Azure Spring: Episodes 3-4
by Dramaddictally
Timing and trust are the topics of the week, as our former swimmer ventures into the water once again. But while her diving instructor seems like a standup guy, a mysterious man from his past arrives to reveal a secret and make waves in the village.
EPISODES 3-4
We left off last time with Anna about to put her training to the test and go free diving with Deok-hyun for the first time. However, Anna’s childhood friend BAEK SOO-JUNG (Go Joo-hee) – a neighborhood gossip with a crush on Deok-hyun – gets in the way with her jealousy.
The two women fight and fall into the water, making the divers miss their chance for the right tide. And afterward, when Anna tries to patch up Soo-jung as an act of goodwill, Soo-jung declares war and walks away.
Deok-hyun, who appears uninterested in either of them at this moment, tells Anna that she should make up with her friend — giving us a glimpse into his past. He says that relationships are about timing, and if you miss it, it might not come around again for a long time.
We see that Anna feels this to be true as well when she thinks of her mom. While she was swimming, she kept thinking she’d talk to her mom later, but then her mom died and there was no later. As she and Deok-hyun prepare their food, in another detailed cooking scene, Anna realizes that everything in life is about timing, from diving to relationships to food prep.
When the kkulppang is finished, Anna tries to feed a sticky sweet sample to Deok-hyun, who jerks his head away before taking the honey bread in his own hand. They wordlessly agree that it’s good, and it’s the first truly cute moment we’ve seen between them.
But the kkulppang is really for Soo-jung, as Anna decides to make amends. These two were friends as kids, and Anna is realizing that weathering storms and seeing the sun shine again is a type of timing too. So, when the friendship is repaired and the sea is finally right again, Anna takes her first dive, while holding Deok-hyun’s hand.
She digs up an abalone, feeling proud of herself and coming away with total trust in Deok-hyun. But it’s right about then that a stranger from Deok-hyun’s past shows up, holding a picture of them in the military, and creeping around town looking for our hero, who wants to remain hidden.
When the New Guy (Jung Hyun-min) makes his way to Anna’s house in the dark, she and Soo-jung fearfully hide before Anna decides to attack. She screams and runs toward him, but then slips, falls, and knocks herself unconscious, waking in the morning in her room.
It seems New Guy isn’t dangerous, since he and Deok-hyun are calmly talking outside, but in any case, Deok-hyun is telling him to go away. Ignoring this suggestion, he follows Deok-hyun, Anna, and Soo-jung on a boat to a nearby island where they’ll dive for oysters, after revealing that Deok-hyun has been fleeing him for the past three years.
Anna wonders why she trusts Deok-hyun so much – maybe he’s a bad guy? – but she tells herself that trusting doesn’t come from knowing more. In fact, after her shoulder surgery, her doctor said she was fit to swim again, but she hasn’t been able to do it. Knowing she’s healed hasn’t meant having enough trust to get back in the water. And when she tells this to Deok-hyun, he understands her, saying she just needs some time to trust herself again.
When they’re ready to dive for oysters in this new place, the water is darker and deeper than their usual spot. Deok-hyun says that to find the food, she has to have faith – just trust the practice she’s put in. That’s it. And so, Anna dives, trusting herself in the dark, and comes away with the idea that maybe faith itself is born of uncertainty.
Back at the house, the four of them sit around eating what they caught that day. But Anna feels that the New Guy is making Deok-hyun uncomfortable and asks when he’s leaving. He says that he’ll leave when his business is finished, since Deok-hyun took something precious from him.
After this comment, Deok-hyun goes to his room, but later, the New Guy drunkenly pleads for him to come out of hiding. Staying in this town and running away won’t bring back the man he killed, says New Guy. Anna overhears this conversation and then we end with a flashback to their time in the army, where Deok-hyun has shot someone but is crying while kneeling over him. Today, Deok-hyun still wears the soldier’s dog tags around his neck.
Well, I still feel that this drama is cookie cutter and kind of boring, but I did like the meditation on trust this week. While timing is a theme in a lot of dramas, trust here is more understated. The idea is to set out into the darkness and have blind faith that you’ll find what you’re looking for. And in fact, the uncertainty you feel is actually necessary for that faith to exist.
The metaphor of the ocean as the epitome of darkness may be cliched, but the visual capture of these two hurt souls gliding through the water, holding hands, unable to see further than the distance between them — that’s quite lovely. So, when they find the oysters, and Anna realizes that it’ll work out the same above the surface, I felt an ebb of emotion in an otherwise stagnant sea.
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