Here we recap and discuss episode 1 of Love Rain. Caution, spoilers below. Don’t read if you don’t want to know what happens.
In our opening scene we see Suh In Ha (Jang Geun Suk) narrating how he falls in love with Kim Yoon Hee (Yoona) in the three seconds it took for her to walk by. We then quickly cut to Kim Chang Mo playing the guitar in a cafe to a captivated audience. As he finishes, his DJ friend Lee Dong Wook jokingly says he’s not as good as him and moves on to a song request. As the girls who request the song go wild, Chang Mo gets jealous that he can’t get girls to do that no matter how well he plays. We also are introduced to their friend Baek Hye Jung (Son Eun Seo).
Meanwhile, In Ha is busy working on a painting when he happens to see Yoon Hee sitting on a bench outside the window of the room he’s in. He immediately picks up a blank sketch book and starts drawing.
Back in the cafe, Dong Wook has gotten off work and is talking with Chang Mo and Hye Jung, who mentions Dong Wook and In Ha are going to fight today. Chang Mo asks him what the stakes are this time, and Dong Wook says a girl that In Ha fell in love with at first sight. They don’t believe him at all as Chang Mo says that he hasn’t seen In Ha with a girl in the three years they’ve been roommates.
We then cut back to In Ha, who is still sketching Yoon Hee. He looks down for a second though and she’s gone. In Ha immediately runs out to go look for her and inadvertently bumps into her. He doesn’t realize it’s her at first though until he looks up and can do nothing but stare at her. After Yoon Hee collects her belongings, In Ha stops her from leaving, but says nothing. At this point, the loudspeaker turns on and it’s time to pledge allegiance to the Korean flag. During this period, he inches backwards so that he can get a better look at her. When Yoon Hee catches him looking at her, In Ha immediately turns away.
As In Ha turns to leave after watching Yoon Hee walk away, he notices that she dropped her notebook and starts flipping through it to discover that it’s her diary. He’s about to chase after her when his friends show up and reveal In Ha’s “lover”: a guitar. Their fight over her is actually a tennis match and you can hear noisy fan girls watching them. Yoon Hee also happens to come across their match but when she once again bumps into someone and drops her belongings, she finally notices that she dropped her diary. In Ha forgets about the match, to Dong Wook annoyance, and just watches her.
Later that night, in his dorm, In Ha pulls out his books to start studying when he pulls out Yoon Hee’s diary. He starts flipping through it like a creeper and reads her entry about the movie “Love Story”. In Ha does seem to have some kind of a conscience though and quickly puts it away. We do find out though through the diary entry that Yoon Hee’s parents are dead.
The next day, he’s moping around debating what to do with the diary when Yoon Hee finds him and asks him if he’s seen her diary. In Ha hesitates and so Yoon Hee thinks that he’s busy and doesn’t have it. He’s about to go after her when once again his friends call out for him. They watch as Yoon Hee rejects a guy who is asking her out and Chang Mo sings her praises, calling her the Madonna of her class. Hye Jung doesn’t like her, of course, to which Chang Mo attributes to Yoon Hee being more popular than her.
As In Ha sits in class, he reads more of Yoon Hee’s diary entries. We hear Yoon Hee narrating her entry and learn that the place she was sitting before is her favorite place in the school and that it makes her heart flutter. We then see In Ha looking out of the room he was in when he saw Yoon Hee, but she’s not there. Instead, we see a brief flashback of Yoon Hee sitting there and narrating an entry about her grandmother and how she wishes to fall in love like her parents and the actors in “Love Story”. It’s nighttime again now and In Ha is still reading the diary. This time, we hear Yoon Hee narrating a diary entry about “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
