My dear friend @phikyl knows that I like analyzing kisses for the sheer perversion heck of it so this one is for her. She isn’t watching the show at the moment so I’m leaving this here for her to read later.

I have a rubric for what constitutes a satisfactory kiss.

First, the mood.

The mood must be staged before the kiss scene so the viewers are emotionally ready for the moment. The mood can be a variety of things: sentimental, funny, dangerous, sleepy, playful, anything at all. But it must be visually established so that kiss will look organic to the story.

That’s why a forced kiss appear … well… forced. There’s no lead-up to the passion. Side-eyeing that crappy kiss on the bridge on “The King Loves.”

Fortunately, in this kdrama, the mood was set by HongShim. She was coming home from punishing the new mayor when she encountered GoDol on his way to fetch water. She was surprised to see him and mystified that he had returned alone without WonDeuk. When she heard that her husband had stayed back at Hanyang, she looked worried.

This was the moment she feared the most and, oddly enough, her surrogate father had feared the same thing whenever she went on her monthly trip to Hanyang to seek her brother. They both feared being abandoned. She feared that WonDeuk wouldn’t return to her if he finally found the memories he was searching for in Hanyang.

So HongShim walked listlessly through her village, stopping to watch the sunset.  She thought, “What’s wrong with me? It was a fake marriage. He’s not my real husband. Why am I heartbroken?” Then she continued walking with a downcast face, shoulders down, arms limp.

That was the general mood. There was sadness but also ambivalence. She knew she couldn’t hold onto him. She was leaving shortly anyway. She was convincing herself that it was for the best that he didn’t return.

She didn’t expect to see him again, leaning against the wall, barely hidden by the flowers. She saw him first, and she stopped.

Second, the approach.

For me, this is the tricky part in most kdramas: how to make the characters close their distance without looking cheesy, klutzy or amateurish.

For me, the best approach was the one undertaken by WonDeuk in the kdrama. He moved toward her slowly and calmly. No running in slow-motion. No tripping over a pebble and accidentally falling onto her lips. No grabbing her by the shoulders and bending her backwards as if she were a flexible doll. I so dislike slapstick.

The mood was already set by HongShim so it was now WonDeuk’s turn to bridge the gap between them. All eyes were on him as he made the next move. And he did a good job leading to the kiss.

I especially liked the way he turned his head as if he sensed her nearness 👍, and then he moved away from the wall to walk toward her without breaking eye contact.

Thank goodness, he didn’t smile at her. It would have been jarring had the director ordered the actor KyungSoo to smile at this particular moment. No. Smiles are fine on other occasions, but not in this instance. To smile at HongShim now would have suggested that WonDeuk was reassuring her that he’d come back or that he was glad to be home. But that wasn’t the point here. 

An unsmiling WonDeuk however underscored the seriousness of their meeting again. There was something more pivotal and more solemn going on between them than just two friends happy to see each other again. He was showing her that he was a man of his word. He was her husband and he had no other place but to be at her side.

Third, the eye contact.

The eye contact before the kiss is important for me because it’s how the couple communicate their feelings without speaking. Just think of eye contact as silent and long-distance seduction. 🙂

Also, contrary to GoDul’s advice in a previous episode, eyes don’t have to smolder. (I always connected smoldering eyes with satanic eyes and malaria, anyway. 😈) The gaze merely needs to be focused on the other person to be romantic. A steady gaze is like that Pinterest quote widely circulated, “The best kiss is the one that has been exchanged a thousand times between the eyes before it reaches the lips.”

HongShim’s and WonDeuk’s eye contact built up the tension between them so that WonDeuk didn’t have to say a word in response to HongShim’s questions, “I thought you weren’t coming back. Did you regain your memory? I thought you’d never come back if you regained your memory.”

At that point I doubt anyone cared whether he remembered his name or not. We all just wanted him to kiss the girl.

Fourth, the moment of truth, the kiss.

credit: kyunsookhakipants’ tumblr

I’m picky about kdrama kisses.

No Park Shin Hye (aka fish-eyed kisses) smooches.
No double-level kisses (pick the upper lip or bottom lip and kiss it. But you can’t have both, please).
No Hwayugi/Lee Seunggi kiss (I complained about this in another post. He looked like he slobbered all over Oh YeonSeo. Yuck).
No lip-tugging (because oucccchhh).
No licking (it looks snake-y). And no tongue. In real life, tongues are sexy. But French kisses might be too erotic for young viewers of this kdrama.

As kisses go, I think both actors acquitted themselves well. The kiss was an open-mouth, single-lip lock; they couldn’t really mess that one up.

The face-touching was sweet, too.

I’m beginning to think that, in kdramaland, face-touching-while-kissing is akin to emotional sex (as opposed to the sordid one-night stand sex). I think it was meant to show that WonDeuk was so moved by her that he had to hold her face to look at her.

credit: kyunsookhakipants’ tumblr

Having his hands around her face was more “soulful” because they had no choice but to look into each other’s eyes. It was certainly more protective than having his hands simply rest on her back leaving her head to flop around, unsupported, during the kiss (like she was drunk or something, lol).

As for her clutching his shirt, pfft, that’s typical reaction in kdramas to suggest repression of passion. A girl can’t show that she’s (lustily) enjoying an intimate smooch as much as the guy. I’ll have to give the actress five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️here for her restraint. A KyungSoo fan could easily have ripped a hole on the shirt by gripping too tightly on the material.  🤨

Last, the disengagement.

I loved how the rain ended their kiss. For one, it was a fitting way to end the kiss because the lack of rain was the reason for their kiss. For another, the rain allowed to end their kiss without awkward dialogue.

For some reason though, I was expecting Yiruma’s “Kiss the Rain” to come on as background music.

Okay, have to end this now. Will edit later (or not). I still have to watch Episode 10 but I’ve been busy with work lately. And I’m going on a trip again soon.

I’ve to post my ratings for this kiss later.

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edited: the kiss rating is here: