all i want is everything

Jiyun can’t easily reciprocate Eunho’s acts of service within the limits of their (thus far) professional relationship – even if she is starting to do so by buying him food and coffee etc. On top of that, she is an inherently guarded person. It’s difficult to say what she can “offer” because she’s not in a position to offer anything besides his salary. It’s also much easier to see the value that he has added to her life because her struggles were emphasised from the start in very visible ways (messiness, insomnia, her trip to the hospital), while he seemed to live a very full life with Byeol.

Therefore, perhaps a better measure of their mutual compatibility and support is in the vulnerabilities that they allow themselves to show around each other – when they let themselves to be something other than the ‘perfection’ that they’ve defined for themselves. Again, it’s more obvious when Jiyun’s walls come down (expressing joy, letting herself be helped/comforted, falling asleep), because it is such a contrast to her stern, no-nonsense, ultra-professional demeanour. With Eunho, it’s not so clear, because his warmth and compassion can easily be mistaken for openness. Yet his pleasantness can also be a shield; a way to deflect uncomfortable feelings by minimising himself for the well-being of others. The most obvious example of this is when he maintains his amiability even in the face of outright mistreatment from his former boss. But it’s also in how he defaults to being the pillar of strength and the ‘fixer’ in social situations. 

In fact, almost all of Eunho’s true moments of vulnerability and honesty have come only in Jiyun’s presence. First, and more circumstantially, the frustration and anger at her for trying to poach the developer in Episode 1, and his desperation to keep his new job as her secretary in Episode 2. Then, more purposefully, when he tells her about why he took paternal leave; the challenges of his previous job; the fact that he was orphaned at a young age; his worries about fatherhood. These are not the only times he’s discussed his anxieties with another character – he did so with his ex-colleague when he was in danger of losing his first job, and with Suhyeon when Jiyun was still being difficult – but both of those times, he was also binging something sugary as a coping mechanism, and speaking in generalities with a tone of resigned acceptance. He’s simply not in the habit of showing so much of himself (i.e. his ‘imperfections’) to another person; even his beloved senior/Mi-ae’s husband doesn’t know why he got divorced.

Of course, everything he has revealed to Jiyun has been in response to her very direct questions. But I don’t think it’s just about that. As much as Jiyun can be a mess, she is also a very stable and confident person who is a good judge of the characters and motivations of others. That’s what makes her so good at speaking to both clients and targets, which Eunho himself has observed first-hand. Jiyun inspires trust and respect, which is (part of the reason) why he feels comfortable revealing the parts of himself that aren’t so ‘put-together’. Furthermore, he’s seen that she’s not incapable of the sincerity that he so readily offers to other people, even while being very rational and principled. This is not just Eunho “rubbing off on her” as Jiyun observes in herself in Episode 6. It’s just that her sincerity, which is a form of emotional vulnerability for her, has often only felt ‘safe’ to use as a strategy in appropriate professional situations.

Jiyun’s interactions with Byeol shed further light on the positive aspects of Jiyun’s personality. It would have been easy for her character to be written as cold or awkward around kids. Instead, there is a mutual respect between her and Byeol, with whom she’s not afraid to discuss more difficult personal topics (at least in an abstract sense). Jiyun treats Byeol like a fully-formed person with agency, takes genuine interest in her independent of any connection to Eunho, and is able to be supportive in her own way without pandering or patronising. It’s the very things that make Jiyun “cool” in Byeol’s eyes that gives us clues about what Eunho admires in her.