Pride, too much of a good thing ...

SPOILERIFIC ... beware.

Pride really is gonna kill these two, I swear to God.
There's a scene in the beginning of this episode that I didn't begin to appreciate until I viewed it for a second time. It revealed A LOT about what kind of people Halu and Aki really are.

For a large chunk of this drama you're fed the allusion that Aki is this sweet, gentle, dutiful, nurturing type of renaissance woman. And she really is all of those things and more so she'll always do the right thing, always do her duty.

Halu and his emotional journey is at centre stage and like him we the audience don't realize just how affected Aki is that someone she loved for a long time abandoned her and didn't even have the courtesy or decency to dump her properly. He just upped left without a word for two years because she's that insignificant to him.

Aki hides her feelings of hurt and abandonment well from everyone: herself, her friends and especially Halu. Aki, like Halu, is very scarred but she's too good at being a woman from the last century -- the dutiful, uncomplaining woman who is the perfect helpmate to her man -- to reveal how she really feels.

So when Halu goes to Yamato's place to get a change of clothes for him and runs into Aki he lies to her about revealing their intimate relationship to her now returned boyfriend. He does this in a roundabout effort to get her to realize ... okay Naksutawa (the boyfriend) knows the truth, he won't want me now that he knows I cheated on him with another man (Halu) so I'm free to go be with Halu.

But what happens? Aki doesn't take the bait. In fact she doesn't EVEN realize that she's been given a bait. Halu is SHOCKED. How can she not see through what I'm saying? Does she really love me? Meanwhile, all Aki sees is a man who's talking about her relationship with him as if he doesn't care ... asking her if she'll be able to patch things up with the boyfriend (Natsutawa) in spite of her indiscretion with him, Halu. WTF??? thinks Aki. Did he -- Halu -- ever really love me? Red flags are popping off like fire works in Aki's brain.

This scene was SOOO brilliantly executed. It reveals perfectly Halu's fear of opening himself completely to Aki and Aki's fear of just being used and discarded like Natsutawa did to her.

She wants so badly to take a chance on Halu, but she can't read him, she can't trust him 100% with her fragile heart. He says he loves her, but his attitude is aloof. He holds her at arm's length and she can't afford to take a chance on a guy who isn't willing to SHOW that he loves her. She's been there, done that and look where it got her. Abandoned, alone and lonely. No, she can't go down that road again even though she suspects that a lot of Halu's behaviour is BS, just posturing. She suspects, but she's not sure and she's too afraid to find out.

Halu on his side is going through the same whirlwind of emotions. Instead of making himself vulnerable and telling her point blank that he loves her and wants nothing more than to be with her he puts up this macho front. He cracks a door open and fully expects her to bust through and come to him, but he's not thinking that Aki too has her own emotional defenses that HE needs to break down.

He's too prideful and scared to bear himself to her. For the sake of self-preservation he wants her to be the first to declare to him that he's her #1 so he can maintain that facade of cool tough-guy, I don't really give a damn about nuttin'... like he's done to all his women prior to Aki. But he's not doing it out of cockiness or spite, but because he's truly scared of getting hurt by Aki just like his mother hurt him. I find it very symbolic that Aki's demureness and overall demeanour bears a striking resemblance to Halu's mother -- the source of all his emotional pain and suffering.

Wow, this is one pretty brilliant piece of writing AND excellent acting on both lead characters' part on top of it because that's how human beings truly are. Sometimes we let pride steer our lives too much. We act for our own intents and purposes without giving much thought to the other person and where they're coming from. Both Aki and Halu are guilty of this. They communicate poorly and neither one of them wants to take the first move in reassuring each other so misunderstandings abound, and they act in ways that frustrate the hell out of everyone around them, including us the viewers. Normally I HATE misunderstanding as a plot devise because it is often very poorly used. In this case however even though it's no less frustrating, it's very well executed. There's a SENSIBLE reason for the misunderstanding. It is not just a plot devise deliberately used to drag out the drama and torture the viewers. So just for this one scene in Yamato's flat I'm going to rate this episode very high.

The rest of the episode is also quite good. I love that Halu stood up for Aki. I found his actions very justified and appropriate. Now if only he could be just as bold with Aki herself everything would have been perfect.

As much as I want to rant and rail at how they're going on this is real. This is why men and woman misunderstand each other ALL the time. Pride, fear, insecurity, lack of good communication skills. Aki and Halu are like a mirror.

At this point, it could go either way. I don't know if these two will end up together or not. If this was a Hollywood series I probably could have made a pretty safe bet that they would, but with the Asians you can never know for sure. They can be cruel, just like real life.

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