I must be the only person who thinks Norae is actually trying to move the relationship forward, or at least feels more confidant about it, but that Seola is skittish and easily overwhelmed by this thing between them that she constantly runs away from it.
To give examples, when their kiss a few chapters back was interrupted and Norae (off-handedly) invited her back home with her, Seola said yes and then ran off to bed, blushing deeply. And then when Norae was playing the guitar and Seola grabbed her hand, yes, Norae was being oblivious but it was Seola who cut things off abruptly by leaving the room. And now a drunk Norae breathes on her neck and Seola practically throws her off - NOT because Norae is drunk (which means she didn't actually initiate anything), but because, in Seola's own words, it was unexpected. It caught her off-guard and made her retreat.
I really do enjoy seeing Seola so unraveled by Norae, since she's usually so assured and confident when she approaches romantic relationships, but while she's more reactive and blushes a lot more easily, she's also been cockblocking herself in a lot of instances. If she held her ground during any one of these times, I think Norae would have met her halfway (case in point: the hand-holding scenes, that time Seola slept on Norae's shoulder and she let her)

See, this would be a great plottwist for example! After we've all seen Seola's struggling, we switch to Norae's POV and find out she has been trying to convey her feelings to Seola as well (in her own flawed way). And actually it's BOTH of them failing to make this relationship happen. After it's been established that both are playing certain roles that fail to make the relationship happen, it's far more exciting to have a moment such in this chapter where the roles are switched and Norae is the aggressive one while Seola kinda pretends to be oblivious to her advances.

But again, it's all based on an assumption about Norae. As readers we still don't KNOW what she's thinking. So, instead, the moment in the latest chapter is still ambiguously mysterious as everything is concerned with Norae these days.

To address a couple things about my negative comment:

My issue is not with the pacing! Somehow calling the problem "bad pacing" makes it seem like the issue is that not enough stuff is happening or that that the series lingers too long on any scene. But I think everyone who reads the series weekly and comes back here to discuss it knows that some stuff is happening in each chapter and it never seems like the narrative gets bogged down in the minutiae of some scene. Where things do become flawed is when you look at the narrative momentum of the series. It's about the dramatic high-points where tension rises and it seems like something significant is about to happen - but then the series cuts away to a future point in the timeline and saps the narrative momentum of all its energy.

Nya-chan mentioned the bus-accident and someone rightly pointed out that this was the moment of Seola realizing how she has feelings for Norae. Sure, you could argue that the character-development because of that event could’ve been bigger but it’s fine if the series wants to develop things more gradually with little things (while using RARE big events as a catalysts for change). At that point you clearly could make an argument for that it’s all really just about whether you are a fan of the pacing or not. But the direction of the narrative was that now Seola would try to get closer to Norae in an effort to confess her love at some point. And she was determined about that.

What is different about the ski-resort-arc is how cutting off the narrative momentum isn’t just about slowing down the portrayal of the consequences of a big moment here and there. In that arc disrupting the momentum became a weekly ritual made all the more egregious because of how BIG those moments were. The events never seemed as connected as they should’ve been and the character-interactions aimed for BIG moments instead of portraying natural, down-to-earth reactions to the events.

And that brings me to something ffins07 said: This idea of FF trying to be slice-of-life. FF is a romance-series. What matters and what we focus on each week is the “development” of the romance between Seola and Norae. That’s what each chapter comes back to in terms of story, no matter what happens in the plot. And it being more slice-of-life-y wouldn’t be a problem at all if the series would be willing to discard its need for romance to focus on secondary plot-lines. Like this moment recently where Norae’s graduation-problems were covered. The story hasn’t established any stakes for why we as readers should fear she isn’t graduating properly. This secondary detail was introduced with a “Shit happens!”-attitude and a shrug played up for comedy. If this were indeed a true slice-of-life-series, Norae having troubles with her grades should’ve been a consistent plotline. Sure, we got hints here and there in the past that she wasn’t doing so well but you wouldn’t look at any of that saying “Oh, what’s happening here…?” (presuming you care about the character). If this series wants to show good slice-of-life it has to be willing to occasionally drop its romantic focus and dwell on the mundane details of various characters’ lives. And that means less of the overly dramatic, romantic stuff. I just come back to the ski-resort-arc again: A luxurious part-time-job that led to a holiday at a ski-resort at which coincidentally Norae’s ex-boyfriend stayed at the same time which led to Seola breaking down in tears, having an accident and a nearly-kissing-moment between Norae and Seola. That isn’t slice-of-life-writing exactly…

At the same time, considering what is discussed each week here, would anyone even be satisfied with a chapter that solely focuses on the lives of the characters instead of showing romantic moments between Norae and Seola? That’s what slice-of-life really means, though! Life isn’t all about the development of a loving relationship (except in, well, romance-stories, of course)! Right now it seems like FF is a romance story where slice-of-life-elements occasionally pop up as secondary concerns but I wouldn’t classify the series as a slice-of-life-series at all.

Also, my issue isn’t that I want to see Seola and Norae together as soon as possible. Someone mentioned the conservative values of Korean society and that maybe those would complicate matters. Maybe coming out as gay/bisexual is difficult in Korea. But it’s so presumptive to just let them hesitate because it would be difficult. Where’s the storytelling in that? The story can be as much about what Norae doesn’t do as it is already about what Seola fails to do. Right now it feels like Seola is already at the finish-line – but she can only cross it together with Nora. And Norae is far behind just doing nothing. It’s fine to put these two into that position but if that’s the case make that the story! Why are they in this position?! And this isn’t a series bound to one POV, so there’s no excuse for ignoring characters. Why is Norae in this position? The series still hasn’t offered any sort of answer for that. There are even easy parallels to draw that she’s exactly as much falling behind in terms of study as she’s falling behind in terms of romance. Her educational setback is equal to her romantic setback and now she has some catching up to do on both terms to start a good relationship with Seola (I mean, this COULD be the story, right?). And Norae clearly is a character who hides a lot of what she’s thinking. We’ve got hints here and there of how she only acts obliviously but right now we can only assume what she’s thinking and what her goals/doubts are. But that’s the problem with the lack of a much-needed Norae-POV: You project more onto Norae than you identify with right now. She’s more mysterious than compelling in how little the series actually lets us understand her motivations.

I’ve been reading the forums for a few days now and I just wanted to add my two cents to the discussion of the series ^^ .

Overall, I still am interested in the series and want to know what happens in the discussion but the last couple chapters have lessened my interest in the series. Frankly, I don’t care if the series will ever cover a working relationship between Seola and No-rae. And I’m fine with the series having a slow character-focused pacing. But I really think that in the whole ski-resort-arc (with the trip to No-rae’s parents) the series jumped the shark without knowing what to do with that.

I don’t think repetition is the problem here. It would imply that when something happens the series would move on in order to return to the same point – but the series never seems to move on these days. The relationship between Seola and Norae is frustratingly static, the complications of the plot remain incidental and the closure (even on an incidental level these days) is non-existing. FF’s writing seems very inconsequential. What happened on that ski-resort-trip was all VERY dramatic (Seola crying out of frustration, Sungpyo suddenly appearing, Seola and Norae nearly kissing etc.) but it didn’t amount to anything. None of it even seems very dramatic in hindsight due to this lack of commitment. Those atrocious time-jumps happened too often between chapters and killed the natural momentum of the story again and again there.

But even aside from consequences, the writing wasn’t very elegant. You have all these plot-points and character-moments but they all seem to be only tangentially related in how they’re presented. Every meaningful moment of the ski-resort-trip exists in its own little bubble. There have been no confrontations between Norae and Seola despite the fact that the reason for all the events is that they’re at odds with each other. Norae clearly isn’t on the same wavelength as Seola when it comes to their relationship and the series has so far done nothing besides rubbing the readers’ noses in it. And if for some reason you haven’t realized that yet, you will have certainly gotten the message with that wordy chapter 66 that needlessly summarized all that has happened in the previous couple chapters (the golden rule is “show, don’t tell”, not “show, don’t tell – then later tell them what they’ve seen”).

What bothers me the most these days is Norae, though. I assume Ssamba wants to create tension by making us identify more with Seola than Norae. But it should be the other way around at this point, I think. Chapter 66 and this new chapter are disappointing because we already know what Seola’s mindset is. Far more interesting would be to find out what Norae is actually hoping to achieve by doing this whole “oblivious”-routine. Honestly, in the scene where Norae plays the guitar she acts oblivious to the point of being kinda insulting. Since it’s hard right now to identify with Norae (because we don’t really know what exactly she’s thinking) the whole thing starts to feel like an “idiot-plot”. You know, the kind of plot that can be easily resolved with one short, honest conversation but it isn’t happening because the characters behave like idiots. And Norae is that idiot right now. I mean, with how stubborn Norae is, I don’t think there’s anything Seola can actually do to change their relationship.

It’s disappointing for me because the chapters itself often have one or more nice, little moments of fluffiness and cuteness. But these are only moments in a story that hasn’t really come together as a whole in a while.

Also Sungpyo is a stalker… Seriously, this is the second (!) time he just “happened” to be in the vicinity of Norae for a flimsy reason.