bagels and bees

I didn’t care about either of them. Until now.

This is one of those stories where the more you think about it, the worse it gets. The more you read, the more details surface, the more you realize how much was hidden in plain sight.

And now, a month after her death, the weight of it is finally settling in.

For years, this man was untouchable. His image, pristine. A career so carefully crafted that even now, even after the internet exploded with these allegations, Korean media is barely touching it.

Silence. Hesitation. The kind that only comes when you’re dealing with someone so high up, so protected, that no one dares to challenge him.

And the worst part? A lot of people still don’t care. They think it’s another scandal, another tabloid story. They don’t see the pattern. He can't be blamed alone for her death, they say.

But this isn’t just about him.

The playbook never changes.

A young girl, a powerful man. More then a relationship between a minor and a grown adult, he was also her boss.

The imbalance of it all. The way these stories always follow the same trajectory—an older man picks a teenage girl, keeps her close, isolates her, makes her dependent, and then discards her the moment she becomes an adult, the moment she starts to have her own thoughts, her own independence.

She drinks to cope. Crashes. The world turns on her.

Now she’s the villain. She’s the cautionary tale.

He? He moves on. The industry protects him. The public defends him. People say, "Well, she was an adult when they broke up." Ignoring the fact that he got to shape her entire adolescence. Ignoring the fact that by the time she was "an adult," she had already been broken down in ways most people don’t recover from.

Why didn't she expose him?

That’s the question everyone keeps circling back to.

But that’s not the real question. The real question is: Why did she have to fight this battle alone?

She had the proof. The texts, the photos, the letters, the witnesses. If she really wanted revenge, she could’ve posted everything. But she didn’t. And that tells you everything you need to know.

She could have still had hope. That she will pick up her pieces. That one day, she would look at his photo and wonder "who was that again?" People without hope don't change their names or try to make a comeback in a play or have plans to open a café.

It also means she still thought, on some level, that keeping his secrets was worth something. That her silence would be repaid in kindness.

And maybe, deep down, it means she knew the truth: Even with all the evidence in the world, we, the people, still wouldn’t believe her.

We never had anyway.

The silence is the loudest part.

This is what gets me. Not just the details of their relationship, not just the fact that his agency sent debt collecting letters to her while making sure exactly why she couldn’t pay.

What gets me is the silence.

Her death on his birthday and the pictures of them together speak LOT LOUDER than her words ever could have.

Maybe she knew this. It break my heart...

Yet, will this change anything?

Korean media is barely touching it.

His agency is scrambling but saying nothing of substance.

People are defending him out of reflex because "he was so young too" (he was 27) or because "she should have said no, she consented" (gee, I wonder why children need guardians) or "her family should have stopped the relationship" (y'all have never dealt with lovebombing narcissists and it shows.)

And even now, the people with power are waiting. Waiting to see if they can let this pass.

And if they can, they will.

They’ll bury it. They’ll rewrite the narrative. They’ll let time do its thing, because they know the public has the attention span of a goldfish, and in a few months, some other scandal will come along, someone else will die, and people will forget.

That’s what always happens.

So why do I care so much?

I keep wondering this. I don’t follow celebrity gossip. I don’t usually get invested in these stories.

But this one got under my skin.

Maybe because I remember seeing that photo last year and brushing it off. Maybe because I know exactly how easy it is for a powerful man to get away with this. Maybe because deep down, I feel caught off-guard to realise that this is the best example of how celebrities are humans too. Good and bad.

I didn’t care about either of them.

One of the things that takes up the early days of dating someone is getting to know them. You fill your time together asking questions and revealing your past and yourself to the other person. But what happens when you start dating someone you've been close friends with for almost 30 years? What do you talk about when you already know everything about each other?

I like Seok Ryu asking about Seung Hyo's relationship with Tae Hui, not just because it shows us that she's no longer looking at Seung Hyo as a friend, but also because it's one of the few things she doesn't know about Seung Hyo.

They'd spent the entire episode being awkward and shy with each other because neither of them knew how to facilitate the change in their relationship. Seok Ryu's jealousy and her desire to gain access to this unkown part of Seung Hyo's life was the spark they needed to get the conversation going about their changed status.

I loved Seung Hyo drawing a boundary. He let's Seok Ryu have so much of him, but him being firm about her crossing a line with her questions about Tae Hui was really great.

I also liked the little detail about it being weird to call Seung Hyo "boyfriend". They've been one thing to each other for THIRTY years. It's going to take some time for them to get used to this new layer of their relationship.

The scene in Seok Ryu's room was perfect. They apologize. They acknowledge and talk out the awkwardness of going from friends to lovers, but most importantly, they both reaffirm with words and actions that they are changed. They acknowledge their desire for each other and give explicit and enthusiastic consent to act on those desires. It was beautiful and I can't wait to see what happens next weekend.

I did lean on you.

is so obvious that they want to compare seokryu and dongjin and how seokryu had to deal with this alone while her mother baby him even if he's not sick anymore

its not like the stomach cancer came out of nowhere this happened bc of her lifestyle, this wouldn't be happening if her parents supported her like they do with him. they're showing the consequences

there's a line from an old jesse mccartney song that perfectly describes the last few minutes of ep 4: "but nothing's greater / than the rush that comes with your embrace / and in this world, alone — in this i see your face... /"

the inherent romance of seok-ryu hugging seung-hyo for all but one second; how that's more than enough for his mind to be instantly flooded with memories tinged by her touch, saturated by her smile: lit by her laughter.

the wide-eyed look of wonder in his eyes as she embraces him, the way his pupils grow impossibly large — as if to say: "she's touching me. my god, she's really touching me. she's really real."

how that one hug is enough to remind seung-hyo of every single time she's ever put her arms around him — how he's frozen within that moment, wishing that the warmth of her skin against his could last forever.

how his hand flexed and fisted (darcy hand flex! darcy hand flex!) when seok-ryu fell against his chest during that flashback — as if he might shake apart with the force of his feelings for her. with the effort of keeping still when all he wants to do is hold her.

how even after their argument earlier in the episode, he still stooped to water seok-ryu's plant: because she lives and breathes and grows stronger in every aspect of his life. because it was something she'd given him — and he can't help but treasure it.

how the episode title changes from "past perfect" to "present perfect continuous" — because seok-ryu isn't just a memory of first love anymore for seung-hyo. she's tangible. she's touchable. she's real.

langston hughes once wrote, in the poem 'harlem'— "what happens to a dream deferred? / does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? or fester like a sore, and then run? /"

this episode is all about dreams — seok-ryu's dreams, unrealized and unthought of. seung-hyo's dreams — given up on, and formed anew. how, from past to present — from dreams broken and built again: they're still at each other's side.

love next door captures with such beautiful fragility the reticent hope tinting our adult lives — crushed by the corporate grind, the endless race from job to job to stultifying job: can we truly rise above the numbness, the wasteland of our everyday, walking home on wistful feet — and blow the dust off of our dreams? touch the stained gold of our longings, still buried beneath the bone-deep weariness? do we not owe it to our younger selves, still glistening with the dew of possibility — to at least try?

what does freedom mean to you? what does the ability to dream mean to you? this is what love next door asks of its characters, and of us — with so much empathy. so much warmth.

i can't stop thinking about how seung-hyo put his hand in the pool water with such infinite gentleness — as if the current could carry him back to the past where anything was possible. the water a conduit to wonder — to youth.

water in any form is rebirth, redemption — and the fact that seok-ryu jumped into it for seung-hyo, that he held her in his arms, suspended in the pool: indicating that they will reaffirm their dreams together. rebuild them side by side.

this is what i love about k-dramas: they make the mundane sacred. they infuse so much intimacy into the most ordinary of things — and love next door is such a fine example of it. the parallels to lovely runner were so precious to me — swimmers headed to the olympics, thwarted by unforeseen circumstance — hopelessly in love with their neighbors.