Naughty KISS

Episode : 12

Mom asks Seung-jo to move back home and stop giving Ha-ni such a hard time. Seung-jo tells her that he left precisely to get away from her attempts to control him. He notes that she never asked him what he wanted when she brought Ha-ni back into the house, bringing Mom near tears.

After he leaves, she frets that he’s left home to discover his own path, but nothing has actually changed in his life. Dad tells her to wait it out for him to figure things out on his own.

Min-ah and Ju-ri come by for lunch, telling Ha-ni about a high school reunion, complete with a school-uniform dress code. But, didn’t they graduate, like yesterday? Ha-ni gets weak in the knees thinking about Seung-jo back in his high school uniform.

She finds him at school to tell him about it, and he brushes her off coldly, saying that he doesn’t know who came up with such a childish idea, but he’s not interested. Ha-ni mumbles to herself as he walks off, “How can I possibly know what’s in that head of yours?” Yeah, you’re not the only one who’s wondering, as the comments in this thread’ll tell ya.

He hears her and turns around to give her the stink eye, and walks off.

Mom suggests a scheme to get Seung-jo to the reunion. Gah, this is why he’s running away from you. Maybe you want to give the scheming a rest for a while, till he stops pushing Ha-ni away because of your “plans”?

Ha-ni gets dressed in her old school uniform, getting nostalgic for the good old days, even taking out her D-minus love letter and remembering it fondly.

At the event, Ha-ni rubbernecks around for Seung-jo, finding him sitting alone in his regular clothes, complete with sour look of disdain. She heads over and he coughs up her house keys, completing his mom-assigned task with little desire to humor her further. Although it does make me wonder: if you hate being controlled so much, then why do you always do as she asks, knowing exactly why you’re being asked to do it? Not that I don’t know the power of the Korean Mother’s Request For Favors. They’re not requests—they’re thinly-veiled commands from up high, couched in social graces. It’s like if Noriega used words like “please” and “thank you.”

Ha-ni tries to get Seung-jo to stay and have some fun since he’s here anyway, (grabbing his wrist) but he shakes her off and leaves curtly. But not two feet away, when his classmates greet him, he joins them at a table, smiling and chatting like a person not made of inorganic metal parts.

Unsurprisingly, his friends from high school are the cream of the crop smartypants boys from good families, who all went to Taesan University, where Seung-jo missed his interview that day. They see Ha-ni across the aisle and assume that they’re really dating now, making her smile. But Seung-jo, still angry, and well, being Seung-jo and all, flatly denies it, saying, “I don’t keep those sorts of things [girlfriends].”

Ha-ni glares and pouts, then stalks away, and Seung-jo clocks her every move. You passive-aggressive little snot.

At the gathering, Bye Bye Sea gets introduced as Bye Bye Sea, now having officially become a band after high school. While they play, Ha-ni notes that Seung-jo is brooding in the corner, lost in his thoughts. He’s angsting over what to do with his life, now confronted with the fact that his classmates have all chosen majors while he’s still undeclared, and they suggest that he simply rest on his laurels and inherit his father’s company.