Today’s Webtoon: Episodes 11-12
by solstices
Things are starting to look up for our team as they progress ahead and celebrate milestones. However, they can’t get too comfortable just yet — right when they start to see a glimmer of hope, our scheming antagonist conspires to snatch it away.
EPISODES 11-12 WEECAP
The team dinner winds down, and everyone heads home in varying states of inebriation. Aw, Man-cheol drunkenly wails that he’s sorry for holding Ji-hyung’s career back twice, but Ji-hyung reassures him that he genuinely wants to stay.
The next morning, the tension between Ji-hyung and Joon-young is unbearably thick. Ji-hyung pulls him aside to finish last night’s conversation, but Joon-young brushes him off brusquely.
A flashback explains Joon-young’s cold behavior — Joon-young gives his uncle the cash he demanded, and his uncle reveals that Ae-ri was a contract employee at Neon. She was promised a full-time position, but they overworked her and then fired her once her contract expired.
Dong-hee comes up to Seoul to pay Writer Baek a visit, and they have a meal together at Writer Baek’s residence. To their surprise, Dae-ryuk joins them, and Dong-hee tells him that he’s enjoying his webtoon. Aww, Dae-ryuk sheepishly says that he came because he missed Dong-hee, and Dong-hee echoes the sentiment.
Ma-eum and Joon-young eat lunch together in the cafeteria, only for Joon-young’s “friends” to sidle up to their table. They make backhanded remarks about how Joon-young must enjoy living in a fancy house for free, as a perk of his customer service job for rental lodgings. Ah, that explains his uncharacteristically lavish house, as well as the booking messages he keeps receiving.
Exasperated, Joon-young leaves, and Ma-eum follows after him — but not before pointing out to the two nasty “friends” that they’re just making their inferiority complex obvious.
Ma-eum catches up to Joon-young, but he’s on edge from the encounter, and he ends up rebuffing her concern. Bluntly, Joon-young reminds her to consider whether there truly is a place for her on the webtoon team, or not.
Chief Heo asks Joon-young for an update on the files he requested, but Joon-young demurs, saying that he can’t give them to him just yet. Joon-young tells Chief Heo that he’s decided to wait and evaluate whether giving him the files will be beneficial or detrimental to the team, much to the chief’s displeasure.
Riding on the success of his webtoon (which is even going to be adapted into a drama), Dae-ryuk moves into a new apartment, yay! Ma-eum helps him unpack, and she gives him a dreamcatcher as a housewarming gift, in the hope that he’ll be able to sleep peacefully. Dae-ryuk comments that it’s pretty, but he’s looking at Ma-eum.
Ma-eum returns home to find Joon-young waiting outside, and he apologizes for being harsh with his words earlier. Good-natured as always, Ma-eum reassures him that it’s alright. They reminisce about the goofy reference photos they took for Dae-ryuk, and it puts wide smiles on both their faces. (Joon-young’s dimples!!)
Oh no, Man-cheol arrives at work the next morning only to discover Joon-young’s resignation letter on his desk. In order to avoid affecting team morale, Man-cheol fibs that Joon-young just took an off day, but Ma-eum finds out the truth when she overhears Ji-hyung’s phone call.
Ji-hyung tells Ma-eum the full truth, and we see it in flashback. At the end of Gingertoon’s lifespan, Man-cheol regretfully tells Ae-ri that he has no choice but to let her go. Even though he’d love to keep her on the team, he can’t do so with Gingertoon shutting down, though he doesn’t tell her this. With no hard feelings whatsoever, Ae-ri promises that she’ll continue supporting the team as a loyal reader.
Subsequently, Man-cheol goes from door to door, begging numerous companies to consider taking over the webtoon team. After a long string of rejections, CEO Yoon is moved by Man-cheol’s sincerity, and she gives them the opportunity to join Neon. Unfortunately, that very night, Ae-ri is run over by a drowsy driver.
Back in the present, Man-cheol goes searching for Joon-young, and they end up meeting at Ae-ri’s columbarium. Man-cheol tells Joon-young that he left Ae-ri’s work belongings on his desk, and entreats him to take a look at them before finalizing his decision to resign.
Late that night, Joon-young returns to the office. Ae-ri’s diary sits on his desk, and he opens it to reveal a scrapbook of her favorite webtoon panels and quotes. It sparks Joon-young’s memories, and we see that Ae-ri used to leave little notes with webtoon quotes around for Joon-young to find. The uplifting messages always made Joon-young smile, and he collected them all in a glass jar.
Joon-young cries over his sister’s diary, and Ma-eum finds him like that, consumed by his sorrow. Guilt-ridden that his sister died trying to earn enough money to support his overseas studies, Joon-young sobs that his place in the team should have been his sister’s. No words could possibly soothe his grief, and Ma-eum pulls him into a hug, holding him close.
Later, they wait for the bus home together. Joon-young repeats the quote from Berserk about how there’s no paradise to be found if he runs away, and he admits that he’s been running away from webtoons. At first, he disliked webtoons because they felt like fantasies far displaced from his harsh reality. Then later on, he couldn’t stand even the sight of them, because they reminded him of his late sister.
After Ma-eum reaches home, she contemplates texting Joon-young the words she meant to say earlier — that he isn’t running away. She hesitates, but then her sister startles her, and she accidentally presses send. Problem is, the text is unfinished and only says “Run away,” LOL.
Joon-young calls Ma-eum, understandably confused by her text, and she gets super flustered and quickly brushes it off as no big deal. Except it clearly means something to Joon-young, and the pair are adorably bashful in the office the next morning.
Man-cheol calls for a team meeting; Chief Heo is pushing for the acquisition of Youngtoon, which means our team is at risk of being pushed out. They resolve to put their best foot forward, which means recruiting webtoon author MO YOUNG-SOO (Jung Eun-pyo). Young-bae used to work with him during their Gingertoon days, but that bridge has since been burned after Gingertoon abruptly shut down.
Writer Mo is now a famous author with his own studio and company building, and Man-cheol personally goes to persuade him. However, pragmatic Writer Mo is now entirely business-minded; he doesn’t want to partner with a platform that can’t guarantee results.
Recognizing this, Man-cheol takes a different approach, leveraging on the Neon platform as a whole to offer an investment contract with Writer Mo’s company. It works, and Writer Mo agrees to consider.
Tired of watching her husband and her daughter continue tiptoeing around each other, Ma-eum’s mom takes it upon herself to bring the two back together. Not only does she give Ma-eum’s rejected cologne to Dad, but she also sends the two on a made-up errand so that they can have alone time together.
Old habits die hard — father and daughter keep overlapping in both their tastes and their actions. By the end of the evening, they may not have explicitly made up yet, but the atmosphere is certainly a lot more comfortable.
Ma-eum and Joon-young pay Pomme a visit, offering to help her buy groceries since she can’t risk deliveries anymore. Her assistant HYUN-SOO (Lee Sung-hoon) volunteers to go with them, but he’s antsy and avoids their gaze the entire time.
As they exit the elevator, they come across a suspicious man in the lobby. The apartment security guard addresses him as a deliveryman, pointing out that he claimed he was one the previous time, but the man hems and haws. Ma-eum gets a good look at his face, and it’s the creepy man that harassed Pomme back in episode one — in other words, he’s the stalker!
He takes off running, and our three characters give chase. Cornered, he pulls a knife on them, but Ma-eum swiftly disarms him with her judo moves, pinning him to the ground for the second time. Haha, I think that just made Joon-young fall for her even more.
It turns out Hyun-soo’s just very reserved, and he finds it difficult to look other people in the eyes — sorry for suspecting him last week! He apologizes for not noticing the stalker earlier, but Pomme says she enjoys her assistants’ company, and would like to continue working with them. Aw, look at that character development!
Having fallen down during the earlier chase, Ma-eum tapes her sprained ankle, then tapes Joon-young’s sprained wrist for him. He gazes at her while she focuses on her task, and he starts to say something, but backs out at the last minute. Deflecting Ma-eum’s curiosity, Joon-young says he wants to tell her properly another time. Ooh, do I sense a confession on the horizon?
Joon-young wasn’t the only one affected by the moment — Ma-eum is too, and she recalls their charged atmosphere once she’s home, though she doesn’t let herself linger on it for too long.
Unfortunately, Joon-young has more than just love to worry about. Impatient to make a move, Chief Heo pressures Joon-young to write him a report on Youngtoon’s viability over the current webtoon team, then baits him into a meal with Youngtoon’s CEO.
The next morning, an article is released — it’s an exclusive interview in which Chief Heo declares Neon’s plan to acquire Youngtoon. It’s essentially signaling that the current webtoon team’s days are numbered, diminishing their credibility and upsetting their artists. Burned twice, Writer Mo immediately calls off their contract, vowing never to trust the webtoon team again.
I don’t think Joon-young expected Chief Heo’s schemes to escalate this far — it’s proving difficult to extricate himself from Chief Heo’s slimy grasp. Now that Joon-young has developed a loyalty towards the webtoon team, he’s decided to play both sides and beat Chief Heo at his own game, but it won’t be an easy task.
Joon-young may be trying to play double agent in order to secure evidence of Chief Heo’s internal sabotage, but on the surface it just appears as if he’s betrayed the team. That’s exactly what it looks like to Ma-eum, who not only saw the trio exit the restaurant the other night, but also witnesses Chief Heo patting Joon-young’s shoulders patronizingly.
Oof, this week was rough on Joon-young, but I’m proud of him for shouldering through and taking steps to move forward. I suppose he’s trying to make the best out of the Chief Heo situation now that he’s in too deep to back out — the incriminating traces of him forwarding confidential information are there, though they would certainly have worse implications for Chief Heo (assuming he isn’t able to weasel out of it).
I think Joon-young resembles a lost sheep that’s slowly finding his way; at the beginning of the drama, he was disillusioned and adrift in the wake of his sister’s death. He came to Neon in search for a job that could give him purpose, and I think that’s part of the reason he fell for Chief Heo’s coercion, because he conflated career achievements with a sense of direction. Now that he’s found his place in the webtoon team, though, he’s beginning to grow into himself and recognize his own capabilities and emotions.
Ae-ri’s apparition disappeared as Joon-young cried, as if signifying that he’s finally acknowledging his grief and allowing himself to properly mourn. I hope this is the start of Joon-young’s healing journey; though he blames himself for leaving his sister and studying abroad, her death isn’t his fault. Joon-young may have lost a family member, but he’s not alone, now that he’s a part of the webtoon team.
Plus, Joon-young’s ever-growing crush on Ma-eum is so cute! I love how he practically wears his heart on his sleeve, even if he may not realize it himself. His smiles — a rare sighting — are so bright and genuine whenever he’s with Ma-eum, and he’s starting to become very conscious of her interactions with Ji-hyung.
This is illustrated in a very cute scene, in which Joon-young suggests changes to the loveline in Woo-jin’s baseball webtoon. Instead of ending up with her senior, Joon-young argues that it’d be more convincing for her to end up with her fellow teammate, whom she can grow alongside. LOL, the webtoon is visualized with our main trio in the lead roles, making the parallels even more obvious.
Woo-jin concedes to his opinion on the webtoon, but she maintains that in reality, once the senior catches the girl’s attention, it’s game over. In response, Joon-young takes a very indignant bite out of his Subway sandwich, HAHA. Don’t worry, Joon-young — I’m rooting for you and your adorable dimples!
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Today’s Webtoon: Episodes 11-12
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily
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