Tell Me That You Love Me 2023 K Drama Episode 13-14

One thing I really love about this drama is that it’s full of complicated feelings. There’s no good and evil here, just people that have lived, hurt, and learned. Sometimes they’re more guarded (like our hero) and sometimes they’re learning to be more vulnerable, which is what we see of Seo-kyung this week.

We left off last week with a stab in the heart as Jin-woo opened the door to Seo-kyung on a rainy night. Mo-eun drags herself away from the scene in obvious pain — and now we witness the aftermath.

To begin, let’s jump into the backstory about the fire, since we finally get all the details. Seo-kyung was being followed around by a looney stalker, who attacks her in the arts college building and accidentally sets fire to the place while she’s trying to break free. She’s knocked out and he leaves her there to die.

Jin-woo smells the smoke and goes looking for Seo-kyung as the fire gets bigger. Seo-kyung wakes up and sees him outside the room she’s in, but he doesn’t see her. She’s screaming his name (in vain, of course) and he runs in the other direction to keep searching for her.

We later learn that Jin-woo never finds her, and Do-hun is the one that pulls her out and saves her life. Now, last week it seemed like Do-hun was the guy stalking Seo-kyung. As it turns out, he’s just another obsessive weirdo who was in love with her and was secretly following her around to protect her from her stalker (got all that?). And as he’s carrying her out of the fire, he sees Jin-woo run further into the building to find Seo-kyung, but has no way to stop him. Jin-woo ends up needing to be rescued and gets a nasty burn on his arm.

So, what does all this mean for their present-day feelings? Well, it’s pleasantly complicated. The story goes that Seo-kyung broke up with Jin-woo after this incident because she thought Jin-woo abandoned her that day. This is what Jin-woo has believed all these years. She hated and resented him, and he hated and resented himself.

The truth comes out later when Seo-kyung finally admits to Do-hun, and to herself, that she knew Jin-woo was looking for her that day. When she runs into Jin-woo in the street right after her conversation with Do-hun, she tells him she was lying to herself back then and looking for a reason to run away. She kept telling herself he’d abandoned her because it seemed like the only way to leave. She never told Jin-woo about the whistling stalker, and she wanted to break up because the fact that she could hear and he couldn’t made her feel alone in the relationship.

Seo-kyung tearfully tells Jin-woo not to blame himself anymore. Then she apologizes and walks away. Jin-woo, crushed and angry as he is to learn all this, understands that she must have been dealing with a lot on her own. And since we learned last week that Mo-eun is feeling lonely for similar reasons, I hope this means our hero can put this new information to use.

This whole thread plays out over the course of the two episodes and it serves a couple of purposes. First, we see Seo-kyung admit that she’s been overconfident before she comes clean about the past. When we met her, she seemed smart and like a good person, and it’s in line with her character to be this self-reflexive. I was happy to see the drama pull her back around from what we saw last week.

That being said, the second thing all this does is to get in between Mo-eun and Jin-woo. In the opening scene, where a rain-soaked Seo-kyung is at Jin-woo’s house, she says she misses him a lot. At first we don’t see Jin-woo’s response. But the pain that emanates from both Seo-kyung and Jin-woo any time they’re together says they still have deep feelings for each other — just not the kind they should pursue.

Still, holding off on Jin-woo’s response for a bit allows us to get into Mo-eun’s head and feel all the insecurity that she’s feeling. After she leaves Jin-woo’s door, she goes home in a daze and sits awake all night. Jin-woo doesn’t see her text until after Seo-kyung leaves, and then he texts her right back. But she doesn’t respond.

The next day, Jin-woo goes to visit his best friend/neighborhood bartender, Ki-hyun, who tells Jin-woo to wise up a little. Mo-eun came to see Ki-hyun a few days before, asking questions about Jin-woo’s prior love life, and he advises Jin-woo to make sure Mo-eun doesn’t worry. “Tell her as much as possible about yourself. It’s really upsetting to hear about the person you love through other people.” He doesn’t want Mo-eun to start thinking, “Am I the only one that didn’t know? Am I not that important to him?” (Wow. Simple advice that’s worth repeating.)

Jin-woo and Mo-eun meet up later and he starts apologizing for texting her back so late, as if that’s the big issue between them. Mo-eun is the one that has to tell him what she saw, instead of him coming out with it (and man do I feel her pain in this moment). Jin-woo apologizes for not telling her beforehand. He was wrong, he should have told her from the start.

Fair enough. But then he takes a wrong turn when he starts defending himself. “I didn’t know she was coming. She was standing in the rain.” Blah, blah. (Come on, Jin-woo! You can do better than this!) But it’s worse because Mo-eun, who’s been crying through this whole thing, can’t understand all of what he’s signing. He wants to explain himself, but she tells him it’ll have to be later. (Another great job with the writing here. Mo-eun is honest and brave through and through, and I’m happy to see her character doesn’t waver.)

We continue to see Mo-eun question the relationship, as we started to see last week. When she talks to Ji-yoo, she notes that, in the beginning, when she didn’t know sign language and couldn’t understand what Jin-woo said, she felt like she understood him. Now that she knows more sign language, she feels like she understands him less. “I know a lot more words now. Why is it getting harder to talk to him?” (I love that this question goes unanswered as food for thought.)

The next time Mo-eun goes to Jin-woo’s house, he apologizes again — and then empathizes by saying he never would have been able to understand the situation either. (That’s better.) Mo-eun follows with a good question: “She came late at night, drenched with rain — are there still such important things to discuss between you two?”

He shakes his head no, and then writes (so it’s clear), “Since I met you, I’m really happy. I still have the scar I got back then, but that’s it. And I will never let that scar make you sad and have a hard time. I’m so sorry.” He takes her hand. She smiles. And they’re back.

But the waters have been disturbed and it’s not so easy to calm them. Mo-eun starts shooting the new drama she landed, and she and Jo-han are spending a lot of time together as he teaches her guitar for her role. At one point, she starts to cry. She says it’s because she feels so comfortable there with Jo-han, laughing, joking, and playing music so easily. She’s afraid that the special moments with Jin-woo will someday feel uncomfortable.

On the day that Seo-kyung meets Jin-woo in the street and tells him the truth about why she broke up with him in college, Mo-eun also happens to see them. So, after everything Jin-woo said about not hurting her, it looks to Mo-eun like a replay of the other night.

Mo-eun contacts Seo-kyung so the two can meet, and Seo-kyung apologizes, saying she didn’t mean to make Mo-eun uncomfortable. She wants Jin-woo to succeed as a painter. Mo-eun takes the assertive girlfriend role and responds that she understands the painter-curator relationship, but Jin-woo has her by his side now. (That’s the confidence I was waiting for.)

Afterward, Seo-kyung thinks back to the moment that she told Jin-woo she misses him, and we finally see his response. “I might never be able to love anyone as much as I loved you long ago. Because the old me, who loved without being afraid that it would end, doesn’t exist anymore. I may not be as passionate as I was back then, but I do have someone I love with all my heart now.” Thank you! Maybe Jin-woo missed the boat on telling Mo-eun the truth when she needed it, but he’s honest when it matters most. Now he just has to say those words to our heroine.

So, with the Seo-kyung story moving into the background, we end our episodes with a newer thread. Last week, we saw a woman crying in front of Jin-woo’s exhibition — and it was pretty clear this woman was going to be revealed as Jin-woo’s mother. This week, it’s confirmed. She has dementia but still remembers the house she lived in all those years ago when Jin-woo was born.

Mo-eun learns the woman’s identity, takes a trip to Busan, finds the house, and sends a pic to Jin-woo. He’s seen the house before, in the lone photo he has of himself as a baby. We end with our hero comparing the photos, and setting us up for some family reunions next week.

Wow, I loved these episodes. And I can’t believe I got everything I asked for last week. Seo-kyung’s confidence was toned down and Mo-eun’s was kicked up. There were zero scenes of Mo-dam and Ji-yoo — but we did get more of the adorable high school students in Jin-woo’s art class. Can they have their own drama, please? And the nuanced writing has been a lovely constant. In essence, this is a simple story, but that’s why it works so well. It takes simple, relatable themes and digs deep into them.

While the family stuff could be interesting in the final week, the part that has me on edge is how Mo-eun will resolve her mixed feelings. She and Jin-woo love each other. But it’s in the drama’s DNA that love is not enough — we know this because of how things ended with Jin-woo and Seo-kyung. Will the relationship be too hard, like it was for Seo-kyung? Or will they find a way to bridge their differences, like Ki-hyun and So-hee? I think it depends on how much work they’re both willing to put into it, and how comfortable Mo-eun can get with being uncomfortable.