Four Hands, Two Sonatas: who ends up together — the kiss in the promo isn't the pairing fans are betting on
The main trailer answered this question before episode 1 aired, and most of the audience decided to ignore it. Eight episodes in, the show is still running two romances on very different tracks.
As of 22 September 2026, eight of twelve episodes have aired on tvN, with the finale set for 4 October. That matters, because the drama has already used its biggest structural move — a nine-year time jump at the midpoint — and the pairings on either side of that jump are not the same.
The couple the show has actually committed to
Kang Bi-o (Song Kang) and Hong Jae-in (Jang Gyu-ri). The main trailer shows them kissing; episode 6 delivers it. Jae-in, a viola major with an unusually precise ear, has carried a crush on Bi-o since childhood. Post-jump, with Bi-o a world-touring pianist and privately falling apart over a friend he believes is dead, she confesses, and he kisses her.
Critics have not been kind about how it got there. Leisurebyte's episode 7 review in 2026 called the romance "forced and unnatural," noting the pair went from friends to lovers across a time skip rather than on screen. It is, however, the only romance the drama has explicitly staged.
The pairing the audience is betting on
Bi-o and Choi Jeong-yo (Lee Jun-young). Netflix tags the show Brotherhood, Rivalry, Intimate and Emotional, and has never described the two men as anything but friends and rivals — a distinction that did nothing to stop the speculation, because the show keeps staging them at one piano with four hands on the same keyboard, which is where the Korean title 포핸즈 comes from.
The emotional spine of the series is Bi-o and Jeong-yo. The romance is with Jae-in. Those have been two separate lines since episode 1.
Episode 8 makes the imbalance obvious: Jeong-yo talks Bi-o through his performance anxiety, mirroring what Bi-o did for him nine years earlier, and it is the most intimate scene the drama has staged for anyone.
What's still in play
Four episodes remain, and the unresolved material is almost entirely on Jeong-yo's side of the board:
- The amnesia — Jeong-yo's memory loss is an act, confirmed in episode 7. He's been performing it since returning as conductor Luca Domenico.
- The kidnapping — he was taken before the Harmonie Competition final in Prague, shot, and left in a lake. Who paid for it is unanswered.
- Bi-o's mother — Kang Ji-hye (Yoon Se-ah) is the working suspect, and Jeong-yo has positioned himself near her deliberately.
- The hand — nerve damage to his right hand ended his piano career, which is why he conducts.
- Jae-in's job — her mother runs a classical management agency, putting her on the business side of both men's careers.
Reviewers have noted that Jeong-yo's behavior toward Bi-o stays genuinely protective, which points at Bi-o's family rather than Bi-o as the target of whatever he came back to do.
"Pi-o might not be the target," Leisurebyte wrote of episode 8 in 2026.
What that means for the finale
On the evidence aired so far, Bi-o and Jae-in are the couple who end the show together, because they're the only couple the show has written as one. The Bi-o and Jeong-yo relationship gets the reunion, the duet and the reckoning over nine missing years. Whether the drama resolves the imbalance or just lets it stand is a question for 4 October.
For the record: the ratings have followed the bromance, not the romance. Episode 1 opened at 3.391% nationwide and episode 6 — the time jump and the Luca Domenico reveal — hit 7.318%.
Previously we wrote: Live shows are back on The Voice after disappearing entirely in season 29, and the vote is now same-night
