Daniel postpones his Yale interview to spend time with Natasha

Daniel Jae Ho Bae’s decision to postpone his Yale University interview is an early test of the pull Natasha Kingsley exerts on him: he knowingly shifts an important appointment to remain near a girl he barely knows, then admits that he did it for her. The choice is at once impulsive and deliberate. Daniel recognizes the risk to his future, but when Natasha asks what makes her worth it, he answers with instinct rather than a calculation.

The Decision and Its Stakes

Daniel has already met Natasha that day, and his first account of rescheduling makes the choice sound absurd even to himself. He thinks of his mother, who would be furious, and stresses that Natasha is not simply a girl he does not know well but someone who might not even like him. He also recognizes that changing the interview could jeopardize his future. That self-reproach does not stop him: he reschedules anyway.

The appointment is his Yale interview, a consequential opportunity in the future he has been pursuing. Daniel’s later joke that he has not destroyed the building, only moved it until later, understates what the decision means to him: the interview remains, but he has chosen to give Natasha his time now. The story places an ordinary administrative change beside the intensity of a new attraction, showing how a small adjustment to a schedule can become a meaningful personal risk.

Waiting for Natasha

After rearranging the interview, Daniel returns to the lobby of the building where he had left Natasha. He studies the directory, surrounded by tenants whose professional credentials are marked by abbreviations such as J.D., Esq., CPA, and CFA, and watches for her. He wonders why she could be in a building full of lawyers and accounting professionals. In his comic private shorthand, he lists possibilities, then labels himself FB, for Foolish Boy, and DTF, for Doomed to Failure.

Daniel’s phone call brings another turn in the scheduling: the woman he speaks with says she had been about to call him to reschedule as well, and the only appointment he can get is at 6 p.m. He waits in the lobby until the elevator doors open and Natasha comes out. The encounter is not staged as a grand romantic reunion. She walks toward him, and her first question is what happened to his interview. He hopes her expression means she is happy to see him, but her immediate concern is the consequence of his decision, not a display of welcome.

The building matters because Natasha has come there seeking legal help. Her appointment is urgent: she is facing deportation, and the attorney she needs, Jeremy Fitzgerald, has been hit by a car and cannot meet with her. She has filled out immigration paperwork, including a questionnaire asking what America means to her, why she wants to stay, and how she might contribute to the country. The decision to wait for her therefore brings Daniel into contact with a crisis far more consequential than the romantic uncertainty he first imagines.

The Truth Behind the Rescheduling

When Natasha asks about the interview, Daniel distinguishes between the bare fact and the reason behind it. The fact is that he postponed; the truth is that he postponed in order to spend more time with her. He gives her the truth directly. Natasha responds by asking whether he is insane and reminding him that this is his life. Her reaction makes clear that she understands the choice as more than a casual convenience: it could affect a future he has worked toward.

She presses him further, asking whether he did it for her and what makes him so sure she is worth the risk. Daniel says that instinct is his answer. He cannot explain why he feels fearless when telling her the truth, but he does not retreat into a practical justification or pretend the choice had another purpose. Natasha calls him impossible; he replies that it is possible. Their exchange turns the rescheduling from an unseen act into a mutual recognition: she sees what he has risked, and he makes the reason explicit.

Natasha’s Circumstances and the Meaning of Time

The disparity between their immediate concerns sharpens the scene. Natasha is in her senior year and wants the ordinary milestones of prom, graduation, friends, and college. She has started an application for Brooklyn College and hopes financial aid and a scholarship might make in-state schools such as SUNY Binghamton possible. Her mother saved for two years to travel to Florida and buy a stolen-number Social Security card that might pass background checks and college applications, making financial aid accessible. These plans exist alongside the possibility that Natasha may have to leave the United States for Jamaica, a country where she says she has lived only until age eight and no longer knows the people or family she would return to.

The legal forms make that threat procedural and intimate at once. Natasha must answer questions about criminality, communism, terrorism, and defending the United States, then account for her time in the country and explain why she wants to stay. The attorney’s staff tells her that anything Jeremy can use to humanize her will help. Daniel’s postponed interview does not solve any of this, and the scene does not suggest that affection can substitute for legal assistance. Its significance lies instead in his choice to be present: he shifts his own appointment while Natasha is trying to make her life legible to a system that may remove her from it.

The episode also gives Daniel’s attraction a concrete cost without claiming that he has already sacrificed his educational future. He has moved the interview, not abandoned it, and he knows Natasha may not return his feelings. Yet he chooses closeness before he can know the outcome. That contrast—between the appointment he can reschedule and the precarious future Natasha cannot control—makes his gesture both romantic and limited. It is an early declaration of care, not a solution to her crisis.