*Alternate titles include: 1% of Something, 1% of Anything

Running time: around 35 – 45 minutes per episode, for 16 episodes. If you are me, the time spent on this drama is a big blur.

I originally planned to write about Cebu for this week’s post, but I wasn’t really feeling it because my feelings were so consumed by this drama.

So the plot goes, lovely and kindhearted teacher helps out an old man from nearly dying. Old man turns out to be a rich chairman who is not a frequent recipient of unconditional love and help. He decides he wants to reward her by leaving her everything in his will, provided she be married. Whoever gets the girl, gets the fortune. Whack.

Old rich man, of course, has an asshole chaebol grandson. This grandson is of such concern to the old man that he desperately wants to set them up so she can whip him into shape. Asshole grandson wants the fortune, so agrees to date the teacher for six months. If it works out, good. If it doesn’t, they just chalk it up to fate. Both parties agree to this despite their mutual, initial dislike of each other – which means that them falling in love is inevitable. And because it is “merely a business arrangement”, there is pining and drama and domestic cuteness.

Cue the swooning.

I love all these tropes, but executing them as realistically and as neatly as this drama does is difficult. The pacing, the tension, the chemistry are all very important.

Though it stars the rich, stuck-up asshole guy from Drinking Solo (Ha Seok-Jin – it’s funny because he falls for a poor teacher there too), and yes it features my K-Drama pet peeve of the *wrist grab*, the drama is refreshing for its characterisation of the lead girl and the swiftness it takes to clear up miscommunications.

Jeon So-Min plays the teacher character, which I thought was really drawn well. Most K-Drama female leads annoy me a lot because they act so dumb when they’re not supposed to be dumb, and so cowardly when they are supposed to be brave. The teacher character here is charming, smart, fierce, and loveable without being Mary Sue about it. She’s president of a K-Pop boy’s fan club, has a nouveau riche best friend who is equally magnetic and loves her a lot, and she’s charitable without being irritating. She feels like a whole character, who is in fact, able to stand up for herself even if she is physically treated like a rag doll. (Will there be a day in K-Drama where the female lead does not get kidnapped? Rare.)

And because she can stand up for herself, she can clear up miscommunications easily. She asks the male lead questions, rather than acting in foolish assumptions, so it doesn’t take so long to resolve petty misunderstandings. It’s what made their six month relationship so wholesome – the fact that they communicated and exerted effort to meet each other. They even tackle adult stuff like sex and consent (“You’re not a human if you touch a drunk woman.”) without being preachy about it. It’s the kind of relationship that proves that loving someone is really a choice.

My admiration for the drama’s clear, respectful lines and my investment in the relationship then, made The Last Trip Episode (another K-Drama classic trope) really painful for me. Because they were like “Please find a good man, so I will feel less bad.” and “If I’d known I’d like him so much, I would have given these six months my all so I would have no regrets”, and I was like “Please stop, you guys, this is wrecking me.” This drama was Drinking Solo on rom-com steroids.

“Most people break up because they don’t love each other. I don’t understand why we have to break up because we do.”

My crops have been watered. My skin has been cleansed. This was the death blow. I’m drowning in my own feels. The year is 2020, but emotionally we are in 2013. I would recommend this drama to friends, but I think I want to keep it for myself for now. Because I am still in the middle of processing my thoughts about it. Which is why this blog post is so, so long and so, so *hand gestures* messy. omg.

Short of giving up my whole entire heart to this drama, I can no longer find the words to describe the joy it brought me over the past week. Aside from the short episode lengths, I really just ate up the whole damn thing as fast as I possibly could. Healthy K-Drama couples without losing the spiciness and the cuteness for 2020? Amen.