Twenty-Five Twenty-One

February 12, 2022

Na Hee-do (Kim Tae-ri) is a passionate fencer whose school team is disbanded due to the IMF financial crisis. Baek Yi-jin (Nam Joo-hyuk), from a once-wealthy family now destroyed by the same crisis, is trying to rebuild. Their paths cross in Jeonju.

February 13, 2022

Hee-do joins the national fencing team. Yi-jin begins working as a reporter. The friendship between them deepens in the Jeonju alleys and tunnels that serve as their shared geography.

February 19, 2022

The Suwon Hwaseong Fortress Paldalsan section features in the drama's iconic bus stop scene — Yi-jin tying Hee-do's shoelace at a stop that does not exist in real life.

February 20, 2022

The 60-metre tunnel near Jeonju Hanok Village. The drama's most intimate early conversation — two young people figuring each other out in a tunnel built during the Japanese colonial era.

February 26, 2022

Hee-do competes for a spot on the national team. Yi-jin covers the event as a reporter. The distance between their respective ambitions begins to close.

March 5, 2022

Hee-do and Yi-jin's first kiss, in Jeonju. The Hanok Village alleyways provide the setting for a moment that the drama has been building toward with remarkable patience.

March 6, 2022

Hee-do and Yu-rim meet in person at Marronnier Park in Daehak-ro for the first time, having been online chat friends using pseudonyms, with yellow roses as their recognition signal.

March 12, 2022

New Year's Eve 1999, crossing into 2000. Two young people watching history change, certain that what they have between them is permanent.

March 27, 2022

A return to the Suwon Hwaseong Fortress area. The drama revisits its early locations in a register of memory rather than discovery.

April 2, 2022

The drama's time frame jumps forward. Both characters are adults now. What they had in 1998 to 2002 exists as the memory that the present-day framing — a mother telling her daughter their story — is preserving.

April 3, 2022

The finale. The bittersweet ending — their love story ends, their lives continue, the love is real and was real — divided and then unified fans. One of 2022's most discussed K-drama conclusions.