Misunderstandings — the biggest theme to come out of this episode. While some are focused on clearing up these misunderstandings and the tensions that come about as an aftermath, some others are fine with leaving things the way they are. Regardless, it’s a difficult time for everyone to endure.
Meow, the Secret Boy: Episode 5 Recap
Sol-Ah gifts cat Hong-jo with a new collar to proudly claim him as her cat. Human Hong-jo is so happy he confesses to Sol-Ah later on that night and admits that he likes her.. and so does cat Hong-jo. Sol-Ah is taken aback by the confession and can’t help but feel flustered by the sudden confession. Her heart was fluttering. Aww. Meanwhile, the real Guk-bong makes his way to his house. On the way, he stops by Jae-sun’s cafe for some coffee, but returns home when he learns from Jae-sun that the cafe is closed. Human Hong-jo overhears Guk-bong entering the house and grows alarmed at the arrival of another person in the house.
“Cats want to come inside if you send them outside, and if you bring them inside, they want to go outside. And sometimes, they want to do both.”
The next morning, Sol-Ah grows suspicious when the water in the shower remains cold. She approaches Guk-bong’s bedroom for an investigation, but quickly runs away when she finds a person with long hair who she assumes to be a lady sleeping on Guk-bong’s bed. Sol-Ah is disappointed but not surprised at the sight of a woman in Guk-bong’s bedroom, but what she isn’t aware of is that well.. it’s not a woman sleeping in his room. The person is none other than the real Guk-bong who just sports really long hair. LOL.
Sol-Ah heads out for work, but she soon meets up with Jae-sun who wants to chat with her. He apologizes for being so harsh towards her the other day after learning that she did go out to search for cat Hong-jo after she lost him. He reminds Sol-Ah to take care of cat Hong-jo and to not lose him, but just as he mentions that, cat Hong-jo pops up at the cafe. Hahaha. Jae-sun ends up playing hide and seek with cat Hong-jo after cat Hong-jo runs around in his cafe. While searching for cat Hong-jo, Jae-sun accidentally knocks over a box full of items including the red scarf that Sol-Ah wore multiple times. Upon seeing the red scarf, cat Hong-jo transforms into human Hong-jo and he grabs the red scarf from Jae-sun’s hand. As he will soon learn from Jae-sun, Jae-sun cares for cat Hong-jo like his own because he discovered kitten Hong-jo abandoned in the same exact red scarf that they’re holding.
Human Hong-jo slowly starts to put the puzzle pieces together and grows aware that he is the reason for Sol-Ah and Jae-sun’s misunderstanding. When he gets home, he catches Sol-Ah drawing her webtoon and asks if she’s curious as to why the male lead in the webtoon (aka Jae-sun in real life) shut the female character out. However, Sol-Ah isn’t interested for an answer anymore; it’s been 10 years since she’s liked Jae-sun so she’s had enough of waiting for him. But enough about Sol-Ah, what about Hong-jo and the “lady” she brought into the house? Hong-jo is genuinely confused on what Sol-Ah is referring to, but Sol-Ah assumes he’s just feigning ignorance and grows upset at his refusal to open up to her as well. OoOooOH, someone’s jealousss.
Hong-jo debates whether or not to tell the truth to Sol-Ah and the reason as to why Jae-sun rejected her. However, if he does clarify any misunderstandings between the two, what will be left of him? Angry Sol-Ah places a note on her door forbidding Guk-bong (aka human Hong-jo) from entering her room before heading to sleep that night. It’s unfortunate timing for the real Guk-bong who was going to come clean to Sol-Ah about what she saw earlier that morning. Lol.
Human Hong-jo creepily watches Sol-Ah sleep and is patted on the head by a sleepy Sol-Ah who has clearly become accustomed to sleeping with cat Hong-jo. Aww. After returning from a run, Guk-bong changes the dead lightbulb at the main door. Hong-jo exits from Sol-Ah’s bedroom at the same time and catches Guk-bong changing the bulb. After some initial confusion, the two exchange greetings (sort of). Guk-bong assumes Hong-jo is Sol-Ah’s boyfriend which could explain for the sign outside her door, but Hong-jo? He isn’t so thrilled at the sight of Guk-bong.
From breakfast to the bathroom to getting ready for work, Sol-Ah barely manages to miss Guk-bong throughout the house. Of course, Hong-jo plays his part in rushing her out of the house to prevent her from seeing the real Guk-bong. Even when Hong-jo does finally manage to get Sol-Ah out of the house to minimize any chances of her interacting with Guk-bong, he doesn’t feel so great. In a short conversation with Guk-bong, Hong-jo feels guilty for hiding his relationship with Sol-Ah around Guk-bong so he apologizes and leave the house.
Work isn’t the greatest for Sol-Ah or for anyone else really. Sol-Ah’s lip gloss is all over her mouth and Ji-eun is misunderstood once again for having connections to CEO Park. When Sol-Ah is assigned a task by CEO Park that was originally Ji-eun’s, everyone assumes Ji-eun is being favored by CEO Park. Even Doo-sik – who had gifted Ji-eun with a vitamin drink on her desk earlier that morning – is disappointed and reclaims the vitamin drink that he got her. Oh nooo.
While walking out and about, Hong-jo slowly comes to accepting his new reality. He’s going to reveal the truth to Sol-Ah in order to repair the damaged relationship between her and Jae-sun. But Hong-jo still has a hard time accepting his feelings and he can’t help but feel empty inside. Hong-jo seats himself down on a bench where Ji-eun is also sitting at! OMG! Hahaha. Hong-jo talks to himself out loud and feels apologetic towards Sol-Ah who he feels must have been very lonely the past ten years. Ji-eun assumes Hong-jo is referring to her and grows emotional upon hearing his speech.
Sol-Ah takes a break from work and glances outside the window while sipping on some water. Upon staring out the window, she finds Hong-jo sitting next to a woman who she eventually discovers is Ji-eun! She grows shocked at the sight of them together and assumes Ji-eun must be the woman that was in her house the other night (when really it was just Guk-bong lol). Hong-jo hands Sol-Ah her cell phone that she had forgotten to bring with her that morning and also breaks the news to her at the same time: he’s not Guk-bong. Hong-jo walks away after confessing the truth, but Sol-Ah doesn’t think too much about the revelation.
Instead, her focus is on Ji-eun who she assumes is dating Hong-jo. Ji-eun herself thinks Sol-Ah is angry at her for telling CEO Park about her webtoon when really Ji-eun didn’t. The tension is too much for Doo-sik who wishes to just work on their project together. It’s only until after he exits the room when Hong-jo reveals her true intentions: she wants to befriend Ji-eun.
The two end up meeting at none other than Sonamu (Jae-sun’s cafe) to get to know each other better. Sol-Ah arrives first and is informed by Jae-sun to grab cat Hong-jo who’s hiding in the back room of the cafe. Sol-Ah makes her way over with the goal of finding cat Hong-jo, but instead she discovers her red scarf laying on a shelf. Jae-sun arrives shortly afterwards and the two converse over the red scarf. They eventually clear up any confusion and misunderstandings about the scarf: unlike what Jae-sun thought, Sol-Ah did not abandon kitten Hong-jo. She gave the red scarf to young human Hong-jo because he was lost and confused and cold so she took care of him. And then he eventually disappeared from her with her red scarf and was never to be seen again.
Sol-Ah grows offended and upset by finally discovering how Jae-sun felt about her all this time and what lead him to ignore her that night they were supposed to meet up. Even after knowing the truth, she has no plans to make amends with Jae-sun. Sol-Ah reasons Jae-sun was afraid to fall in love with her back then so he used kitten Hong-jo as an excuse to run away and disappear from her. She reclaims the red scarf and takes it away with her as she exits from the cafe. Once outside, Sol-Ah encounters Ji-eun who had arrived a little late. The two ladies decide to go out for some drinks instead of coffee.
While drinking, the two bond by talking about topics from work to boys. After talking about Jae-sun, Sol-Ah eventually learns that Ji-eun and Hong-jo are not a thing like how she had assumed. Instead, it’s Doo-sik who Ji-eun has a crush on and has had a crush on since high school. Hahaha. Talk about getting closer! Now they know each other’s secrets.
Ji-eun and Sol-Ah eventually make their ways home safely. Ji-eun departs in a taxi while Sol-Ah walks home with human Hong-jo following closely from behind. Aww. When Sol-Ah gets home, she notices some odd things around the house.. like the light at the front door is now working and a letter in the mail for Guk-bong. However, as both she and Jae-sun will eventually discover separately, Hong-jo is not Guk-bong like how they had originally thought. They interact with the real Guk-bong as he prepares to leave to travel once again. EEEEEEK!
Sol-Ah confronts Hong-jo when he gets home from bidding farewell with little Dae-sung. Hong-jo is fully prepared to be confronted by Sol-Ah, but things aren’t as they seem. Sol-Ah shows Hong-jo the letter that came in the mail for him indicating his name change from Bang Guk-bong to Bang Cruise. LOL. She’s sad over the fact that he changed his name. Hahaha. In her prior conversation with the real Guk-bong, she assumed that he was just Hong-jo’s friend who came to visit Hong-jo and stayed at the house. Sol-Ah is relieved at the news and teases Hong-jo for the name change, but Hong-jo himself isn’t so sure how to take all of this in.
Just as Sol-Ah is about to pass out from all the drinking earlier that evening, she pleads for Hong-jo to stay as Guk-bong and to not go through with his name change. She also asks for him to stay with her and to not leave. After Sol-Ah expresses her wishes, she falls over, but is caught not by Hong-jo who was standing across from her but by Jae-sun who had been trying to get inside the house. After catching an unconscious Sol-Ah in his arms, Jae-sun turns to Hong-jo and questions his identity. Who is he?
My Thoughts:
First and foremost, I’m back! Finally! Kind of.. for now. The past few days has been a wild roller coaster ride for me so I didn’t have all the time and energy in the world to do recaps for last week’s episodes. But I’m back (finally)!
I’m not sure if it’s the small hiatus I had in watching this drama, but I had a challenging time finishing this episode and recapping it. I’m not sure if it’s because of the short break so my attention span wasn’t all the way there or if it was really because the episode wasn’t as engaging that I had trouble finishing it. Regardless, this episode was one of my least favorite episodes because I felt like there were too many things going on and the different sub-plots within this episode could have easily been spread out over a span of a few episodes. Instead, everything was grouped into this one episode and everything happened all at the same time. There was too much going on all at once.
We can start off with the whole Guk-bong plot. It was supposed to be something originally simple and fun and I felt like the drama played around with it a lot more than I expected. Given, Guk-bong was the main focus in this episode, but I’m surprised at how much time the episode spent on Guk-bong. Granted, it needed to since Sol-Ah assumes that Hong-jo is Guk-bong (and still does) and I enjoyed the comedic antics the drama was pulling with Guk-bong (the long hair for example), but I don’t know.. why pull in the real Guk-bong only for Sol-Ah to not find out that he is the real Guk-bong. It didn’t really make any sense to me. At the end of the episode, she still believes that Hong-jo is Guk-bong (despite the name change to Bong Cruise) which defeated the original purpose of looping in real Guk-bong which was to reveal Hong-jo’s identity. I guess one can argue that real Guk-bong’s appearance allowed Hong-jo to be honest with both himself and Sol-Ah and it was a sense of character development for him. However, I’m still on the fence of not understanding why real Guk-bong was brought into the drama if Sol-Ah still thinks of Hong-jo as Guk-bong. When will she actually believe that Hong-jo is Hong-jo and not Guk-bong?
The next thing that the episode heavily focused on was the relationship between Jae-sun and Sol-Ah once again. I know the drama has been heavily focusing on them throughout its run so far so I’m kind of glad in a way that the misunderstanding about the red scarf has been cleared up between them. It’s not even a matter of they weren’t on the same page about the red scarf and were confused about it; now they both are aware of how the other felt on that night they were supposed to meet up and how the red scarf severely influenced the decisions they made that night. Now that Sol-Ah and Jae-sun have come clean to each other about what happened that night, it’s now up to them two to determine how they will respond and react from here on out. They can either choose to remain familiar strangers and be acquainted with each other to an extent or they can just stay away from each other for as long as necessary. We got a bit of Sol-Ah’s answer in this episode when she walked away from Jae-sun and in a way chose to cut ties with him. However, what we will have to wait for is how long Sol-Ah is willing to keep him away and whether or not she’s willing to accept Jae-sun back who clearly misunderstood Sol-Ah this entire time and wants her back now that he knows the truth. Can they go back and continue on from where they previously left off now that the cat is out of the bag or are things far too damaged to be repaired?
Hong-jo was great in this episode and clearly showed signs of how selfless he is. Despite knowing the outcome and the possibilities of what could happen to him, he went ahead and told the truth to Sol-Ah. He’s not the Guk-bong that she originally thought she was, but it doesn’t matter now that he’s come clean to her because she still believes he is. It doesn’t change anything either because she still wants him around regardless of his name. Hong-jo no longer now has a reason to hide or lie; he’s done his part and Sol-Ah’s reaction to his confession only gives him more hope and encouragement to stay with her — even if that means still pretending to be Guk-bong or to be his true self as Hong-jo. Maybe to an extent, even Sol-Ah is careless about who Hong-jo actually is. She clearly has enjoyed his presence and his company the entire time they’ve been together so it doesn’t matter to her who Hong-jo is. What she cares more about is being with him and staying with him.
Now that I finally write out my thoughts, I know the reason as to why I didn’t enjoy this episode as much as I wanted to which is that all the misunderstandings between all of our characters in this episode was frustrating to watch. And there wasn’t just one or two misunderstandings between our characters, there were multiple misunderstandings between all of our characters. There were misunderstandings between real Guk-bong and Sol-Ah, Sol-Ah and Hong-jo, Sol-Ah and Ji-eun, Sol-Ah and Jae-sun, Doo-sik and Ji-eun.. I mean, I felt like the episode was purposely and continuously building tons of misunderstandings throughout just to keep us viewers entertained so I was actually getting frustrated. Combine this with the many different sub-plots going on in this episode and it made for a tiring watch. The episode was trying to do something with all the misunderstandings, but it dragged on for too long with too many people and it got tiring after a while of having to catch up with everything.
It seems like I have a lot of concerns about this episode (in which I did), but I still love what the series is telling us at the end of each episode which is ultimately that Sol-Ah loves Hong-jo, regardless of his form as a cat or a human being. She takes comfort in being with him and with him being by her and she’s not prepared to lose that even if that means Hong-jo isn’t the person that she thinks he is. Hong-jo has come to meaning a lot more to her than I think the both of them ever expected and it’s this relationship development that is beautiful to watch. We’ve seen plenty of times throughout this drama so far how easily Hong-jo can transform from a cat to a human being (sometimes a little too easily in front of other people which is a bit concerning), but what we’ve also come to seeing so far is the beautiful transformation he’s made in her life.
Extra screenshots from the episode~
MaryMeKpop 