#anyway it is good to know i did not f*ck up the translation bc i have very little faith in said skills in that department rip

[theinfinitedivides]

omg thank you for calling my ask "a love letter to ktl" that made me so happy 🥹

loved all the points you made and i'm really hoping they touch more on won overcoming his trauma as well. it seems like we're gonna learn more about his mom soon based off of the preview for ep 11 - sarang might give won the push to ask the ahjussi at the entrance (who worked at king hotel for 30 years) if he remembers her.

totally begging that they don't give them a breakup arc right along with you btw, i'll take any other angst arc please 😭 they're too precious, i don't think they can handle losing each other when they can barely stand being apart for a few minutes. also really hoping hwaran and won's dad don't interfere with their relationship, though i doubt won would let that affect them if it does happen.

on another note, i wonder if we'll get more on sarang's backstory too like how her parents, especially her mom, passed away. her love for king hotel stemmed from her memories with her mom, so i'm curious to see if there's more to that.

also, those lyrics fit the swimming pool scene so well (the translation was perfect dw). i can't tell you how many times i've watched that scene over and over, it's just so natural and intimate. the way won almost breathes out more than says "i missed you." after that first kiss in the pool? it was like he could finally breathe again after having sarang in his arms and seeing her face up close and clear. you can literally feel how much they missed each other and craved each other's touch even though they were together all day. god. them!!!

can the weekend please come faster 😭

me whenever those two do literally anything at all:

my standards are up by God themself at this point. they are holding the marker in their hand and i am kindly asking them to send it back down to earth for me bc would you look at that how tf am i supposed to function otherwise

now as for your points: i definitely believe we're going to see more of that ahjussi, bc the minute Sang Sik mentioned that he's the longest working employee at the hotel i saw the lightbulbs go off in Won's head. he might kill Sang Sik when they get home after the fun he had bossing him around (that and the way he had to suffer seeing the back of Sa Rang for most of the time there, more on that later) but he'll make it by the skin of his teeth out of Won's office for that information alone, sksksksk

and that brings me something that i forgot to bring up in the answer to your last ask with regards to Won's trauma—he's very touchy when it comes to the subject of his mother. we saw it during his interactions with Hwa Ran where she tells him to be careful otherwise he might end up like her (iirc he left the house and ran out to the overlook[? is that the word? i feel like i might know where that is bc of Heart Signal 4 and filming locations but don't mind me i could be wrong] over Seoul right after that), we saw it in the interview when Sa Rang brought up the revised questions about his mother (hello again ep 3 panic attack and lashing out at her afterwards), and we saw it again when he lied (!!!) to Sa Rang during the dinner that he wasn't curious about what had happened to her anymore. (we know it was a lie bc of his body language and how he [once again] got up and left the room) he is the definition of 'i never bothered looking for my mother / i am angry on behalf of my mother', and, by extension, is not very good at hiding his emotions whenever that subject is brought up, so i think whatever new information we do get in ep 11 will be very crucial to whatever happens to him at that anniversary dinner (if he gets the info beforehand ofc). in contrast, Sa Rang's memories of her mother seem to be much happier, despite the obvious grief of her death—it appears that she knows what happened to her mother (although we don't yet), she doesn't hesitate to talk about her and the dreams that she had to work at King Hotel, and it's very obvious that she is the driving force behind most, if not all, of what she does.

what i expect to see from a typical k-drama cliché is that her mother and Won's mother have some sort of connection, bc it's either the main couple are long lost childhood besties or someone's parents f*cked somebody else's parents over or the parents just had something going on and never told the kids. how they execute that (whether they met briefly in the hotel or whether they knew each other otherwise), or if they never execute that at all and skip the trope, is what i'm looking forward to, and i'm very curious as to what happens.

now, as much as i do not want them to come within fifteen feet of this ride-or-die couple that is SaWon Hwa Ran and CEO Gu are both going to be a problem. that's all but guaranteed—remember when they had that argument in the house and he said 'there is no such thing as love for people like us'? the premise that they've been setting up for us is that there is a 99.9% chance that Won's father will not take it lying down if he finds out his son 1. has a girlfriend (who is not of his status per say) and 2. it's the best talent of the hotel. and that's sad, in a way, that he's become so indifferent to anything but his own success that he cannot fathom that someone would take all of their resources to go save one person (cliff side heli trip *cough*). Hwa Ran reflects this kind of mentality too, when she says that only those who fight for themselves with everything on the line win, unlike those who fight for others in order to protect them (that's the same scene where he tells her he didn't want to fight, i went back and checked), and she won't blink twice at meddling with either of them if it means she's back in the running for successor. (when Oumou Sangaré said in Mogoya that 'people today / they're not loyal / humanity / i'm concerned about them' she meant it, these folks out here with the Korean version of Succession rn) but remember that these are two Gu siblings, never mind the half, and so if she makes a move it's unlikely that Won will back down either.

ending with the swimming pool scene again bc (like you) i've gone back and kept watching and you're right—there is this intimacy about it that feels about as natural as breathing. i mentioned in the tags of one of my KTL reblogs (and OG posts i think) that Won's love language is probably touch (acts of service as well but we're focusing on the touch rn), and the acting choices that Junho makes here amplifies that almost immediately. (hand,,,,,,,, on shoulder,,,,,,,, in the deleted take for that scene,,,,,,,, unwell. unwell i say) something something saying he missed seeing her face oh God he missed seeing her face something something to love another person is to see the face of God something something 'as if i just saw you / 'cross Second Avenue / wading in waist-high water' something something 'tujh mein rab dikhta hai... / dil de dil vich vasdi' — 'i see God in you... / she (the lover) resides in my heart'—

*screeches* if i'm alive after the weekend to live blog anything then that's a miracle, so anon pray that it comes faster so we all survive it <333