Rooftop Prince: Episode 12

by javabeans

If yesterday was all about Park-ha confronting her feelings and trying to resolve them, today was all about Yi Gak doing the same. I much preferred this episode to yesterday’s, which seemed like all plot and little personality. This one was a nice way to follow up yesterday’s moodier story turns, because we get less reaction and more action. Mm, I love me my men of action.

The episode also advances our main story in huge ways, on multiple fronts. Hurrah, advancement!

SONG OF THE DAY

Daybreak – “두 개의 심장” (Two hearts) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 12 RECAP

Yi Gak pulls up to the warehouse fire, douses his handkerchief in water, and bolts into the burning building. He finds Park-ha near unconsciousness and carries her out, his handkerchief draped over her face to filter out smoke. Does he not register the resemblance, or will this be a belated realization?

The paramedics take over, and then Park-ha is allowed home, where Yi Gak tends to her with a soothing medicine he’s brewed. As he tucks her into bed, she hands him the handkerchief, which slips from his grasp and flutters back down over her face. And now he makes the connection. Yessss!

Se-na leaves her meeting feeling peevish, since Yi Gak dashed out and ruined the proceedings. She calls Man-bo to ask what the matter is, and the mere mention of Park-ha’s name is enough to sour her mood. If that’s possible, that is; is sourness a finite condition, or can that soul keep shriveling indefinitely?

Se-na reports this to Grandma, who’s furious to hear that her grandson lost the contract after running out because of Park-ha. Even Pyo Taek-soo berates him for ditching the meeting, and warns that his project will be deemed a failure; he’ll be judged incompetent and pushed out of the company.

Yi Gak asks for another chance, but Taek-soo scoffs—this test was his chance.

Grandma thinks Park-ha called Tae-yong from his meeting and blames her for leading him astray. She doesn’t give him a chance to clarify the accident, and demands that either he move out of that rooftop penthouse, or he kick Park-ha out. Then Grandma decides that she’ll have to meet Park-ha face to face “to make her understand.”

The rooftop family goes out to eat, and Man-bo gives Park-ha a chicken leg from his soup, telling her to eat up. Yong-sool follows with his own chicken leg, and that makes Chi-san pipe up that Park-ha’s not the only patient, you know: “I had surgery! Me!” So Yi Gak gives him his chicken leg, and Chi-san beams. So cute. Are you all just going to sit there and pass around chicken legs of love?

Yi Gak asks how Chi-san’s recovery is going, and Chi-san says he’s healing well. Just as long as he doesn’t laugh, because that pulls on his stitches.

Not missing a beat, Man-bo and Yong-sool immediately make funny faces to make him laugh, HAHA. Chi-san’s reaction: “Haha! Ow! Don’t make me laugh! Ha!”

Yi Gak and Park-ha head home after dinner, but Man-bo and Yong-sool want to have a beer, and Chi-san agrees to go as long as they promise not to make him laugh. Muahaha. Yong-sool says with his straight face, “What is there to laugh about? Let us go.”

Yi Gak watches his friends head off and counts down, “One… two…” And right on cue, Chi-san doubles over laugh-crying.

They stroll home, where Grandma and Great Aunt are waiting for their confrontation with Park-ha. She’d told Yi Gak that she’d be coming but the sight of her makes him panic; he tries to block Park-ha’s view to turn her around before they’re spotted.

She peers around him and spots Grandma, though, so he explains that Grandma is under the misconception that Park-ha was at fault for his contract falling through. He decides it’s best to avoid confrontation for now and pulls her away.

They apologize for troubling each other—she for contributing to that contract loss, and he for sending her to the warehouse. Park-ha thanks him for rescuing her, and he thanks her right back for smiling; he’d been afraid that he’d made her unable to smile.

To kill time away from home, they take a walk to the top of the hill, where they pause while looking out at the city lights. He reminds her of her drunken words the other day, about how it was rotten luck that he picked her rooftop to crash into.

Park-ha remembers but feigns ignorance, insisting that she never said that. Yi Gak says that her words made him think, and he realized that his presence must have really disrupted her life. He apologizes for that.

She sighs, “It would have been nice for you to fall into a nicer house.” He contradicts her—he benefited, but the encounter only brought her rotten luck. Hearing those words repeated back at her, Park-ha tries to soften them now; that’s not what she meant. To which the ever-sharp Yi Gak points out, “You said you never said that.” Haha, caught in her lie.

Chi-san texts the all-clear to let Yi Gak know that Grandma has finally left. But to Park-ha, he says, “She’s still there.” Aw. Somebody wants an excuse to hang out.

To kill more time, they head to a restaurant for some snacks. Park-ha notices how smoothly he’s adapted to modern life, and laughs to herself, recalling how he couldn’t do anything at first. She admits that she’d thought he was crazy—a comment that makes him bristle. He returns that they all thought she was loud and wicked: “Do you know how many times I stopped Yong-sool from cutting you down with his sword?”

That escalates the bickering, and she points out how useless he was, refusing to work and freaking out over a teeny finger prick, calling him an annoying loser. Ha.

Incensed, Yi Gak throws out that HE was the one who “shook his body” like a fool in that animal suit to sell HER strawberries. But this is news to her, and she asks, “That… wasn’t Becky?” Ha! I’d forgotten about that, but it’s just the thing to defuse all that arguing, and she’s touched.

Yi Gak adds awkwardly that when she was going on her blind date, she looked kind of pretty. So she concedes that after he cut off his hair, he looked a tiny bit handsome. He informs her, “It wasn’t because of the hair cut, but because I was handsome to start with.” Keke.

Another text comes from Chi-san, now wondering why they aren’t coming home. Park-ha asks if Grandma has left yet, and he lies, “No, not yet.”

So, they head out to transfer to yet another location. As they walk—comfortably in silence, in step with one another—they both think back on their times together, giving us a highlight reel of their cute moments.

On to a jjimjilbang, where they relax in the main room. She tells him not to fall asleep since they have to go home, but he lays back with his eyes closed, telling her Granny’s still keeping vigil. Park-ha wonders at Grandma’s perseverance—isn’t she hungry? The lies come easier and easier: “I hear she just ordered delivery.”

But now Park-ha catches on, and suspects that he’s been lying all night. She starts to complain, but he falls asleep and Park-ha gently slides a pillow under his head. She reaches out a hand to touch his face, though she pulls away without making contact.

Yi Gak dreams of Bu-yong, remembering the word games they had played with each other at the palace. When he awakens, he murmurs to himself, “Sister-in-law is appearing in my dreams frequently.”

They walk home together in the wee hours of the morning, and find Se-na waiting in front of the house. Oh, right, her. The fiancée. He’d forgotten their date—engagement preparations, at that—and hurries inside to get ready.

The company holds a meeting with its directors, who look favorably on Tae-mu and praise his accomplishments. They have voted against promoting Tae-yong as previously planned, because in addition to the recent failure, there are also rumors that he’s not right in the head.

In his defense, Pyo Taek-soo points out that the contract fell through as Tae-yong was rescuing a life, and Tae-mu generously offers to give his cousin one more chance to prove himself.

He must be feeling pretty confident since the odds are in his favor that Tae-yong will just fail again. This time they’ll go head-to-head with new product launches.

Tae-mu plans to market an athletic shoe—a top brand “used in Hollywood.” Uh, guys? I’m not sure that says what you think it says. That’s about as meaningful as saying I sell the badminton fly preferred by brain surgeons. An interesting statistic, maybe, but useless.

Our team gathers for a strategy session. Man-bo vows that they must beat Tae-mu. Chi-san has the fatalistic view—they’re doomed to fail. Yong-sool argues like a seasoned warrior, saying that an unwinnable fight is best avoided.

Yi Gak, on the other hand, is ready to meet the challenge, and thinks that they’ll be able to use the other team’s underestimation of them to their advantage. For instance, he anticipates sabotage by Tae-mu’s team, and they’ll be ready for the tricks and manipulations. That includes leaking some info purposely to mislead the others in the company. Ooh, I love that they’re getting crafty.

Se-na models engagement dresses for Yi Gak, and he’s agreeable to it. So agreeable, in fact, that she pouts, wanting a bigger reaction. She fishes for more compliments, and he complies.

But it’s not done with the enthusiasm she wants, and coffee afterward is quiet and awkward. Se-na tells him worriedly that she feels him drifting from her. He says the right things, assuring her that’s not the case, but it’s not enough to convince her. He asks her to explain the distance, and she answers that it feels like Park-ha is the cause—”I’m afraid she’ll steal our relationship from us.”

Yi Gak says firmly that Park-ha isn’t the kind of person who steals things that aren’t hers, and that Se-na is mistaken. She tears up, asking how he can turn this into her fault—isn’t he supposed to take her side?

Yi Gak comes home to find Park-ha packing her things. He isn’t exactly in a position to prevent her from leaving, but he balks when she wants to take the lotus plant, saying she can come over and see it whenever she wants. When she claims the fireworks too, he snaps, “Fine, take it ALL!”

The ducklings tell Becky and Mimi that Yi Gak is marrying another woman, to their outrage. How can this be? Anybody can see that he and Park-ha like each other!

The boys say that they feel bad, too, but they can’t do anything. The girls sigh in pity over Park-ha—she must be feeling miserable, and after having given the boys so much, too.

Park-ha asks Mimi if she has any job connections, and hears that Mimi’s uncle is looking for someone in his landscaping business. The catch: The job is alllllll the way down in Pohang, on the opposite coast in the South.

Mimi drops by to give Park-ha information about her uncle’s job, and Park-ha puts away the letter she’s writing, tucking it under a tissue box. Mimi urges her to head down to Pohang right away, since Uncle is interviewing other candidates. Park-ha then submits her resignation, planping to move out in three days.

Tae-mu receives the report that the ducklings are on the move, and have made appointments with travel agencies. He instructs his secretary to get on the phone with those in charge, to refuse to work with the opposing team.

The boys dutifully try to meet their contacts, only to be turned away. They hang their heads in dejection… until Yi Gak asks how things are going, and then Chi-san chirps that they’re being sabotaged, just as predicted! The other side firmly believes they’re winning.

So when Tae-mu’s spy lurks around, trying to eavesdrop, the boys purposely drop names for him to hear, so Tae-mu can keep barking up the wrong tree.

The real product is the same one as before, and Yi Gak heads to the cosmetics factory again to rebuild that burnt bridge. The president is no longer willing to take a meeting with him, but Yi Gak plants himself in the lobby and waits, and waits, and waits. It takes hours, but finally, Yi Gak wears the president down long enough to get him to agree to hear him out.

Se-na submits her own resignation now that she’s marrying a chaebol, and Tae-mu flips out. He urges her to let him “take care” of this, to lie low in England with her mother for a while until he can work things out. He vows that when she gets back from England, he will have taken care of Tae-yong (who “won’t be around”) and ensured that his father can’t interfere.

It’s perhaps not the best thing to say out in the open where Daddy Dearest can overhear, though Tae-mu doesn’t notice their eavesdropper. He insists that Se-na can’t go to Tae-yong, “Because he’s headed for ruin!”

Uncle Money confronts Tae-mu over his inability to get over Se-na, telling him that she clearly used him until she could hop up to a higher rung on the social ladder. He says that Se-na is made up of lies, from head to toe.

That’s enough to get Tae-mu wondering what his father knows. So Uncle Money shares the tidbit that Se-na’s entire background is a lie, starting with that fabricated mother story. Her sneaky, lying ways come as a shock, and he fumes in frustration.

Yi Gak goes looking for Park-ha in her department, surprised to hear she resigned this morning. He races home and finds her room already empty, her phone shut off. He staggers into her room, feeling crushed, and spots the note peeking out under the tissue box.

It’s Park-ha’s farewell to her “Dummy Prince,” as she explains that she’s heading elsewhere. She thanks him for giving her good memories and making their time together fun, urging him not to feel sorry. She asks him to convey her well-wishes to the boys, and says she’ll miss them all. The note signs off with “Even Dumber Park-ha.”

The letter brings tears to Yi Gak’s eyes, and for a long while after, he sits in defeat. He’s itching to do something, to swing into action, but he has nothing to go on.

With Dad’s information, Tae-mu arrives at the fish market and sees Mom arguing loudly with a customer. He recognizes her from the accident, and then to add to the shock, he remembers that she’d ask him to find Park-ha—her daughter—a job. Ooh, finally the sisterly connection!

He asks after Mom’s health, and she welcomes him happily, inviting him in for coffee. In the back room, he sees the family photograph on the wall, and recognizes the man. It’s the same man who had been married to CEO Jang, there with that girl she had abandoned.

Mom notices him looking at the photo and explains their family relationships, identifying Park-ha with her father.

Madly Tae-mu works this through his brain, fitting the pieces together. Like CEO Jang looking for her girl. And Park-ha once calling Se-na “unni.” And once he finally gets a handle on the truth, he smiles a twisted smile. Uh-oh; anytime Tae-mu is happy is a time to be wary. Looks like his kill-dar is up.

He calls Se-na and gets her attention right off the bat by telling her he wants to talk about her family. That’s menacing enough to get her to meet him right away.

She supposes that his father told him the truth. He asks if she let his father blackmail her with “that measly stuff.” Because he doesn’t care who her family is, or whether she comes from money. He doesn’t even care that she lied to him about those things.

However. There’s that other tidbit about Park-ha being her sister. And how she knew that Park-ha was CEO Jang’s lost daughter, and purposely hid that because she couldn’t stand to see Park-ha inherit everything. So here’s his proposition: “Become CEO Jang’s daughter.”

HAHAHA. This cracks me up, though I’m pretty sure the humor’s inadvertent. What are you going to do, act all smart and slick and con the woman, who will know you’re conning her about being her daughter… because she knows you’re her other daughter?

Tae-mu’s rationale is that together, they can walk away with the company—Se-na will take CEO Jang’s share, and he’ll have his, and Tae-yong will be cut out. To do this, he needs Se-na to send Park-ha far, far away. And he and Se-na can resume their relationship, just like before.

It’s a tempting offer, but will require a complete turnaround on Se-na’s part. She leaves the meeting thinking hard about the proposal, wondering whether to take it.

Yi Gak asks Becky if she knows where Park-ha went, but she has no information. Mimi’s out, so he has to go back home empty-handed. Hope crushed again.

He stands there on the porch with lighted sparklers, left behind by Park-ha after all, burning them all down. Aw, what a pathetic sight.

He sits out on the roof all night, and in the morning, Park-ha returns from her trip to Pohang. She looks curiously at him and wonders what he’s doing out here.

He looks at her with disbelieving eyes—didn’t she leave?

Not knowing that he found her goodbye letter prematurely (her overnight trip was about the job, not a permanent departure), Park-ha is puzzled at his strong reaction. At his breaking point, Yi Gak yells, “Do you know how hard I looked for you?!”

Yi Gak: “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you making me this way?! All day yesterday my chest was crushed and pounding and suffocated, it felt like it would burst! I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was going crazy! No matter how I shouted or kicked, none of it made me feel any better!”

Park-ha perhaps realizes what he’s saying before he even says it, and now he calms a little to say, “But now that I’ve seen your face, I understand. I… missed you all day long. I like you.”

A tear falls from his eye, and then hers. She looks momentarily hopeful, but then hurt again: “You’re always doing things your way.” As in, only for his own feelings, not hers.

Park-ha turns around, her back to him. Yi Gak he whirls her right back around and grabs her in a kiss, as they stand in front of their paradise.

 
COMMENTS

Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Granted, I knew it was coming (spoilers are freakishly hard to avoid, no matter how hard you try), but the episode did such a nice job of building up the crescendo that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t surprised. I knew it was coming, but it fit the context so well that even if I hadn’t known, it would have worked just as well.

This episode was a much more successful one for me than the previous one; I thought Episode 11 was the one episode of the bunch that felt the dullest, and was sort tiresome to watch. This episode brought back some of my excitement, because everything is moving forward and changing. I think the difference is that when Park-ha faced her feelings, there was nowhere for her to go. She likes someone who’s unavailable, which sucks, but there’s no conflict of emotion. She couldn’t act, because she wasn’t in a place to do anything.

Yi Gak, on the other hand, has warring agendas, and so it’s much more interesting to see him struggle. He’s the one who has to make decisions, and he’s the one who has to carry the burden of his mystery. Unlike Park-ha, he can effect change by deciding something and taking action—and so he does, thankfully.

With a full eight more episodes to go, I’m wondering what new obstacles will be encountered because it seems like they’re pretty close to figuring out most of the big questions. The sisterly connection has been made by both men, feelings have been confessed, enemies have been identified clearly, and alliances are shifting again.

Not that there isn’t plenty of ground left to cover, since we still have to figure out what the murder is all about. I wonder how close Yi Gak is to figuring out that his princess wasn’t the shining lotus flower he assumes she was. He’s got a solid enough faith in the reincarnation theory to understand that if Se-na’s a hateful backstabbing wench, then it’s likely his princess shared those traits. Perhaps if/when Se-na dumps him to go back to Tae-mu, he’ll make the connection. And then he’s just another step away to realizing his own “thwarted Fate” scenario.

By now, the characters have figured out most of the secrets that the audience has known all along. Now it’s time to get to work on the big mysteries and head together into the unknown.

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