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Twinkling Watermelon: Episodes 9-10
by Dramaddictally
Kisses, confessions, and a couple of undercover dates — we are at the good part, my friends. Plus, a new name for the band, some serious life lessons, and actual music! Twinkling Watermelon is at its best this week, mixing the heart and humor we’ve come to love — and juicing it up with a little romance.
EPISODES 9-10
As predicted, Eun-gyeol and Eun-yoo are coupling up and they’re cuuuute! But their budding romance is not without problems. Like the fact that both Eun-gyeol’s dad and his brother have a crush on this girl (sort of). It’s a long story; we’ll get there.
We jump in where we left off with Eun-gyeol’s “fake” confession to “Se-kyung.” So many fakes happening here — with Eun-yoo pretending to be Se-kyung and Eun-gyeol pretending he doesn’t have a crush on someone he still calls ajumma. But the point is Yi-chan has to choose: Eun-gyeol or Se-kyung.
Yi-chan’s response? “No. I don’t want to.” And then he punches Eun-gyeol in the face! (OMG, the fight that ensues had me rolling. It’s such an overreaction.) As their hair-pulling match turns into a schoolyard brawl, Eun-yoo’s hat falls off and all the students see that “Se-kyung” is back. Security comes to break up the madness and Eun-gyeol grabs Eun-yoo’s hand and hustles her out of there. And boy is she likin’ it, judging by her face.
Once they’re safely alone, she wants to know why he’s publicly confessing. That’s practically an assault! Plus, he doesn’t really like her does he? (This girl knows how to fish.) Eun-gyeol is not a quitter so he says, yes, he does like her, adding some canned lines about fate, etc. To his disbelief, Eun-yoo buys it. But it’s pretty clear it’s because she already likes him.
She takes him out to eat again, hoping to find out if he’s Se-kyung’s first love (the test is if he can handle spicy food). And at the restaurant, they have their first honest moment. She won’t tell him why he’s there, only that it’s important. And Eun-gyeol goes along, saying, “I know what it’s like to be in a situation you can’t talk about.” This grips her heart, but little does she know they’re in the same situation.
After that she slaps the food out of his hand and doesn’t want to know the answer. (I mean how can she hook him up with her mom if she wants him for herself. This whole thing makes me giggle.) Still, she doesn’t respond to his confession. She’ll wait until the spring festival to decide. There, Se-kyung’s first love is supposed to serenade her, and then Eun-yoo will know for sure if Eun-gyeol is the one.
Meanwhile, Eun-gyeol learns that Chung-ah has a crush on Yi-chan. Maybe getting his parents together won’t be as hard as he thought. He just needs Yi-chan to reciprocate. To buy some time, he gets Yi-chan to agree that neither of them will see Se-kyung before their performance at the spring festival. That way they can each try to woo her fair and square. But really, he’s planning to move Chung-ah into the picture while Yi-chan isn’t distracted by another girl.
The agreement goes out the window the next day when “Se-kyung” and Eun-gyeol are in school together. He avoids her, but since he already confessed, she chases him down (literally) until he tells her why he’s running away from her.
As soon as she learns the reason, she heads straight to band practice to see Yi-chan — who’s happy to break the deal since Eun-gyeol already did. At the same time, Eun-gyeol brings Chung-ah to practice as a surprise and things are about to get awkward. So, Eun-gyeol takes Eun-yoo on a pseudo-date and leaves Yi-chan and Chung-ah alone.
This is when the adorable starts to happen. First, we have Yi-chan and Chung-ah, shy and just sitting there, until Yi-chan breaks out his newly learned sign language to thank Chung-ah for saving his life. She still doesn’t know enough to understand, but she’s impressed that everyone seems to sign but her. You can almost see the heart beating in her chest she likes him so much.
Yi-chan is looking through her drawings and stumbles on one of himself. She grabs back her notebook but it’s too late. He asks if it means she likes him. She bravely nods yes. And he literally falls out of his chair (lol, who knew these two could be a comedy duo?).
When he peels himself up, he’s planning to reject her confession, but she hands him a comic she’s made for him, and then runs out the door. The comic asks if they can at least be friends. And later, when they start faxing each other (lol), it seems they are.
And on our second date of the evening, Eun-gyeol takes Eun-yoo for a ride into the countryside — until they run out of gas. But it turns around when he gives her his coat at a cold and lonely bus stop. They’re arguing about her seeing Yi-chan and Eun-gyeol asks sincerely if she can “just pass the ball to him.” (It’s a pretty swoony confession for being so manipulative!)
But no, he really likes her. He sings her a song out there in the moonlight and she’s hanging on every syllable. When he sees her smitten face, the voiceover says, “Suddenly I realized, in the spring of 1995, not just mom and dad, but I was also 18.” Cue kiss! Eeeee!
Okay, it doesn’t happen exactly like that. While he’s leaning in he thinks of future Se-kyung, many years his senior, and stops himself mid-lean. But then he thinks of his brother, telling him to have fun and live his life, and there’s a very sweet and innocent kiss.
And speaking of his brother Eun-ho, in a memory from 2023, we see Eun-gyeol breaking up with “all Eun-ho’s girlfriends” for him — because he wants Eun-ho to focus on getting into college. Eun-ho doesn’t want to — and this is where he tells Eun-gyeol to live his own life. But he also mentions the one girl he doesn’t want to break up with because she’s special: the one who plays the cello.
We learned in Week 1 that Eun-ho was interested in a cellist who knows sign language. This week, we see Eun-yoo signing to Chung-ah and she says she learned from a friend who’s deaf. So, I think we’re talking about the same girl here — putting the number of possible love connections/disasters at too high to count.
We get two more quasi-dates between our couples, both with a serious slant. Eun-yoo is still struggling with her depression and we learn that one of her friends, also a cellist, killed herself, which pushed Eun-yoo into first place in cello. Now she has a debilitating fear of playing and is traumatized by her friend’s death (and her mother’s evil response to it).
Eun-gyeol stops by to see Eun-yoo just when she’s feeling super low, and they end up in a movie theater alone. She’s crying, thinking of ending her life, and Eun-gyeol offers comfort. “Everyone just lives,” he says. “By justifying, finding meaning, and hanging in there. You don’t have to try so hard to be impressive. Surviving itself is already impressive.”
Earlier, Eun-gyeol learned that the Time Master sent someone to help him, but he doesn’t know who it is yet. All he knows is that for her to help him, he has to help her first. I think he might be helping already without even knowing it because by the time the episode ends, they’re laughing together in the theater.
The next meeting, between Yi-chan and Chung-ah, also digs into more serious themes. The band has recruited Eun-yoo and Chung-ah to take photos and make posters for them. They’re changing the name of the band and they need some ideas. Chung-ah proposes using a Frida Kahlo painting as inspiration because it’s her favorite artist. The painting is of watermelons and says, “Viva La Vida” (“Long live life”). It’s a phrase she lives by and she teaches Yi-chan how to sign it. They laugh as he messes up, and the bond is clearly forming between these two.
He takes the idea back to the band and they decide on a new name: Watermelon Sugar. We end by finally get to hear the band practice together and it’s so fun! Plus, the look on Eun-yoo’s face when she sees Eun-gyeol playing guitar — her mom may not be into band boys but she sure is. I am so rooting for these two!
Okay, so about this upcoming spring festival. I completely trust this drama by now and whatever it’s doing with its timelines. So any clues we get, I think we can take at face value. This week we learned that Eun-yoo wants to wait until the festival to decide who Se-kyung’s first love is because that’s where she’ll be serenaded. But, does this make sense? If the real Se-kyung is in New York right now, and Eun-yoo is the one in Korea, how would future Se-kyung remember the spring festival? She wouldn’t be there.
We’re definitely in for another fun surprise with this, and I’m wondering if Se-kyung’s first love and her husband are one and the same. The guitarist she was hanging out with back in the beginning is also the doctor she married. And all she’s really told Eun-yoo is that the band member she fell in love with back then is not the same guy she’s married to. Hmm, heard that before.
I continue to love the combo of goofy fun and life-affirming messages from this drama. This week’s themes of life, struggle, and endurance took it up a notch and Eun-gyeol’s lines about survival being impressive enough are words to live by. We can take a little pressure off ourselves this week. The future is on track.
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