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Crash Course in Romance: Episodes 9-10
by mistyisles
Our leads get swept up in a flurry of scandalous accusations. As if that weren’t complicated enough, it’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore the budding feelings between them. And then there’s that pesky fake husband story that everyone keeps tripping over…
EPISODES 9-10
Chi-yeol takes the All Care moms to his office to explain that he’s well within his rights to tutor a student for free on his own time. Just as most of them are starting to hang their heads in shame, Haeng-sun comes barging in trying to take the fall. Chi-yeol drags her out of the room for damage control, and they argue in the stairwell over who’s making the situation look worse and whether it calls for defense (not Haeng-sun’s forte), offense, or — Chi-yeol’s preference — “team play.” By which he means she waits and he smooths things over.
Rebuffed but not defeated, Su-hee threatens to boycott Chi-yeol if the tutoring doesn’t stop. To her annoyance, Chi-yeol isn’t fazed. She stews until her husband suggests Chi-yeol and Haeng-sun might be romantically involved (and he’d know — he’s the one having an affair).
It only takes a little digging and pulling of strings to get CCTV footage of Haeng-sun showing up at Chi-yeol’s home almost every day. Delighted, Su-hee types up a scathing exposé post about a teacher-parent affair with just enough information to make their identities obvious.
It spreads like wildfire, dragging Haeng-sun’s name through the mud as a gold-digging seductress. Her customer base drops to zero almost overnight, and even Hae-yi has to deal with snickers and jeers from classmates. (Both Geon-hu and Sun-jae jump to her defense, and ultimately bond over the detention they get for fighting Hae-yi’s hecklers.) The scandal gets big enough that a popular streamer visits the shop to make content out of it, sending Jae-woo into a panic attack.
As soon as Chi-yeol hears about it, he rushes to the hospital to check on them. Even there, Haeng-sun is getting recognized, so he takes her out for a drive to get some snacks. Haeng-sun jokes that she feels like a celebrity on a date, then quickly tries to backpedal as they both get flustered about the idea.
She drifts off on the way back to the hospital, so Chi-yeol parks by the Han River to let her sleep. He tucks her hair behind her ear, but stops just short of caressing her face, finally admitting to himself that he likes her. Which is, of course, a problem. So he decides to bow out. He’ll stop tutoring Hae-yi, he tells her after she wakes up, and he won’t buy from her anymore. They agree it’s for the best, both hearts visibly breaking as they say their goodbyes, even though Haeng-sun stubbornly insists to Young-joo that they aren’t right for each other.
Some time later, Haeng-sun decides to attend a college admissions lecture for parents, unaware that the special guest speaker is Chi-yeol until she’s already seated and he’s about to walk out onstage. Despite Chi-yeol’s explicit request for no personal questions, one audience member prods him to defend himself once and for all — why should the scandal keep following him just because a student’s mother threw herself at him?
No one in the audience seems to have recognized Haeng-sun, but she’s still mortified and gets up to sneak out — and that’s when Chi-yeol spots her. Making eye contact with her across the room, he says that actually, he’s the one who caught feelings, not her. And he says it in such a beautiful and sincere way, too, describing how brilliantly she shines in his eyes. Later, when she confronts him for an explanation, he says it again, just as sincerely: he likes her. But he labels it a “wrong answer” and promises to put an end to those feelings.
Just like that, Haeng-sun’s public reputation is restored and Chi-yeol’s is smeared. The hagwon director convinces Chi-yeol to take a couple weeks off, secretly in talks with his replacement already. One silver lining, though, is that Chi-yeol’s ex-friend Jong-ryul reaches out and they reconcile over drinks. A few bottles in, Chi-yeol catches himself using Haeng-sun’s catchphrases and sighs that he misses her. He passes out soon after, and Jong-ryul calls Jae-woo to take him home.
Chi-yeol, feverish, dreams of waking to Haeng-sun at his bedside. Since it’s a dream, he does what he can’t normally: holds her hand, and then kisses her. And since it’s a dream, she kisses him back. (Except it’s not a dream, but we don’t learn this until the epilogue.)
He can’t get the “dream” out of his head, so he goes AWOL to refresh himself. This sends Dong-hee into a rather frightening panic that’s juuust shy of rage. Haeng-sun worries herself sick when she hears he’s missing, until her cup of mix coffee gives her an idea — and sure enough, Chi-yeol is fishing at the campsite. Haeng-sun shouts at him for making her worry, but he coldly brushes it off.
Then he takes her to her mother’s old restaurant (she pushes the dishes closer to him, not interested in eating much herself) and tells her about his connection to her mother. He must have confused gratitude toward her mother with feelings for her, he says, but now he’s sorted it all out and gotten over it. Only after he drops her off at home and drives away does Haeng-sun collapse in tears on Young-joo’s shoulder. To feel this heartbroken now, she must have liked him a lot after all.
Hae-yi, watching all this play out, blames herself for the collective heartbreak. When the scandal first broke, she considered telling everyone the truth, and even slipped back into calling Haeng-sun “Auntie” instead of “Mom.” But the last time she confided in a friend about her real mom, that friend told everyone and the gossip got so unbearable she had to transfer schools.
Now, though, Hae-yi is ready to make it public. When the streamer from before confronts Chi-yeol at the hagwon, Hae-yi also shows up and announces to the camera that the “scandal” isn’t a scandal — because her mom is actually her aunt and isn’t married.
As for the murder mystery, Yi-sang’s body turns up floating in the river with a metal pellet in his pocket. Hee-jae and Seo-jin come home the night of his death looking distraught, and Hee-jae again locks himself in his room. It’s unclear what actually happened, but Seo-jin certainly seems to think Hee-jae had a hand in the murder.
It’s interesting how some information spreads at lightning speed in this show, while other information trickles out at a snail’s pace. Scandalous local celebrity gossip? The whole internet knows within the hour. A teacher at a prestigious hagwon is found dead not long after a student dies on the premises? Informing said hagwon’s other employees is almost an afterthought.
But in a way, it mirrors what Dong-hee said about the All Care moms’ willingness to use any means necessary to help their kids get ahead — but heaven forbid they see anyone else get the slightest leg up. All that extreme, toxic competition kills compassion and blinds people to the actual life-and-death issues around them.
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