Lucky Romance: Episode 6

by girlfriday

Turns out, the more obsessed our hero becomes with solving a riddle, the weirder he gets, and the funnier the drama becomes. Everything is still life and death as far as our heroine is concerned, but I like that she’s also become the one puzzle our genius can’t solve, and that means he has to start stepping outside his comfortable world of facts and figures to try and understand her. At least he’s trying, even though it really seems like they’re from two different planets.

Episode Grade: B+

 
EPISODE 6 RECAP

After confronting Bo-nui for trying to sleep with him because he’s a tiger sign, Su-ho looks stricken when she doesn’t contradict him. Though Gary pulls her away, Bo-nui runs back to Su-ho, wanting to explain herself and give him the full story. But when he sees her approaching, Su-ho starts up the car and drives right past her without looking back.

Bo-nui stays up for a while starting and stopping a few text messages to Su-ho, but ends up not sending anything. Su-ho sits up staring at Bo-nui’s contact information on his phone, but he doesn’t send anything either.

He trudges off to bed glumly, but then when his phone chimes, he leaps to the couch and scrambles for it madly. But it’s just spam, and he ends up even more deflated and flails in frustration.

The next morning, Bo-nui stands outside the Zeze building and carefully explains her situation, and that she’d do anything if it meant saving her sister. She swears that she never once thought of Su-ho lightly or saw him as a sacrificial offering, and then the camera pulls back and we see that she’s standing there alone, doing a practice apology.

She’s sure that he’ll never forgive her, but she tells herself that Su-ho will at least listen, even if he won’t understand her. She doesn’t look very eager to go inside though, and lingers outside a little longer.

Gary comes home from a run to find his agent Amy sitting on his front stoop, since he’s stopped answering her calls lately. She brings up the If game and prods him to accept, but Gary says he doesn’t like Zeze or the CEO, and Amy gets upset thinking that Su-ho bypassed her and approached Gary directly.

As if on cue, Gary’s doorbell rings and Su-ho is standing there. He starts to ask Gary about Bo-nui and last night, but then he sees Amy inside and clams up. Gary is surprised when Amy greets Su-ho familiarly in banmal, and suggests relocating if they’re going to talk business.

Amy sits there glancing back and forth between the two boys, trying to figure out whether they’ve met before and why things are so hostile between them. Gary refuses to do the game and says he needs to work with people he likes, and he doesn’t like the way Su-ho treats people.

Amy insists that she was in the middle of convincing Gary to do the game, but Su-ho won’t even meet her eyes and just asks her for an answer either way so that they can proceed with the game development.

The whole staff groans when Su-ho walks into the office and asks for a second version of their game without Gary, just in case he says no. Su-ho returns to his desk to find it littered with books on talismans and superstitions, and he tosses them all on the floor in frustration.

Bo-nui sneaks into a meeting room to take a call, and addresses the other person as “Red Fishnet Cha Cha.” Well that’s a red flag right there. She tells him that she won’t give him any information until he shows her an ID card, and asks him to stop sending her dirty photos. Red flag number two.

She walks out of the meeting room and jumps when she sees Su-ho standing right outside, having overheard the phone call. What’s worse is that she drops her phone, and while picking it up he sees the porny pictures that Red Fishnet sent her.

Bo-nui is beyond mortified and scrambles to explain herself, but Su-ho cuts her off and says that that’s her private life, and that as long as he’s no longer a contender for sacrificial tiger offering, it doesn’t concern him at all. It doesn’t sound very believable, the way he says it rapidly and robotically.

But then Su-ho adds that Bo-nui should stop trying to recruit Gary for their game, and all he offers by way of explanation is that she’s already very busy. Aw, do you not want her spending time with Gary?

Su-ho runs through his launch speech for the If game, but can’t even deliver the first line about living life only once without glancing at Bo-nui and face-planting into his couch in defeat.

And then when Bo-nui leaves work that night to go meet someone, Su-ho follows her out like a stalker. He hides behind a pillar when she looks back, and has this hilarious self-pep-talk: “Why are you hiding? You could just look at her confidently. Je Su-ho, why would you hide? Just look at her confidently! Confidently. Go out… and look… confidently… Je Su-ho, what are you doing? Go back!”

He goes back and forth but can’t bring himself to leave, and then he spots a street vendor selling masks and sun visors. Pffft, this is going to a good place.

Bo-nui sits down at a café to meet her date, and for some crazy reason doesn’t notice Su-ho walking through the door wearing a giant visor and pink mask over his face. He couldn’t be more conspicuous if he tried.

He convinces himself that he’s just going to stay for ten minutes, just to see who the heck Red Fishnet is. But the person who comes to meet her turns out to be Gary, and Bo-nui is there to ask him about their game. Su-ho leaves once he figures out what’s going on.

Gary asks if Su-ho put her up to this, but Bo-nui says it felt like fate because she made the game thinking of her sister Bo-ra. She thought about what kind of life Bo-ra would like to lead and places she’d like to go, and Bo-nui wanted to create a game that allowed a sick person or an average person to experience the life of someone great, just for a little while.

She says it felt like fate that Gary happened to come back and become the model for the game, and Bo-nui wonders if maybe Bo-ra will come back like he did, and then her happy days would return too. Gary asks if she’d be fired if he said no, and Bo-nui assures him that her job isn’t on the line.

Amy panics when Su-ho calls and asks to meet, and she says she’s meeting with Gary right now to try and talk him into doing the game. But when she arrives at Zeze, Gary is standing next to Su-ho. Whoops.

Gary’s already agreed to do If, and Amy is surprised to see next-door noona Bo-nui there. The rest of the Zeze staff is agape when Gary calls her noona and stops to ask her in banmal if she’s not coming to the meeting. It’s not until Su-ho asks Bo-nui to join them that she follows them in.

Gary watches the presentation and agrees to do the game, but adds that he’d like to make it known that he’s only saying yes because of Bo-nui. Su-ho acknowledges it readily (with a little smile, even!) and Bo-nui peers over at him with a look of shock.

Afterwards Bo-nui thanks Gary, and he tells her to make a big deal of it in front of her boss and stand proudly from now on. Amy thanks her too and stretches out a hand, at which Bo-nui takes out her magic salts and starts sprinkling Amy, so that she won’t catch any of Bo-nui’s bad juju.

Amy obviously thinks that Bo-nui is a crazy person, but Gary defends her to the end. When they’re alone, Amy asks him what’s really going on between him and Bo-nui, but all he offers is that they have happy memories between them. He in turn asks what Amy’s relationship with Su-ho is, and remembers her mentioning a guy she left without saying goodbye to.

She confirms that Su-ho is that guy, and explains that from a young age, Su-ho was always used by other people left and right. Su-ho is under the impression that she did the same to him, which Amy denies. But then she thinks about it and admits that she was no different—she used him too. She thanks Gary for giving her another opportunity to reconnect with Su-ho.

Su-ho’s mom looks like a giddy schoolgirl as she looks up the chicken ajusshi’s shop online, and hides her phone guiltily when Dad asks what she’s doing. He asks if Su-ho mentioned someone leaving something for him, clearly hoping to get credit for leaving that carp juice the other day.

Mom ends up going to the chicken shop to spy on Chicken Oppa longingly from outside the window, and runs into Bo-nui again. The Zeze team is having dinner there, though she tells Mom that Su-ho won’t be here (assuming Mom came to see Su-ho), and Mom quickly makes up an excuse and leaves.

The Zeze team is in the middle of doing their best Su-ho impression when he shocks them all by showing up for dinner, for the first time ever. He sits awkwardly next to Bo-nui and the air is tense, until he announces that they should all take tomorrow off since it’s Saturday. They cheer and start chanting his name, and Su-ho gulps down water while the rest of them chug beer.

After drinks, the rest of the team stumbles home and Su-ho quite obviously loiters outside until Bo-nui comes out. They don’t say anything, but end up walking together.

Bo-nui finally says that she’s been wanting to tell him something all day, but Su-ho wants to go first and tells her to come to work tomorrow. She reminds him that he gave them all the day off, but he says they still have twenty-one hours and thirty minutes left on their contract.

She says they can call it even and that he doesn’t need to fill the remaining hours. No! That’s not the answer he wants to hear right now! Su-ho insists on upholding his end of the contract (hee), but Bo-nui insists on letting him off the hook.

Su-ho takes another tack and says that she owes him a debt, so from now on he’ll decide when and how those remaining hours will be spent. She asks if maybe they could do this after the launch since she’s busy, but he tells her to come to work tomorrow and practically runs away from her.

Bo-nui gazes at her sister from her rooftop and sighs that she’s running out of time to find a tiger. She goes to meet Su-ho that afternoon per his request, and is surprised when he takes her to a fortuneteller.

Bo-nui is very engaged and nods along with the fortuneteller’s words, especially the part about Su-ho being stubborn and self-centered. Bo-nui: “Oh you’re very good.” Su-ho gives her the side-eye but remains quiet as the fortuneteller says that everything looks good except for the month of June, and offers to make them a talisman.

Su-ho then interjects to explain in his human calculator voice how fortunes are computed mathematically, and according to her system, fifty-one other people would have the exact same fortune as him based on their birthdates, and asks the fortuneteller what she thinks of that.

He does this over and over all day long, taking Bo-nui to fortunetellers, to mystics, to face readers and Tarot card readers, talking at them a mile a minute with scientific facts, all in an effort to debunk their theories.

Bo-nui stops him and says she understands what he’s trying to do, but no matter how many places they go to, she still needs to find a tiger. Su-ho asks how she can say that after what she’s seen today, but Bo-nui says she knows there are a lot of phonies out there, but sometimes just having someone listen to your problems makes you feel better.

He argues that there are shrinks for that, and just wants her to know how ridiculous and unbelievable all this stuff is. She surprises him with her answer: “Why do you assume I don’t know that?” She thanks him for his concern and his sympathy, but says that she’ll take care of herself, and leaves him stammering in the street.

A little later, Bo-nui waits in dimly lit street until a car pulls up. She asks the man for his ID to confirm that he’s a tiger, when suddenly Su-ho snatches the card out of her hand and starts calling the cops. The driver hurriedly peels away, and two other guys that were hiding in the backseat pop up as they drive away. Yeesh, that’s a bullet dodged.

Bo-nui doesn’t see it that way though, and she yells at Su-ho for interfering when she asked him not to. He argues that he just saved her from a very dangerous situation, but she erupts angrily and says she’s running out of time.

He realizes that she’s got a ticking clock on this tiger business, and scoffs that whoever sold her this crap is a good salesman. Bo-nui says with tears in her eyes that she was wrong to think that Su-ho was a good person who was trying to help her because he felt sorry for her, and accuses him of just wanting to laugh at someone stupid.

He says that’s not it, but Bo-nui cuts him off: “Then are you going to sleep with me?” When he has no answer for that, she tells him not to interfere anymore. She admits to being scared and wanting to run away, but she’s not going to. She stops herself from telling him about Bo-ra, and just says he’d never understand anyway.

Su-ho’s heart isn’t in his video game match with Ryang-ha that night, and Ryang-ha asks teasingly if Su-ho asked him to find all those fortunetellers to get a reading for him and that woman who propositioned him last time: “Did they say she’d eat you alive?”

Su-ho admits that it’s Bo-nui and that she’s deep into her superstitious beliefs, which he doesn’t understand. Ryang-ha remembers her bringing bottles of salt to the café once to ward off the bad luck that she brings, which he figures is a normal level of superstition. Su-ho says this is serious though, and that he doesn’t know what she’ll do if he leaves her alone.

Ryang-ha looks over at him in shock and asks, “Are you… worrying about Bo-nui-sshi right now?” He says he’s never seen Su-ho worry about another human being ever, and gasps, “Has our Su-ho finally become a person?” Su-ho looks a little shocked too, but he insists that he just doesn’t like having a superstitious person in the office.

Gary finds Bo-nui lighting a candle on the roof and she tells him about needing to find a tiger before the full moon. He doesn’t really know whether to encourage her on this endeavor, but he does tell her sincerely that he knows her heart is in the right place. He says that her heart for Bo-ra will give her strength.

Bo-nui smiles and says he’s all grown up, and Gary asks teasingly if she’s fallen for him. He pats her on the head and calls her little, and she laughs.

Zeze goes into ’round-the-clock live-at-the-office mode, and everyone comes dressed for work in pajamas, armed with pillows and toothbrushes. The others ask Su-ho if Bo-nui has to stay all night too since she’s just a temporary contract employee, but he says that doesn’t matter right now, with the launch just days away.

Amy tries to sweet-talk Ryang-ha into helping her get some time to talk to Su-ho, but they end up just having a contest over who knows Su-ho best. Ryang-ha insults her sideways by sighing that Su-ho should just call her a bitch and move past it instead of holding a grudge. He acts like he was saying something in Chinese, not cursing her to her face, and Amy wonders why Su-ho keeps a greasy friend like him.

Dal-nim comes down for a coffee run and interrupts angrily, and when Amy asks her for a pass to their office, Dal-nim enjoys turning her down because outsiders aren’t allowed. Amy seems determined to get in there though, and notes that they’re going to be here all night for days.

The Zeze team works all day and all night until they’re down to D-1, and Su-ho notes the way Bo-nui stares wistfully at the countdown, as it means something different to her. Bo-nui is called downstairs by her old boss, who shows up with cases of “miracle water” for the whole staff. She sighs at another of his attempts to get money and turns it down, but he just leaves the water there and runs off, saying that he’ll collect the money later.

Bo-nui sighs when she gets another text from Red Fishnet, but this time it’s a picture of his ID—proof that he’s a tiger. (And ha, his name is Cha Do-hyun.) She’s only got one day left, so she makes a date for tomorrow night after the game launch.

D-Day comes around and the staff is aflutter with nerves for the big presentation, and Gary and Amy arrive to do their part. Su-ho takes his medication and tries to calm his nerves before the public appearance, and Dal-nim tells him that she made sure to prohibit flash cameras this time.

Dal-nim takes out a talisman from Bo-nui to help strengthen his nerves, and Su-ho just asks Dal-nim how long they’ve worked together. She replies a little too quickly that it’s been two years, eight months, and seven days, and adds shyly that tomorrow it’ll be a thousand days. Su-ho: “A thousand days? Oh I like that it’s exact. So then you should know after a thousand days, what I’ll do with that.” Ha. Dal-nim apologizes and slinks away.

Su-ho puts his earplugs in and then begins his presentation, introducing their new virtual reality game where you get to live like tennis pro Gary Choi. Gary gets his own big flashy entrance, and the launch goes swimmingly.

The team happily heads off to go eat meat with Su-ho’s credit card in hand, and Bo-nui tells Dal-nim that she has to be somewhere and can’t join them. She’s changing in the bathroom as she takes that call, and Su-ho takes his earplugs out and overhears her as she’s leaving the restroom.

He follows her out, worried about what she might do, and when Amy tries to stop him in the lobby to ask for a coffee date, he offhandedly tells her he’ll meet her tomorrow just so he can keep following Bo-nui.

He follows Bo-nui’s cab and sees her get out in front of a motel, where she meets Red Fishnet and checks his ID. Su-ho watches them go inside and looks ready to chase them down, but then he remembers the last time when she’d asked him not to interfere if he wasn’t going to sleep with her.

Su-ho sighs and starts the car to go home, but then he notices two more guys skulking around the corner before they run into the motel. Oh noes. He runs in after them and finds out what room they got and hesitates out in the hallway, not knowing what to do.

Just then, Red Fishnet comes out of the room across the hall and knocks on the door where his friends are waiting. Su-ho watches from around the corner as the friends pass him bags of equipment, which Red Fishnet takes back to his room with Bo-nui. This can’t be good.

Meanwhile, Gary sits through a round of press interviews impatiently, and warns Amy to end it in five minutes or else he’ll end his contract.

Bo-nui ignores Gary’s calls and shuts off her phone, and then rushes to put talismans all over the motel room while Red Fishnet showers. Blegh, I’m already shuddering. Fishnet comes out and says he likes how she’s into weird things, and ignores her cries to wait. He just overtakes her and climbs on top of her on the bed.

Ohthankgod, somebody knocks on the door. Even better—it’s the police! Red Fishnet tries to make a run for it but gets caught, and the policeman tells Bo-nui that they got a tip that this guy was trying to make a sex tape without her knowledge. He looks around and finds multiple hidden cameras all over the room, and Bo-nui just watches numbly.

Su-ho watches from his car and waits to see the guys getting hauled off in police cars, and then he drives off.

The policeman in Bo-nui’s room asks if she can come down to the station to give a statement, and she asks what time it is. Gary rushes to the after party in search of Bo-nui, but when he finds that she isn’t there, he runs off, worried about her. He bangs on her door and tries to locate Bo-nui or Su-ho, worried that they might be together.

The night of the full moon wears on and Bo-nui is almost out of time. She trudges to the hospital looking weary and defeated. But when she turns the corner towards Bo-ra’s hospital room, she’s stunned to see Su-ho standing there, looking in on Bo-ra. He turns to face Bo-nui, and their eyes meet.

EPILOGUE. The morning of Bo-nui’s practice apology, Su-ho had actually been there the whole time, just on the other side of the pillar she was talking to. He’d heard her confess that it was all in an effort to save her sister, and that she’d stop at nothing if it meant getting her back.

Su-ho went to the hospital in search of Bo-nui’s sister, which is how he knew where to find her that night.

 
COMMENTS

I do like the pairing much better now that Su-ho likes Bo-nui. It makes a big difference in how I’m watching their interactions, because now there’s an undercurrent of emotion there beneath the stuff that Su-ho is saying on the surface. He probably doesn’t know it yet, of course, but every time he gets awkward around her or pep-talks himself into acting natural or confident or otherwise human, it’s abundantly clear how much he cares what she thinks and wants her to like him. There’s a great boyishness to the character that works so well, especially when there’s a big gap between how he wants to appear (cool, confident, self-assured) and how he really feels (awkward, geeky, self-conscious). I think his charm is that he knows that, and that he cares what other people think of him. Like a real person with a host of self-esteem issues.

Identifying with Su-ho’s feelings is really helping right now, because Bo-nui is starting to drive me crazy with her recklessness. I totally sympathize with her, because her need to save her sister is desperate and sincere, and that motivation works to drive her character’s crazy antics. To a point. But I’m also screaming at her to stop going on dangerous internet dates for one-night stands, with who knows what kind of psycho using a fake ID. I know she’s desperate, but if it weren’t for Su-ho’s interference, she could’ve been the victim of so many horrible crimes by now. She’s crossed over into dangerous and reckless territory, and I’m frustrated with her for not caring more about her safety. At least Su-ho is voicing that frustration and trying to get through to her, but she’s certainly not making it easy when she keeps ignoring all the red flags and just walking right into harm’s way.

It says a lot that Su-ho is even attempting to learn everything he can about mysticism just to debunk each fortuneteller in front of her, thinking that she’s being fleeced by a phony. It was above and beyond, and though it didn’t work, it revealed a thoughtful side to Su-ho that really endeared him to me. He didn’t have to research all of the ways in which each kind of fortuneteller was bogus, or spend all day debating them in person, but I like that he did. He’s missing the point, of course—Bo-nui chooses to believe in something because she feels helpless and would be debilitated by her guilt—but I thought it was super sweet of him to arm himself with math and logic and go fight the fortunetellers, like a man on a (very geeky) mission.

Now that Su-ho knows about Bo-ra and how far Bo-nui is willing to go to save her, will he be her tiger before the clock strikes? What do you suppose happens at midnight? Does he become unlucky, or does he turn into a kitten?

 
RELATED POSTS

• Lucky Romance: Episode 5
• Lucky Romance: Episode 4
• Lucky Romance: Episode 3
• Lucky Romance: Episode 2
• Lucky Romance: Episode 1
• Lucky Romance’s charm-filled (literally) promo posters
• Lucky Romance gets ready to test its fortunes and fates
• Hwang Jung-eum traps her tiger man in Lucky Romance
• Ryu Joon-yeol and Hwang Jung-eum get handsy for Lucky Romance
• Sneaking good luck charms in Lucky Romance’s first teaser