#guess water is decidedly NOT a unifying force for those two love rivals

[sexyglances]

How Water Is Used In Relation to Hyejin and Dusik and How it Narratively Unifies Them in Their Emotions

Hometown Cha Cha Cha uses Gongjin as a seaside town part of its narrative, so much so that the story feels like it would be incomplete without it, however, in addition, the drama also employs the use of water in other ways, especially during emotionally resonant scenes. Not only do both Hyejin and Dusik each go to the water when they want to go to find solace by themselves, but also, water holds significance when they are together, as its presence seems to be the equalizer in their relationship, washing away any artifices they may have put up and revealing them at their most basic emotional cores.

Hyejin and Dusik are their most carefree with each other when they are in the water together. Both in the beach rain scene and then later when they are washing the blankets together. It's those times when they, for at least a few brief moments, forget the pretenses they built their tenuous denial of attraction to each other on, and just allow themselves to be together. When they are splashing around in the water together, they are simply two people happy to exist in the presence of each other. They bask in the joy of being unencumbered by any of the supposed societal obligations, life philosophies, or whatever other baggage they usually carry with them as shields against showing their true selves. Of course, eventually, real life and their personal hang-ups come barging back in, but when the story has water involved, their dual attraction manifests at its most basic level.

Not there aren't other times they are attracted to the other person, like when Dusik was filling in at the supermarket and stared after Hyejin, or when Hyejin was looking at Dusik as he lay "asleep" while sick, but those incidents were more one-sided and didn't convey mutual attraction in those specific moments. Conversely, water seems to be often present when their attraction is mutual and sparks fly between them. It even happens during their drunken night. I doubt the kiss would have happened had Dusik not used the water from the condensation from the ice bucket as a way to cool his hands, and had he not used those water-cooled hands of his to cup Hyejin's face. That moment (with water in between them) indelibly brought them closer. Even how they met at the beginning of the drama had to do with her losing her shoe to the sea as she was alone, and then they were brought back together in a moment of unadulterated joy after he found the shoe while fishing and gave it back to her. Again, the story uses water as a catalyst for something more.

However, water is also used in isolating ways as well. It's when they are in or near the water by themselves that their individual melancholy hits the most. Both Hyejin and Dusik were each alone at the beach, both with pensive looks on their faces right before they first met as 30-something adults. They were at the beach to be alone in their own wistful thoughts, staring at the sea, lost in their own introspection before the sea brought them together via Hyejin's lost shoe. And a similar feeling was conveyed when they were at the waterfront at the same time (yet still separately) as teenagers as well. Even as children, Hyejin could feel the bittersweetness of an imminent goodbye to her mother at the seashore.

Also, remember the rain Dusik told Hyejin to find joy in because of its unexpected presence? How interesting that it is the next time it is raining, while Dusik is on a neighborhood patrol and he finds Hyejin and Seonghyun sharing an umbrella, that Dusik feels the most disconnected from Hyejin. Because this time with water present, he is separated from her. While she stays dry, he is the only one being drenched by the rain shower, alone, by himself. Even when Hyejin and Seonghyun invited him under the umbrella with them, he refused, keeping himself an outsider once again. He purposefully disconnected himself from them, and the water he said to embrace is the same water that he used to (at least subconsciously) wallow in his loneliness and distance from Hyejin in. And it's also the same rain that he insisted on not taking cover from that gave him the fever Hyejin worried about. His physical isolation in the rain literally made him physically sick, which dovetails in nicely with the emotional isolation they both have felt in their indivudual ruminations by the sea.

The closer the water is coming to them, the more acutely they feel their emotions, as the water itself moves from something they use as a tool for internal contemplation to a tool of external manifestations of feelings that can no longer be ignored.