Li Yu Bing uses his newfound status as Tang Xue’s boss to his full advantage, trying to make up for years of childhood bullying by Tang Xue. But Tang Xue never backs down from a challenge.
Recap
Tang Xue finds her new boss familiar… and then she places his face: Li Yu Bing, her deskmate from elementary school! Yu Bing pretends it takes him a moment to remember who she is.
He’s subtly petty, refusing to sit on the same bench as her and making a jibe about how she spent all his money as a kid. He shows off that he skipped a grade in high school and is majoring in a difficult science, while reminding her that she’s studying, what, veterinary medicine?
But Tang Xue tries to act chummy. In her memory, they had a great relationship. She admits that she’s relieved to find that he’s her boss. She was afraid he’d be some psycho. In fact, it’s quite fitting that she was his boss in elementary school and he is her boss now. It’s like getting a return on her investment. She suggests that maybe he hired her as a show of gratitude?
Yu Bing finds her even more brazen than she was as a child, but grits his teeth and smiles, saying that yes, he hired her as a way of returning a favor. He reminds her to report for work tomorrow. She smiles and gives him a friendly slap on the shoulder, saying he should just tell her what to do.
He smiles and says she’ll do whatever he tells her to do. Just like you did when we were little, he thinks.
Yu Bing’s memories of her not fond. He remembers how she once bullied him into purposely answering questions wrong on a test just so that she could get the top score in the class and get a trip to Disneyland from her grandfather.
At night in her dorm room, Tang Xue reassures Huan Huan that she got her a spot in the hockey club. She muses that Li Yu Bing seems to have changed a lot since he was a child. Liu Ying quotes Heroclitus: “the only constant in life is change.” Tang Xue and Huan Huan don’t quite understand and move on. Tang Xue laments that Yu Bing used to be so obedient as a child. Now? It’s completely different.
Huan Huan says that Yu Bing has a reputation for being cold and not letting any girls near. Was he the same as a child? Tang Xue thinks back to how she would dress Yu Bing up like he was an actress in a period drama. He refused to smile so she kissed him on the nose.
It’s a fun memory for Tang Xue, but for Yu Bing, it’s a nightmare. He wakes up from his bad dream and looks at Tang Xue’s lost ID card. He vows that from now on, he will be her nightmare.
The next day, the hockey team and figure skating team butt heads over ice time, a usual occurrence. The figure skating team grudgingly gets off the ice for Yu Bing, the “ice god,” but say that soon they’ll have their own god joining the team. They’ll see who gets the ice time then.
Tang Xue shows up for her first day as Yu Bing’s assistant. She has her skates with her, hopeful that she’ll be able to use the promised free ice time, but Yu Bing just smirks. He quickly volunteers her to wipe down the whole team’s helmets and hockey sticks. When she protests, he reminds her that she was the one who taught him that his things were her things. He’s only learned to pass that generosity on. Then he puts her to work doing menial tasks like fetching him lunch (he’s very particular about what he eats) and miscellaneous errands around the rink. He has her class schedule and makes sure to fill up every empty block she has with something to do.
Everything that Yu Bing puts Tang Xu through is an exact retaliation of something she had him do as a child. He makes her move heavy boxes, payback for when she would make him carry her heavy backpack. When she falls asleep during his hockey practice, he leaves her there until the lights turn off, then wakes her up after drawing makeup on her face in a crude imitation of how she dressed him up as a child.
Tang Xue didn’t get to eat all day, so Liu Ying makes her instant noodles in the bathroom on the toilet, the one place where the dorm monitors are unlikely to cut electricity. (Portable electrical stoves are normally forbidden.)
The next day, Tang Xue greets Yu Bing with a headbutt and tries to get him to fire her. He says she can quit now, but then she’ll have to pay a 100,000 yuan (almost $14,000 USD) fee for breaking the contract. She doesn’t remember reading such a clause in the contract. She calls him a dog and asks why he’s treating her like this. He winks and says she should know what she did.
Thanks to Yu Bing, Tang Xue is late to her lecture with Professor Hawkeye. He glares at her as she enters late, then glares again when she slams her books onto her desk, still angry about Yu Bing.
Later at night in the dining hall, Tang Xue teasingly shoves Zhen Yu from behind while he’s drinking something, except it’s not Zhen Yu. It’s actually a student she doesn’t know, Yu Yan (Zhou Li Jie). She immediately apologizes and smothers him with a napkin in an attempt to wipe his face.
Embarrassed, she scurries over to where the actual Zhen Yu and Huan Huan are sitting. She realizes she doesn’t have her student ID, then asks Zhen Yu to buy two soy milks for her, one to give to Yu Yan as an apology. She smiles at Yu Yan when Zhen Yu gives him the apology gift. Yu Yan nods shyly. Huan Huan giggles that he looks like a little lamb.
Tang Xue rants to her friends about Yu Bing and his ridiculous contract penalty fee. She thinks the fame and attention have gone to his head. Zhen Yu gets angry on her behalf and says that he’ll go fight Yu Bing for her. But it’s all just talk. When she tells him he should go fight, he awkwardly says he should probably eat first. He makes an offhand remark that if they could rip up the contract, that would be great. But that gives Tang Xue an idea.
The next day, while the XDragons hockey team is busy with a game, Tang Xue sneaks into Manager Ma’s office. Zhen Yu and Huan Huan are supposed to keep lookout for her, but they get tempted away by sounds of the game and the possibility of seeing Yu Bing in action. So there’s no one to warn Tang Xue when Manager Ma strolls into the office, on his phone.
Tang Xue tries to hide — in plain sight. Somehow, Manager Ma doesn’t notice her as she dodges her away around him. She finally manages to escape his office, but nearly runs into the hockey team. She hides in the nearest room, which happens to be their locker room, and crawls into a locker, which happens to be Yu Bing’s.
Yu Bing doesn’t out her, but when he spots her holding her contract, they struggle over it. She stuffs it down the front of her shirt, hoping that it’ll deter him, but it doesn’t.
Tang Xue has already crawled into bed at night when she gets a text from Yu Bing, telling her to come to the library and keep him company while he studies. She greets him angrily and loudly, earning glares from other library patrons who shush her. But the study session ends up being Yu Bing helping Tang Xue with her work. He leans in close to help her. A student in the stacks snaps photos of them with her phone.
Yu Bing comments on Tang Xue’s shampoo, saying it smells familiar. Then he challenges her with an easy geometry problem. She solves it: the answer is 2190.
Yu Bing apologizes for being harsh on her earlier and says that he hopes they can put the past behind them and work well together moving forward. In room 208 in a building that’s 2190 meters away, there’s a gift for her as a sign of his goodwill. She asks why he doesn’t give it to her directly. He responds that it’s been six years since they last saw each other in grade school. That’s 2190 days. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe it means something.
Tang Xue asks if Yu Bing likes her, looking awkward. He looks at her for a moment, then smiles and looks away. He tells her to go find her gift. Once she finds it, she can go back to her dorm.
Tang Xue finds room 208, which is a science lab, and eventually finds a nice box with a bow on it. She opens it eagerly — and finds her sports bra inside. She had dropped it that day when she accidentally went into the men’s shower room. Yu Bing had just trolled her. Hard.
Furious, she goes back to the library to confront him, slamming him back against the table with a hand on his chest. He smirks and asks what she ate that day, since it was quite fragrant. She warns him not to tell anyone about the her being in the shower room, or else… “Or else what?” he asks.
A student at the next table takes more photos of them on her phone.
A Childhood Story: Tang Xue recites an essay she wrote to her teacher. It’s all about how much she loathes Li Yu Bing. He was ranked number one in the class, making her lose the trip to Disneyland that her grandfather promised her. Her teacher lectures her on her essay content, saying she should focus on improving herself instead of trying to drag her classmates down. She uses Yu Bing’s essay as an example of what she should be saying. His essay was all about how much he liked Tang Xue as a deskmate. She praises Tang Xue for not making any spelling mistakes in her essay, but then Tang Xue reveals that she made Yu Bing edit her essay for her. That earns Tang Xue a call to her parents.
The humor is a bit on the nose in this show. My boyfriend made a comment about how it was “annoying” that there were so many “random sounds” coming out of my laptop while I was watching this episode!
Usually, this type of comedy is not really my thing. But I do find it kind of funny how in Yu Bing’s version of his and Tang Xue’s childhood memories, he and Tang Xue are just their college-aged selves dressed up in grade school uniforms with bad haircuts and surrounded by actual children.
Also let’s be real, Yu Bing is too much of a skinny boy to be a real hockey player!
But there is something here that makes me want to keep watching. For now.
The Drama Llama 