Oh Hae-young Again: Episode 3

by LollyPip

Though Do-kyung would like to right his wrongs, he doesn’t necessarily want Hae-young hanging around, but it’s difficult to avoid someone who could walk into your home at any moment. Things are awkward enough without having to run into the victim of your biggest mistake on a daily basis, but getting rid of her may not be the best way to handle things. Hae-young isn’t the kind to let others make her decision for her, so Do-kyung will need to find another way to settle this situation.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP: “Love if you want to live”

Do-kyung steps out of the bathroom in only a towel, and is shocked to find Hae-young standing in the middle of his living room. She breathes an impressed Wow!, while he’s trying to process yet another premonition coming true.

He asks how she knows he lives here, but Hae-young quickly says that she didn’t — she just happened to move in next door, and found a hidden doorway that led into his place. Still in his towel, Do-kyung steps through into her tiny living room, and it’s Hae-young’s turn to be embarrassed at the clutter of leftover wedding gifts.

Do-kyung tells her that this used to be a storage room, which explains why such a tiny, simple place is attached to his nice spacious home. Irritated, Do-kyung goes back to his place to get dressed and call his landlord, while Hae-young brazenly takes one more peek, hee.

Later that night, Hae-young overhears Do-kyung loudly complaining about the landlord renting out his storage space without telling him, demanding she be kicked out immediately. It’s not that he objects to her personally, but he only recently learned that he accidentally caused her fiance to cancel their wedding, and he wants to avoid her finding out.

He goes inside to find her in his living room again, and informs Hae-young that they’ll go to the landlord’s office and nullify her lease. Hae-young is mystified, perfectly happy to be neighbors, but Do-kyung says that it would be too uncomfortable.

His blunt tone takes Hae-young aback, but she calls him on his rudeness. Do-kyung would let it go at that, but Hae-young asks if he somehow saw this coming when he asked before if she knew where he lives. She says that she really didn’t — it’s not like she fell for him at first sight, and moved here to be closer to him.

She keeps explaining that really, this is a total coincidence, but Do-kyung isn’t moved. Hae-young shuffles back to her place, huffing and thinking that Do-kyung thinks she’s a stalker, and hears him slide a cabinet in front of the door so she can’t let herself back in.

They go to the landlord the next day, but it looks like Do-kyung won’t be getting his way. The landlord asks if Do-kyung’s been avoiding his calls because he’s afraid he’ll be kicked out, which piques Hae-young’s interest, though Do-kyung doesn’t answer.

He offers to pay rent for the storage space apartment too if that will get Hae-young out, but the landlord starts to rant about his family and says he regrets renting to Do-kyung in the first place. His assistant tells Hae-young that Do-kyung lived in that house when he was a child, until his mother borrowed money from the landlord to produce a movie, which failed.

The landlord lost everything, and he bought their house as an investment, and rents out the top and bottom floors separately (and now, the storage unit, too). Do-kyung rents the second floor, and Hoon and Soo-kyung live downstairs.

The landlord refuses to kick Hae-young out, but he does agree to let them remodel and get rid of the door between their units. Do-kyung stalks home with Hae-young trailing behind, and he rounds on her to ask how much security deposit she paid, offering to pay her back if she’ll move out on her own.

Hae-young asks if he hates having a neighbor that much, or if he just hates her. Do-kyung just offers to pay double her deposit, which is tempting, but Hae-young is hurt and confused and more than a little annoyed. After all, he’s the one who told her to live even if it hurts, but now she wonders why he’s trying so hard to get rid of her.

Do-kyung tries the I’m a man and you’re a woman excuse, but Hae-young just asks if he’s scared they’ll sleep together. The funny part is that she doesn’t claim that will never happen, just that if it did, she certainly isn’t the kind of woman to get all clingy afterward, HA. She tells Do-kyung that if he’s that scared of her, then he can move out.

She starts to stomp off, but stops and stomps right back. She snaps that she told him the truth about her canceled wedding because she thought they’d never see each other again. So if anyone finds out that she’s not the one who ended things, she’ll know that he told. If that happens, he can expect retaliation.

Hae-young’s in a tizzy by the time she gets home, and glares at the door between their apartments as if this is all the door’s fault. She shoves a table in front of it on her side, while on his side, Do-kyung packs up some of his sound recordings and slams out.

Do-kyung goes to his therapist and tells him that he saw Hae-young in his house in a premonition, which then actually happened. He asks if he’s going crazy, but ha, the therapist fell asleep while he was talking.

The therapist rouses and asks about Do-kyung’s sleeping habits, blaming his “delusions” on not getting enough rest. But while he’s talking, Do-kyung sees a vision of the therapist suddenly screaming, and this time he says what he sees out loud before it happens. “In a few seconds, you’ll be surprised.”

And just as he predicted, a few seconds later, the therapist shrieks when he sees a pair of legs drop past his window. It’s just the window washer, thank goodness.

Do-kyung jumps up and leaves, and his therapist follows him, assuring him that all his tests are normal — he’s not crazy. He wants Do-kyung to stay so they can figure out why most of his premonitions revolve around one particular woman, but Do-kyung just keeps going.

Back at work, Do-kyung sets up his sound equipment on the roof of a building to record the noises of a crowd in the street below. He suddenly has a new vision — this time he sees Hae-young wearing a heart-shaped necklace and asking why he’s late in a sad voice, then she turns and walks away.

The real Hae-young is venting to her coworkers about her new cranky neighbor, and how he wants to kick her out. One of them asks if he’s handsome (causing Hae-young to remember those abs, ha) and says that for handsome men, it’s easier to be rude to a girl, since their standards are high. Hae-young huffs that lots of people think she’s pretty, triggering spit-takes from her female coworkers.

Do-kyung’s mom complains to a scriptwriter that the work he’s turned in to her is way too cool, and instructs him to rewrite the script, much nerdier this time. He doesn’t understand why, but she insists that nerdy movies are the thing these days.

She runs into Do-kyung on his way to work, but he’s in no mood and locks her out of his studio, heh. His employees figure she’s looking for money again, which would explain Do-kyung’s avoidance.

Hae-young goes looking for Do-kyung when the workers come to give her an estimate on blocking the door, and calls her friend Hee-ran for his number. His employee answers and takes a message, and Hoon goes pale when he hears the name Oh Hae-young, assuming it was Do-kyung’s ex-fiancee.

Angry, he grabs the phone and calls Hae-young back, but she’s confused when he talks to her as if he knows her. He screams that he and his sister are going to tear her apart if she ever contacts Do-kyung again, shocking Hae-young.

Do-kyung grabs his phone, asking who it was, and he answers when she calls again. He hangs up again when he hears that it’s his neighbor Hae-young, not his ex. Then he calmly tells Hoon that today is his day to die, hee.

Later, he remembers how his Hae-young used to sometimes get mail for a girl with her same name, and how she’d described her as dull, like a person without any color.

Do-kyung is working on some sound recordings when Hae-young arrives home that night, and her clattering and cooking noises disturb his work. He moves the cabinet from his side and comes into her place, looking adorably awkward, like he’s not sure why he’s there.

Hae-young tells him to take care of blocking the door, but he’s here to apologize for the way Hoon spoke to her today. He explains that Hoon mistook her for someone else, and also tells her that he’ll be moving out.

That sets her off again, and she asks if he really thinks she followed him here. He says that he knows she didn’t, and that this is just because of his own issues. Hae-young asks what’s so terrible about him, but Do-kyung just goes back to his side. Both of them stand staring at the door, for different reasons.

Jin-sang loses his cool when he hears that the Oh Hae-young whose life they ruined moved in next to Do-kyung. He jumps to the (wrong) conclusion that she knows everything and is deliberately there to torture Do-kyung, but Do-kyung coolly says it’s not like that, and anyway he’s moving out.

Jin-sang updates Do-kyung on Tae-jin — he’s got his first trial coming up, which will be difficult unless CEO Jang (Mom’s boyfriend) testifies. Soo-kyung staggers in dead drunk again, which is apparently a nightly occurrence, and offends both men by plopping her shoes on the table to take them off.

Hae-young calls her mother to see if she’s even curious how she’s doing. Mama Oh pretends not to care and hangs up, but the fact that she and Dad are actually right outside Hae-young’s apartment checking up on her proves the lie.

Dad rattles the doorknob to make sure the lock is secure, which is such a dad thing to do. He checks the bars on the window similarly, but they’re not so stable, and he ends up yanking them off then falling down the stairs after them, HAHAHAwhoops. Hae-young sees the damage and assumes it was a burglar, totally missing her parents cringing on the stairs not five feet away.

Do-kyung also hears the noise, and he catches Hae-young’s parents trying to sneak off with the broken window bars. Mama Oh explains who they are and that they came to check on Hae-young, while Dad hilariously slinks away and just abandons her there.

Do-kyung takes the bars and says he’ll put them back tomorrow, and Mama Oh watches him go, an appraising look on her face.

The next day, Hae-young gets a reservation reminder for lunch plans she and Tae-jin had made at a very exclusive restaurant, so she calls Hee-ran. But Hee-ran has to work, and can’t join her.

Tae-jin’s lawyer tells him that Jin-sang, Do-kyung’s lawyer, is friends with one of the lawyers in his firm, and that Jin-sang told his friend how bad he feels about Tae-jin’s case. He’d drunkenly slurred that this whole thing was a misunderstanding surrounding Hae-young, but that’s all they know. Tae-jin doesn’t know anything either, but he asks his lawyer to look into Do-kyung.

Do-kyung is surprised when he sees Hae-young leaving her house wearing the heart-shaped necklace from his latest vision. She’s dolled up to go to her reservations alone, and she remembers the day she and Tae-jin made the plans. They’d talked about how they’d be married by then, and Tae-jin had angled for some shirt-optional cuddles in bed… aww, they were so cute.

Now Hae-young can hardly choke down her food, as she sits alone with her memories.

Do-kyung is having a pretty cranky day himself, as he tries to teach a reluctant Hoon about sound directing. He closes his eyes and sighs when Hoon lets a whole scene go by without any sound cues, and growls at his brother, “Insert the sound of sunlight coming in.” Ha, poor Hoon.

After her lonely meal, Hae-young meets her old classmates for drinks, and she puts on her happy, confident persona for them again. She makes a big deal over her luxury outfit and accessories, joking that the best way to get extravagant gifts is to set a wedding date.

She claims that she got dressed up for a blind date, but that they guy wasn’t that impressive. The classmate who kept hitting on her last time is still up to his tricks, joking that he and Hae-young are meant to be, and reminds her of her embarrassing run for class president.

He’d been the one to nominate her, and since the other Oh Hae-young was also nominated, they’d been written on the board as “Pretty Oh Hae-young” and “Just Oh Hae-young.” The other Hae-young had won by a landslide, with our Hae-young only getting one vote. Now the guy who nominated her reveals that he was the one to vote for her. Hee, he’s awfully cute.

While Hae-young and her friends go dancing, her parents sit at home, Dad keeping vigil while Mama Oh sobs her heart out. She wants to go bring Hae-young home, sobbing that she can’t live without her daughter. Awww, Mom.

Do-kyung is still at work, and he has his vision again, of Hae-young dejectedly asks why he came home so late. “I thought I was going to die, waiting for you.” His vision extends as he watches her walk away and a shadowy figure follows her, unaware that Hae-young has locked herself out of the house and it right now walking down that very street.

The vision is disturbing enough that Do-kyung gets up and runs out, sensing something is truly wrong. He rushes home and arrives in time to see Hae-young walking with a dark-clad man following right on her heels. He calls out right before the man reaches her, which scares the man away, and Hae-young whirls around.

In a perfect recreation of his premonition, Hae-young looks at Do-kyung with a disappointed expression, and asks, “Why did you come home so late? I thought I was going to die, waiting for you.”

Do-kyung takes Hae-young to his place, and she huffs when she sees the cabinet in front of the door between their units. She asks if they’ve switched gender roles, ha, but he just moves the cabinet so Hae-young can get into her place. After she’s inside, he wordlessly puts the cabinet back in place.

But he can’t help hearing Hae-young struggle with her broken heater later that night, and he brings her to his place and makes her some hot tea. Hae-young wryly tells Do-kyung the story of the class president election, and how she knows the classmate who nominated her was messing with her — the one vote she got was her own.

She tells Do-kyung what he already knows, that there were two Hae-youngs at her school, and that she always felt inferior. But she always wonders, if she had the chance to be the other Hae-young, would she take it? Now she knows that she wouldn’t, she just wants to be a better version of herself.

She starts to cry, just a little, as she says, “I didn’t want to become her. I still love myself the way I am. I only want myself to do well.” Hae-young laughs at her own tears, and wonders how the other Hae-young is doing these days.

She tells Do-kyung that she’ll move out, since she knows that this is his childhood home. Do-kyung softly says that he’ll be the one to go, but Hae-young quips that that will make her feel almost like she got dumped.

But she admits that she feels like everyone is pushing her out of their lives, and that she’s tired. She wishes that just one person would tell her that it’s no big deal to be dumped the day before her wedding, looking at Do-kyung with pleading eyes.

Hae-young mistakes his silence for disinterest and calls him cold, but he says in a rough voice, “How could it be no big deal? It feels like the whole world sentenced you to death. It feels like getting kicked out of the universe. I… got dumped on the day of my wedding.”

Hae-young’s head whips around, seeing Do-kyung in a completely new light, and he shakes it off and goes to his recording equipment. He tells her to take a break and get back up, as he plays her the sound of a soothing rainfall while she cries to herself.

The next day, Hae-young bikes out to the river with an album of her and Tae-jin’s wedding photos. She looks through the album one last time, and in voice-over she says that it’s comforting to know that there’s someone else who understands her pain. She heaves the photo album into the river, finally letting go for real, and smiles as she bikes away.

I was only knocked down for a little bit… When I think about it, I’ve never given myself one hundred percent to love. I was always cautious and nervous. I worried if I liked the person more. Let’s not do that anymore. If I meet someone I like, I will love him all the way until I get dumped. I’ll never turn around crying because I was told to get lost. I’ll hold onto the man and not let go, even if I get beaten up. I’ll give it everything. Shouldn’t you fall in love once in your lifetime?

She runs into Do-kyung as he’s leaving the house, and tells him that she’s looking for places to move to today. If he’ll give her the security deposit as he offered, she’ll make it look like she’s still living here, so the landlord won’t rent it out to anyone else.

Do-kyung doesn’t say anything, but he watches as she notices that the safety bars are back on her window.

Do-kyung screens the movie he’s been working on for the production team, who’re thrilled with the final result. He rewards his team by paying for a night of drinks, but Hoon leaves to meet An-na for a date. He sneaks her into the studio to show her what he does, and even shows her how he put the sound of sunlight into a scene.

We see that Do-kyung had instructed Hoon in adding the sound of children playing, which gave the sunny scene a feeling of a bright clear day. The sound of cars passing changed the feel of the scene, and Hoon seems to suddenly understand something as he explains it to An-na.

Do-kyung listens in as Hae-young orders delivery and the delivery guy asks if she’s single. He watches the dude go down to this scooter and check his appearance in the mirror, then call his boss that he’s going home early, as he heads back up to Hae-young’s place.

He can hear Hae-young let the guy back in, thinking he’s bringing her change, and he literally flings himself through the door and into her apartment. Okay that was hilarious, rewind! He sits down at the table and starts to eat like he’s supposed to be there, glaring at the delivery guy like Why are you still here?

Once they’re alone, Hae-young smirks at Do-kyung and compliments his acting skills, and he jumps up to leave. She invites him to finish the jjajangmyun he started, but he goes back to his place.

He comes right back with some his shoes to put in front of her door, which is so sweet it makes my heart hurt. He goes back through the door, but before he does, he tells Hae-young gruffly, “Just live here. I’ll live here, too.” Yay!!

Hae-young watches him push the cabinet back in front of the door, gaping like a fish. She mutters to herself that he’s impressing her without her permission, ha.

Soo-kyung isn’t speaking French after all, or any other actual language, and Do-kyung laughs as Jin-sang yammers back at her in nonsense. He thinks about what his therapist said – not to fight his visions of Hae-young, and to think about why she might be showing up in his premonitions so often.

Right on cue, Do-kyung sees a new vision of Hae-young, but this one gives him chills. She’s saying that Pretty Oh Hae-young is back, and he sobers at the thought.

On a sunny day, Hae-young and Hee-ran drive past a marathon in progress, laughing when they spot a girl with “Oh Hae-young” on her name tag. It’s a common name, and Hae-young finds it funny, until she sees yet another “Oh Hae-young.”

She leans out to shout a “fighting!” to the girl, but everything slows down when she sees the woman’s face — it’s Pretty Hae-young. Memories of high school insecurity flood our Hae-young’s mind, as she stares at the familiar face.

COMMENTS

I’ll admit that I was wondering when Pretty Hae-young was going to show up (ugh I hate that nickname, but since the show is calling her that, I’ll do so as well to avoid confusion). I hadn’t complained because I’m loving the show as it is, but now that Do-kyung and our Hae-young have come to a sort of agreement, the timing is perfect for Pretty Hae-young to show up and create some waves. And seeing how hurt both Do-kyung and Hae-young still are about their failed relationships, I predict those waves will be tsumani-sized, at least.

But more importantly, hooray for semi-cohabitation hijinks! I think it’s fun that Do-kyung and Hae-young have found themselves reluctant neighbors, and Do-kyung’s grumpy irritation is especially fun to watch. It’s very in line with his character that he’s not angry at Hae-young, and doesn’t take his frustration out on her like so many drama heroes might (For example, it was so nice to see him politely let himself into her place the first time, then be so respectful and apologize to her). He’s just nervous that she’ll find out what he did to her and Tae-jin before he has a chance to make some things right. I get the feeling that what Hae-young thinks of him is more important to Do-kyung than even he knows — he seems almost mesmerized by her at times. I don’t think he likes her romantically, not yet, but I do think he finds something about her to be magnetic and interesting, not least of which the way she keeps showing up in his visions.

I really like Do-kyung as a character — he’s a unique kind of guy in Dramaland. He’s not loud or overbearing, or mean and rude, and when he realizes that he made a terribly, unfortunate mistake, his first instinct is to try to fix it. He’s not perfect, and in a moment of weakness and peer pressure he made a terrible, terrible decision, but in his defense, he really didn’t think things would go so far. I think his goal wasn’t even necessarily to break up Tae-jin and his fiancee (who he thought was his Hae-young), just to mess with him and give him a hard time financially. Even if Tae-jin has been marrying Do-kyung’s ex-fiancee, I don’t think Do-kyung ever meant for him to go to jail — in fact, when he heard the news, he was shocked. So of course, what Do-kyung did was awful and unforgivable, but I truly don’t believe his intention was to send Tae-jin to jail and ruin his entire life.

Because otherwise, Do-kyung is really a very gentle soul, he hardly even raises his voice. It makes him an interesting contrast to Hae-young, who is brash and bold, outspoken and opinionated, and not afraid to call it like it is. I just love Hae-young, and I want to be her when I grow up. I adore her refusal to let life get the better of her, even when she’s got everything stacked against her, and it’s so awesome how she tries to spin everything to a more positive light. Like how she told her old classmates that she didn’t get married because there are just too many men to appreciate in the world — yeah, a lot of that was bravado, but it proves that Hae-young has a core of strength and uses it to bolster herself, instead of letting bad luck get to her. She’s obviously worked hard to find her strength and sass, because the other Hae-young remembers her being dull and boring, so it’s even that much more impressive that she worked so hard to become this awesome.

I love her sassy mouth too — she says exactly what she’s thinking, things that most people wouldn’t say out loud, and screw anyone who doesn’t like it. She’s not hateful (though she can go a bit too far when she’s insulting her boss, which is definitely a downside to being outspoken), but she lets her feelings known, which makes her a perfect foil for Do-kyung and his tendency to say exactly nothing of what he’s thinking. Hae-young is the one who lets herself be vulnerable, and she somehow always finds herself telling Do-kyung the one thing she’s never told anyone else. I don’t think either of them realizes it yet, or why, but it’s telling that she feels safe enough around him to trust him with her secrets. I admire Hae-young’s spirit, and it makes me eager to see where her mouthy tendencies take her and Do-kyung as they get to know each other better.

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