'Still Shining' Episodes 7-8 Recap: Are Eun-A And Tae-Seo Still Together?

Episode 6 of Still Shining had ended on what seemed like a silly cliffhanger, leaving us primed to expect yet another inexplicable breakup when our leads had only just gotten back together. Honestly, the entire premise of their relationship in the show still feels very shaky. Sure, it’s natural that they’d have felt drawn to each other back then, purely from being in proximity to each other. But in a good romance, you want the tension and the reunion to feel natural and compelling, and all we get with Tae-Seo and Eun-A is drama that seems to spring from nowhere, with no real reason for these two to stay apart in the first place, and no compelling evidence that they’re really into each other either. But enough criticism, let’s get into the recap of episodes 7 and 8.

Spoiler Alert

What Happens After Eun-A Loses Her Job?

The potential misunderstanding from the end of episode 6 gets cleared up surprisingly quickly, and for a while, it almost seems like we won’t get any more nonsensical breakups. Eun-A explains that she didn’t even meet Seong-Chan, and that he’s just here to drop off stuff he didn’t want to deal with, and Tae-Seo explains that A-Sol is the woman who drove his brother to the hospital in Gangneum to see their grandma, so he was just returning the favor by driving her back. Eun-A just jokes that he’s not allowed to pay her back or buy her a meal, and the matter is past them. Speaking of Seong-Chan, though, Eun-A specifically refrains from mentioning that he’s an ex, and simply talks about him as a non-committal business partner.

But she ends up having to go see Seong-Chan again when he says that the contract’s been reworked, meaning their guesthouse in Tongyeong is technically theirs to run again. She’s disappointed to the point of tears when she finds out her stepmother, So-Hyeon, managed to get this done in days when she and Seong-Chan had struggled for months. But she still doesn’t want anything to do with Seong-Chan, at least partly because she’s with Tae-Seo now. So she goes to the guesthouse, sees the owners have left it in disrepair, and then leaves to go back to Seoul, greeting her boyfriend at the door when he gets back home from a tiring shift and making them both happy.

But Eun-A is soon gripped by uncertainty, as the old manager of the guesthouse she’s currently managing in Seoul comes back and tells her that she’s taking over the place again because her new job fell through. This means Eun-A is not only out of a job, but out of a flat too, since she was going to move into the old manager’s place. She has a talk with Tae-Seo about what the future could hold for her, and he corrects her by saying “Us,” given they’re together now, and her future is their future. She rules out Yeonwoo for now, saying she can’t stand the idea of going back. That leaves Tongyeong, or some other place in Seoul. Meanwhile, Tae-Seo’s reading up for an exam to become a proper train driver, and not just a metro rail driver. He starts thinking about where he wants a posting if he wants to both see Eun-A and take care of his grandparents.

Eun-A ends up going back to Tongyeong when she learns the family of a kid called Ga-On is coming, and she cleans the guesthouse out, surprising Seong-Chan when he shows up. He tries to talk her into keeping the place running until their lease ends in a few months, but she’s noncommittal. A plot twist comes when Tae-Seo bumps into So-Hyeon in Yeonwoo, where she’s hanging out at the abandoned guesthouse, and he finds out from her that Seong-Chan dated Eun-A for a bit, and that he was pretty much the only man in her life for a decade, which she’d kept from him. Letting out his emotions at So-Hyeon, he makes her feel bad for “letting” Eun-A’s dad die, though it really wasn’t her fault. He calls Eun-A and tells her that Tongyeong is not an option either, just as she’d started to warm up to the place, because he doesn’t want her hanging around Seong-Chan.

Is A-Sol Still Crushing On Tae-Seo?

We see in a flashback that A-Sol gave Tae-Seo her nametag way back when they were in high school, and she clarifies to him in the present day that though it was at least partly because she liked him, it was also out of sympathy and respect. She says it to try and make things less awkward after he answers a call from Eun-A while they’re sitting down to a meal together. Yes, even though Eun-A said he better not buy A-Sol lunch, though she wasn’t really being serious. We also get a bit of A-Sol’s backstory here; she used to work in some company’s tax department before her dad asked her to start working for his company, but now her dad’s got cancer so he’s off in the countryside with her mom recovering, so she’s left holding the ball. She talks about how stress relieving it was just seeing the ocean when she drove Hui-Seo to the hospital, given she lives basically as a shut-in now. It seems like A-Sol isn’t obsessed with Tae-Seo anymore, but there was a lingering ember of a crush, though Eun-A’s call might’ve worked to extinguish it. She does think it’s sweet when Hui-Seo texts her and offers to show her around town if they ever end up meeting again, so maybe she was focusing on the wrong brother, we’ll see.

What Does Hui-Seo Struggle With In Episode 8?

Hui-Seo’s long since struggled with insecurity because of his damaged leg, but it’s almost at its most prominent this time around. With his grandmother in the hospital, he even tells Tae-Seo he doesn’t need to show up and work around his busy train schedule, because he and his grandad will have everything in control. He’s very tender towards his grandmother, and does everything he can to take care of her and help her get better, though she remains comatose. But when the doctor tells them her vitals have become unstable, and she’s remained unconscious longer than they’d expected, Hui-Seo starts to feel useless, and all the more so when he can’t get out of the truck by himself when they get home, needing both his grandad and Tae-Seo’s help. When Tae-Seo sees his brother walking into a pond by himself late at night, he maybe fears this is a suicide attempt and tries to pull him out, but Hui-Seo says something cryptic about how dark it is, the whole world just pitch black, and tells his brother to “go find some yourself.” We know he’s feeling deep despair, but what’s he trying to find? We could speculate he was looking for light and followed the moon, metaphorically, hoping it would bring him peace. The guy’s really going through it, he just wants to be useful and is frustrated by how little he can do to change things. 

Does Seong-Chan Mess Things Up For Eun-A And Tae-Seo?

Though Tae-Seo initially crosses Tongyeong off the list for Eun-A, he changes his mind when he goes there and talks to her in a field of flowers, coming to the conclusion that he’s overthinking things with her and Seong-Chan. Later, however, when Eun-A’s enjoying a bonfire with Ga-On’s family, Seong-Chan pulls up out of nowhere, and he’s brought a bunch of beer to share with everyone. He gets drunk enough that he says he can’t drive back, and then he tells Eun-A that this is goodbye. Apparently, he’s got a job offer on Jeju Island he’s finally decided to accept, though she can always call on him if she needs him. So Eun-A busts out a bottle of wine Seong-Chan had apparently bought the day they’d opened the guesthouse, but he tells her it was a gift from her dad. He basically forces her into sharing the bottle with him at this point.

In the ending of episode 8 of Still Shining, when Eun-A goes to bed, Seong-Chan somehow decides that he’s sober enough to drive home, even though he’s more drunk now than before, considering the wine. Unfortunately for Eun-A, Tae-Seo has driven out to see her, and when Seong-Chan sees his truck parked outside, he starts harassing him, assuming he’s here to intimidate them on behalf of the owners. At this point, Tae-Seo’s fresh from the hospital, where seeing his grandmother’s vitals dropping sent him into a traumatic flashback of when he was waiting outside the ICU as the exact same thing happened to his mother, so he’s very shaky. He simply assumes Seong-Chan and Eun-A have been sleeping together and drives off, leaving Eun-A in tears. Later, he walks into the same pond as Hui-Seo did; perhaps he’s just as overwhelmed by darkness and despair now. Finally, sobbing, he calls Eun-A’s back and tells her to forget the last month ever happened. You thought we weren’t getting any more breakups? Think again. Will they get back together one last time? We’ll have to wait till next week to find out (of course they will). With only 2 episodes of the show remaining, I’m wondering what the whole point has been. I really don’t see what we’re meant to get from this show. I guess some people are destined not to be together even if they try multiple times? What do you think? 

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