Mask: Episode 14

by LollyPip

Seok-hoon is losing control over Ji-sook — and to make matters worse, his wife is going rogue, and she’s got the ability to hurt them more in one day than Seok-hoon has done in months. It’s going to take a lot of work on Seok-hoon’s part to get her back under control, but it won’t be easy — I’m sure that his victims losing their fear is the worst thing a villain can imagine.

EPISODE 14: “A Spear and a Shield”

Min-woo tears up the marriage contract and declares it null and void, and asks Ji-sook if she will be his real wife. But before she answers, Mi-yeon interrupts them, having driven all the way out here intent on telling Min-woo that his wife isn’t who he thinks she is. She ignores a call from Seok-hoon, so he calls Ji-sook and has her hand Mi-yeon her phone.

Mi-yeon listens silently, then hangs up and walks away. As she drives home we hear that Seok-hoon had warned her darkly that if she does what he thinks she’s about to do, it will ruin their relationship for good. He’d warned her to take action only if she was certain she could handle the outcome.

As Min-woo and Ji-sook walk back to the others, Ji-sook tries to answer Min-woo’s question. But he stops her, and insists that she think it over before answering.

They get back to find a thoroughly drunk Manager Yang whining about having to work with someone who frustrates him, but Ji-sook placates Min-woo that he must be talking about someone else. Until he calls the person “awkwardly tall,” and says he’s jealous of their beautiful wife, and she’s all, “Never mind, he’s talking to you.” HAHAHA, Min-woo’s face.

They find Yeon-soo passed out drunk in their room, and Yeon-soo wakes up and freaks right out at Min-woo seeing her in bed. He points out that it’s their room, but they look for another place to sleep.

Ji-sook is worried Min-woo won’t be able to sleep on the floor, but he counters every one of her suggestions for heading back home. His stomach is upset from his bad cooking so Ji-sook massages a pressure point in his hand, but the contact makes him nervous and he pulls away. She pricks his finger to relieve his indigestion instead, and when he laughs at his wussy response, she snaps a picture — she’s decided to take photos of him whenever he laughs, to remember his smile.

Seok-hoon is awfully cranky when Mi-yeon arrives back home, and as usual, they talk in circles around the real issue. He asks if she’s ready to give up on them as a couple, but she says she won’t give up that easily, asking if he knows what she’s done for him. It’s Mi-yeon’s turn to say that he needs to trust her, even when she’s lying to him.

Seok-hoon agrees to trust her, but warns her not to do anything like this again. She takes a page from Ji-sook’s book and says nope, she’ll do as she pleases. He’d told her to be sure of what she wants before acting, but she won’t know until after she acts. With a sweet smile, she says that surely something interesting will happen tomorrow.

Min-woo watches Ji-sook sleep, and sits up to look at the pictures she took of him today. He lies down facing her, tucks her hair behind her ear, then gives her a tender kiss on the forehead. He falls asleep smiling at her adoringly. ~melts~

When Yeon-soo wakes in the morning, she’s horrified to realize that she slept in the same bed with Chang-soo. They both scream when she wakes him, and she sprays air freshener into his open mouth until he passes out, HA.

Min-woo complains that he didn’t sleep very well, because something is wrong with his heart — it kept beating fast all night. Oh man, his cheesy lines are getting worse. They both gape at Yeon-soo escorting a crying Chang-soo out of the bedroom, assuring him that nothing happened.

The group heads out to a fun little outdoor shopping center to scout new recipes, and today it’s Min-woo’s turn to take pictures of Ji-sook. Catching onto the lovey-dovey atmosphere, Chang-soo offers to leave them alone, and Min-woo takes him up on his offer.

Ji-sook puts sunscreen on Min-woo’s face for him, and the close proximity of their faces makes him twitchy again. When she does the back of his neck, she draws a little heart in the cream before rubbing it in, awww. There’s an old wives’ tale that a couple who walks down a certain path will never break up, and Min-woo suggests they walk it together. So they walk, and it’s adorable how Min-woo almost puts his arm around Ji-sook, then chickens out.

Ji-sook’s new coffee shop, the one her family runs, is doing bustling business. Myung-hwa thrives in her new job, and seems much happier than she was at the department store. Mom even declares that she feels much better with a fun job to focus on. Ji-hyuk says there’s a meeting today regarding the interior design, and that the parent company will be paying for the renovations.

It’s a bit confusing, but there are actually multiple coffee shops, and Ji-sook and Min-woo check up on the renovations in another location. They’re surprised when Mi-yeon arrives with the franchise owners for the interior concept meeting, and Ji-hyuk sees Ji-sook and quickly tries to hustle Dad out of there. Ugh, Mi-yeon planned this on purpose, didn’t she?

Ji-hyuk begs Dad to just stay calm and he’ll explain everything later, and of course Dad thinks that’s actually Ji-sook talking to the other franchise owners. Ji-hyuk says to just pretend nothing is wrong, but he draws attention anyway when he crashes into another man and falls right in front of Ji-sook.

She’s shocked, but goes to help him up, and Mi-yeon watches and gleefully anticipates a scene. Thankfully, Dad does as Ji-hyuk asked and just thanks her, though he can’t look her in the face. Ji-sook goes to the restroom to calm down, and trembles as she remembers yelling at her father for his burdening the family.

Ji-sook plans to give a speech the next day in support of Eun-ha’s father’s presidential bid, and the whole Choi family is planning to be there. Seok-hoon has something up his sleeve, and whatever it is it’s so bad that even Scar seems nervous, but Seok-hoon says that he must stop Mi-yeon.

Seok-hoon visits an elderly man in the hospital, and the man appears to be able to hear him, but can only communicate through blinking. This is Seok-hoon’s father, and Seok-hoon speaks to him fondly and seems to treat him gently. He even puts a pair of gloves on him, and we see where he’d lost his fingers in that long-ago accident that cost him his job.

Seok-hoon takes his father out for some fresh air, and entreats him to stay healthy long enough to see Seok-hoon get his revenge. They have a system of communication where Seok-hoon can point to a chart of letters and Dad blinks for the letter he wants. He spells out a word, “happiness,” then spells out “forgiveness,” but Seok-hoon rejects this message.

Ji-hyuk tells Ji-sook not to worry about their father — he told Dad she was just a doppelganger and not to mention this to Mom. Ji-hyuk asks if she plans to return to being Ji-sook one day and she nods yes, so Ji-hyuk says not to worry about the family too much until then. Then he demands some allowance, ha.

Mi-yeon needles Min-woo that evening, asking how Ji-sook could ignore her “nanny’s” family like that. Min-woo doesn’t bite, saying she’s probably in a tough situation, and can’t talk about it (Mi-yeon: “Why can’t she talk about it?” Min-woo: “Because she’s in a tough situation.” Mi-yeon: ~GLARE~).

He admits he’s messing with her, but seriously warns her not to pull a stunt like that again. Mi-yeon chides him for not at least asking Ji-sook about today, and he admits he’s an idiot who sees and hears nothing — a lot like she was when she first met Seok-hoon.

Apparently Ji-sook is still insisting on sleeping on the couch, so Min-woo brings Butler Nam-chul and Maid Yeon-soo in to show them the “ink stain” on the couch, which is really just teensy heart that he drew, HA. He claims that stain is bothering him so much, and orders them to throw out the couch. He comes back to find they’ve simply replaced it with a nicer couch, whoops.

In their bedroom that night, Mi-yeon asks Seok-hoon pointedly, “Don’t you miss [her]?” When he asks who she’s talking about, she plays it innocent, that she was asking if he missed her when she went to talk to Min-woo. He softly says that he does miss “the person I love.” (With the Korean language’s way of dropping pronouns, it could be interpreted that he means Mi-yeon, but it’s obvious that he means Eun-ha.)

When Ji-sook arrives home, she finds Min-woo stretched out on the new couch, and she creeps over to cover him with the blanket. She remembers Eun-ha’s diary entry saying that Seok-hoon will kill Min-woo, and recalls meeting with the lawyer from the card stuck in the book.

He’d remembered meeting Eun-ha before, who had said she planned to divorce Min-woo before the presidential election. Ji-sook had asked if she can divorce him sooner than that. As Min-woo sleeps peacefully, she starts to make a list of things she wants to do with him like making him fresh juice every morning, exercising, and doing a duet.

When Min-woo wakes later, Ji-sook has fallen asleep in the chair next to him, and he reads her list. She wakes and hides the list, but he asks if she’d like to start making juice tomorrow morning, and she brings up exercising together. He proposes they do the duet together now, but she complains that there’s no piano.

Instead he gets his violin and stands behind her while instructing her how to hold it, but as he shows her how to play it’s obvious she’s enjoying the close contact too much to care about the music. As they sway together, Ji-sook recalls writing in Eun-ha’s diary that in order to protect Min-woo, she will divorce him. But before then, she wants to do whatever she can for him.

The family gets ready to go to Congressman Seo’s press conference, and when Stepmom tells Mi-yeon to prepare, she smirks that she’s already got everything prepared. When Ji-sook gets nervous about her speech, Min-woo steps in to give her advice and encouragement. He tells her not to worry about memorizing anything, but just to say what she wants to say.

Seok-hoon can tell Mi-yeon is planning something, and urges her not to do it, whatever it is. She tells him not to do whatever he’s planning either — or they can both enact their plans together. Director Shim shows up, and from his expression, I swear Seok-hoon is trying to kill him with his brain. Seok-hoon says this is a bad time with a flick of the eyes towards Mi-yeon, whispers for Shim to wait for him in the parking lot.

Instead, Seok-hoon goes to the press conference and sends Scar down to meet with Shim. He brings several thugs with him, and they quickly surround Shim and his lackey.

Ji-sook gets up to present her speech, and since it’s televised, her mother nearly sees her on the television set in the coffee shop. Dad quickly shuts off the TV, saying it’s annoying to customers.

At first Ji-sook follows the prompters to the letter, but after her first few sentences, the words change to say, “I’m Byun Ji-sook, not Seo-Eun-ha. I’m a fake.” To her horror, the prompter goes on to make mention of her family, and Ji-sook starts to stammer.

After a long uncomfortable silence, she remembers Min-woo’s advice to say what she wants to say, and she starts again. She says that she wants to talk about her father, how he’s always been sorry that he couldn’t do enough for her, and for her mother. The words are vague enough that they could apply to Congressman Seo — though we know she’s talking about her real father.

She tells a story of falling off a bike as a child and getting a scar on her knee, and that she was angry with him for letting her fall. Later she found out that he had quickly learned to ride a bike just to teach her, and that now she understands why he was always sorry — because he loved her. Ji-sook says that Congressman Seo knows how to love his family, and he knows hwo to love the citizens. She asks for their support, and says one last thing: “Father, thank you for raising me well. I love you.”

The room erupts in applause, though Congressman Seo looks unsettled. And in the back room of the coffee shop, Ji-sook’s real father watches the broadcast on his phone, and recognizes her bike story. He cries as he understands that this truly is his daughter.

Disgusted that her plan backfired, Mi-yeon tells the aide who helped her with the prompter to play a USB that she hands him. She meets Min-woo on her way back into the auditorium and tells him to stay, that there’s something he needs to see, but he needs to take care of something and leaves.

After he’s gone the lights suddenly go down, and on the projector screen, a CCTV video of the family’s pool area starts up. Everyone sees Mi-yeon striding towards a staggering Eun-ha, but suddenly the lights come back on and the video stops. Mi-yeon tearfully asks Seok-hoon how he could do this to her, and he just reminds her that he told her not to do whatever she had planned.

Ji-sook realizes that Min-woo is gone, and he’s not answering his phone, so she goes looking for him. She becomes worried when she can’t find him quickly, but she does overhear Seok-hoon on the phone just as he says the words, ”Kill him.”

Of course Ji-sook thinks he’s just ordered a hit on Min-woo, but he was actually telling Scar to kill Director Shim. He finds them in a wooded area nearby, Shim and his lackey deep in a hole in the ground with the thugs all around them. On Seok-hoon’s order, the thugs start to shovel dirt into the hole.

Ji-sook gets a call from a nearby hospital that Min-woo was hit by a car. But she finds him safe and sound, only a bit banged up, and he’s confused as to her level of worry.He asks what’s the matter, and she takes a deep breath: “I love you. I’m saying I love you.” Min-woo takes this in and smiles at her endearingly miserable expression. As they leave the hospital, he moans that he has a meeting he can’t cancel, and asks if he heard her wrong before.

She pouts at his teasing, but he swears he’s just trying to figure out if it really happened. In answer, she promises to tell him everything at home later, and that if he still feels the same way after she does, then she’ll say “I love you” again.

She sends Min-woo off to his meeting, but the buyer he meets with seems confused at the papers that Min-woo hands over. Min-woo takes them back, and instead of the documents he intended to give, it’s the fingerprint results that he never looked at. He opens the results, and they show that the fingerprints that he took from the items in his safe belong to someone named Byun Ji-sook. With the fingerprint results is a copy of Ji-sook’s resume from the department store, along with her photo.

Ji-sook waits at home, twisting her wedding ring and smiling, ready to tell Min-woo the truth and unaware that he already knows.

COMMENTS

Well damn, I guess it was too much to hope for that Min-woo would find out about Ji-sook from Ji-sook herself. I wanted that for them as a couple, but narratively that’s naive of me, since it wouldn’t make for a juicy reveal. As much as I’d love to have seen Ji-sook confess and Min-woo accept her, it’s much more dramatic for him to find out about her true identity through someone else. Hopefully, the fact that she already told him that she wanted to tell him some hard truths will count in her favor, and he’ll understand that she was going to tell him the truth. Min-woo isn’t an unreasonable man, nor does he have a hot temper, so I’m crossing all my crossables that he’s willing to listen to her explain.

I’m sure this means we’re heading into the final angsty stretch of the story, and I’m not looking forward to a possible falling out between Min-woo and Ji-sook just when they were finally admitting their true feelings, but I still hope they can at least move through it quickly and head off Mi-yeon and Seok-hoon in whatever they each have planned. It’s in their favor that Seok-hoon and Mi-yeon aren’t working together, and are in fact at odds with each other right at the moment when everyone’s plans are at their most vulnerable. If things go as I hope, Min-woo and Ji-sook will work out their issues, and be able to pull a divide-and-conquer with Seok-hoon and Mi-yeon. It’s hard to guess what may happen though, since I still don’t know what either of our baddies have planned other than “kill Min-woo” and “destroy Ji-sook.”

I said in my previous recap that I was worried what Seok-hoon would do now that he’s lost control of Ji-sook — and to make matters worse, now Mi-yeon has just bucked his control and told him she’s planning to be a loose cannon. He’s gonna go supernova, isn’t he? Well, he will if we’re lucky, because I have a feeling that the uber-controlled Seok-hoon going completely out of control would be a wonder to behold. Unluckily for Min-woo and Ji-sook, the less control Seok-hoon has over the situation, the more unstable and unpredictable he becomes — so while it would be fun to watch as a viewer, it’s bad news for anyone around him who’s trying to, you know, stay alive.

Unfortunately, Mi-yeon’s one-eighty-degree turnabout from potential ally to outright opposing force against Seok-hoon has the opposite effect on me as it did when Ji-sook did the same thing, and I find her much less sympathetic now. I could understand her when she was lonely and love-starved, and would go along with Seok-hoon in the hopes of winning his love. But when she knows the truth about Ji-sook then actively sets out to ruin her life? After her brother asked her not to ruin his happiness? Well, now she’s just a bitch.

I would have thought that discovering that Ji-sook is not her nemesis — not the woman who was planning to steal her husband and in fact not connected to Eun-ha at all — would make Mi-yeon more likely to soften towards her and possibly even help her. So I admit I don’t understand what Mi-yeon has against Ji-sook that she’s going after her with such vehemence when she didn’t even attack her this badly when she thought she WAS Eun-ha. I don’t understand what made her go from the misguided but basically sweet woman who said she wished her brother happiness in his marriage, to this vicious harpy who does what she can to destroy his life. Especially since, when she wished him well, she was wishing him well with the woman she thought was having an affair with her own husband.

My best guess is that she was hoping for him to find happiness with Eun-ha so that Eun-ha would leave Seok-hoon alone. But once she discovered that Eun-ha is dead and it’s really an imposter in her place, all that tamped-down anger and hurt, and sorrow over the “loss” of a baby, came bubbling up to the surface. She’s likely realized that she never had Seok-hoon and probably never will, so she’s got nothing really to lose. And to see Min-woo and Ji-sook falling in love so obviously, you know she’s got to be jealous to death. So the only thing I can think is that she’s doing all this to destroy Ji-sook and Min-woo, simply because she can. Let’s hope that their happy moments are strong enough to pull them through.

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