The Heirs

Chapter 12

This time our love triangle plays Come With Me, No With ME in the middle of what must be the longest red light crosswalk known to man. Either that or obeying traffic signals is for the little people.

Tan sticks out his hand and asks Eun-sang to turn metaphor into reality (or is it the other way around) and take his hand to go forward with their relationship. (I didn’t promise it’d be a deep metaphor, did I?)

Eun-sang slowly raises her hand up to his, but Tan can tell this isn’t her reaching out to him—it’s a goodbye. He yells at her not to do this, but she says they’ve come a long way already, and they can’t go any farther.

With that she lets go, forces a smile through her tears, and gives a casual “I’ll see you around” before walking off. Young-do says rather sincerely at Tan: “You’re still always making people leave you.”

Young-do catches up to Eun-sang and quizzically examines her tear-stained face, as if trying to compute what leaky ailment has possessed her. He complains that people will think he kidnapped her (well, you’re not wrong), and when she bursts into a full sob, his response is: “I want to party. Why are you crying?” Pfft. This right here is why you suck at human role-play.

He asks if she wants to ditch first period and party, and even through her sobs she manages to throw a barb his way: “Ninety-eighth place would say that.” He watches her go with a long face, sighing to himself that she refuses to be caught.

Okay, so I died laughing to discover that after all the dramatics in the intersection, Tan and Eun-sang share first period gym. I guess “see you around” meant see you in twenty. He walks into class and stares moony-eyed at her, which she doesn’t notice until Chan-young and Bo-na walk in.

Bo-na runs over to Eun-sang and asks where she ran off to so early, and from the other side of the gym, Tan asks Chan-young if he housed Eun-sang for the night. Chan-young knows nothing about Eun-sang sleeping elsewhere last night, which only freaks Tan out more. The clues are tipping in Young-do’s direction—she’s been to his hotel room before, and he found them together this morning looking awfully chummy.

He runs into Young-do in the locker room and asks if Eun-sang cried a lot this morning, and Young-do refuses to answer his questions, which is maybe the first thing he’s done that I actually like. Tan tells him plainly not to think of this as an opportunity to win Eun-sang over: “This opportunity—it’s mine.”

Young-do doesn’t say anything in response, but then sits around googling Eun-sang all afternoon. Bo-na and Myung-soo rifle through the photos from their camping trip, and come across a telltale pattern—Young-do gazing at Eun-sang over and over again in every picture.

They both whirl around and exclaim, “Do you like Cha Eun-sang for real?” Young-do looks at the pictures and smiles to realize that’s what he looks like when he’s looking at Eun-sang. Myung-soo can’t understand why of all the girls in the world that’s his first love, and Bo-na can’t believe it’s taken him this long to have a first love.

Tan comes home to a nagging Madam Han who interrogates him about having any more contact with Eun-sang. He asks his mom if she’s genuinely happy living this way—never being introduced to anyone as his mother—and she answers honestly that it makes her sad, but it’s all worth it for his future.

He points out that if he marries Rachel and all that comes with it, he may never get to introduce his mother as his mother. But despite her feelings, she doesn’t budge on her stance about his future and about Eun-sang. He lets it go for now, and asks her give back the bunny socks she’s been wearing all this time, saying that they’re his. Ha.

Eun-sang spends her afternoon apartment hunting and calls Mom to bring her a change of clothes.

Tan calls Hyo-shin out and casually drops the bomb in his lap that Director Jung isn’t his biological mother. Hyo-shin thinks it’s a joke at first, but Tan says he’s testing out the confession, to see how it feels. He admits he’s shaking, and decides to run another lap to sort out his thoughts.