Love Is Coming: One Overheard Word Costs Ryu Seung-soo's Character His Daughter's Loyalty

"If I had to choose between Gyeol and you, I would choose Gyeol without a second thought." That is what Han Gyu-rim (Ahn Hee-yeon) tells her father Han Seok-jung (Ryu Seung-soo) in episode 23 of KBS 2TV's weekend drama Love Is Coming, which aired on the 18th.

The line lands hard because Seok-jung had no idea his grandson was listening when he referred to the boy as a lump, an unwanted growth, while discussing his daughter's marriage prospects. Gyu-rim learns of it from Han Gyeol (Yoon Ha-bin) himself, and she goes straight to her father to ask how he could say such a thing.

A gentle talk that sets up the fight

The confrontation grows out of a quieter scene. After her sweet reunion with Kim Mu-jin (Ha Seok-jin), Gyu-rim tells Gyeol she plans to see him again. She promises to give Mu-jin her best effort and to stop pushing him away with strange behavior, but she is careful to temper expectations: getting back together does not automatically mean marriage.

Gyeol asks a child's logical question, whether people marry because they love each other. Gyu-rim answers honestly that you can marry without love and can love without marrying. She asks him not to be disappointed if things with Mu-jin do not end in marriage, and compares feelings to a bowl of bean sprout soup that was hot and then cooled. Gyeol suggests microwaving it. She gently corrects him: people's hearts cannot be reheated that way.

His next question is the one that turns the episode. Is that also why he cannot like his grandfather no matter how hard he tries? He had been carrying Seok-jung's remark all along.

"Gyeol is the son I gave birth to with my heart"

Seok-jung is flustered and asks what he supposedly said. Gyu-rim spells it out: why would Gyeol be a burden, and why say it where a child could hear? Only then does he realize the boy had been listening.

He bristles with "You are my daughter," but Gyu-rim does not back down. Gyeol, she says, is the son she gave birth to with her heart. When the child cries, she adds, she feels even greater pain than he does. It is a firm, protective scene, and Ahn plays it with restraint rather than volume.

Parents falling, children unaware

The episode also sets up an ironic contrast. Mu-jin kneels before his mother Hong Ok-seon (Jin Kyung), who has opposed his relationship with Gyu-rim, and apologizes for staying away. He relays that Gyu-rim wanted him to reconcile with his mother first. He argues that she taught him character matters most, yet judged Gyu-rim by appearance and background. Ok-seon stays cold, asks what Gyu-rim has done to cloud his judgment, and leaves. He waits for hours on his knees.

Meanwhile the parents are quietly growing close. Seok-jung has feelings for Ok-seon and is seriously thinking about remarriage, unaware that their children are in love. He tells his children he wants to pass some of the burden of being a father to a new wife so they can live more easily. Gyu-rim's reply is icy: has he told her everything, including how incompetent and unreliable he has been? His life is his own, she says, but he should at least not hurt the children.

Love Is Coming follows two people gathering the fragments of broken families to build a warm table of life. The cast also includes Bae Jung-nam and Park Yu-na. It airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on KBS 2TV.