flashback, we then see her listening to a tape of him singing and playing the guitar before she comes face to face with Jae-Hyun. He tells her to stop hanging around his society so she asks him again to date. He refuses and takes his tape back before walking away. Back in the present, they arrive at a bed and breakfast. Jae-Hyun looks at the handkerchief, realizing that she hasn’t forgotten it while Ji-Soo sings the song from the tape in her room. The next day, Jae-Hyun tells her that he wishes it would snow more so they could get stuck there. As they walk back, she tells him she feels a little uncomfortable listening to stories from the past and wants to treat the issue with their children as two parents. After parting ways, Jae-Hyun gets picked up by Joon-Woo and asks him to find out more about Ji-Soo while the latter visits her dad who has dementia. She speaks to him about what happened with Young-Min and about the seasons, which all remind her of Jae-Hyun. She also tells her father she wished she had met him again after all these years under different circumstances. At home Jae-Hyun’s wife, Seo-Kyeong, has returned and berates her husband for letting the school incident slide. She tells him that she already didn’t like that Young Min is going to school for free. At the same time, one of the mothers meets with Ji-Soo and tells her she wants her to resign from her position as the chairperson of the committee because of what happened with her son. She also reveals that she knows she has been lying about her life. Ji-Soo replies that she shouldn’t have to disclose her personal life but she agrees to resign. Leaving the mother, Ji-Soo gets a call from her ex-husband. He wants to make sure his son is OK as he hasn’t been able to reach him in two days. Ji-Soo tells him his phone is broken before we flashback in 2004 and Ji-Soo’s time in prison when she refused to settle. As we go back in the present time, Jae-Hyun finds out that Ji-Soo is divorced, has a child and not a lot of money. He later meets with Dong-Jin to discuss the women protesting their contracts, which they believe are unfair. Jae-Hyun decides to leave them for now as they are not hurting anyone. In school, we see that Jun-Seo is bullying Young-Min just as Ji-Soo is heading to have drinks at Young-Woo’s bar. We then see a flashback of the two of them together in 1993 where he invited her to join his philosophy club. She agreed to go when she found out that Jae-Hyun frequents these meetings. After finding out he often comes to the library, Ji-Soo decides to hang around and finally meets him again one day. He doesn’t stay though but makes sure he leaves a book with love poems for her. In the present, Ji-Soo leaves the bar to go shopping as we see Jae-Hyun watching her. She drops her shopping so he sends Jun-Woo to help out. When he returns to the car, Jae-Hyun asks him to come back in the mornings for a few days to see how she is doing. While buying gloves for Ji-Soo, Jae-Hyun finds out that she is helping the protesters. At the protest, the women find an article about Jae-Hyun which shows them that Ji-Soo is married to the chairman’s daughter, Seo-Kyeong. In the meantime, Seo-Kyeong decides to visit the headteacher of her son’s school to tell him she wants to get the violence committee involved for the incident. Later on, Jae-Hyun finds out about the committee while having a meeting with the head of Seoul bank. This prompts him to confront his wife but she is adamant they go ahead with it. Ji-Soo is devastated when she hears the news so she first tries to get in touch with the parents, then calls her son. He still doesn’t want to say anything and later starts writing a letter to her. Both mothers arrive in the school the next day and Ji-Soo tries her best to apologies. She begs her to take it out on her instead and kneels down just as Jae-Hyun arrives. He tells her to get up and grabs her as the episode ends. Poor Ji-Soo definitely seems to have had quite the difficult past with her time in prison and her abusive husband. Her relationship with Jae-Hyun seems to bring back some painful memories which I am sure we will see very soon. On the other hand, Jae-Hyun is determined to pursue her already and perhaps make up for the time lost? His wife is set to be quite the evil and selfish antagonist and will probably be one of the main obstacles for our leading couple to overcome. So far, When My Love Blooms has been a little slow but managed to give us some clever hints about the past and just what happened, which makes it interesting enough and should keep you coming back from more next week.
