Something in the Rain
よくおごってくれる綺麗なお姉さん
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A thirty-five-year-old woman and her best friend's younger brother; the office harassment subplot is as sharp as the romance.
Yoon Jin-ah is thirty-five and supervises stores for a coffee franchise in Seoul. Her boyfriend, Lee Gyu-min, has cheated on her, her mother wants her married into a good family, and at team dinners she is expected to put up with the drinking and touching of her male bosses. Seo Jun-hee, the younger brother of her best friend, Seo Gyeong-seon, comes home after three years in the United States to design characters for a games company whose office is in her building. They start eating together, and when Gyu-min makes a scene outside her office, Jun-hee steps in and plays her new boyfriend. The pretence turns into love, and they begin seeing each other in secret.
The secret is hard to keep. Gyu-min will not let go; one night, saying he wants them to die together, he nearly kills them both, and Jin-ah is hurt. When the affair comes out, Gyeong-seon is hurt that her friend hid it, and Jin-ah's mother, Kim Mi-yeon, is appalled: Jun-hee is younger, and he and his sister grew up with no parents to rely on. She follows her daughter to his flat and pushes her into meeting a suitor.
At work, a woman in senior management, Jung Young-in, gathers evidence of sexual harassment by the managers and asks Jin-ah to testify, and Jin-ah writes a statement. It costs her: colleagues turn cold and she is demoted. She moves out of her parents' home without telling Jun-hee, who has quietly applied for a posting in America. He asks her to come with him. She says no, and he leaves alone.
Years later they meet at the wedding of her brother, Seung-ho, Jun-hee's best friend. She has a boyfriend her parents approve of, and both act like strangers. Jin-ah resigns after ten years at the company, tells her parents she has left the boyfriend and does not want to marry, and moves to Jeju to work in her old colleague Bo-ra's coffee shop. Jun-hee, about to fly back to America, finds a voice message she once recorded for him, saying that when she loves she will love the way he taught her. He flies to Jeju and appears in the rain. He tells her he cannot live without her and asks her to forgive him, just once. They kiss in the rain.
Starring
Son Ye-jinas Yoon Jin-ah
A thirty-five-year-old supervisor at a coffee franchise, harassed at work and pressed to marry well, who falls for her best friend's younger brother.
Yoon Jin-ah’s story
Jin-ah is a store supervisor who puts up with her bosses' drinking and touching at team dinners, and whose mother wants her back with Gyu-min, who cheated on her. Jun-hee, her best friend's younger brother, plays her new boyfriend to see Gyu-min off, and the act becomes love. She hides it until she cannot: Gyu-min, saying he wants them to die together, nearly kills them both; Gyeong-seon is hurt that she lied; her mother follows her to Jun-hee's flat. At work she signs a harassment complaint and is frozen out and demoted. Without telling Jun-hee she takes a flat alone, and turns down his plan to go to America. Years later, after seeing him at her brother's wedding, she resigns, leaves the boyfriend her parents liked, and moves to Jeju, where Jun-hee finds her in the rain and they kiss.
Jung Hae-inas Seo Jun-hee
Gyeong-seon's younger brother, a games-company designer back from America, who loves Jin-ah openly and without caution.
Seo Jun-hee’s story
Jun-hee comes home from three years in America to design game characters in Jin-ah's building, and falls for his sister's best friend. He steps in as her boyfriend when Gyu-min makes a scene, and soon means it. Her mother cannot accept a younger man who grew up without parents to rely on, and Gyeong-seon is wounded by the secret. To take them both away from it, he quietly applies for a posting in America and asks Jin-ah to come; she has taken a flat alone without telling him, and says no. He leaves alone. Years later he walks past her at Seung-ho's wedding. About to fly back, he hears an old voice message in which she promised to love as generously as he did, flies to Jeju, and in the rain asks her to forgive him, just once. They kiss.
Jang So-yeonas Seo Gyeong-seon
Jin-ah's best friend and Jun-hee's older sister, who grew up relying on him alone and is hurt by their secret.
Gil Hae-yeonas Kim Mi-yeon
Jin-ah's mother, set on marrying her to a man from a good family and bitterly opposed to Jun-hee.
Wi Ha-joonas Yoon Seung-ho
Jin-ah's younger brother and Jun-hee's best friend, caught between the couple and his family.
Oh Ryungas Lee Gyu-min
Jin-ah's unfaithful ex-boyfriend, whom her mother still favours, and who will not let her go.
Why it matters
Something in the Rain is remembered as a romance, but some of its hardest scenes are at the office. Jin-ah's managers touch and humiliate the women who work for them at team dinners, and the cost of complaining falls on the women who complain: Jin-ah is frozen out and demoted for putting her name to it. At home the pressure has the same shape, a mother who treats her daughter's marriage as the family's business and a younger man without parents as a disgrace. The series takes a relationship its own characters call scandalous, an older woman with a younger man, and treats it with tenderness, then shows how much a woman in her thirties can lose by choosing for herself. Good Data Corporation ranked it the most talked-about Korean drama of 2018. Its happy ending comes slowly, to two people who each gave up too easily, meeting again in the rain.