Oh My Venus: Episode 9

by LollyPip

There’s apparently a lot more to starting a relationship than just the two people in the couple, with other people needing to be taken into consideration. Add in too-involved exes, serious health concerns, and a multi-billion-won family conglomerate, and things can get messy pretty fast. The question is, is it smarter to hide and make it easier on others, or to follow your heart and announce your love to the world?

EPISODE 9 RECAP

Young-ho sits uncomfortably in his father’s office, where Dad says that he heard that he’s made a full recovery from his cancer. Dad congratulates him that Young-ho will soon have his job — the position that his mother used to hold. Dad says that Young-ho can’t afford to have any faults if he takes on this job, as many people will be watching him closely, and Young-ho sighs that he knows.

Dad signs the official paperwork, adding that now he can face Young-ho’s mother in the afterlife. This makes Young-ho look at his father for the first time, seeming on the verge of tears.

Manager Min drives Young-ho home, noticing that he doesn’t look well, but Young-ho waves off his worry. He goes inside to an empty house, gasping for air, and suddenly his bum knee goes out from under him. He manages to limp to his treatment room, sweating and barely able to stay upright.

When Joo-eun arrives home and decides to share the year’s first snowfall with Young-ho, she finds his bedroom empty. She calls him and follows the sound of his ringing phone to the hidden treatment room, shocked to see Young-ho sitting on the floor barely conscious, with his pants leg cut open to expose his knee.

He gasps for her not to come any closer, but she instinctively crouches down beside him anyway. She pulls out her phone to call for help and he stops her. Joo-eun starts to cry, unsure how to help him. Young-ho just tells her to go — this isn’t something anyone can help him with.

Joo-eun refuses to leave, begging Young-ho to go to the hospital, but he’s so weak he can barely move. He can only breathe out a simple, “Please,” and he tries unsuccessfully to move, which almost seems to hurt Joo-eun as much as it hurts him.

She finally leaves the room, remembering how he told her that he was very sick when he was young. Inside his treatment room, Young-ho still sprawls on the floor, but he manages to take some medicine and give himself an injection. Joo-eun cries on the other side of the doorway, just listening to Young-ho struggle alone and crying out in pain.

Joon-sung watches his birth mother again that night (and yes, she is also Hyun-woo’s mother-in-law), and when he sees her struggling to carry a heavy package, he offers to carry it for her. He pretends not to see the bruises on her face, though his smile fades when she’s not looking at him.

Eventually Young-ho emerges from the treatment room to see Joo-eun still waiting outside the door. She asks if he’s okay, and he sighs that it’s unsexy to have been caught out like this, which just starts Joo-eun sobbing again. Young-ho folds her into a hug, asking why he’s the one hurting but she’s the one crying. Joo-eun wails that he scared her, weakly hitting him but not breaking the hug.

Grandma sits Stepmom down, and tells her unceremoniously that it’s time for her and Young-ho’s father to leave her house. Now that Young-ho is to be the director of Gahong, it’s time for them to sever their relationship. Shocked, Stepmom stammers that she doesn’t want anything from Grandma, but Grandma is determined not to have Young-ho living as an outsider from his own family anymore.

Young-ho sits in bed and lets Joo-eun see his scarred knee, which is still twitching from the pain and trauma. She deduces that he didn’t go to see Anna Sue recently like he said, but instead went to the doctor in Daegu. She thinks it was probably a lonely and painful time, since that’s what he’s used to.

Joo-eun asks him for more details, fussing when he balks that they can kiss but not be honest with each other. Young-ho tells her that it was cancer, caught when he was a child, and that the scars are from the many surgeries it required. But he says that he’s made a complete recovery, so Joo-eun wonders why he’s still in so much pain.

Young-ho tells her that it’s psychological, that his body remembers all the years of pain. Knowing that he’s been suffering like this even since meeting her, Joo-eun cries again that she never noticed, and even talked bad about him behind his back. Young-ho gently chides her for judging people just based on looks.

Young-ho sighs again when Joo-eun gets teary, and she retorts that it’s hard to see the person you cherish in pain, because she can’t take on his pain herself. Of course, Young-ho latches onto the “cherish” part, and she’s all You didn’t know?! I cherish you! A lot, dammit! He just sweetly pulls her over to sit beside him.

Joo-eun complains that there’s no medication Young-ho can take for this, whining that her hypothyroidism is nothing in comparison to what he’s going through. Young-ho says that he’s spent most of his life in hospitals, which made him realize that there are a lot of people in pain in this world. Everyone is in pain at least a little bit, and everyone lives while carrying their burdens.

As he speaks, we see a series of tiny scenes: Soo-in kneeling in supplication to her client’s victim; Joon-sung with a punching bag, clutching his shoulder in pain; Min-joon’s grandmother tucking her sleeping grandchild into bed while still sporting her bruises; Stepmom looking at pictures of her son Young-joon; Young-ho’s father getting treatment in a hospital. Even Joo-eun’s mother, smiling wistfully at a picture of her deceased husband.

Now lying in bed under the covers, facing each other, Young-ho tells Joo-eun that he said he was cured, not that he didn’t feel pain anymore. It wasn’t a lie, which she hates so much, so he entreats her not to run away. He caresses her face, teasing that she’s not quite pretty yet, and Joo-eun sniffs that she’s never been prettier. Young-ho answers that she’ll be prettier and sexier the healthier she gets, and warns her never to get sick.

Young-ho starts to fade, but whispers that he’d like Joo-eun to stay. He leans in and cuddles his face into her chest, and she wraps her arms around him comfortingly.

In the morning, Young-ho walks in on a hula-hooping session and gets roped into participating. Ha, he’s terrible — the thing goes around once, falls, and he bails. Young-ho and Joo-eun eat breakfast alone, and Joo-eun says that she went back to her room about 4 am, so as not to get caught by the boys. Young-ho cheekily points out that even if she left early, they still technically slept together.

Joo-eun confuses Young-ho by opening his yogurt and calling him an oppa, but she just winks that that’s what you do when you’re dating. She offers to be his coach in dating, and leans in close to his face, like he always does to her, to say that she has a lot to teach him. He challenges her by putting his face even closer, and she nearly bites him before shaking it off.

She tells Young-ho that she’s leaving soon to move to her own place, and I love that his first question is whether it’s somewhere that he could visit often. But she mentions that people will be watching him once he starts his new job at Gahong, and they discuss her presence on his legal team. Joo-eun proposes they at least tell Ji-woong and Joon-sung about their relationship some time soon, though they’ll tell everyone else that he’s just her exercise coach.

Their exercise sessions lately look more like flirting, with surprise kisses and silly play, using the excuse to get physically close to each other. It gets especially difficult to hide their feelings around Ji-woong, who seems to always walk in just as things are about to get steamy.

Yi-jin makes an unannounced visit to the house to see Joon-sung, who cringes in horror but goes out to see her. She insists on talking in her van, in case anyone sees her, and tells him to speak in banmal. She tries to force a level of familiarity that makes Joon-sung uncomfortable, as she pushes for him to at least have dinner with her.

Soo-jin sees her doctor, who basically rolls right past her obvious depression and tells her to get a hobby. How about getting a new doctor, instead? As she leaves she gets a text from Woo-shik, but she doesn’t respond, though she nearly immediately sees him in the street waiting for her.

Sitting in his car, he gives Soo-jin a box of chocolates, the same chocolate he got for her when she passed the bar exam. He says it’s an apology, understanding that she’s still upset that he beat up Joo-eun’s stalker. But Soo-jin sighs that that’s why she likes him — he and Joo-eun were together for fifteen years, and he didn’t stop caring for her just because they broke up.

She tells Woo-shik that Joo-eun appears to be dating someone, and Woo-shik already knows who it is. He gets quiet for a moment, then asks if Soo-jin wants to do something, but she’s tired and declines. He says again that he’s sorry, but she just replies that women don’t want to hear men say that word.

She gets out of the car and walks away, and Woo-shik takes a wrapped gift out of the glove compartment. It’s a tie with a diamond tie clip, and he remembers Joo-eun giving a tie to him on his first day at his new job. She’d said that she would give him a tie when she proposed to him, and this is the gift she had for him on the day they broke up. Oooh… she was going to propose that night.

Back at Young-ho’s house the next morning, Joo-eun tells her boys to free their schedules tonight, because they’re going camping. Young-ho says that she hasn’t lost the five kilos she promised, but Joo-eun argues that she’s lost fat and gained muscle, so it counts. Young-ho doesn’t give in, insisting on seeing her measurements.

Joo-eun pouts that she’s moving out tomorrow and she just wants to go freaking camping, okay?? Young-ho makes a big show of being beat down, but he gives Joo-eun a cute little wink and says fine, they’ll go camping.

He takes her for coffee, and Young-ho must be made of steel to be able to resist Joo-eun’s dimples and adorable “oppa,” as she wheedles for something sweeter than plain coffee. Ha, they’re outside the shop where he first kissed her, and he teases her to put her pouty lips back in her face before he misinterprets what she wants.

Young-ho still isn’t keen on Joo-eun moving out, and even offers to let her stay at his place. She rolls her eyes at his offer to “let” her pay rent, and says that she’s already having to hide because of his John Kim identity. It will get even worse when he’s Gahong’s new director.

Joo-eun’s phone rings, and she and Young-ho both gape to see Woo-shik walk into the coffee shop, calling her. When he asks to talk to her privately, Young-ho leans in to ask if she’ll represent him if he beats this guy up, ha. But he pleasantly allows her space, joking for her not to think of any other guys but him.

Woo-shik notes that Joo-eun looks good, but then ruins it by implying that she’s trying to lose weight because of him and Soo-jin. Joo-eun fires back that she’s not trying to lose weight, she has lost weight — but she does admit that the two of them originally motivated her. Though she makes it clear that she wasn’t ONLY doing it for that reason, but also for herself. She says that working out helped her not think about the upset in her personal life, though it hasn’t been easy.

Without a word, Woo-shik places the gift with the tie inside on the table, and Joo-eun just asks if he couldn’t find a trash can. He says that it was a meaningful gift, and that he thought she should be the one to dispose of it. She easily agrees, and Woo-shik looks saddened that she’s not reacting to this the way he expected. What, you thought she’d fall weeping at your feet? You clearly don’t know her.

Woo-shik tells Joo-eun that her mom still texts him sometimes, and sighs that for fifteen years, it wasn’t just them — it was also her mom and Jae-hyuk, and all their mutual friends. He didn’t know that breaking up would involve so many people. He doesn’t regret breaking up, but now she’s happy with another guy and that makes him jealous.

He knows he’s having mixed emotions and that this isn’t rational, but he also can’t ignore his feelings. Joo-eun sighs, but she knows him pretty well, and she knows what he’s trying to say. Plus, this is the first time either of them has ever broken up with anyone, being each other’s first loves, so it makes sense that they didn’t know how to go about it correctly.

Soo-jin happens to be at the same coffee shop (aren’t there any other coffee shops in Seoul??) and sees Woo-shik and Joo-eun talking companionably. The gift still sitting in front of Joo-eun gives the wrong impression, and Soo-jin assumes that it’s happening again — Joo-eun taking the guy she likes.

At work, Joo-eun massages her sore shoulder, and her fantasy-Young-ho shows up again — this time sitting in her lap. HA. He corrects her posture and begs for a kiss, but just before Joo-eun can give him one, Soo-jin shows up. She compains about Joo-eun’s work priorities and her messy desk, and leaves in a huff.

Soo-jin ignores Woo-shik’s call yet again, but he gets a call from PD Go (Hyun-woo’s ex-husband), who has hard evidence that John Kim’s house in the States is owned by the Lee family. He asks if he should release the information, but we don’t hear Woo-shik’s answer.

Uncle is incensed when he hears that Grandma is kicking Young-ho’s father and his family out of the house, and blames Dad for the whole thing. Stepmom defends her husband, saying that she didn’t come her to get scolded. Uncle tells her to hang in there, ominously adding that when Grandma loses her position, things will change.

Meanwhile Young-ho studies up on the company, preparing for his new job, and Manager Min calls to warn him to be careful of his personal life as well. We see that Min is waiting outside a club, and observes Uncle coming out with a group opf men he’s been schmoozing.

Joo-eun finishes up her work and calls Hyun-woo, and the two meet up at the camping site and start setting up tents. Hyun-woo complains that the men should be doing this, but she can’t argue that she owes them a favor for helping at Min-joon’s school.

Hyun-woo finally gets to meet Joo-eun’s boys, and she hilariously identifies them by the descriptions Joo-eun gave her (“Oh, you’re the sexy guy! You’re the muscle guy!” HAHA). It’s so cute how Ji-woong calls Hyun-woo “Second Ma’am,” and she actually seems to enjoy his attack hugs.

Young-ho pulls Joo-eun aside, confused why Hyun-woo is here, but she just asks him to go with it. She also asks him not to betray their relationship, which seems to mildly offend Young-ho.

Hyun-woo and Joo-eun lead a campfire song, while all three guys stare at them in confusion. Poor babies, they’ve never done this before. But soon everyone is joining in gamely, and having fun together dancing around the campfire.

Next Hyun-woo has everyone light candles and close their eyes, and they all have to make a confession. Hyun-woo confesses that she once took advantage of her ex’s busy schedule to ask for child support twice in one month. That’s awesome. Young-ho reluctantly goes next, and his confession is that he and Joo-eun are dating. HAHA, pretty much everyone freaks out, and Joo-eun solemnly admits that it’s true. I love how Ji-woong and Joon-sung look at each other like soooo many things make sense now.

Heading back to the villa in the car (what happened to camping?), Young-ho angles for some sexyfuntimes on Joo-eun’s last night in the house. While she acts prim, I notice that Joo-eun doesn’t actually say no. But their good mood is sqquashed when they find Manager Min and his minions waiting for Young-ho, who gets out of the car to see what they want.

It seems that Director Choi has gotten wind that Young-ho may be John Kim, and Min tells Young-ho that this is no time to be focusing on his private life, with a pointed look towards Joo-eun. She jumps out of the car and heads inside, but Young-ho goes back and pulls her to Manager Min.

He officially introduces Min to Joo-eun, and tells a slack-jawed Min that this woman is his private life. He puts his arm around her, pulls her close, and tells Min that this is Kang Joo-eun, the woman he’s dating.

COMMENTS

How much do we love Young-ho right now? Soooo much. He’s spent so much time being afraid of what his family might think of him, and now he finally seems done with that. I love that he’s more concerned with showing Joo-eun that he’s serious, he cares about her, and he’s not going to hide her just for the sake of the company. And it occurred to me, but I don’t get the impression that he’s intending to use her to get out of his family obligations… he’s just not going to let the company tell him how to live and who to date. Young-ho is a good man.

I just adore how we learn a bit more about our characters in each episode, and how each revelation connects so many dots. Young-ho’s one little comment to Joo-eun about judging people based on their looks says so much about him as a person. He knows that you can look wonderful on the outside but still be sick and in pain on the inside, but it also works the other way around. It explains a lot about him, like why he so quickly looked past Joo-eun’s outward appearance to the woman inside. Just as you can look good but be sick, you can also look unhealthy yet be a wonderful person on the inside. How wonderful that Young-ho’s lifelong illness hasn’t caused him to be all gung-ho about health to the extent that he sees anyone who doesn’t look healthy as inferior, but precisely the opposite — he knows that what you see is not all there is to a person.

I definitely notice that Young-ho’s pain seems to be intricately tangled up with his emotions — specifically, his interactions with his family seem to trigger the pain, and the more upsetting the family interaction the more pain he feels. Every time he has an emotional moment with his father or grandmother, he ends up clutching his knee and sleeping in his treatment room. It’s interesting that, when he fought with Joo-eun about hiding his true identity from her, he also felt twinges of pain. I certainly hope that’s something that he can overcome, because his last episode looked like a doozy. To spend hours self-medicating and groaning in pain just because you had a tense moment with your father seems like a terrible way to live. Hopefully his announcement that he’s dating Joo-eun will be the first step for him, as he takes back his life and starts living for what he wants, and I hope that it helps his pain, also.

I’m suddenly a lot more interested to see where the family stuff leads, now that we’ve had a few clues about something going on with Dad. Rather than angry, Young-ho’s father seemed almost relieved to hand over the company, even mentioning seeing Young-ho’s mother in the afterlife, and then was suddenly in the hospital. Could it be that what we’ve been interpreting as anger that his son was taking his job, was actually fear because Dad is ill? How ironic, to isolate his son his whole life for being sick, then to find himself facing his own mortality just as his son finally wins his lifelong battle with cancer. Maybe I’m morbid, but this possible turn of events makes the whole family business side plot a bit more compelling, since it involves personal matters now and not just company machinations.

I can’t say enough, how great I think Joo-eun is. She’s not only strong and smart and spunky, but she’s also honest. I expected her to bristle and bark when Woo-shik asked if she lost weight because he’s dating Soo-jin, but Joo-eun only honestly admitted the truth, that they did start this whole health kick. It’s not easy to concede a point to someone else, much less when they’ve hurt you so badly. But Joo-eun not only does it, she does it with dignity and no show of shame. The truth isn’t shameful, it’s just the truth. And she’s honest in that same way with Young-ho, admitting how much she likes him without any hint of coyness or embarrassment. I also love her way of understanding people, such as when she let Woo-shik off the hook for their bad breakup, since this was really the first time for both of them. And I think that’s what appeals to Young-ho so much about Joo-eun — that straightforward, no-nonsense, what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude she has. Coming from a family like his, where everyone hides and lies and sneaks around, her brand of open honesty is like a breath of fresh air. No wonder he’s so twitterpated.

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