Episodes 11-12 » Dramabeans Kdrama MGG

Twinkling Watermelon: Episodes 11-12

by Dramaddictally

First love is taking its heartbreaking toll this week, but hey, that’s high school. We’re on an emotional rollercoaster just like our leads as they navigate their feelings and how to express them. Sometimes love means saying you’re sorry and other times it means finding a bridge between different worlds. Any way you slice it, our heart-and-soul hero is growing up.

 
EPISODES 11-12

The highs are high and the lows are low, but both extremes hit me exactly how I wanted them to. The spring festival is upon us and it’s a rockin’ good time — meaning Eun-gyeol might have just changed the future for real.

We learn about the causes of the accident this week (or, “an accident” — who knows what else is in store!) that could have injured Yi-chan or another band mate. Thanks to Eun-gyeol, crisis is averted, but it rears its ugly head a second time and the boys have a serious scare.

It starts when the leader of the Jindo Dog Gang gets out of jail. This is the same group of thugs that put Yi-chan in the hospital two weeks ago and now they’ve got bigger plans. To everyone’s surprise (because it came a little out of nowhere), the bass player of Watermelon Sugar, KANG HYUN-YOOL (Yoon Jae-chan) is the former second in command of the gang.

The gang leader is out to kill Hyun-yool because he “betrayed” the gang. He starts by fixing the stage lights so they’ll fall during the band’s rehearsal, but luckily no one is hurt when they do. This is because Eun-gyeol has taken Yi-chan to a remote island and held him captive, screwing up band practice for everyone.

Eun-gyeol gets the tip that Yi-chan’s accident might happen during rehearsal on the day before the festival when he remembers a 2023 interview with famous rocker Yoon Dong-jin. The interview states that (in the original timeline) the band never played the spring festival due to a serious accident that injured one of the members so badly that the band had to break up.

Eun-gyeol begs Yi-chan not to rehearse but when his pleas don’t work, he uses Eun-yoo to trap Yi-chan. Yi-chan takes a boat, thinking he’s going to meet “Se-kyung” on the island, but finds Eun-gyeol instead — with no return boats all day. Eun-gyeol is desperate to keep Yi-chan there and tells him the truth: he’s his son from the future and he’s trying to prevent a tragedy.

Yi-chan doesn’t believe it and is about to find another way off the island when Eun-gyeol jumps off a cliff (I kid you not) to get him to stay. Yi-chan dives into the water behind Eun-gyeol to save him, and then sits with him on the beach until evening, deciding to give Eun-gyeol what he wants. When Eun-gyeol hears that Yi-chan isn’t going to rehearsal, he sobs into Yi-chan’s chest with relief. The stage lights fall but because the other band mates are all in a kerfuffle that their front man is missing, no one is on stage when it happens.

With the accident thwarted, it’s time for Eun-gyeol’s date with Eun-yoo. This scenario comes about as payment for Eun-yoo lying to Yi-chan about why he’s needed on an island. She wants two things from Eun-gyeol in return: 1) to know what big secret he’s hiding and 2) a movie date the next night. She’s embarrassed when she asks for the second one, but he’s all over it with popcorn, soda, and giant grin.

Their date doesn’t go as planned. Before they enter the theater, Eun-gyeol gets a message that, now that Yi-chan is back, the band found a way to sneak into the school at night and practice anyway. Eun-gyeol runs out — leaving Eun-yoo without a word — and gets to the gym to find Yi-chan and the rest in an all-out battle with the Jindo Dog Gang. Since the stage lights didn’t kill Hyun-yool, they’ll have to use their fists.

Just as Eun-gyeol arrives, Yi-chan is clubbed in the head and goes down. But when the gang finally runs out, Yi-chan can still hear. The clock strikes midnight and it seems Eun-gyeol has completed his mission to stop his father’s hearing loss and change history.

Before the band can perform at the festival they need to clean up and talk to Hyun-yool about his former gang days. So, they stop at a public bath for some requisite water frolicking and locker room prettying. And then it’s time for the big day!

The band arrives with all their merch — from Watermelon Sugar tees to stickers of each member — and they’re ready to become stars. Eun-yoo is there since this whole thing started to impress Se-kyung, but now, the stakes are raised because she has to decide between Yi-chan and Eun-gyeol after the show.

Up until Eun-gyeol abandoned her at the theater, she had her mind made up already. Now, she’s a woman scorned and she’s at the festival to ignore Eun-gyeol and flirt with Yi-chan in front of him. Eun-gyeol has already tried to apologize about their date, but Eun-yoo has a history of being abandoned by her parents and he hit a nerve when he walked out on her.

Both Eun-gyeol and Eun-yoo have been struggling with the fact that each thinks the other is almost 30 years older than them in real time. Eun-yoo was quicker to admit to herself that Eun-gyeol is too cute to pass up, but Eun-gyeol has been putting his parents’ mission ahead of any possible romance. When he sees Eun-yoo at the festival, having fun and winning all the games, he can’t deny his feelings much longer.

The band performs to screaming success and we get to hear some new songs (Nirvana was scratched from the playlist but it didn’t stop the flannels). It’s a high-energy, head-bopping, hand-waving show and the band is amazed at their triumph. All except for Yi-chan and Eun-gyeol — who are upset because Eun-yoo walked out in the middle.

Poor Eun-yoo learns at the performance that Yi-chan and Eun-gyeol once jammed with “Ohn Ji-hwan’s band.” Yep, Ohn Ji-hwan is her father. It hits her like a Truck of Doom to realize her dad was once in a band and that her mother’s first love was, in all likelihood, the same man she married. Eun-yoo thinks back on her childhood and how happy her parents used to be, putting all her mother’s clue in context and lining them up with her dad.

She’s so distraught, she leaves the school in tormented tears, realizing she’s been wasting her time trying to find her mom’s first love. Not only that, her great plan to never be born just went out the window. As if she wasn’t hurt enough by her own crush, now even her mom’s first love is causing her pain. She packs up her things and heads for the airport, hoping to go back through the time portal the way she came.

Before she leaves, she finds Eun-gyeol waiting at her door, wanting to apologize again. “I was wondering why you left and what I could do to make you look at me.” (Why am I swooning?) She’s in such a desperate state that she’s not interested and accuses him of just being angry that she didn’t pick between him and Yi-chan. “Why are you making me out to be a jerk?” he asks. “I was worried about you.” She tells him to stop worrying because they won’t be seeing each other again. They just live in two different worlds.

Not much later, Eun-gyeol learns that she’s on her way to the airport and he runs out in the rain to stop her. He’s been blue ever since their argument, realizing that the pain he feels might be love. (This realization is thanks to a sit-down with 1995 Harabeoji, who I don’t think Eun-gyeol has placed as the same Viva Harabeoji from the future.)

Eun-gyeol races to the airport and finds Eun-yoo sitting outside in the downpour after failing to get back through the time portal. She’s crying and at a loss for what to do next or how to get back. He steps up next to her with a red umbrella and promises to help her find her way, though he still has no idea where she needs to go. For now, he says, “Stay with me. Let’s stay together.” Oh, be still my heart.

While these episodes were set up with the idea that it was Eun-yoo who had to make a choice (between Eun-gyeol and Yi-chan), the important choice here belongs to Eun-gyeol. He has to choose between his parents and his own happiness and that means giving his energy to either Yi-chan or Eun-yoo, but not both. This scene is just lovely because we hear him struggle with the idea of their different worlds, come to terms with it, and then act from the heart.

Chung-ah’s story takes a backseat again this week, but there is some development between her and Yi-chan. At first, she’s lovingly fixing his hair as the band preps for their pre-show photo shoots, but by the end she’s shutting him out. It’s partially a matter of miscommunication. When Eun-yoo is angry at Eun-gyeol, she tells Chung-ah that she’s planning to pick Yi-chan at the festival, and Chung-ah backs off.

But Yi-chan may be swaying in her direction. He invites Chung-ah to watch their performance and when she doesn’t show up, he goes to her house to ask why. In a crushing but beautiful scene, she signs that she’s deaf, and asks if he invited her to mock her. He can’t understand everything, so he pulls out the sign language dictionary he’s carrying in his back pocket and tells her that music isn’t just for the ears, but also for the eyes, the mind, and the heart.

Holding back tears, she writes something on a paper and shoves it at him before leaving. We learn later that it says not to ever see her again — because they live in different worlds. He mulls it over alone and looks deeply affected by it.

Wow, all of our kiddos are going through the worst of it right now. But when they come out the other side they will have grown up so much. Eun-gyeol’s story is especially interesting to me because he started out as this overwhelmed, adult-like child. Rather than finding maturity through responsibility, he has to learn to relax a little and take on fewer burdens for other people in order to grow up — and I find that to be a moving life lesson. He speaks his truth when he tells Yi-chan he’s from the future, saying he felt like all his family lived in one world, but he lived in a different world (continuing the theme of loneliness all our characters are feeling).

On top of that, I’m shocked at Eun-gyeol’s transformation into such a swoon-machine over these last few weeks. When this story started, I didn’t think he had it in him. Ryeoun is giving off some serious intensity and he and Seol In-ah are very natural together. In fact, the naturalness of all four leads is one of the great strengths of this show.

In terms of the time travel part of the story, I have no idea how this is going to wrap up now that the future has so obviously changed. But I’m ready to go wherever this drama takes me — the journey is just too much fun.

 
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