Oh Hae-young Again: Episode 10

by LollyPip

There are times when the right thing to do is wait and let things happen as they will, and times when you need to step up and make things happen. The trick is knowing when, and doing the right thing when it’s time for action. With Do-kyung’s visions growing more and more ominous, the moment has come for him to make a decision — will he let life decide his future, or will he make his own fate?

 
EPISODE 10: “On my way to you”

Needing some space to think after kissing Hae-young, Do-kyung visits the playground where he and his father (cameo by Lee Pil-mo) used to play and talk together. They had a very close relationship, and Do-kyung especially loved to ask his dad questions about sound.

Dad had told his son that he loved sounds because they disappear. He’d said that when you realize that things don’t last forever, you don’t waste your energy on useless things. Little Do-kyung hadn’t quite understood, but he’d remembered those words.

Hae-young goes back to her parents’ house, and sits in her room frowning at her silent phone and reliving that kiss in her mind. She finally snaps, screaming at the phone, “How could you kiss me like that and not even call me?!” Never accuse this girl of being out of touch with her emotions.

She takes out her aggression on the laundry, phone in hand just in case, swearing that she won’t call Do-kyung first. She hollers to Mom for more laundry, and Dad begs Mom to just give her something, anything, to wash. LOL, Mom starts taking clean blankets to her half-insane daughter.

The phone finally rings but it’s Tae-jin, and Hae-young’s face actually falls. She declines his offer for lunch, and now it’s Tae-jin’s turn to be disappointed.

Mom finally demands to know who’s the cause of Hae-young’s behavior — is it Tae-jin, or that neighbor guy? She threatens to kill Hae-young if she dates either of them, but Hae-young just says she’s going out.

Dr. Park worries when Do-kyung doesn’t show for his appointment, and goes looking for him at home. He says that today he’s just Do-kyung’s friend, not his doctor, and sits to explain his theory regarding Do-kyung’s premonitions.

Dr. Park thinks that this has something to do with how people perceive time. We think it moves in a straight line, past to present to future. But in his theory, only the body is constrained by time, and the mind is able to move freely. So the body moves forward in time, but the mind can shift fluidly back and forth.

It’s his guess that Do-kyung’s body is, right now, in the middle of experiencing a car crash. The shock of his body dying is causing his brain to flit around in time, looking for the woman he loves, Hae-young. That’s why he keeps seeing her and only her — he’s not seeing the future, but remembering the past just moments before he relives it in his mind.

Do-kyung listens very carefully, asking a few questions, and gives the theory serious thought. He imagines himself lying in the street covered in blood, his body dying while his mind searches for the one person he wants to see the most in his last moments. His conclusion: “You’re a weirdo, right?” ~PFFT~

But the idea that his body may be dying right at this moment shakes him, though Dr. Park says that there could be another explanation. He promises to hang in there with Do-kyung, and help him figure this out.

Do-kyung runs into Drunk French Soo-kyung on his way home, but he walks right past her. He asks if she’s coming home, and she trails behind him, muttering that her life is too pathetic for her to live through it sober.

She can’t stop thinking about waking up in Jin-sang’s bed, and when he runs into her in the street it becomes clear that he doesn’t remember anything, since she snuck out before he awoke. He does a cute little “congratulations” song and dance, and tells Soo-kyung all about a guy he knows who would love to marry a woman like her.

He turns and starts peeing on the street right in front of her, not so sober himself. Soo-kyung yells at him and he turns, nearly getting her wet, ew. She yells at him to be more respectful, even if he doesn’t see her as a woman. She runs home screaming, “I’m a woman!” and we see that Jin-sang was only pouring out his bottle of water, ha.

Once home, Do-kyung tries to drink away his worries about this terrifying theory of Dr. Park’s. Hae-young cancels another date with Tae-jin, claiming that she has to work, and goes out with her friend Hee-ran. She tells Hee-ran about everything that’s happened, including the passionate kiss, but whines that Do-kyung hasn’t called her since then.

Hee-ran thinks that he’s just dealing with his bouncing from one Oh Hae-young to another, and cautions patience. She’s sure he’ll call once he comes to terms with the idea. But Hae-young doesn’t understand it — she can’t hold herself back, so how can he do it so easily?

Later that night, Hae-young stands in front of Do-kyung’s house, practically vibrating with wanting to go and find him. She fights with herself over whether to go to her own place, and she wonders to herself how Do-kyung can hold back like this if he likes her. She ends up leaving and going back to her parents’ house.

After several beers, Do-kyung still can’t get Dr. Park’s words out of his head, that he’s somewhere dying right this moment and wanting to see Hae-young. He closes his eyes and hears a loud crash, and opens them again to find himself lying in the street, blood on his face and pooling under his head.

He sees Hae-young walking confidently through traffic, her arm in a sling, in the vision from the first day they met. Back in reality (or is it?) his eyes fly open again, and he’s back on his couch, safe and sound.

In the morning, Do-kyung knocks over his coffee mug, and something about it makes him feel uneasy.

Hoon goes to visit An-na at work, where she greets him with her usual shrill enthusiasm. She’s over the moon after reading his script, declaring it amazing, and urges him to show it to a producer as soon as possible.

The other Hae-young visits Chairman Jang, her mother’s ex-husband, and he asks about her ill-fated engagement to Do-kyung. She clams up at his questioning, though he says that he’s only curious since he’s about to marry Do-kyung’s mother.

Though they aren’t blood-related, his having two stepchildren who nearly married each other could become a point of gossip, so he wants to confirm that it’s really over. Hae-young says that it’s over, though the expression on her face tells Chairman Jang that it’s not for her, and she admits that she still has feelings for Do-kyung.

She thinks to herself that she really thought that it would be over once her emotional wounds healed. She remembers a time when just the sound of her voice was enough to calm him to sleep, and the sweet memory has her crying.

Hoon takes his script to Hee-ran, who promises to read it and get back to him. He asks her to keep this a secret from Do-kyung, who’s been especially moody lately.

Do-kyung’s mother orders him to Chairman Jang’s birthday party against his will, warning him not to bring a cheap gift. Do-kyung thinks that two marriages should have been enough for her, and takes offense to the idea that he needs another father at his age. He mentions that Chairman Jang is notorious for cheating, which makes his mother stomp off in a rage, screeching that it’s not true.

Do-kyung is nearly mowed down by his own employee as he steps off the curb, and his newfound horror of car accidents makes him overreact. He stops for a coffee and sees Hee-ran reading Hoon’s script, and it doesn’t appear as though she likes it.

He joins her and asks about the script, ignoring her big fat hints about Hae-young, and Hee-ran remembers her promise to Hoon and asks Do-kyung not to mention that he knows she’s reading it. She does say that Hoon’s writing level isn’t up to par, and that she regrets agreeing to read it because it wasn’t worth going behind Do-kyung’s back.

Do-kyung takes it to reads himself, and yeah, it’s bad. When Hoon comes home, Do-kyung asks who else has seen the script, angry that Hoon is still trying to be a scriptwriter after so many years of rejection. He says that he’s at least trying to teach Hoon his business so he’ll have a career he can be proud of.

Hoon says that he still wants to try, and Do-kyung flings the script at his feet, calling Hoon’s writing embarrassing. That angers Hoon, who says that worse scripts are made into movies all the time, and being embarrassing isn’t the worst thing in the world. He snarls that Do-kyung is the one who can’t stand being embarrassed, but Hoon himself can live with embarrassment if it means living his dream of being a writer.

Do-kyung hollers back that he can’t stand seeing Hoon belittled, and begs him to just learn sound direction from him. With tears in his eyes, Hoon says that even though Do-kyung thinks people respect him, they actually badmouth him behind his back. So what’s the point of all that pride if they’re going to do it anyway?

An-na is beside herself on Hoon’s behalf when she hears what Do-kyung said about his script, and she’s ready to go kill that jerk right now. Hoon has to physically hold her back from storming off to confront his brother.

Do-kyung goes for a walk, Hoon’s words that people are talking about him anyway mixing with his father’s statement that you shouldn’t waste energy on useless things. A flashback shows us Do-kyung’s and his father’s close, loving relationship, as they talk about the sounds that Dad got from visiting the DMZ once.

When asked, Dad had said that his favorite sound in the world was his son’s voice. Awww. Do-kyung’s mother (cameo by Lee Yu-ri) had come home drunk, complaining that her husband preferred the company of his children to his wife, accusing him of using his job as an excuse not to come home.

Dad takes little Do-kyung on one of his trips to record sounds, this time to a high cliff overlooking the ocean. He warns Do-kyung not to play near the edge, telling him to listen for the sound of a butterfly’s wings.

A strong wind tips one of the microphones over the edge of the cliff, and Dad lunges for it. When little Do-kyung turns around, his father is gone. He creeps to the cliff’s edge on hands and knees, but he can’t see anything.

He runs all the way to the bottom of the cliff and finds his father lying on the beach, blood covering the side of his face and pooling under his head. Is it me, or isn’t that the exact pattern of blood we saw on adult Do-kyung in his vision?

Little Do-kyung has to run to the nearest farm and drag a tarp all the way back to his fathers prone body, and he somehow manages to pull his father to their car. That mighty little boy pushes the car as far as he can, late into the night, until he collapses with exhaustion. He climbs into the car and begs his father in a small voice to please wake up, and that’s when help finally arrives. But it’s too late.

Little Do-kyung had gone back to their favorite playground, and screamed into the sky, “Why did you leave without asking me? Why?? I will never leave, ever!” And as he relives these memories, adult Do-kyung runs circles around the playground, trying to exhaust himself.

When he finally does call Hae-young, just seeing his name on the screen starts the waterworks all over again. She yells for him to say something when he doesn’t immediately speak, and he says just two words: “Come here.” Hae-young angrily says that she’s not that easy, but his next words completely disarm her, remembering how she’d wanted to hear them so badly. “I miss you.”

He’s crying now, and he says it again, “I miss you,” and Hae-young literally runs to him. When she finds him they both go a little shy, but their faces show how happy they are just to have reached an understanding, without even needing to discuss it.

After a long, adorably awkward moment, they just walk, and Do-kyung’s face splits into the biggest, most beautiful smile ever. Eventually Hae-young breaks the silence, chiding herself for being so easy that she comes whenever he calls, and asks what else he wants her to do.

Do-kyung asks for a hug, looking scared that she might reject him. But Hae-young easily wraps her arms around him, and he returns her hug, and they both close their eyes like they’re finally home.

They go for a drive, where Hae-young jokes that she’s so easy, she doesn’t even care where they’re going. Do-kyung teases back that he’s glad she’s easy, and she threatens to kill him if he changes his mind. He promises that he won’t, and Hae-young lets loose a loud cheer. So cute.

They go for a walk on the beach, and Hae-young asks when Do-kyung started liking her. She guesses it was when they first met, but he shakes his head no. It was when she admitted to voting for herself for class president. Her courage to reveal such an embarrassing thing is what made him like her. Ha, Hae-young launches into a whole long list of embarrassing things she’s done, and her stories have Do-kyung laughing freely.

They stop to eat dinner, and Do-kyung pours himself a drink for once. Hae-young tries some aegyo on him and gets shot down, hee, and the grill reminds Do-kyung of that awkward dinner with her parents. Hae-young was embarrassed, but Do-kyung remembers it more fondly, because her mother had put a piece of meat on his rice.

It’s a very maternal gesture, and he was touched, not having a very loving mother himself. Hae-young promises to put meat on his rice any time, and starts filling his plate with grilled oysters.

Do-kyung watches her for a while, smiling at her determination to make him feel loved. Suddenly he jumps up, turns her chair around with her in it, and plants a big old kiss on her. They make out like teenagers for quite a long time, not caring if anyone sees.

Jin-sang stops to say hello to Soo-kyung as she walks home, showing off his fancy new suit. He does a little dance and she can’t stop staring at his booty, and has to struggle to shake off her fascination. He boogies off to a party, leaving Soo-kyung to cringe at her newfound attraction.

She runs into the neighborhood ladies who walk young women home after dark, and frightens them into walking her home for once. Ha, they look more scared of her than any potential attackers.

She invites them inside for juice, ordering them to sit and drink whether they want to or not. Out of nowhere she asks them how many men they’ve slept with, and she shyly admits that at forty-four, she’s only slept with two and a half men. A half??

Her problem is that, once she sleeps with a man, she falls in love with him. And now she’s slept with Jin-sang, and she feels doom looming over her, hee. She rants that of course it only makes sense to have a relationship with someone she’s slept with, but why does it have to be that womanizer Jin-sang? In a fit of anger, she chases the neighborhood ladies out the window.

Hoon and An-na go drinking, where we learn that Hoon and Do-kyung are actually stepbrothers. They’d met when Hoon was six and his father had married Do-kyung’s mother, and he’d followed Do-kyung around for a week until Do-kyung told him to go back home. And now they still live in the same house.

Hoon decides that he will agree to live with An-na, sure that the news will make Do-kyung angry and looking forward to it. But An-na says that now that she knows they aren’t blood-related, she thinks Do-kyung probably reacts so strongly because he really does love Hoon.

Apparently, drinking turns Do-kyung into a giant cuddlebear, and Hae-young starts to entertain thoughts of a nice cozy motel room. But he’s already called them a driver, so Hae-young argues that a room would be much cheaper than a ride back to Seoul. She’s flabbergasted that he’s not thinking along the same lines as she is after such a romantic day (not to mention all the kissing), but he totally misses her point.

Hae-young looks like she could kill the driver with her brain when he overhears her complaints about the cost, and offers a deep discount. Dude, you’re not helping! Unwilling to admit that she really just wants a chance to jump Do-kyung’s bones, she’s forced to submit to the drive back to the city.

She shoots eye-daggers at Do-kyung on the ride back, and he says that women shouldn’t sleep in motels anyway, proving that he knew exactly what she wanted. But being the gentleman he is, he says that he wants their first time to be at a nice place. Next time.

That mollifies Hae-young, and she snuggles with Do-kyung and they both nod off to sleep. He wakes in the morning, back in the city, and smiles to see Hae-young still sound asleep with her head in his lap. He gently pushes her hair behind her ear, and shields her eyes from the early morning sun with his hand.

He thinks to himself, “Let’s go. Let’s go all the way.”

COMMENTS

First of all, I just love that the show allows its characters to be real people, who think and talk about sex as if it’s a natural part of life, and not something shameful. I love how open Hae-young is about wanting to sleep with Do-kyung (because if she was being all coy, we wouldn’t buy it anyway — have you seen the guy??) and that he obviously wants her too, but he wants their first time to be special. Their kisses reflect their natural chemistry and attraction, and then, wonder of wonders, they actually talk about it! Seeing them have a frank, open discussion about wanting each other, and making plans like actual responsible adults, is very refreshing. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

This theory that Do-kyung is dying and seeing his life flashing before his eyes has definitely occurred to me (and to many of you, I know), but I admit I was hoping for pretty much anything but this. If this turns out to be the truth — and I’m going to go with it being true until the story tells us otherwise — I suppose there’s hope that Do-kyung is only dying and not dead, and that he still can be saved. I think that Do-kyung will slowly learn that the visions aren’t necessarily unchangeable fact, and his attitude towards them is already changing. At first he just passively watched them happen, and now he seem to be actively doing things to make them happen. In the last episode he was clearly watching for the moment when he’d seen himself kiss Hae-young, and there were several times when he looked to see if she had blood on her lip, knowing that she would when they finally kissed. He actually looked disappointed when he would see there was no blood, but when they fought and he finally saw it, it was like the signal he needed to finally do what he’s been wanting to do for ages.

So now that Do-kyung is starting to anticipate his visions, it’s my wish that he goes one step further and finds a way to actually alter the events before they happen. Maybe he can even go so far as to stop his accident from happening. At the very least, it’s possible that he has enough time to avert total disaster, and while he may not be able to avoid his accident completely, he could do something to mitigate the severity of what’s going to happen to him. I’m sort of wishing into the wind here, but I’m really just desperate for someone to find a way to save his life, and with us only being at the midpoint of the show I hope there’s enough time for that to happen. I’m hoping that the key to all this lies in the blood pattern on his face, which definitely looked exactly the same as the blood pattern on his father’s face when he fell off that cliff. There’s a connection here, once I can’t quite figure out yet. But whatever it is, I feel like if Do-kyung can solve the puzzle, he can change his own fate.

Speaking of which, it’s no wonder that Do-kyung is so reluctant to talk about his father’s death. Aside from being the one parental figure he could count on for love and security, the way his father died had to be extremely traumatizing to such a young child. It shows us that he was a very emotionally strong and determined boy from the beginning, the way he saw his father’s need for help and just did what needed to be done without hysterics. Despite being unable to save his father’s life, Do-kyung was a pure hero, and it explains a lot about why he feels he has to be the stoic, strong one in the family now. He’s already a natural caretaker and an old soul, and no doubt when his father died he felt he had to be the head of the family, given how unreliable his mother was even back then. It’s no wonder that he has a hard time letting go and allowing himself to be led by his feelings, especially since the one time he did that, it backfired on him in the most painful way possible. It’s nothing short of miraculous that he’s able to open up to Hae-young now.

The problem, which I know is going to come back to haunt them both sooner rather than later, is that Do-kyung still hasn’t told Hae-young about his part in Tae-jin’s incarceration and their subsequent breakup. I do think that he made a terrible mistake, but it came out of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and I believe he regretted it long before he ever met our Hae-young. He only intended to mess with Tae-jin’s finances a little, it was never Do-kyung’s goal to ruin his entire life. But no matter how it was meant, the truth is that he only has Hae-young now because he managed to break up her impending marriage, and she’s going to be heartbroken when she learns the truth. With everything Do-kyung has going on right now, I don’t blame him for grabbing onto happiness while he can, but that’s no excuse for keeping Hae-young in the dark.

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