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Reasons To Enjoy My Youth
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Sunwoo Hae was a popular child actor who shone in his youth. Due to the greed of the adults around him, he lost his shining light. He barely made it through the turmoil and now lives peacefully as a novelist and florist. Suddenly, Seong Je Yeon appears in front of him. Sunwoo Hae and Seong Je Yeon were each other's first love, and they helped each other get through the darkest times of their lives.
They reunite after 10 years. The appearance of Je Yeon also reminds him of his past. On the other hand, Je Yeon is driven than ever before by the harsh reality and only looks for success in her life. To achieve her goal, she finds Sunwoo Hae, who was her first love, and breaks his peace. (Source: Asianwiki)
Sunwoo Hae has his gaze fixed on Sung Je Yeon with the text between them reading, “Did you also miss me?”
Sunwoo Hae is a former child star who burned through his prime too quickly, spending his 20s just trying to make ends meet. After Sunwoo Hae reunites with his first love, he experiences changes in his life, while Jung Se Yeon reawakens forgotten emotions as she meets her first love again.
The second poster presents Mo Tae Rin (Lee Ju Myoung) and Kim Seok Joo (Seo Ji Hun) exchanging affectionate gazes. The main quote, “I must have waited to fall in love,” raises anticipation for their relationship. Mo Tae Rin is an actress who started out as a child star and fell in love with Kim Seok Joo’s voice, thus having an on-going crush on him.
This time, he agrees to attend a private one-on-one meeting with his high school-aged fan, but he’s unaware that she is actually the daughter of a PD Je-yeon is trying to impress at work. Hae, who showed up to the fan meeting with a small bouquet of flowers with Je-yeon, obviously hoped they were reconnecting on personal terms, but when he learns the whole truth, he assumes Je-yeon is trying to trick him into meeting the PD as Sunwoo Hae, the former child actor. Both times Je-yeon has reached out to him, her motivations have been partially professionally motivated, which makes Hae feel used. He nearly walks away from the meeting, but Je-yeon stops him. Yes, she had ulterior motives, but she wasn’t lying about his teenage fan or the fact that she asked him to do a favor as a writer.
For certain, when the PD showed up with his daughter, it quickly becomes apparent that Je-yeon wasn’t lying. Hae needn’t worry about the PD because his daughter, an aspiring writer, dominated the conversation at the table and shut her father down every time he interjected into the conversation. The whole exchange was quite amusing due to the father-daughter antics, but the conversation about Hae’s writing career also allowed Hae and Je-yeon to organically discuss their time as classmates, revealing small tid-bits of information, like Hae’s poor financial status and the fact that his “vibe” made him a loner in high school.
Hae and Je-yeon did well to act like close acquaintances in front of the PD and his daughter, but as soon as they’re out of sight, Hae compliments Je-yeon on her ability to pretend she’s happy to see him. His comment comes off as a sudden disappointment, and while it’s understandable, he seems to hold on higher expectations than he tought towards Je-yeon. For someone who obviously wants to forget his past and shed his child-actor persona, he’s stubornly hung up on his former view of Je-yeon, and as well their past connection. Time stopped for neither of them, and it’s rather unfair to Je-yeon for him to be upset that his expectations do not align with reality.
(Source: owlshellaxy on Tumblr)
Thankfully, Hae comes to his senses and realizes if he wants to be friends (or more than friends) with her going forward, he’s also capable of bridging that gap and initiating contact. So he waits for her in the lobby of her company, and after she rips his shirt trying to move him to a spot where they won’t be seen by her boss and coworkers, he tells her it was nice to see her and indicates that he wants to see more of her. It takes Je-yeon a moment to recover from the awkwardness of receiving his unexpected hug, but when she does, she tells him to buy her dinner.
Returning back to the past, during teen days Pil-do, Je-yeon’s boss in the present-day, approached Hae at one of his part-time jobs, and while she convinced him to return to school, he refused to accept any additional support from her. And that is how Hae transferred to Je-yeon’s school her senior year, and she was instantly interested in him due to his past as a child star — though she denied it. When the teacher tasked her with delivering a career aspirations form to his home address, she eagerly waited for him so long that her stomach grumbled when he finally came home. They slowly became friends while discussing the soon-to-be-published book Hae wrote for his sister and their career aspiration forms. Despite his success as a young writer, Hae didn’t put “writer” on his form. Instead, he filled in “George Clooney” (a reference Je-yeong didn’t understand), but afterwards he claimed that what he really wanted was to be rich).
Although Je-yeon was H ae’s antithesis on paper, they made adorable friends. She didn’t let her interest in his child actor days cloud her perception of him, and her trusting and nonjudgemental personality allowed Hae to relax in her presence. Unfortunately, even with Je-yeon’s suggestion that Hae sleep off his part-time job exhaustion in the school nurse’s office in order to maintain his attendance record,
Hae was still struggling to balance all his duties. At one point he was suspended from school when someone reported seeing him outside the love motel where he worked, and then poor little Nu-ri decided to run away at a theme park because she mistakenly thought his life would be better off without her in it. Thankfully, she was found, and Hae was able to explain to her how important she was to him.
(Source and more information on these quotes: Soompi)
At the end of their senior year, she gave him a pen (to sign her book) and the two wish bracelets he continued to wear into adulthood. With one bracelet, Hae wished to be rich, but the wish he attached to the second bracelet — the one we see break off in the future after he’s reunited with Je-yeon — remains a mystery. Together, they took a spontaneous trip to see the ocean, where Je-yeon worked up the courage to confess to Hae. Even though it was clear Hae returned Je-yeon’s feelings — and Je-yeon was quick to point out all the obvious signs of his affection — Hae rejected her. He had too much pressure in his own life, while he could momentarily forget his responsibilities and worries when he was with her, he couldn’t let himself be distracted or make her a priority — not when he had a four-year-old sister to raise.
Je-yeon didn’t take the rejection well, and to compound the pain, her family went bankrupt. Her future success became dependent upon her acceptance to a top tier college and scholarship money. The pressure was bad enough, but she was not able to focus because of her heartbreak. As he walked away from her, she called out to him, “Don’t act like you know me ever again! Forever!”
(Source: owlshellaxy on Tumblr)
Back in the present, Hae pours Je-yeon a drink and asks about the TV program she initially approached him about. He expresses his surprise that she actually become an entertainment manager. She counters by saying she’s equally surprised he owns a flower shop. Despite her initial sarcasm, she willingly answers Hae’s follow-up questions as he probes into her past, but she got drunk a little too much, and Hae has to give her a piggy back ride to the nearest taxi stand. Je-yeon’s emotions get the best of her and she confesses that she once missed him and was curious about where he’d disappeared to and who he’d become. Likewise, Hae admits he’d wondered if she’d gone to college and was working in one of the fields she’d listed back in high-school. Then, after a beat of silence, Hae turns to her and suggests being in the show because, as she’d said, being on television would help the shop and make him a lot of money — and fulfill his career aspirations.
Although Hae claims he just wants to make money, I can’t shake the detail that “George Clooney” was still written on his career form when he turned it in, despite him saying he was going to write in “rich, billionaire, chaebol.” Whatever happened to him as a child actor didn’t completely ruin his interest in the profession and is a partial motivator for his change of heart. Like Je-yeon who used the show as her motivation to finally reach out to him, it feels like Hae is using his interest in Je-yeon to spur him into doing something he already secretly wants to do.
Sunwoo Hae (Song Joong Ki) finally steps out of the shadows, ending his self-imposed exile from the cameras and lights. For years, he had chosen anonymity after his painful exit from the spotlight as a child star. His decision to return is both surprising and unsettling, and it immediately puts him under the relentless glare of tabloids hungry to rake up his dark past.
At the heart of this turn lies Sung Je Yeon (Chun Woo Hee), Hae’s long-lost first love and now an ambitious talent manager. For her, persuading Sunwoo Hae to appear in a documentary is nothing short of a professional asset. This triumph feels awkward because it looks like a career win, that forces him to relive the traumas he tried so hard to bury. But the moment the lens turns on him, he freezes, as if dragged back into the very life he had tried so hard to escape.
“I was performing even when the cameras stopped rolling,” he recalls. That one sentence lays bare the truth of his childhood: a boy forced to grow up too soon, burdened with responsibilities no child should bear. As the family’s sole provider, his mother pushed him into ill-fitting suits to preserve his image, only to later gamble away his earnings in a failed scheme. Even at her funeral, the media swarmed him for the perfect shot, reducing his grief to a spectacle.
As loan sharks came calling, reel life and real life became indistinguishable. Stardom had promised a halo, but in reality, it was a lonely, punishing road. What shaped Sunwoo Hae, however, was not bitterness but stoicism, an awareness of the world far beyond his years. His story mirrors that of countless child stars whose childhoods are devoured by the spotlight.
He is branded as a wayward and irresponsible youth. Sunwoo Hae does not feels the need to correct her as he has learned the hard way that adults will do and think as they do. Now back in front of the cameras and facing memories long buried, Sunwoo Hae realizes it is time to bring back the lost inner child who only gave and was never allowed to bloom. Delivering happiness is how Sunwoo Hae spends his time. He tends withered flowers, coaxing them into bloom, a quiet reminder that even what is damaged can still flourish. He let go of chasing the road paved for fame, and remained with small, ordinary things, autonomy, and a life lived only by the freedom of his own choices.
So when he agrees to face the camera again, it surprises everyone. He calls it “just another way to make money,” fully aware that tabloids will seize on his past scandals. Yet he remains unmoved, refusing to correct the record or explain himself. He recalls how, at 19 and already world-weary, the only time he had truly felt alive was when she was around. He had rejected her confession then, believing her dreams and ambitions to be far bigger than anything he could offer.
Now she returns, first pretending not to know him, later bluntly asking him to star in a documentary. For Sunwoo Hae, the chance to spend time with her is worth the risk even if it means putting everything at stake. Though she insists it is business, he sees her quiet guilt whenever his troubles mount because of her.
There are telling moments: the bracelets she gave him still tied around his wrist, his sudden request for a hug, and the way his guard slips in her presence. These aren’t grand gestures but signs of a man who no longer wants to punish himself for the past. Even with debts and fading stardom, he wonders if he can risk his heart again—because what more does he have left to lose?
What follows is a rekindling that feels natural: their sparring, teasing, and easy comfort with each other. And when he finally leans into kiss her, it doesn’t come across as forced drama—it feels inevitable, the culmination of a love that never got a chance to bloom.
Yet one question remains: can Je Yeon shoulder the emotional burden of his past without endangering the one thing she holds most dear, her hard-won success? The answer to this is yet to be discovered.
My Youth (2025) | Dir. Lee Sang-Yeob
Just one little pebble fell out,
but everything came pouring out.
In his name, too much rain fell.
Perhaps he was born under a cold star.
He hoped all my days would be sunny.
The smiling face that said his life had been nothing but rain…
is something I can’t quite recall.
The reason I borrowed his name to create a garden,
was to tell him, that rain only falls to bring clear skies.
That was the message I wanted to send.
That’s when I realized..
that I had forgotten I’d forgotten all about him.
If.. you were to exist in another world,
I hope you’ll understand my deepest wish.
That where you are is forever clear and bright.
but everything came pouring out.
In his name, too much rain fell.
Perhaps he was born under a cold star.
He hoped all my days would be sunny.
The smiling face that said his life had been nothing but rain…
is something I can’t quite recall.
The reason I borrowed his name to create a garden,
was to tell him, that rain only falls to bring clear skies.
That was the message I wanted to send.
That’s when I realized..
that I had forgotten I’d forgotten all about him.
If.. you were to exist in another world,
I hope you’ll understand my deepest wish.
That where you are is forever clear and bright.
That was my small hope and faith.
—Jin Mu Yeong.
(Source: owlshellaxy on Tumblr)
(Source for audio and music videos: The entire album with instrumental melodies from Spotify is included in the photo from left side. Enjoy them!
Goodbye my dear readers,
until next time, be well!
Sources: MyDramaList, Spotify, Asianwiki, DramaBeans, Soompi, here, here, Namuwiki, Tumblr and themoviedb.org.
