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chaehwa-archives · 11 days ago

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friendly rivalry deep dive part 20

It’s never not weird being a fan online, but I’ve beeing feeling extra weird about it lately. If I may be real for a minute, we live in hell. My accursed home country is still gleefully sponsoring genocide, while fully embracing the fascism we fund and arm everywhere else in the world. (Fuck Israel, Fuck ICE, death to America, free Palestine, etc.) Fandom feels like an alternate universe. I know guilt isn’t a helpful emotion in these situations, but it’s hard not to feel some cognitive dissonance when your timeline is half cute HyeBin photos, half children being starved and bombed.

The weirdest part is that there’s never been a better time to be a Friendly Rivalry fan. The Korean edition of the script book was just released. Su-bin had her first-ever fan signing and now has a Bubble account?? Hye-ri is touring Asia, the BluRay release is getting more content, and there’s the possibility of recognition at the Blue Dragon Series Awards coming up. We just keep winning. I wish these things weren’t happening in a world where unimaginable atrocities are also happening every day, but that’s the surreal nightmare world we live in.

I don’t have any answers, or even any questions, really. Just a lot of messy feelings.

For me, what makes the FR fandom an oasis in these bleak times isn’t just the excitement of new updates and new things to spend too much money on (although I won’t lie to you....money has been spent y’all)—it’s the love that everyone who helped create this series has for it. The script book could have been a quick way to make a few million won, but it’s put together with as much care and attention to detail as the series itself. The director and her co-writer are clearly every bit as obsessed with this story as we are. You can feel how intensely *they* feel about Friendly Rivalry whenever they talk about it.

And you can tell the cast loves the show just as much. In light of the revelations about this year’s K-drama darling When Life Gives You Tangerines, the respect and fondness of the FR actors for the series and each other says a lot. I don’t think FR needs a second season, but when Hye-ri is literally dreaming about it...I don’t know! Maybe they could make it work!! I would love to see this director work with these actors again, even if it’s on a different project.

I take a tiny bit of solace in the fact that this team was able to come together in a country where patriarchy and homophobia are deeply entrenched and create an amazing work of art about girls who find salvation in their love for each other. And I’m grateful that their work is reaching and resonating with so many people. It’s not much...but it’s not nothing.

I’m excited to consult the script book down the line to see how well my ideas overlap with the authors’ intentions, but I’ll probably wait until the official English translation comes out, so Google Translate doesn’t lead me astray. For now these are still all my own unverified theories. Which means you can expect me to continue to be wrong about everything!!

Let’s dive back in. (Be thankful I don’t make more bad diving jokes in these posts okay.) After her prologue, we don’t see much of Je-na in Episode 9. But that doesn’t mean we won’t endlessly overanalyze the two or three lines she does have.

First she asks Jae-yi what she’s doing in the, um, what room is this supposed to be? The test...storage room? But before Jae-yi can respond, she jumps to a strange conclusion:

“So you know it, too. That Dad killed Mr. Woo.”

What a bewildering thing to say. Then, after she says it, she notices the phone in Jae-yi’s hand, and realizes it’s Mr. Woo’s phone. Which seems like a more appropriate time to make this leap. If Jae-yi has the phone, then she might have seen the video, or the blackmail texts...although it’s still quite a leap to assume that Tae-joon killed Seul-gi’s dad based on that.

Then there’s also the fact that !!! huge spoiler warning !!! Je-na is lying here. Tae-joon didn’t kill Mr. Woo. Je-na did.

These few words, as puzzling as they are, tell us a lot about Je-na’s mental state. And our tragic heroine...she is not doing well.

It seems clear that she is already drifting into delusional thinking. In her paranoid and guilt-ridden mind, everything is connected to her secret, everything a reminder of her guilt. Which is why she assumes that Jae-yi must know something. The room alone—the place where Je-na started her “relationship” with Do-hyeok—is evidence enough that Jae-yi is onto her.

Je-na is terrified of Jae-yi learning her secret in particular, because she knows Jae-yi is smart enough to put the pieces together—and because she cares what Jae-yi thinks of her.

It’s not just that Je-na killed someone. It’s that she killed someone who (at least in her mind) she was exploiting for grades, all while trying to cheat on the CSAT. The reality of course is that Je-na was exploited by Seul-gi’s father and her own—but her self-sacrificing, self-effacing nature means she can’t see her own victimization for what it is. She places all the blame on herself.

In her prologue, we saw Je-na take on enormous responsibility as a child, doing everything in her power to protect her sister in a cold and abusive home. But Je-na is human, too, and has feelings other than pure sisterly love. Deep down, she’s terrified that Jae-yi really is her superior in every way—not just smarter, but a better person. That fear has utterly eroded her self-esteem.

This is the natural consequence of Tae-joon’s brainwashing. Neither sister will ever be perfect enough to win his approval. Neither can be Abel—and so Jae-yi and Je-na are equally convinced that they must be Cain, the bad sibling. Je-na believes at heart she’s nothing more than a cheater and a murderer.

But she can’t possibly let Jae-yi know that. It would be the greatest shame of her life. Another consequence of Tae-joon’s curse is that, because they’ve been taught to fear each other, neither sister can admit her weakness to the other. Neither can let her guard down.

So Je-na makes up a story to protect herself—to hide her sin. A story in which her dad killed Mr. Woo.

Even this cover story, though, betrays a desire to connect with Jae-yi again. Listen to how she says it: So you know it, too. She wants this lie to be something they can share together. Which is partly why she is so desperate to get the phone back. If Jae-yi learns the truth, that lie is shattered, and she’s exposed for the hopeless, irredeemable sinner she thinks she is.

Okay I should probably move on since this is just one line. Can the writers of Friendly Rivalry please just…stop? Stop writing so good? You’re embarrassing the rest of us.

When the phone falls out the window, Je-na jumps after it, but she’s stopped by a security guard before she can find it—and we have more indication of her mental instability when she hallucinates that the security guard is Mr. Woo. I have less to say about this moment, it’s just some really brilliant foreshadowing. The first time you watch this scene, you think she’s having, you know, just like a normal PTSD flashback, but the second time you realize oh god oh no she is being haunted by the memory of her abuser who she also murdered. I need to stop thinking about Je-na...it’s bad for my heart.

A lot happens very quickly after the stabbing. Like most of its student body, Chaehwa has an image to protect, and the school immediately goes to work on damage control. (Boomers vs zoomers PR battle! Who will prevail, some teachers lying over the phone, or two dozen witnesses livestreaming the event.) Je-na bumps into Byeong-jin while running away from the school, and Vape God Ye-ri overhears the principal interrogating Beom-su about her drug use. Gyeong, realizing the administration will try to cover up the incident, sneakily decides to preserve the knife as evidence.

We don’t see much of Ye-ri or Gyeong this episode, but I like the little scenes we do get. After all her worst qualities were on full display in the last episode, we now see Ye-ri at her lowest point: evicted from her apartment, visibly injured, canceled on social media, and face card...declined?! Just kidding, she pulls off the smeary clown look. For pushing Beom-su over the edge, she probably deserved to get knocked down a peg or two, but still, this is karmic overkill. No high school kid deserves to be homeless. (I mean, in theory no one does, but I’ll make an exception for billionaires and genocidal freaks.)

Gyeong also has some interesting moments. When Jae-yi finds her and asks what happened, she pauses and stutters when explaining that Seul-gi was hurt. Why the hesitation? Is it just that Gyeong still doesn’t trust Jae-yi? In Episode 8, she did suspect that Jae-yi had stolen Do-hyeok’s phone.

But I think there might be another reason. Gyeong wants to believe Jae-yi is a fake friend who never cared about her or anyone else, but...what if she’s wrong? What if Jae-yi is serious about Seul-gi? Gyeong might even wish that she was the one who’d been stabbed, just to see how Jae-yi would react. Would she look this upset? Would Jae-yi chase after her like she’s aiming for the gold medal in Gay Sprinting at the Homosexual Olympics?

Later, Gyeong’s mom confronts her in the car about the knife she took from the scene of the crime. Gyeong wants to hold the school accountable, but her mother, a lawyer, scolds her for being childish. She’s a realist who knows how the law works, and she knows that a student has zero chance of winning a case against an institution like Chaehwa. Gyeong would be throwing her future away for nothing.

This is a side of Gyeong we’ve only seen in glimpses, and I love the dimension it adds to her character. Eighteen years of feeling unfairly persecuted have given her a powerful injustice detector: she knows when something doesn’t feel right. But she’s also sheltered, and not as smart as she thinks she is.

Like in Episode 4, when she tried to protest the class election, we once again see her planning something that probably seemed really badass in her head, only to be immediately undermined. But this time she’s clearly in the right—the school administration *is* corrupt and full of shit. It’s the world that’s wrong.

If she can let her rich-girl sense of entitlement and her personal grievances go, and and direct her outrage at the proper targets, Gyeong has the potential to fulfill her true calling as the most powerful SJW on the internet.

Okay that was a joke but radical activist Gyeong is definitely in my post-series headcanon. She absolutely won’t shut up about Fanon and Ye-ri is always half falling asleep but into it like, “Mmm it’s so hot when you read theory babe tell me more about decolonization.”

One last scene before we move on to the JaeSeulgi show. The school decides to crack down on drugs, and after the festival the students are rounded up and their teacher goes around confiscating anything that looks suspect. Although this teacher is the worst, I admire the stone-cold way she just takes a rip off this kid’s e-cig.

Gyeong is told to open all the lockers at the back of the classroom, and she does, except for three: Jae-yi, Seul-gi, and Beom-su are all missing, and all three of their lockers have locks on them (one black, one white, one gray).

I bring this up because it seems important—even the color-coding seems like it could be symbolic. But I don’t actually understand the significance of this scene. Maybe watching Episode 10 again will remind me, since that one deals with the aftermath of the drug scandal from what I remember.

It’s also just strange that the three students who happen to be missing are the only three kids in the class who bought locks?

I spend a lot of time talking about how well-written Friendly Rivalry is but can I also say it is a damn fine-ass looking show too, as my folder of seven million screenshots can attest. Every episode has moments that stand out to me as visually iconic, and in Episode 9 I particularly love the shot of Jae-yi looking up at her father while holding Seul-gi’s hand as she lays on the operating table. Something about the angle, the intensity of Hye-ri’s eyes, the oppressive dark greenish hue, the way Tae-joon’s sleeve obscures the right side of the frame...I don’t know enough about film theory to explain why it’s great, but I know ⋇✦⋆cinema⋆✦⋇ when I see it.

Not just that shot though—I love everything about this scene. I love Jae-yi taking those stairs *three steps* at a time. I love the way her brain is so obliterated by dread that she just barges right into the operating room without thinking, and the little uh oh moment when she stops to catch her breath. At this point, dear readers, can there really be any doubt that this girl is gay gay homosexual lebsbiasn?

Friendly Rivalry is full of moments where Jae-yi and Seul-gi mirror each other, like in Episode 6, when Seul-gi’s pill addiction reflects Jae-yi’s addiction to Seul-gi the thrill of competition. In this scene, Seul-gi is physically on the operating table, but at the same time, Jae-yi is under the knife psychologically.

This is Tae-joon’s way of dissecting his creation, cutting her open to see what makes her tick. He’s done his best to mold Jae-yi in his image, but at the festival he saw a new side of her, one he doesn’t like. He saw the way she smiled when she took Seul-gi’s arm. He saw her ignore his own advice and listen to Seul-gi instead. And now here she is, bursting into the room, not hiding very well that she ran up ten flights of stairs to get here.

What’s gotten into his perfect daughter? Why is she acting so weird about some lowly orphan girl?

It’s always intense when Tae-joon and Jae-yi square off in a battle of wits, but this time Seul-gi herself is the battleground, and the stakes are that much higher.

Under pressure, Jae-yi responds in a way we’ve come to expect: she plays a role. She pretends to examine Seul-gi’s body with detached fascination, and when her dad asks her to fetch the forceps, she puts on gloves instead, as if she’s eager for the chance to practice on a living specimen. When Tae-joon talks about Seul-gi as if she *is* no more than a specimen, explaining the impact of malnutrition on her skin in clinical detail, Jae-yi shows restraint. She doesn’t stab him in the eye.

But there’s a difference in how this performance is framed. The camera is helping us read between the lines. In the first half of FR, when Seul-gi was not our POV character, the version of Jae-yi we saw was usually meant to make us more suspicious of her. Think of her drugging the rat in the C-Med Room, or staring out the window while Seul-gi waited for her in the rain, or twirling her scarf in the hospital while she watched Seul-gi follow her orders. She’s either been sinister, or a cipher.

This time the camera shows us what she’s hiding from Tae-joon. When she puts on the gloves with her back to him, we can see that she’s far from excited to be stitching up her “friend.” She’s doing it because she has no other choice. It’s the only way she can convince her dad that she’s like him, and still on his side, which is the only way she can keep him away from Seul-gi.

And, of course, we see Jae-yi holding Seul-gi’s hand.

For me, this might be one of the most significant gestures of love in the whole series. It’s powerful because, paradoxically, Seul-gi can’t feel it. In a way it’s pointless. But that also makes it unambiguous in a way that Jae-yi’s actions rarely are. It’s impossible for this to be a trick, or part of an act. No one knows about it but Jae-yi. She might hope that Seul-gi can feel her presence somehow, but really, she’s doing this for herself. And...it’s kind of stupid! If her dad leaned over and noticed, that would be bad news, for her and for Seul-gi.

Jae-yi does it anyway. She does this risky useless irrational thing, in an incredibly tense situation, because she’s just too damn in love to stop herself. Even unconscious and sprawled on an operating table, Seul-gi has the power to make Jae-yi do things she would normally never do. In this case, she’s acting out of love even when she has every reason to be afraid.

Suel-gi’s stepmom comes to the hospital, and she’s pissed. I love the way she stands up to Tae-joon in this scene. Go off, tell that mfer he can go straight to hell. Still makes me sad when she slaps Jae-yi’s hands away from the gurney though. Poor Jae-yi ;_;

We get some Tae-joon beefcake (lol) when he changes shirts in his office, which is not for me, but in principle I believe all villains should be hot, so I hope all the weirdos out there into sociopathic zaddies are satisfied. (That has to be at least 27% of tumblr users I imagine.) Love how he just wads up and tosses his old shirt into the trash. This man is far too busy profaning the right to privacy to care about the environmental impacts of fast fashion.

What are the odds that that oh-so-generous “top 20 students get a free comprehensive JMC checkup!” deal is just another way for Tae-joon to creepily surveil the student body? Infinity percent. He opens up Beom-su’s file from last year, when she was 20th in the class, and comments on her poor health. (I wasn’t able to tell if there’s any noteworthy info in her records.) Then he opens up the records from this year, and sees that Seul-gi is tied with Jae-yi for the top spot.

Like daughter, like father. Tae-joon has seriously underestimated Seul-gi, just like Jae-yi did at first.

Also, why the *hell* is Jae-yi smiling and laughing with this girl? Doesn’t she realize Seul-gi is a threat?

One motif repeated throughout this episode, starting with Je-na’s prologue, is “broken connections.” Gestures of love all go unnoticed, or unappreciated, or end up misinterpreted. It’s as if Je-na’s tragedy radiates outward through every relationship. Jae-yi holds Seul-gi’s hand, but Seul-gi can’t feel it. Seul-gi’s stepmom is too suspicious of the Yoo family to recognize that Jae-yi loves her daughter. And while she’s unconscious, Seul-gi misses all the signs that her stepmom cares about her. One of the most tragic moments comes when the stepmom, who’s been waiting patiently by Seul-gi’s side for her to wake up, leaves the room to take a phone call just moments before Seul-gi finally does.

Once you see this pattern, it’s everywhere. You can even view the scene between Tae-joon and Jae-yi as his twisted attempt to bond with the daughter he senses slipping away from him. If he wasn’t so evil, it could almost be comically awkward. “Oh, so you, uh, like this girl? I like...performing surgery. Hey maybe we could, um, perform surgery on your girlfriend together?”

We also see Jae-yi trying to connect with a sister who isn’t there—a sister she is realizing too late that she never knew. And it’s her fault. She never even tried to get to know her. She goes into Je-na’s room, opens her closet, puts on her favorite CD, looks at her report card. All these years she’s been living with a stranger. How could she not know that her sister was sleeping with a teacher?

The report card suggests Mr. Woo was even more of a scumbag than we saw in the prologue. Based on the uptick in her math scores, his sexual exploitation of Je-na was probably an ongoing thing.

I had somehow completely forgotten this detail, but when Jae-yi opens Je-na’s closet, she takes out a princess dress. Wait. So Jae-yi didn’t just find a matching dress on Mercari? Did she actually use her sister’s dress for that stunt? Big if true. Honestly I need more time to think on this one, but it’s the clearest indication yet that Je-na and Seul-gi are parallel characters—both shaped by neglect and driven by an intense desire to feel seen.

I love how we’re placed directly in Jae-yi’s shoes, trying to solve a puzzle with too many missing pieces. We can guess what kind of person Je-na is based on her room decorations, her taste in music, and the princess dress in her closet. But that person doesn’t bear much resemblance to the girl who just jumped out of a window to steal a phone with disturbing evidence of blackmail on it.

A-ra calls Jae-yi, panicking about the drug crackdown, afraid they’ll be caught. We’ve seen so much of Jae-yi’s softer side lately that it’s a bit shocking when all of a sudden Bad Girl Jae-yi is back, but I’m so here for it. The way she tells A-ra, “Watch your mouth”...girrrrll. I’m sorry I don’t really have any analysis here I just like it when women are a little bit evil.

I do love the way this conversation ends. It seems like Jae-yi has the upper hand as usual, but then A-ra reminds her of an important little detail. Jae-yi sold drugs to Seul-gi in person. Seul-gi could bust them both.

Jae-yi hangs up, checks her tracking device, and sees that Seul-gi is still at the hospital.

This is an interesting way to set up the next scene, because we’ve already had convincing evidence this episode that Jae-yi’s love is real. It’s pretty hard to backtrack after that secret handholding.

But now we’re seeing that love tested: first by her father, and now by the possibility that her drug empire could come tumbling down. At this point Jae-yi can’t deny that her love is a liability. It’s making her act dumb. She shouldn’t have sold drugs to Seul-gi in person, and she probably shouldn’t have been holding Seul-gi’s hand right in front of her dad either!

Interestingly, as soon as Old Jae-yi makes her comeback, she’s also given what could be another ulterior motive. Even if she doesn’t care about her own future prospects, if she cares at all about protecting A-ra from the fallout, it’s important that Seul-gi doesn’t snitch.

So we have reason to be suspicious of Jae-yi’s intentions again. She could easily lapse back into her old ways. But will she?

I think we’re meant to be asking that question, because this scene at the hospital is constantly inviting comparisons between Old Jae-yi and New. It starts with Jae-yi suddenly hugging Seul-gi from behind the way she did in Episode 2, when she was too deep in her devious scheming to give Seul-gi’s feelings any thought. We even see them both in a reflective surface again (then it was the bathroom mirror, now it’s the hospital window). Je-yun, who helped her carry out her most twisted bit of manipulation in Episode 4, is back. And Jae-yi is giving gifts again: this time she brought coffee.

This scene has all the hallmarks of a classic Jae-yi chess maneuver. And yet...it’s different.

When Jae-yi embraces Seul-gi, she’s not playing. The look in her eyes is dead serious. When she inspects the wound, she mentions that the suturing was done well, but she takes no credit for it. She passes up the opportunity to make Seul-gi feel indebted to her, or like she was at Jae-yi’s mercy, under her control. And Je-yun hasn’t been trained to perform any emotionally manipulative tricks this time. Jae-yi only brings the dog hoping to cheer Seul-gi up.

This scene is clearly meant to mirror the scene in the prologue when Jae-yi comes to visit Je-na at the hospital—and it’s clear Jae-yi has been thinking about her sister, and regrets pulling away from her in the past.

But I think it’s a mistake to view this scene as a do-over with Je-na, with Seul-gi as a stand-in. What this really is, imo, is a do-over with Seul-gi. Jae-yi is trying to right the wrongs of the past, but it’s the ways she’s betrayed Seul-gi that she wants to undo. Or, rather, she wants to do everything again, from the beginning, but minus the deceit. For real this time.

Consider how often Jae-yi has imitated her sister when showing Seul-gi affection: dressing her, the ear-covering move, etc. In this scene, though, she isn’t trying to replicate something Je-na taught her. She’s trying to be herself—and she’s not necessarily very good at it. Lord knows she hasn’t had much practice.

That bumbling sincerity comes through in Jae-yi’s most vulnerable confession yet, and one of my favorite lines in Friendly Rivalry.

Friendly Rivalry writers. I am begging you again to stop. Please stop writing such poignant, beautiful, thoughtful, characterful, creative, smart, stunning, lovely, pulchritudinous, cute, handsome, pretty, gorgeous, exquisite, ethereal, meaningful dialogue. It’s not fair.

I could talk about this quote for days, weeks, months, years... but I’ll try to be brief. First of all, Jae-yi gains nothing from this admission. It doesn’t give her leverage, it doesn’t make her seem cool. It’s a weird, kind of off-putting, embarrassing thing to say. Just telling someone I can’t stop thinking about you is already awkward when you don’t know if that person likes you or not. And Jae-yi doesn’t know.

But she takes it one step further: I can’t stop thinking about the worst possible thing happening to you. Not because I want you to die, but because I’m a coward. I’m afraid of losing you, and this is how I process fear.

Jae-yi’s confession isn’t *just* a confession of love—although it 1000% absolutely is one. It’s also an admission of weakness: I love you, but I don’t really know how to deal with that, and it scares me. I haven’t felt this way about another person before. The only living thing I have ever cared about this much is my dog!

All of this is new to her, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing. But she takes the risk of making a fool of herself, because it’s important to her that Seul-gi knows.

That’s the one and only reason that Jae-yi could possibly have for admitting such a thing: She wants Seul-gi to know how she feels.

It’s possible to consider this line from other angles. What does this reveal about Jae-yi’s suicide plan? At this point, has she given up on it, or is talking about Seul-gi’s death a veiled way of talking about her own? If Jae-yi dies, Je-yun and Seul-gi disappear, too. Planning her own death is also planning for theirs, in a way.

But, when she confesses, I don’t think Jae-yi is thinking about the future. I think for a moment she has no plans at all. She doesn’t know what comes next. This love has set her adrift. Everything used to be so certain before, and now nothing is.

In this scene, we watch Jae-yi symbolically remove her last piece of armor. She bares her innermost thoughts to Seul-gi voluntarily. And, the moment the breastplate comes off, she takes an arrow straight to the heart.

“Pardon me but,,,, what the fuck?”

What makes this scene such a gut-punch is that Seul-gi, bless her dumb gay little heart, doesn’t really get it. This is new for both of them: Jae-yi’s never confessed to anyone before, and Seul-gi has never been confessed to. She doesn’t realize until much later what Jae-yi is actually trying to say.

Jae-yi puts her whole ass on the line, but it’s not enough. Of the many “broken connections” in this episode, this one is the most heartbreaking because they come so close.

But they still aren’t on the same wavelength. There’s still some doubt at the back of Seul-gi’s mind, for one. She brings up her dad’s phone and asks if Jae-yi’s seen it, probably because of Gyeong’s suspicion that Jae-yi had stolen it. Seul-gi hasn’t ruled out that possibility. And her lack of trust is valid. Jae-yi not only *does* have the phone, she even lies about it.

Jae-yi has lied to Seul-gi plenty, but this lie is different. The reason she’s reluctant to tell the truth is that she doesn’t want Seul-gi to be traumatized by the video of her dad. Note her reaction when Seul-gi says she hasn’t figured out the PIN yet—the same sad guilty puppy dog eyes from Episode 7, and her ears practically jump off her head. Seul-gi has no idea how much she meant to her father, and also has no idea that her dad suuucked. Learning both of those things at the same time would be horrifying for anyone.

Even the way Jae-yi tries to protect Seul-gi is different. She doesn’t shield Seul-gi from reality the way Je-na tried to shield her. She does the exact opposite. She rubs Seul-gi’s face in the ugliness. She tells Seul-gi her dad “slept with his students,” plural, elaborating on the little bit she knows to paint an even nastier picture of him. If Seul-gi expects the absolute worst, maybe it will soften the blow when she learns the truth, if only a little bit.

She’s trying to protect Seul-gi the way she knows best—the way she protects herself.

And...it backfires. Jae-yi’s love confession was confusing to Seul-gi, but this remark about her dad is even more so. Why would she poke and prod at such a sensitive spot? What kind of manipulation is this supposed to be? Is Jae-yi trying to make Seul-gi feel bad about her father to feel better about her own dad being such an asshole? One way or another, it hurts—and it hurts even worse coming after the most romantic night of Seul-gi’s life.

Jae-yi is hurt by Seul-gi’s reaction, too, but doesn’t chase after her when she leaves. A part of her is resigned. She knows this is just a taste of the way she treated Je-na for so long. Maybe it’s what she deserves.

We don’t know how Jae-yi will respond to Seul-gi’s rejection yet, but if there’s been one consistent pattern in her behavior this episode, it’s that Jae-yi keeps choosing Seul-gi—even under pressure, even when it’s not the smart thing to do. In the face of fear, Jae-yi isn’t backing off or running away from love. She’s doubling down.

This isn’t the end of Episode 9—after Seul-gi leaves, there’s a spooky little scene and a cliffhanger. But one thing we know now thanks to the script book is that Friendly Rivalry was planned as an 8-part series, but all the episodes were split in half, meaning 9 and 10 were originally written as one episode, anyway. So I think I’ll just cover the ending in my next entry, together with Episode 10.

Sorry for the wait and thank you for your patience! This one took so much longer than I was expecting, and I’m not even sure I did it proper justice. Hopefully I won’t have much to say about the next episode...is what a loser would say, not me, I’ll never tire of talking about this masterpiece lmao. On my deathbed my family will be pleading with me to stop talking about it. Not this Woo Seul-gi lady again and that darn “friend” of hers...I don’t see why they don’t just kiss already, if they like each other so much!

#friendly rivalry #friendly rivalry meta #girls love #gl drama #gl series #korean gl #deep dive #jaeyi x seulgi

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