Vicky_step_

After watching today’s episode, I really needed some time to sort out my thoughts because there was a lot to process. I’ve had so many opinions about this drama over the past few weeks that it’s honestly hard to keep this short 😅 I loved how much it made me think, analyze the characters and discuss different interpretations with other viewers. I do think the ending felt a little rushed and some storylines had even more potential, but overall I’m genuinely happy with where the characters ended up. I left my full thoughts in my review, but for me this was still a very strong 9/10.

Thank you, that actually means a lot to me. I think that is why I enjoy these discussions so much, because sometimes someone else puts into words something you were feeling but could not quite explain yourself. And you are right, misunderstandings are bound to happen. I am just glad we understood each other.

Thank you, I completely get what you mean. That is exactly what bothered me too. I do not mind the mother realizing what she did or even trying to make things right, but I wish the story had spent more time on the damage she caused before moving into redemption and sympathy for her.

That is such an interesting comparison with Queen of Tears too. K-dramas really do have a tendency to soften parents at the end after putting their children through years of emotional damage. Sometimes I just want the child’s pain to be given as much space as the parent’s regret.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I find your perspective really interesting, especially the way you connected Pi-O with the religious symbolism and the idea of him carrying the consequences of other people’s sins and choices.

I also really like your point about how so much of what Pi-O goes through can be traced back to his mother in one way or another, even when he is not directly responsible for anything himself. It makes his whole character feel even more tragic when you look at it from that angle.

And I agree about JY too. I think the real emotional impact for him comes after the truth is fully out, because then he has to live with everything he felt and everything he did while believing Pi-O was guilty. I really hope the story gives that realization enough space, because there is so much to unpack there.

I honestly feel like you are focusing on individual phrases that have very little to do with the actual point I am making, instead of engaging with the idea as a whole. It feels like you keep looking for something to disagree with rather than trying to understand what I am actually saying.

I have already explained twice that I was talking about what, in my opinion, could have made JY’s emotional journey and the reveal stronger. I was not trying to argue against facts that we as viewers already know. Yet the conversation keeps being brought back to those facts instead of the point I was making.

At this point I am not even sure there is much more for me to explain, because I feel like we are not actually discussing the same thing anymore.

Thank you, this is exactly what I meant. I’m honestly glad there are people who understood the point I was trying to make, because it seems like some others took one small part of my comment and interpreted it in a way I never intended.

For me, this was always about JY’s inner conflict and his point of view, not about one single detail proving Pi-O’s innocence. Like you said, the seeds were already there. I just wish we had been allowed to stay with JY’s doubt, guilt and denial for a little longer before the truth was fully confirmed. That would have made the emotional payoff so much stronger.

I think you misunderstood my point a little. I wasn’t saying that the lack of phones proves Pi-O couldn’t have been involved. As viewers, we know the kidnapping was planned earlier, when Pi-O was still staying with his mother in Prague. But JY doesn’t know that. My point was about what could have started going through JY’s mind before he learned the truth.

JY doesn’t have the full timeline that we have as viewers, so the fact that they later had no contact with the outside world could simply be one of those small details that makes him start wondering: when was this actually planned? How was it arranged? Not as proof of Pi-O’s innocence, but as the beginning of doubt.

And then those doubts could start clashing with JY’s own memories from the villa during the competition. He saw firsthand how badly all that pressure was affecting Pi-O and how desperately Pi-O wanted to win, but he also saw other sides of him. Pi-O was ready to withdraw after losing his sheet music, he apologized to JY, and there could even have been one very small flashback from Prague that we had never seen before - nothing dramatic, just a moment showing that despite all the rivalry, jealousy and the fact that they were barely speaking, JY still mattered to Pi-O in some way.

Again, none of those memories would prove anything on their own. That’s exactly what I mean. They would just start making JY question whether everything fits together as perfectly as he has believed for years.

And Pi-O’s confession would still be the strongest thing keeping JY attached to that version of events. He could keep telling himself, “But he confessed. He said he did it.” Maybe he even tries to explain every contradiction away because of that. But the more he thinks back to Prague, the more uncomfortable those little details become.

That’s why I think it could have been much stronger if JY had slowly started putting those pieces together himself before getting the final answer. The investigator’s evidence could then confirm something JY had already become afraid to consider, rather than simply giving him the truth all at once.

So I wasn’t questioning why Pi-O was suspected or saying the phone situation proves he was innocent. I was talking about JY’s perspective specifically - what information HE had, what he remembered from Prague, and how those memories could gradually start challenging the story he had believed for years.

The more I think about this episode, the more I feel like the story has all the right emotional pieces, but some of them are being resolved too quickly.

Pi-O’s conversation with his mother actually made his whole relationship with JY even more tragic to me. He basically grew up learning that winning meant making his mother smile, making her proud, proving that she had no reason to be ashamed of him. Being first was never just about music or ambition - it became connected to his worth and to receiving love and approval.

So of course Pi-O never really learned how to be second.

He was taught how to win, but nobody ever taught him that losing to someone did not make him less valuable. And I think that explains so much about his complicated feelings toward JY. JY was probably the first person who genuinely threatened the position Pi-O had been taught his entire life he needed to keep.

That is why his guilt now feels so layered. Even though he did not actually arrange the kidnapping, he still cannot fully separate the fact that he once had ugly, jealous thoughts about JY from actually doing something terrible to him. He almost judges himself as if the thoughts themselves make him guilty.

And even in the prison scene, Pi-O starts by blaming himself, saying that maybe he somehow made his mother become like this. That is such a sad detail because it shows that taking responsibility for things that were never truly his responsibility is not something he only did with JY. It is part of how he thinks.

I am glad his mother immediately tells him that none of it was his fault and admits that she pushed him because she wanted to prove something through him. But at the same time, I still feel like her storyline moved into redemption a little too quickly.

She admits what she did, apologizes, tries to save Pi-O, tells him to cut ties with her and go live his own life, and suddenly the emotional focus shifts from everything she did to him to this tragic mother who finally understands her mistakes and is now sacrificing herself for her son.

I think I wanted that realization to hurt more.

Not because I wanted punishment just for the sake of punishment, but because the consequences of what she did to Pi-O are enormous. He spent his whole life believing that being the best was connected to being worthy of love, and now he cannot even fully defend himself when he is innocent because somewhere inside him he still believes that having once resented JY makes him guilty anyway.

I wanted her to really have to face what that did to him.

And strangely, this episode also changed how I feel about JY finding out the truth.

I know I said in some of my earlier comments that I wanted JY to finally step back and look at the kidnapping situation more objectively instead of seeing everything only through his anger, and I still think that should have happened.

But after this episode, I honestly think the reveal could have been much stronger if JY had started figuring it out slowly on his own before anyone gave him the final answer.

Because Pi-O DID confess to him. That is important. JY has every reason to hold onto that and think, “He told me he did it. I heard him.”

So imagine JY starting to notice small things that do not fit.

Maybe someone mentions that during the Prague competition they had no phones and basically no contact with the outside world.

Maybe JY remembers Pi-O being ready to withdraw after losing the music sheet.

Maybe he remembers Pi-O apologizing to him.

Maybe we even get one very short new flashback from Prague that we had never seen before - nothing dramatic, just one small moment where, despite the rivalry and the fact that they were barely speaking, Pi-O still quietly showed that JY mattered to him. Not enough to erase Pi-O’s jealousy or his desire to win, but enough for JY to later look back and think: if he really wanted me gone that badly, why do I remember him caring?

And then JY starts trying to explain every contradiction away.

He confessed.

Maybe he planned it before the competition.

But then another detail does not fit.

He confessed.

Maybe someone else acted for him.

Another detail does not fit.

And slowly “he confessed” stops sounding like proof and starts sounding like something JY keeps repeating because he is terrified of what it would mean if Pi-O lied.

Because then the question becomes: why would Pi-O falsely confess to something like that?

And suddenly everything we know about Pi-O starts looking different.

His guilt.

His tendency to blame himself.

His relationship with his mother.

The way he seems almost incapable of defending himself if he believes he somehow deserves the punishment anyway.

That would have made the private investigator’s evidence so much more powerful too. I think I would have preferred the investigator not to contact JY directly. Maybe the information reaches Jae-in or the teacher first, and they start asking questions JY does not want to ask himself.

Then by the time JY finally sees the evidence, it is not the evidence that reveals the truth to him.

It only confirms the truth he has already started desperately trying not to see.

Because for me, the most devastating part of this storyline was never simply supposed to be “JY discovers who arranged the kidnapping.”

It is JY realizing that the person he has been deliberately hurting, using his weakest points against and blaming for years may never have done the thing he was punishing him for in the first place.

And maybe, looking back, there were signs all along.

I just wish the story had let that realization unravel a little more slowly.

That scene hurt me so much too. And honestly, I really do think Pi-O loves Jae-in. I just don’t think he fully understands what love is or even recognizes what he feels as love, because when has he ever actually seen a healthy version of it?
He grew up in a family where “love” and “care” were constantly mixed with expectations, guilt, manipulation and control. And I think that’s exactly why he mistakes Jae-in’s panic for control here.

When she tells him he’s in no state to record or perform and desperately tries to make him postpone everything, I don’t see someone trying to control him. I see someone who is terrified watching a person she loves basically allow himself to be destroyed and has no idea how to stop it.

Even her “my job comes before our relationship” felt defensive to me. Almost like she needed a rational excuse for why she couldn’t stay out of it, because saying “I can’t stay out of it because I love you and I’m scared of what you’re doing to yourself” would mean admitting how deeply she cares.
But Pi-O doesn’t know how to recognize that kind of concern. If the “care” you received your entire life was mixed with control and manipulation, then someone panicking over your wellbeing can probably feel like just another person trying to make decisions for you.

And that’s what makes their breakup so heartbreaking to me. She hides her love behind “this is my job,” while he hides his love behind pushing her away.

Because I think he has already accepted that Jeong-yo can cause his downfall. He feels so guilty that he’s willing to let it happen, but he doesn’t want Jae-in to be dragged down with him or hurt in the process. So instead of letting her stand beside him, he removes her from the situation completely.

They’re both trying to protect each other, and neither of them seems capable of saying what they actually mean. 💔

And the saddest part is that Pi-O probably doesn’t even realize that pushing her away to protect her is already showing us just how much he loves her.

No, I didn’t miss that part. I just don’t think Pi-O saying “I did it” suddenly makes every other piece of information disappear.
Actually, even the way that confession happens should raise questions.
When Jeong-yo first talks about Pi-O trying to kill him again, Pi-O looks genuinely confused and asks what he means. Only AFTER Jeong-yo starts explaining what he remembers does Pi-O suddenly accept the accusation and take responsibility for everything.
I’m sorry, but if someone supposedly arranged your kidnapping and believed you were going to be killed, that initial confusion alone should make you pause for a second. It doesn’t prove Pi-O is innocent, obviously. But combined with everything else? Maybe ask a few more fucking questions.
Yes, Jeong-yo remembers seeing Pi-O meeting one of the kidnappers. But seeing two people meet is not the same thing as knowing what that meeting was about. Did he hear the whole conversation? Does he know why Pi-O met him? Who arranged that meeting? What exactly was discussed? What was the money actually for?
If he doesn’t know those things, then he has evidence that Pi-O was connected to these people - not necessarily proof that Pi-O ordered his kidnapping.
And then there’s Pi-O’s mother. Jeong-yo literally has a photo connecting HER to the kidnapper, and he clearly knows she was involved because he later calls her Pi-O’s “accomplice.”
So now we have Pi-O’s initial confusion, a meeting Jeong-yo witnessed without necessarily knowing its full context, evidence directly connecting Pi-O’s mother to the kidnapping, and Jeong-yo’s own admission that his memories of that period are incomplete.
And somehow none of that makes him wonder whether there might be pieces of this story he still doesn’t understand?
I’m not saying Jeong-yo should magically figure out that Pi-O is protecting his mother. He doesn’t know what we know as viewers. But he’s 27 years old. He knows his memory is incomplete. If you’re going to take your revenge this far and deliberately destroy another human being, maybe make damn sure you actually understand what happened first.
And Pi-O’s confession itself doesn’t explain those missing pieces. He gives Jeong-yo a motive - that he was afraid he couldn’t beat him - and says he’ll turn himself in and take responsibility. He doesn’t explain the actual planning of the kidnapping or what his mother did.
WE know the missing part. We know Pi-O didn’t order the kidnapping. We know his mother threatened to kill herself if the truth came out. And we know Pi-O chose to take the blame for her.
That doesn’t make his confession proof to me that he deserves what Jeong-yo is doing to him. It makes the confession fucking heartbreaking.
Because Pi-O has been so emotionally manipulated by his own family that he is willing to let someone he cares about believe he did something horrific - and accept the hatred and punishment that comes with it - to protect the same mother who has been emotionally abusing him.
And that brings me back to my original point: Jeong-yo believing Pi-O may be guilty is one thing. What he chooses to do to Pi-O now is another.
He can see that Pi-O is falling apart. He knows exactly where Pi-O is vulnerable, and he deliberately hits those places. And considering how well he knew Pi-O and that family, I find it very hard to believe he has absolutely no understanding of what that family already did to him.
Jeong-yo’s trauma explains his anger. It explains his need for revenge. It even explains why he might desperately want to believe he has finally found the person responsible.
But trauma explaining someone’s cruelty doesn’t automatically justify that cruelty.
I can understand Jeong-yo’s pain and still say that Pi-O does not deserve to be destroyed for something he didn’t do.

After episode 10, I honestly can’t defend Jeong-yo anymore. Not even a little.

And finding out that his memories still haven’t fully returned somehow changed the way I look at everything even more.

Because now I keep thinking about the time when Pi-O believed Jeong-yo was dead. Pi-O was searching for him. He cared. He was affected by losing him. And if Jeong-yo knew that Pi-O had been looking for him, yet still had gaps in his own memories of what actually happened between them… then maybe, before deciding exactly who Pi-O was and how much he deserved to suffer, he should have tried a little harder to dig into those missing pieces.

If you’re going to take your revenge this far, you better be damn sure you know the whole truth.

And I really hope Jeong-yo regrets the hell out of what he’s doing when those memories finally come back and he realizes that Pi-O was never responsible for any of it.

Because Pi-O is a victim too.

That’s the part I feel like some people are completely overlooking.

I understand why people sympathize with Jeong-yo. I understand his anger. I even support his revenge when that anger is directed at the people who actually hurt him - especially Pi-O’s mother.

But Pi-O is not his mother.

Pi-O didn’t create this situation. He didn’t make those decisions. He didn’t destroy Jeong-yo’s life. He grew up in that same dysfunctional family and suffered in a different way. He has been manipulated, controlled, guilt-tripped and emotionally abused by the people who were supposed to protect him.

And emotional abuse is still abuse.

Sometimes its damage can be just as devastating as physical abuse, even if there are no bruises for other people to see.

So yes, Jeong-yo has every right to be angry. He has every right to want justice for what happened to him. But I can’t support watching him deliberately destroy another victim simply because that victim happens to be the son of the person who hurt him.

I think that’s what frustrates me the most when I see people completely cheering Jeong-yo on without acknowledging what is happening to Pi-O. You can understand Jeong-yo’s trauma and still recognize Pi-O’s. Those two things don’t cancel each other out.

They were both hurt.

They were both failed by the adults around them.

The difference is that right now Jeong-yo is taking his pain and turning it against someone who was never responsible for causing it.

And I genuinely hope that when the whole truth finally comes out, he understands exactly what he did to Pi-O.

As for the people who can’t recognize emotional abuse just because it doesn’t look as obvious as physical violence… I sincerely hope they never have to experience it themselves to understand how much damage it can actually do.

God, it’s been a long time since a drama got this stuck in my head and made me come up with so many different theories. I need the rest of the episodes NOW. 😭

There’s another thing about Pi-O that I can’t stop thinking about — why does he never seem curious about who his father is?

And I don’t mean that in the sense that every child necessarily needs a father. I mean it from Pi-O’s perspective specifically. So much of his story is about family, identity, belonging and where he comes from. His grandfather refused to acknowledge him for years, his relationship with his mother is incredibly complicated, and his place within that family has clearly affected him his entire life.

And that’s exactly why the complete silence about his father feels so strange to me.

We know how much Pi-O wanted his grandfather’s approval and recognition. We’ve seen how deeply that rejection affected him. So if being accepted by his grandfather mattered that much to him, surely at some point in his life the question of his father must have come up too?

Who is he? Why isn’t he here? Why did he leave? Where does Pi-O come from on that side of his family?

Maybe Pi-O asked those questions when he was younger. Maybe he knows more than we do. But right now there is almost complete silence about it from Pi-O himself, and THAT is what I find so interesting.

Because somehow, we barely ever see Pi-O question the other half of his own identity.

And what makes it even stranger to me is his mother’s whole “Pi-O was a gift from God” explanation. Maybe it really is nothing more than the way she talks, but the more the drama avoids giving us an actual answer, the more suspicious that line becomes to me. It almost feels like a way of romanticizing his birth while avoiding the actual story behind it.

What I find especially interesting is that we’re seeing so much of this story through Pi-O’s POV, yet even through his perspective this subject is almost completely absent.

Why?

Maybe Pi-O genuinely doesn’t care. But considering everything we know about him, and especially how much his grandfather’s recognition meant to him, I find that really hard to believe.

So I keep wondering whether he simply learned a long time ago not to ask. Maybe every question about his father was shut down with the same “you were a gift from God” answer until eventually he stopped asking altogether.

Or maybe there is a reason the writers don’t want Pi-O - and therefore us - asking that question too loudly yet.

Because at this point, with so many unanswered questions surrounding Pi-O, I really don’t believe his father is going to turn out to be some completely irrelevant random man we never needed to know about.

If his identity truly didn’t matter, why hide him so completely in the first place?

I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. The fact that the story was told from Pi-O’s POV from the very beginning has to mean something. We were given so many unanswered questions about him, his family, his past and even his father that I just can’t believe there isn’t something much bigger still waiting to be revealed.

That’s also why I’ve always seen Jeong-yo as an incredibly important part of Pi-O’s story rather than Pi-O simply being part of Jeong-yo’s revenge story. Of course I sympathize with Jeong-yo and completely understand where his anger comes from, but we experience so much of that anger through Pi-O - we see his guilt, his attachment to Jeong-yo, his need to find him, and how deeply everything affects him.

There are just way too many question marks surrounding Pi-O for his role in this story to be as simple as “the son of the person who caused all of this.” I really feel like there’s still something much bigger we don’t know.

First of all, I have to say that I literally could not take my eyes off Song Kang this entire episode.

Now, about the actual drama… Damn, I’m so conflicted. I genuinely don’t understand how one episode can leave me with so many completely contradictory feelings at once.

Jeong-yo… part of me is actually enjoying watching him take his anger out on poor Pi-O, but an even bigger part of me desperately wants him to direct all of that anger at the people who actually deserve it.

I think part of his anger toward Pi-O comes from the fact that Pi-O can still play while he can’t. And honestly, I’m starting to believe that Jeong-yo figured everything out a long time ago and has simply been pulling the strings whenever he needs to. He wants Pi-O destroyed, and at this point, I don’t think he can even hide it anymore.

And Pi-O… God.

I genuinely don’t think his story is going to end well, and the worst part is that I have this horrible feeling Jeong-yo is going to be the one who finally pushes him to his breaking point.

Watching Pi-O suffer in this episode already gave me chills. He already knows what his mother did. He’s already carrying the weight of it, even though none of it was his fault. And on top of that, his mother is still pulling his strings, threatening to kill herself if he tells anyone the truth. So he’s trapped — knowing exactly what she did, being forced to keep her secret, and carrying guilt for something he himself never did.

And now Jeong-yo is pushing him even further.

That’s what scares me so much about where Pi-O’s story seems to be going. We’ve seen this kind of tragedy in movies and dramas before — a child becomes so consumed by guilt over a parent’s actions that, eventually, they start feeling like they deserve to be punished for them too.

And I’m afraid that’s exactly where Pi-O is heading.

Pi-O is not responsible for what his mother did. He didn’t make those choices, he didn’t hurt those people, and none of her actions are his burden to pay for. But guilt doesn’t always work rationally. And I’m scared that the more everything falls apart around him, the more Pi-O will start believing that because his mother caused all of this pain, he somehow deserves whatever pain comes his way too.

That’s the part that breaks my heart. Not just watching other people punish him for his mother’s mistakes, but watching Pi-O slowly become someone who might stop fighting back because deep down, he feels guilty enough to think he deserves it.

And seriously…

WHO THE HELL IS PI-O’S FATHER?!

Personally, I find Lee Jun-young much more convincing as the adult Jeong-yo. The calm, controlled presence feels very natural on him. The seventeen-year-old version didn’t always work as well for me. With his more mature features, some of the youthful smiles and playful expressions felt a little too deliberate. At times, I was more aware of an adult actor trying to capture teenage energy than completely convinced I was watching a seventeen-year-old.

I’m also not sure I agree that Jeong-yo is necessarily the more difficult role. The contrast between his younger and older self is very noticeable, but the size of that outward transformation doesn’t automatically tell us how demanding a performance is.

What I appreciate about Song Kang’s performance is how many conflicting feelings Pi-O can carry within the same scene. He can admire Jeong-yo and feel threatened by him, want his friendship and push him away, or try to maintain his composure while struggling underneath. For me, making those contradictions feel like they belong to the same person is a significant part of the acting challenge.

Lee Jun-young deserves praise, especially for the adult Jeong-yo, but I wouldn’t judge the difficulty of their roles mainly by how different they seem after the time skip. Pi-O’s struggle often comes through in the tension between what he shows and what he actually feels, and that’s what makes Song Kang’s performance compelling to me.

After episode eight, I’m a little lost for words, but I’ll try to put my thoughts together.

I’ll start with Jeong-yo. Damn, I’m really rooting for his revenge. We still don’t know exactly what he’s planning, how much he knows, or where all of this is going, but right now, I really want the people responsible for his suffering to finally face the consequences of their actions. Especially Pi-O’s mother and grandfather. For once, I want them to experience the helplessness they so easily inflicted on others.

That said, the reveal of who was behind Jeong-yo’s kidnapping left me feeling like we missed an opportunity for a strong plot twist. But maybe it was never supposed to be the big mystery. What angers me most is Pi-O’s mother’s decision itself. How little faith do you have to have in your own child to decide to eliminate his competition like that? To me, her actions say, “I don’t believe you can win on your own.” Imagine realizing that this is how your own mother sees your abilities. How are you supposed to trust your own achievements after that?

And as much as I support Jeong-yo’s desire for justice, I really don’t want Pi-O to become his target. I understand why Jeong-yo might struggle to trust him, and we still need to understand his perspective. But Pi-O shouldn’t automatically have to answer for his mother’s choices just because he’s her son. His own mistakes and the actions of the adults around him deserve to be judged separately.

As for Pi-O’s mental health, I’m seriously starting to worry. The last few episodes have left even me, as a viewer, emotionally shaken. And now that he’s found out his own mother was behind Jeong-yo’s kidnapping, I’m even more worried about what that knowledge will do to him.

My impression is that he may have been carrying that suspicion all these years, too afraid to confront it and everything it would mean. But now he’s an adult, and Jeong-yo is standing right in front of him. It feels like his need to know the truth has finally become stronger than his fear of facing it, especially when he sees what Jeong-yo has lost. Playing the piano was something they both loved so deeply, something that connected them even when they struggled to understand each other. Knowing that Jeong-yo has lost that, and that his own mother was behind the events that led them here, must make the truth even harder to bear.

So when I read comments saying Pi-O simply used Jeong-yo, I wonder what happened to everything else we’ve seen of him. God, he was seventeen. Even back then, we could see how much he was struggling with pressure, his sense of self-worth, and his own conflicting feelings.

He could envy Jeong-yo’s talent and sincerely admire him at the same time. He could want to beat him and still be afraid of losing his friendship. He could hurtfully push away someone he desperately wanted to be close to. His mistakes have consequences, but his age, his environment, and his emotional state are part of this story too. We can’t just cut all of that out and keep only the moments that support an opinion we’ve already settled on.

And where does his care for Jeong-yo fit into that interpretation? When he stepped in to stop Jeong-yo from being expelled, he had already recognized him as the boy he had competed against in childhood. He knew exactly who he was helping. He could have stood back, done nothing, and let the school remove his competition for him. Instead, he retrieved Jeong-yo’s sheet music and provided the security footage from the convenience store that helped him avoid expulsion. Even with their history and his own conflicting feelings, he chose to do the right thing. That decision deserves to count too.

Then there was helping Jeong-yo deal with his stage fright, twice. Saving him from those thugs. Those moments happened too. Why are his worst moments treated as the whole truth about him, while the good ones are so easily dismissed? The fact that he couldn’t consistently be a good friend doesn’t mean the friendship itself wasn’t real to him.

Both of these characters make me feel so much, which is why I can want Jeong-yo to get his revenge and still be deeply worried about Pi-O. What I really don’t want is for them to end up turning all their pain against each other in a situation the adults created, while the people who caused all of this get to stand on the sidelines once again.

Damn, part of me really wants there to be a revenge angle, but I don’t want Pi-O caught in the middle of it. I really hope Jeong-yo’s intentions towards him are good. The way those final minutes highlighted Pi-O saying they weren’t close in the interview worries me. I really want to believe he also heard what Pi-O said when they were alone: that he thought they had been close friends. I hope that matters to him too.

And honestly, I don’t quite understand why people are so angry about that interview. To me, it felt like Pi-O avoiding something he wasn’t ready to face. Saying they weren’t close immediately shut down any follow-up questions that could have made him fall apart. Admitting how much that friendship meant to him would have opened a conversation he clearly wasn’t ready to have. I think that answer says a lot about how painful the subject still is for him.

As for whether he played exactly the way Jeong-yo would have, I’m not entirely convinced. When Pi-O sat down at that piano during the competition, it felt like he eventually lost himself in the music and his own emotions took over. Even the bleeding finger, to me, reinforced how completely he was giving himself to that performance. He poured everything he had into it, the only way he knew how, because in that moment he had no other way forward. Jeong-yo may have influenced his playing, but I want to believe there was something deeply his own in that performance too.

And if Jeong-yo really is pretending not to recognise him, could he be trying to protect Pi-O from whatever is going on? Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I really hope their friendship still means something to him and Pi-O isn’t going to become another person hurt by someone else’s plans.

God, waiting for the next episodes is so hard. There’s still SO much we don’t know… 😭

Maybe I didn’t express myself clearly enough. What I meant was that although Bi-O had already seen brief visions of Jeong-Yo before, including in the restaurant bathroom, they became much stronger and more overwhelming after he was told that Jeong-Yo was dead—to the point that he couldn’t even continue playing during his concert. To me, that shows the hope that Jeong-Yo might still be alive had been holding Bi-O together all those years, and once that hope was taken away, he finally began to fall apart. And yes, I can’t wait to see Jeong-Yo’s side of the story either!

I feel like episodes 5 and 6 focused heavily on all the pain Bi-O had kept bottled up, while episode 5 also showed what a genuinely good friend Jeong-Yo was.

I’ll admit that, especially when looking at Lee Jun Young, it can be difficult to see them as seventeen-year-olds. But I kept reminding myself that these characters are still children. At that age, you may feel completely grown-up in your own mind, while your impulsive and extreme reactions reveal just how young you still are and how unequipped you are to deal with overwhelming emotions.

That is why Bi-O’s breakdown over the missing sheet music was portrayed so well. It was never merely about a few pages of music. His entire life, he had been taught that he had to be flawless and come first to earn recognition, approval, and perhaps even love. In his world, everything felt conditional: be the best, or you are not worthy. The sheet music became the physical embodiment of everything he was terrified of losing.

And then Jeong-Yo told him, “It’s just piano. Why tear yourself apart over music? You’re way more important than any of that. So why the hell are you doing this to yourself?” Those words were incredibly powerful. Bi-O had spent his whole life hearing that music and winning mattered above everything else, and suddenly his first genuine friend was telling him that *he* mattered more.

Jeong-Yo did not give up on him. In a competition where Bi-O was his direct rival, he could have simply taken advantage of his breakdown. Instead, he gave Bi-O his own sheet music because he had already memorized the piece. He chose to help his friend rather than benefit from his suffering. Even though he did not know everything Bi-O was enduring or what was happening inside his mind, I think he understood enough to see that Bi-O was drowning and needed someone to reach out to him.

I also found it incredibly telling that Bi-O only began hallucinating Jeong-Yo after being told that Jeong-Yo was dead. For nine years, he kept searching for him, and I think the hope that Jeong-Yo was still alive was the one thing holding him together. The moment that hope was taken away, his mind could no longer keep all that grief and guilt at a distance, and Jeong-Yo began appearing everywhere. Those hallucinations were not only a sign of guilt - they showed what happened when the hope Bi-O had survived on for nine years finally collapsed.

What I love even more is the parallel between their musical journeys. Bi-O remains convinced that Jeong-Yo would have won, yet meeting Jeong-Yo had already transformed Bi-O’s own music. Jeong-Yo helped him stop merely reproducing every note perfectly and begin interpreting the music, feeling it, and making it his own.

Then, nine years later, we see Jeong-Yo as a conductor. A conductor does far more than keep time: he shapes the tempo, dynamics, phrasing, balance, and emotional direction of the entire performance. In a way, the whole orchestra becomes his instrument. Jeong-Yo, the boy who taught Bi-O how to feel and interpret music, has now made interpretation itself his art.

The hands that could no longer play the piano as they once did still found a way to create music - and now they guide an entire orchestra. Meanwhile, Bi-O, the person whose music Jeong-Yo changed forever, spent all nine of those years searching for him. That ending was both beautiful and absolutely devastating.

Of course! I hope you keep watching and eventually enjoy the drama as much as we do. I think it helps to look at the story from each character’s perspective - their age, trauma, family pressure, and very different relationships with music - because then their choices feel less random. Hopefully, the next episodes bring everything together for you 😊