Episode 14 Recap
Zhong Yu Tang asks Ji Wen Kai whether it was because he had been angry with her that had him suddenly disappear. “Angry? Angry about what?” Ji Wen Kai responds.
Zhong Yu Tang remembers the day she told Ji Wen Kai to promise to do well in the university entrance exams so they can use the amusement park tickets her mother gave to her and go to the amusement park together. It’s a promise that was made on the day previous to the day Ji Wen Kai got into a fight with the schoolmate that had him disciplined in the faculty office and had him hear Zhong Yu Tang say he wasn’t the type of person she’d be friends with.
Those words is further revealed to have been enough to initiate the rift between Ji Wen Kai and Zhong Yu Tang. After the time Ji Wen Kai got disciplined by the teacher and hearing Zhong Yu Tang say she wouldn’t be friends with a person like Ji Wen Kai, Ji Wen Kai skipped class to shoot hoops at the basketball courts. Zhong Yu Tang had found Ji Wen Kai there and questioned him about the fact of him promising to study well so they could go to the amusement park together. “Who values going to the amusement park with you?” he had said when Zhong Yu Tang asked why he was here proving to the teacher he was a delinquent before asking him if he had or hadn’t promised to study well so they could go to the amusement park together. He’d repeated those words once more as well—loudly and clearly when Zhong Yu Tang asked to hear it again, seemingly having not believed what she heard coming from his mouth had come out of his mouth. The anger Ji Wen Kai displayed that day had him tear up the amusement park ticket Zhong Yu Tang gave him and saw him leave Zhong Yu Tang calling out after him and wondering why he was suddenly acting the way he was acting.
In the present, Zhong Yu Tang clears up this misunderstanding Ji Wen Kai had of the words she said in the faculty office. She tells Ji Wen Kai that she had purposely said those words to the teacher disciplining him so the punishment for him fighting the schoolmate wouldn’t be as severe for him. She also tells him she had told the teacher he wasn’t a bad person and explained to the teacher he had defended her from the schoolmate who hassled her at the school dance. Ji Wen Kai is surprised by this. He takes his turn in clearing up past misunderstandings. He reveals to Zhong Yu Tang how the fight with the schoolmate and his posses started: he didn’t go to the schoolmate and his posses with the purpose of fighting them. The fight started because the schoolmate and his posses was again looking to hassle her. He was there and stopped them from hassling her. For this, Zhong Yu Tang thanks Ji Wen Kai with a slight apology in the thanks.
Zhong Yu Tang returns the conversation to why Ji Wen Kai disappeared. She asks Ji Wen Kai whether it was that he was angry that he disappeared from her. Ji Wen Kai doesn’t enlighten, however. “It’s in the past,” he says.
Ji Wen Kai’s answer has Zhong Yu Tang tell Ji Wen Kai his disappearance had been at the time her mother passed away. She remembers he had gone when she woke up and then disappeared from her from that point onwards. The talk of her mother has Ji Wen Kai seemingly wishing to try once more to tell Zhong Yu Tang of him being the reason her mother went out to buy eggs that day. “I’m sorry. Actually, I—” he begins.
Zhong Yu Tang interrupts Ji Wen Kai with telling him that she had tried her luck by going to the amusement park to see if she could meet up with him; but, she didn’t find him there. “How do you know I didn’t go?” Ji Wen Kai responds. He didn’t, Zhong Yu Tang says. She’d see him if he did come.
This conversation of the past leads to Zhong Yu Tang becoming worried and scared when Ji Wen Kai suddenly disappears from her after they go on a playful game of chase when Ji Wen Kai asked Zhong Yu Tang if she liked him back then and Zhong Yu Tang told Ji Wen Kai she wasn’t going to tell. The playful mood that existed for Zhong Tang became a scary one when she calls out to Ji Wen Kai and searches for him in the vicinity, but he is nowhere to be found.
“I’m over here,” Ji Wen Kai says, eventually appearing. He envelops Zhong Yu Tang in his arms from behind. Zhong Yu Tang turns around and faces Ji Wen Kai with an unimpressed expression. “That was not fun at all.” Ji Wen Kai seems to realise the terrible nature of his game. He brings his arms around Zhong Yu Tang in a comforting hug. Zhong Yu Tang tells Ji Wen Kai the reason for her sudden fear she displayed. “I thought you disappeared again. Don’t ever be like this and suddenly disappear again. I really can’t handle having the person I love disappear from my side again.”
Ji Wen Kai holds Zhong Yu Tang’s cheeks between his two hands and apologises. “Okay, I’m sorry. I promise you: no matter what, I will never leave you. Okay?” Zhong Yu Tang asks him if he means it. “I mean it,” he says before he brings Zhong Yu Tang’s chin up to him and gives her a long tender kiss. After the kiss, Ji Wen Kai promises Zhong Yu Tang to appear before her whenever she needs him to appear with a pinky swear.
Huang Jia Yin heads to Singapore for the beauty care expo with the hope of gaining the contract with those who can help them reach the $30 million target that’s needed to win the bet with Sales Team 1. Ji Wen Kai and her Sales Team 3 colleagues see her off at the airport. One other person is there at the airport: Huang Jia Yin’s ex-husband. He is said to be Ji Wen Kai’s good friend who Ji Wen Kai met whilst working. Johnny, as Ji Wen Kai calls him, accompanies Huang Jia Yin to Singapore to take care of Huang Jia Yin and help look after their baby whilst Huang Jia Yin worked.
The trip to Singapore to the beauty care expo is fruitful. A video call to Sales Team 3 has Huang Jia Yin deliver good news of two contracts totaling to $5 million being gathered for their new Mei Mei product, seeing Sales Team 3 surpassing the amount of $30 million easily and winning the bet Sales Team 1 set for them.
News of a strike taking place at the factory producing their new Mei Mei product occurs, however, bringing a huge problem for Sales Team 3 to find other factories to help them produce their product to fulfill the recently acquired contracts for $5 million worth of Mei Mei and supply future demands in the local market. However, they find that all the factories they contacted are uncharacteristically unable to accept requests for production with their production capacity at full.
Their only hope rides on Ah Hui and his factory. They head to Ah Hui’s factory and wait for his arrival. When he arrives to the factory, they plead him to help increase production of the new Mei Mei to meet demands for the product. Ah Hui doesn’t have the time for a talk, however. He’s busy. The gifts they come with to gift to him isn’t enough to make him give them his time, either.
But Ah Hui’s lack of time to talk to Sales Team 3 reveals to be due to his factory already carrying out the request they are requesting his help with. It’s the efforts of Ji Wen Kai that brings about this positive outcome. Ji Wen Kai, accompanied by Miao Ai Sha, steps out of the car Ah Hui had arrived in. Ji Wen Kai surprises everyone when he stands next to Ah Hui, showing a close brother-like friendship between them when he brings an arm around Ah Hui’s shoulders. Ji Wen Kai gives the honour to Ah Hui to give Sales Team 3 the good news: he and Ji Wen Kai are brothers, Ah Hui says. He will definitely help a brother. He has already taken action of gathering extra resources from the connections he has to help increase the production of the new Mei Mei to meet demand.
The crisis is therefore averted for Sales Team 3. However, Zhong Yu Tang is unhappy about Ji Wen Kai handling the crisis without her knowledge. In the evening, at Ji Wen Kai’s home during dinner, Zhong Yu Tang tells Ji Wen Kai she wishes for him to see her as a worker who he is able to discuss work matters with. She argues that had she been in the know about his plans, things would have gone smoother. It’s that he has to consider things from all angles, Ji Wen Kai explains. But Ji Wen Kai does listen to Zhong Yu Tang’s dissatisfaction with how he handled the matter with the worker strike problem. He promises Zhong Yu Tang he will seek her out when he feels she is able to assist him.
The strike of the factory workers and the uncharacteristic full production capacity of the other factories is revealed to be the doing of Wang Zi Yu and two of Tianxi Group employees—Manager Jia of Sales Team 1 and Wendy of the Secretarial department. Wang Zi Yu reveals Shinway has a plan to take over Tianxi.
Ji Wen Kai’s ability to counter the problem Wang Zi Yu created for Ji Wen Kai and Tianxi surprises Wang Zi Yu, but by no means worries him. He even welcomes the challenge of an opponent with skills in crisis management as great as his own: “The stronger the opponent, the higher the sense of accomplishment we’ll feel after winning them,” he says.
Wang Zi Yu’s relaxed manner towards this move that was countered by Ji Wen Kai is one of many moves Ji Wen Kai has to look forward to—moves that Wang Zi Yu utters Ji Wen Kai as not having the opportunity to block. Wang Zi Yu’s puppet, Manager Jia, reveals one of the plans: they have plans to snatch one of Tianxi’s export partners. The other one is to expose—what Wang Zi Yu believes to be—Ji Wen Kai’s shady activity of embezzlement with Wendy being the person helping Wang Zi Yu investigate the hundreds of millions of dollars Ji Wen Kai has apparently requested from the Finance department.
Unknown to Wang Zi Yu, Ji Wen Kai is aware of a situation occurring on Wang Zi Yu’s side. He is, and seems to have been, treading cautiously. As Ji Wen Kai holds a two-faced wooden toy man figure—one face coloured white and cheerful and the other coloured black and angry—we hear him express to Miao Ai Sha the problems that had existed within Tianxi before he was brought in to solve them. We hear him express Shinway as having been secretly seeking to use the problems within the company to further increase it. Doing so, he sees Shinway to have the possibility of monopolising 90 percent of the market if they succeed in such a risky move as creating internal problems within Tianxi—their collaboration partner. And so, Ji Wen Kai has been preparing very early on for such problems.
We find Ji Wen Kai changing the meeting time of the meeting that he apparently has with Wang Zi Yu to the next day during this talk with Miao Ai Sha in his office. It comes after a message comes into Ji Wen Kai’s phone. It had read: ‘My best friend. It’s been sorted out.’ Ji Wen Kai’s return message to this unknown person had been him looking forward to seeing him.
This person who had considered Ji Wen Kai his best friend seems to be a potential Russian partner going by the name of Mr. Tapko that Wang Zi Yu is seemingly looking to steal from Tianxi and become business partners with. In the following scene, Manager Jia and Wendy comes into Wang Zi Yu’s office, frantic over the news they got from Mr. Tapko’s secretary of Mr. Tapko cancelling his plans to come to Shinway. They inform Wang Zi Yu that a call with Mr. Tapko, himself, has Mr. Tapko tell them he wishes to only do business with Ji Wen Kai of Tianxi.
Wang Zi Yu then receives a call from Miao Ai Sha. She informs him of his meeting with Ji Wen Kai to be changed to tomorrow evening at 9:30 pm. He accommodates the change of the time for their meeting with neutral agreement. However, after the call, he slumps in his chair, appearing beaten.
Thoughts
The start of the episode was not really interesting. There was only two new scenes and those two new scenes didn’t give us any useful or interesting information about anything; the fact of Ji Wen Kai and Zhong Yu Tang having made a promise to go to the amusement park together, but didn’t end up going because of the whole situation in the faculty office that made Ji Wen Kai angry—it was really redundant. That opening sequence of scenes felt like it was simply a long way around of resolving the misunderstandings that caused the rift between Zhong Yu Tang and Ji Wen Kai that lasted for ten years.
We’d thought we’d find out why Ji Wen Kai disappeared, but these scenes didn’t do anything to tell us why. The cliffhanger made it seem so important, too. And yet, we get a response of “It’s in the past”. Not that it’s important that we’re told why Ji Wen Kai disappeared—because why he disappeared doesn’t do anything to increase our understanding of the events and situations in the story—but it’s disappointing that another thing is gotten out of the way so simply. They are leaving it to our imagination, it seems.
We did like the part where Zhong Yu Tang becomes scared when Ji Wen Kai disappeared from her. The way it led up to it wasn’t to our liking, but it was a nice scene. It showed how much Ji Wen Kai meant to Zhong Yu Tang. It also got us to understand how Ji Wen Kai’s disappearance from her life 10 years ago had affected her a lot. It was a very sweet scene that worked well enough.
The other scene with the two of them was not bad, either. It was the scene where Zhong Yu Tang makes omurice for Ji Wen Kai at Zhong Yu Tang’s family eatery. It was cute when Zhong Yu Tang gave herself a score of 100 points for the omurice dish that Ji Wen Kai purposely gave only 99 points for so she’d keep improving. Cute. We thought this scene had the purpose of concluding the past as well. Zhong Yu Tang’s mother was supposed to make special omurice for Ji Wen Kai back then, but never got to because of the unfortunate event. So, we saw it as making what didn’t happen, happen, where Zhong Yu Tang is doing it in her mother’s place. It was like Ji Wen Kai was receiving the omurice that Zhong Yu Tang’s mother promised to make for him that weekend that she wanted him to come over so he could make up with Zhong Yu Tang. That’s how we saw that scene. And so, we thought it was quite a nice scene in that way as well.
We’re glad there is a development that’s rather eventful. Wang Zi Yu becoming the antagonist with a plan to take over Tianxi is interesting. We wish the series could have built this part of the story instead of bringing it out this late in the series, though. We would have appreciated some obvious hints throughout. It probably would have changed the light atmosphere that the series has so far had. But, weaving in this part of the story would have made the series feel like there was some substance in a story that has been feeling to be full of disconnected and trivial developments.
This latest development of Wang Zi Yu doing a 180 and becoming this antagonistic character we’re seeing now—he comes off a little psychotic. The scene where he was with Zhong Yu Tang in his car after their trip shopping for the gift for one of the directors who’s said to be retiring, he congratulates Zhong Yu Tang and her team for winning the bet with Sales Team 1. Now knowing that he is secretly attempting to ruin the hard work Zhong Yu Tang and Sales Team 3 put into getting where they are now so that he can most likely bring it back up and gain gratitude for it after taking over Tianxi, he’s really icky! He asks Zhong Yu Tang to have dinner with him in this scene, too! No way!
We’re glad Ji Wen Kai knows of Wang Zi Yu’s plans. We hope Wang Zi Yu continues to try and believe he is on top of everything. That way, we can see Wang Zi Yu constantly have that depressed and beaten expression that he showed at the end of the episode. Hehe. He’s so sly.
We’re really curious why there was the scene of Miao Ai Sha with Wang Zi Yu. We can’t figure out why there’s a scene showing Miao Ai Sha inviting Wang Zi Yu to join her for a meal. It makes us wonder if this scene was for the purpose of simply showing us the true nature of Wang Zi Yu or whether it’s to build something that once more we’re not clued in on and just spring it on us like they did with Wang Zi Yu and his deceptive side.
This episode was a little better—helped by the development of Wang Zi Yu being deceptive in nature.
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