Choi Chi-Yeol and Nam Haeng-Seon form the central and most adorable couple in the Korean romcom, Crash Course in Romance, and amidst their cutest and clichéd shenanigans, there exists a past connection between them, binding them in an almost destined relationship.
Choi Chi-Yeol is a star maths teacher whose celebrity exceeds even the A-list actors and other such famous personalities. Calling himself the “Trillion Won Man”, Chi-Yeol is a perpetually busy man, drowning himself in work while he withers away due to all the stress that it offers and the physical toll that it takes on him.
Haeng-Seon owns a Banchan shop and works tirelessly to provide for her neurodivergent brother and her niece, although they both share a mother-daughter relationship ever since Hae-e’s mother abandoned her with Haeng-Seon.
Although it’s not a miracle that the two leads of Crash Course in Romance came across each other; the unrelenting mothers of high schoolers die for a chance to meet the academy teachers and faculty. No, what’s unique about their introduction to each other is that it came about due to a different reason — Haeng-Seon’s food.
The meet-cute
Choi Chi-Yeol has damaged his digestive abilities as well as other physical aspects with his extremely workaholic philosophy of life. That, and the traumatic memories of the past occasionally flare Chi-Yeol’s conditions to the worst point, making him vomit out any food item he intends to put inside his gut.
That all changes one day, when he eats food brought to him from a new spot. Eating the food immediately hits Chi-Yeol with a wave of nostalgia and he finds himself eating it all in one go, not gagging even once as he chomped it all down.
He soon finds out the shop it came from and starts buying the food personally from there, visiting the shop in disguise every time he does so. It’s because the shop owner, Nam Haeng-Seon, is a lady he’s already had a run-in with, wherein a misunderstanding put both at odds with each other.
After the revelation, the two have a tiff until Haeng-Seon learns that he’s the same star teacher whose classes she’s been aching to get her daughter enrolled in. Soon, their relationship becomes much sweeter but with a somewhat dull taste of fake pretenses.
However, the opposites attract and the two see sparks flying between each other pretty soon. Not admitting the fact, even when others point it out, the two go through several ups and downs of a will-they-won’t-they dynamic.
The conflict
Hae-e ultimately ends up helping the two love birds out with their feelings and provides them a chance to be open about them. Chi-Yeol had bought into the rumor, as had everyone up until then, that Haeng-Seon was married and her husband lived overseas.
Meanwhile, the rumors of their affair put the star teacher’s career through an adverse public reaction and also affected Haeng-Seon’s sales. Even after loving each other, they have to let the feelings gnaw at their conscience as they sacrifice for their loved ones and for each other.
However, when Hae-e can’t stand Haeng-Seon’s aching heart anymore, she makes the true nature of her relationship with her aunt public, as well as dispelling the rumor about her love life. Haeng-Seon and Chi-Yeol finally meet each other and unite before officially beginning their dating chapter.
The destined-to-be
Choi Chi-Yeol always wondered why he found Haeng-Seon’s food good enough to digest when he couldn’t do that with food from any other joint. The truth behind this eludes him for a long until one day, Haeng-Seon takes him to a restaurant in another town, one that was owned by her late mother.
That’s when the memories come flooding down the star teacher’s head, as he connects the dots and understands the reason behind his affinity for Haeng-Seon’s food. As it turns out, he used to be a regular at Haeng-Seon’s mother’s restaurant at one point in his life.
It was when the present-day “Trillion Won Man” was just a struggling student, barely making ends meet and able to properly feed himself as he toiled away with his work towards becoming a teacher. Haeng-Seon’s mother noticed this fledgling little young man with a sincere and honest attitude.
She would later go on to start feeding Chi-Yeol more and more food, charging little to no cost for it. That really helped him out and in the present day, the star teacher confesses to his assistant and later reveals to Haeng-Seon that her mother came as his savior during one of his toughest times in life.
It was at the same time when Hae-e would be dropped at the restaurant’s door, and Chi-Yeol’s savior would die in an accident, leaving Haeng-Seon in charge of the restaurant as well as her niece.
When it all dawns on Chi-Yeol, he realizes that expresses that Haeng-Seon has become his savior just as her mother once did back in the day.
Also Read: Chi-Yeol’s dark past in Crash Course in Romance explained
