The first two episodes of the K-drama Way Back Love establish a friendship between the two lead characters, Kim Ram-Woo and Jung Hee-Wan. What starts off as an April Fool’s joke to confuse the student teacher becomes an almost permanent thing until something happens that we don’t find out about until the end of the first episode. In Way Back Love, Hee-Wan is a free-spirited and optimistic girl in high school, and Ram-Woo is the new kid in town. The two of them become friends-ish when, for an April Fool’s prank, they switch names to confuse the teacher. I bet this show is going to take us on a rollercoaster ride after giving us two episodes of total fun. What’s with sentimental April K-dramas? Somebody stop them! Anyway, with that said, let’s jump straight into episodes 1 and 2.
Spoiler Alert
Who Likes Whom First?
When Ram-Woo and Hee-Wan’s names get switched on April Fool’s. Hee-Wan decides to put the name to the test and tell everybody in the school that she’s Ram-Woo. Not only the students and the teachers of her own school, but even when she goes to get tteokbokki and even when she fights off a bully from a different school in the middle of the street, it’s Ram-Woo’s name tag that falls off her uniform and leaves an impression. Of course, Ram-Woo and Hee-Wan have their own best friends, Hong-Suk and Tae-Kyung, respectively. Until this day, Ram-Woo hadn’t interacted with anybody in his class, but because of this activity that he was forced to participate in, he became an established figure in the school.
When it comes time to face the bullies, it’s Hee-Wan, who isn’t afraid at all, but Ram-Woo has to go along with her because it’s his name tag and he just feels obligated to join her and Tae-Kyung. The trio even draws animals on their arms to look like tattoos so that they comes across as gangsters. They’re saved when a teacher shows up asking if these are the kids who smoke outside of school every day. The bullies run away, leaving Hee-Wan feeling accomplished and Ram-Woo struggling to wash off the permanent marker on his arm back home.
But the real deal is that Hee-Wan thinks Ram-Woo’s name is a lucky charm for her. She decides to keep it for herself and asks him to switch names for good. At first, he’s completely against it, but after people start calling them by their adopted names and everybody gives in because Hee-Wan is just such a zealous girl, he goes along with it without a choice. Hee-Wan and Ram-Woo also realize they’re neighbors and start seeing more of each other. They eventually become friends after they save an old lady together, and the woman donates all her money to the school. Ram-Woo gets a scholarship, and Hee-Wan gets praised too. It seems both of them were raised by single parents: Ram-Woo by his mom and Hee-Wan by her dad. Hee-Wan’s dad runs a restaurant in the neighborhood, and on the day they’re called to school to be notified about their achievements, Hee-Wan’s dad makes a nice meal for Ram-Woo’s family. I suppose Ram-Woo truly starts seeing Hee-Wan as a good friend at this point. Then one day out, of the blue, when Ram-Woo reads a poem in school, Hee-Wan realizes she really likes him, but will this turn into anything real?
What Happened To Ram-Woo?
At the end of episode 1, we’re now in the future and learn that Ram-Woo has been dead for 4 years, and Hee-Wan is a completely different person. The zealous girl is long gone, and now she’s a college student who lives in a dark house with no electricity and no will to really live. The first episode begins with Ram-Woo meeting Hee-Wan in this future, 4 years after his own death. But he isn’t a ghost; he’s the grim reaper, and he’s there to tell Hee-Wan that she’s going to die in 7 days. Now, we don’t know how Ram-Woo died, but what we do know is that people blamed Hee-Wan for it 4 years ago, specifically because of the whole name change thing.
In episode 2, Hee-Wan first thinks Ram-Woo’s a figment of her imagination, but after trying everything she can to get rid of him, she fails and realizes he’s not going to leave her side. Apparently, it’s like a “phone a friend” free pass for Hee-Wan that Ram-Woo is telling her when she’s going to die, but this is because he wants her to actually live, to do the stuff she once said she wanted to do back in the day.
In the school timeline, Hee-Wan doesn’t confess to Ram-Woo because she thinks it’s a bad idea, and it makes sense to stay friends rather than become a couple and break up because, let’s be honest, how often do high school romances last? In the meantime, a junior named Ji-Soo asks Hee-Wan to write Ram-Woo a letter on her behalf; she’s got great handwriting and charges people to write pretty letters for them. Hee-Wan doesn’t write the letter for weeks, breaks her ankle, and everybody assumes she tried to commit suicide, but finally Ji-Soo finds her, and Hee-Wan has to write the letter. When Ji-Soo is about to give it to Ram-Woo, Hee-Wan tries to stop her by screaming “no” while running towards them on the football field. This doesn’t go too well because she gets struck in the head with a football, and Ram-Woo immediately rushes her to the nurse’s office, basically breaking Ji-Soo’s heart.
Soon after, Ram-Woo asks Hee-Wan to write a letter for him to a person with the initials J.S. Hee-Wan cries and cries while writing the letter, and she changes it to Ji-Soo, but it turns out it’s a birthday present for his mom, who doesn’t like her name and prefers her initials. In the present day, Ram-Woo takes Hee-Won to a hospital to show her what it feels like to die. He collects a soul there, and Hee-Wan takes some time to deal with being in the hospital. It looks like Ram-Woo’s death traumatized her, and the sound of sirens doesn’t sit well with her.
Ram-Woo then tells Hee-Wan that he wants her to do the stuff on his bucket list with him. Ironically, he’s already dead, but he wants Hee-Wan to experience those things for him instead. Hee-Wan rides a tandem bicycle by herself, drinks a beer under the night sky, eats ramen while looking at a video of polar bears in the arctic (because she can’t suddenly end up there), and finally goes paragliding, all for Ram-Woo to disappear from in front of her. But when she’s done and she can’t find him anywhere, she starts to freak out a little bit.
At the end of Way Back Love episode 2, we learn that Hee-Wan had said she wanted to do all of these things with her partner as she grew up. It was never Ram-Woo’s bucket list, but just a list of things she wrote down that she wanted to do so they could eventually do it together. Guess this is not how they expected to do it, though. But it seems they both liked each other and regret not having told the other. I wonder how he died and why Hee-Wan had to be blamed for it, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
