Bang Su-A has remained Hae-e’s biggest nemesis at the school, with all her resentment being one-sided. As Crash Course in Romance progresses, Su-A’s resentment against Hae-e has only gotten worse.
Hae-e’s academic excellence hinges on a subject she dreads most — mathematics. However, when her mother gets the star maths teacher to give her tuition, she sorts the maths issue out and starts performing really well in the exams.
While the most cheerful news for her family and friends, her improving academic performance is nothing but a sore point with Su-A. She resents that Hae-e is getting so better at her studies and succeeding in exams. And now that she contends with a rapidly worsening mental condition, her resentment has devolved into mania.
An envious enemy
Bang Su-A is Jo Su-Hui’s daughter and a classmate of Hae-e and her friends at Woorim High School. She is perpetually miffed by Hae-e’s academic performance, which has only been improving ever since she fixed her fledgling performance in mathematics, thanks to Choi Chi-Yeol’s tuition.
Bang Su-A goes a notch or two beyond the standard competitiveness and fumes with anger at Hae-e, a thing that has remained the same ever since the first episode of Crash Course in Romance.
This anger builds up over time and unleashes in abrupt outbursts, hurting Hae-e at multiple points throughout the show. While unintentional at first, Su-A’s aggression becomes fully intentional and pointed at Hae-e by the end of the show.
Resentment borne out of privilege
One of the major reasons for Bang Su-A’s constantly increasing aggression towards Hae-e stems from her upbringing, which is rife with the classist attitudes her privileged household and parents have instilled in her.
Throughout the episodes, it’s made tacitly clear that she has a lot of resentment for a person less privileged than her performing way better than her and succeeding her. She can’t digest the fact that Hae-e, a person who was unfairly kicked out of the special tuition program due to her underprivileged conditions, still managed to score higher marks than her.
In one of the episodes, Bang Su-A throws an unhinged fit in front of her mother, freaking out over Hae-e doing better on the tests. Meanwhile, her power-drunk wealthy mom constantly enables her daughter and entertains all her fits and freak-outs.
Victim of academic expectations
Bang Su-A has one more reason that explains her outbursts of late. Midway through the show, Su-A faints and collapses, following which she’s hospitalized. Su-Hui thinks it’s because of all the cold drinks that she consumes at an alarming rate.
However, the cause behind it turns out to be something else entirely. Soon, Su-A finds herself imagining things. Whenever she looks at herself in the mirror, her face appears all distorted and squiggly.
The alphabets and numbers on the test sheets start getting all jumbled up right before her eyes, moving from their places and floating in the air. Su-A doesn’t understand what is causing this to happen as she feels her head aching a lot.
This devolves into full-blown hallucinations as her aggression towards Hae-e reaches a boiling point. Meanwhile, her mother continues to be clueless about her daughter’s condition and keeps harping on about her studies and the exams, which have all been making Bang Su-A’s condition worse.
She begins bursting into anger at home as well, and when she breaks crockery while unleashing it in front of her mother, Su-Hui finally takes proper note of her daughter and contacts a doctor. In episode 14, the doctor tells Su-Hui that her anger issues are a common thing many students struggling with their exams have to contend with.
She also tells Su-Hui that symptoms can even become worse to the point that the student may end up hearing and seeing things.
These issues, borne out of the stress to perform better at studies, coupled with Hae-e’s continued excellence, have adversely affected Bang Su-A, who has finally recognized the banes of all that these academic expectations bring with themselves.
Also Read: Lee Sun-Jae: Crash Course in Romance character explained
