Summer Strike: Episodes 5-6

Summer Strike: Episodes 5-6

by Unit

Our heroine settles into town after being accepted by the residents, and finally, we begin to get more insight into the life of the town’s reserved librarian.

 
EPISODES 5-6 WEECAP

We open the week by going back twenty years in time to Dae-beom’s childhood. He found his older sister strangled on the floor of their family’s billiard hall, and his dad had blamed him for leaving his sister alone. Maybe it’s because his sister was a famous math genius, but his dad wished Dae-beom died instead. Such a harsh thing to say to a child!

Anyway, his dad was eventually arrested for the murder based on Dae-beom’s testimony (Dae-beom was the first on scene, and he saw his dad run out of the building before he entered). His mom committed suicide soon after the arrest, and Dae-beom’s childhood was effectively ruined. He wasn’t that much of an outspoken kid before his sister’s death, and the aftermath of her death drove him further into his shell.

In the present, our shy librarian gets an apology plant and a note from Yeo-reum for misunderstanding him last week, and it’s cute how he keeps a growing stash of notes and scribbles from her. The cute couple-to-be get more time together when Yeo-reum is roped into conducting an interview with one of the elderly residents after the original interviewer fails to show up — and they have to suffer in silence when Granny mistakes salt for sugar in their tea. Lol.

They also field off Granny’s matchmaking attempts, but that doesn’t stop Dae-beom from taking the initiative to ask Yeo-reum to keep doing the interviews with him. He naturally seems to assume that she’s going to remain in town for a very long time, and I will never get over just how fast Dae-beom came out of his shell around Yeo-reum.

Ji-young passes the civil servant exams, and Destination Seoul is finally in view for her. Sung-min takes everyone out for celebratory dinner, and he totally has a crush on her, doesn’t he? Heh. Ji-young is upset that Dae-beom is “rotting away” in Angok, and as his only friend in town, she’s equally worried about him being all alone when she moves to Seoul. But Yeo-reum assures her that Dae-beom will be fine on his own.

Ji-young also has concerns about Bom’s seemingly complacent lifestyle, but Yeo-reum is team “not everyone needs to have lofty goals in life.” According to her, she struggled because she felt like she was doing a terrible job while everyone else was thriving, and she fell into a slump while trying to live up to other people’s standards. While I understand where Ji-young is coming from, she doesn’t need to be so hard on Bom. Bom is smart, and she will eventually find her way — and maybe that’s through art since she’s so good at drawing.

I mean, Bom doesn’t cut classes because she enjoys being a truant — the girl is being bullied at school. But, rather than the teacher recognizing it as an actual problem, she makes Bom out to be a troublemaker — and tells Jae-hoon to stay away from her if he doesn’t want to get kicked out of school like what happened to him in the U.S.. Well, that’s an interesting bit of information.

Bom gets into another fight with the bullies and understandably takes it out on her dad since his exploits as the town’s drunkard is the reason she’s being bullied. She runs away from home into the refuge of Yeo-reum’s arms, and it’s really sweet how Yeo-reum just hugs her without asking questions. “I don’t know what happened, but don’t get hurt again,” Yeo-reum tells her, and the sincerity in her eyes and voice in this scene tugged at my heartstrings. Don’t we all just need someone who is unconditionally on our side?

Actually, despite the bullies, Bom still has other people on her side. This is why when she accidentally gets stabbed by her dad and has to undergo surgery, her bedside is not empty of visitors — from her grandmother and brother KIM HA-NEUL (Shin Ki-hoon), to Sung-min and Jae-hoon. And then there’s Yeo-reum, of course, who sent Dae-beom into a frantic race to the hospital because he thought she was the one who got hurt. Awwww. Dae-bom also offers to look after Gyeoul and borrows books from the library to keep Yeo-reum company while she stays with Bom at the hospital, and should I chalk these as merely thoughtful gestures or something more? *winks*

Unfortunately, against Bom’s wishes, she has to lie that she hurt herself so that her dad won’t get arrested — and I’m really upset that the adults practically forced her into making this statement. Sure, he didn’t stab her on purpose, but becoming an alcoholic after falling on hard times and verbally taking out his frustrations on his family is not excusable. And for me, it’s not much of a silver lining that his guilt over hurting Bom is the final straw which sends him to rehab.

Since self-inflicted injuries are not covered by insurance, Bom’s family has to cough up the money — which they don’t have — for her treatment. Sung-min tries to help in his little way and Yeo-reum also requests for the deposit on her rent to use as a down payment, although she is reluctant to leave the house — and the town by extension because she has just finally settled in. (But of course, she forgets the money on the information desk, and the nurse has to call her attention to it). Stop leaving your cash lying everywhere. Jeez!

To everyone’s surprise, Anon ends up covering Bom’s bill, and from Dae-beom’s wide smile when Yeo-reum tells him she no longer has to leave town, I highly suspect he is Anon. And as for how Dae-beom — still under the assumption that he’s Anon — got the funds, he’s not just an ordinary librarian. Dude is actually a math whiz just like his sister, got into college at age 17, and ended up being the youngest person to become a researcher in the school.

Dae-beom has already left academic life behind him, but his professor is very eager for him to return. Especially since he’s on the verge of completing a mathematical theory and becoming the first Korean to have a theorem named after him like Pythagoras and the other greats — but it’s looking more like the professor wanting to boost his own ego, than about Dae-beom the Great.

Anyway, despite Dae-beom’s insistence that he was made to live in Angok (“My surname is even Ahn, so I belong in Angok. Pfft), I wonder if he really feels that way deep down. He looked like a much different person solving that equation on the board (yes, I zoned out at the sight of all those letters and numbers, but that’s not the point), and he seemed very passionate about it too. I have nothing against living a simple life, but I can’t help feeling that Dae-beom was made for more than this.

 
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Summer Strike: Episodes 5-6
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily