I’m in Tears Over Sol’s Sacrifice in ‘Lovely Runner’

I knew Lovely Runner would be a tragic mess the moment Sol ran in the rain with that yellow umbrella.

I’m not saying that all fictional characters who meet under a yellow umbrella are doomed to find true love at the cost of their lives. Still, it happens a lot in fiction. Remember when Ted met Tracy from How I Met Your Mother under a yellow umbrella? That umbrella helps them find each other, but Tracy dies later on.

In Lovely Runner, Sun-jae first met Sol when she ran in the rain towards him and opened her yellow umbrella. What Sol and Sun-jae have is true love, but we’ve seen Sun-jae die in every timeline so far.

I shouldn’t be making parallels between these two stories just because of an umbrella, but Sol might prove my point in the coming episode. Episode 14 of Lovely Runner is scheduled to premiere at 8:50PM KST on May 21, 2024, on Rakuten Viki.

In an unexpected twist of events, Sun-jae saves Sol from her stalker and gets stabbed. Sol decided to travel back in time and erase herself from his life. She decides to avoid her first meeting with Sun-jae, which would make him fall in love with her. This is the same meeting that made Sun-jae fall in love with Sol. He would use it as inspiration for his hit song, “Sudden Shower.”

Who has it worse?

Sun-jae may have died many times in the other timelines. But the sacrifices he made were voluntarily for Sol’s sake. He never meets Sol, so Sun-jae is never inspired to be an idol. At least he’s safe, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Sol, on the other hand, will now have to live with beautiful memories of Sun-jae, who now sees her as nothing more than a stranger.

But not all hope is lost, because we still have two more episodes to go before Lovely Runner concludes. Fans believe that Sol and Sun-jae are meant to be and that he’ll still find his way to her in the coming episode. Maybe the yellow umbrella trope is the jinx we needed to get rid of for Sol and Sun-jae to have a happily ever after.