'When the Weather is Fine' Episode 1 teases romance as Park Min-young and Seo Kang-joon's characters reconnect
The first episode of 'When the Weather is Fine' has a poetic start. It sees Mok Hae-won (Park Min-young) return to her hometown and this time around, she is here to stay awhile. She has returned to the quaint town where she attended high school, and in the middle of winter, everything around her looks calm and peaceful. One of the first things that she sees when she returns is a book store called, "Good night, Bookstore" which happens to be the building next door to her aunt's home. She is intrigued by the title and sure enough, the man who owns the store is someone that she happens to know.
Hae-won is a cello teacher in an academy in Seoul, but things are not too great as she is bullied by a student's parents, the headmaster of the academy and others. We see snippets of her past throughout the first episode, and it looks like Hae-won has returned to her town to heal. The place where her grandmother used to run a guesthouse seems like the ideal place for her to rest and rejuvenate. Her aunt Sim Myung-Yeo (Moon Jeong-Hee) also stays in this house but doesn't seem too excited about the fact that Hae-won is now going to stay longer.
One person, however, seems to be excited about Hae-won's long stay and that is none other than her highschool classmate Im Eun-seop (Seo Kang-joon). Eun-seop has had a secret crush on Hae-won since when the two were in school and it looks like his feelings haven't disappeared. He also owns the 'Good Night, bookstore' which clearly surprises Hae-won. She seems blind to his interest in the past and in the present. We also see bits and pieces of Hae-won and Eun-Seop's time from highschool in the episode.
Coincidentally, the first time that Hae-won gets a chance to visit his bookstore is when she gets locked out of her house on a rainy night. She looks for shelter in the store and gets reacquainted with Eun-seop. She finds the store also interesting because he holds onto books that people partly read, to invite them to read the book again. It is a novel idea for a bookstore in a sleepy town.
Hae-won is still getting used to being back in the town and doesn't realize that Eun-seop's "Irene", who he writes about in his blog, is her. It is only during a school reunion that takes place later in the episode does Eun-seop blurt out he had a crush on her. This is after all his classmates begin to taunt him. The awkward confession leaves him with no choice but to tell Hae-won that he doesn't like her in a romantic way anymore and he only crushed on her while the two were high school students.
When Hae-won tries to clarify it all with him after the two have returned home and knocks on the bookstore's door, he doesn't give her a chance to even voice her question. He refuses everything and shuts the door, only to open it a few minutes later. Of course, Hae-won is perplexed, but Eun-seop is embarrassed about the slip-up and now he has to come up with a way to do damage control. How he does that is something we can watch out for in the next episode.
New episodes of 'When the Weather is Fine' will air on Mondays and Tuesdays on JTBC.