Oh Hae-young Again: Episode 13

by LollyPip

How set in stone are Do-kyung’s visions, and can the future (past?) be changed? It’s time to find out, as Do-kyung decides to take a more active role in his own life. It will take some serious soul-searching and courage, and it will mean taking some scary chances, for a guy who’s always held his feelings very close to the vest.

 
EPISODE 13: “The heart I’ve understood”

After having a premonition that showed him that he will die having never told Hae-young that he loves her, Do-kyung decides that he’s no longer willing to sit back and accept his fate. He speeds back to town, calling Dr. Park on the way to tell him that no matter what happens, he refuses to die with regret.

Hae-young is busy packing away all of her possessions that remind her of him. Her friend Hee-ran drops by to see her, and drags her out to do something normal. Hae-young is quiet, and the song Hee-ran plays in the car seems to reflect exactly how she’s feeling.

They go for a walk, and Hae-young muses that her life isn’t anything like she thought it would be at this point. She never expected earning money and having love to be this difficult.

Hee-ran asks if Hae-young is ending things with Do-kyung, and she smiles feebly that she got dumped. Hee-ran disagrees that it was a dumping, since Do-kyung was very considerate about it, accepting the role of “bad guy.”

Hae-young argues that that’s only because he doesn’t love her as much as she loves him, but Hee-ran disagrees again. “It’s not because he doesn’t love you. It’s because he doesn’t know how to love.” Lady speaks the truth. She expounds that men just don’t understand that women would rather hang in there, and stand by their man even in hard times.

She jokes that Hae-young should date someone and then dump him, just so that she can be the dumper for once. The thought cheers up Hae-young immensely, and the two friends laugh over the idea until a strong wind whips Hee-ran’s hat off her head. Hae-young runs into a fountain to retrieve it, and when the fountain sprays water all over her, she laughs for the first time in a long while.

She catches a cold from wearing wet clothes, and Mom brings her hot tea and tells her that she and Dad are moving to the countryside. They want Hae-young to quit her job and come with them, but Hae-young says she’s strong and wants to go back to work.

HAHA, Dad jumps in front of the video monitor when the doorbell rings, to keep Mom from seeing Do-kyung on the doorstep. He nervously runs out and shoos Do-kyung away, saying that he’ll have Hae-young call him, and grabs his wrist and runs when Mom comes outside.

It works, and when Mom runs looking for them in the wrong direction, they come out of hiding, relieved. Then she pops back up and sees them, and hee, Do-kyung only gets halfway through a bow before Dad grabs him and runs again. The guys are faster, but Mom is wily, and she finally corners them.

Mom glares daggers at Do-kyung and says that he had her fooled, that she fed him not knowing how her daughter would fall for him and be rebuffed. She’s deeply disappointed in him, and says that what goes around comes around — he ruined a couple with a bright future, then broke Hae-young’s heart, and he’ll be rightfully punished.

Dad sneaks away to alert Hae-young that Do-kyung is outside, and she goes out just as Mom is entreating the heavens to cancel what she just said and just let her punch Do-kyung once. Dad drags Mom inside, and Do-kyung tries to hug Hae-young, but she steps out of his reach.

Do-kyung says he came because he missed her, and apologizes for coming too late. Hae-young doesn’t look at him, and sneers that he wouldn’t move a muscle when she was begging him shamelessly, but he’s come now that he’s feeling better. She says that their timing is off, and tells him not to come anymore.

She turns to go, but Do-kyung quickly says that he’s made mistakes and he was wrong. He promises not to go back and forth on her again, and never to let her go. Hae-young turns back and says that she won’t go back and forth either, because she’s letting him go.

She’s calm and collected, and says that this is not a game. Do-kyung argues that they both know he was pushing her away even though he has feelings for her, but Hae-young repeats that it’s over, completely and utterly over.

She blames her sniffling on her cold, saying that she’s not crying, and adds one more thing… “I’m grateful to you for letting me end things and dump you.” And like that, she’s gone. Do-kyung stands outside the house late into the night, but when Hae-young eventually comes out, it’s only to give him the bag of items that remind her of him.

Later, Do-kyung’s mother begs him to ask Chairman Jang for forgiveness, just as she did in his vision. He tells Dr. Park about everything he saw in that vision, worried because so far everything he’s seen has been unchangeable. But if he can’t do anything about them, then why is he seeing them at all?

Dr. Park muses again on his theory of Do-kyung’s visions: that when we die, we look back on our lives and relive them as if they’re happening right then, and Do-kyung is somehow “remembering” things that haven’t happened yet in his current reality.

The good doctor’s advice is for Do-kyung to look into his heart and determine what it wants, but that’s easier said than done for Do-kyung, who’s never opened his heart easily. He admits that he’s always done the bare minimum when it comes to relationships, always letting the other person’s actions guide his own. Never once has he revealed his heart’s desire.

He tells Dr. Park that he’s not scared of dying anymore, he’s just sorry he didn’t give Hae-young more love when he had the chance. Now she’s suffering from his reluctance, and that’s the thing that bothers him the most.

Hae-young shows up back at work with a cheerful mask on, playing it like she was just on vacation, explaining away her pale face and lost weight as if they were intentional. She insists a little too stridently that she’s fine, just fine, really!

Soo-kyung knows the truth and apologizes in private, and Hae-young admits that everyone’s “sorrys” just make her feel worse. Soo-kyung just apologizes again, then apologizes for apologizing, then stops before it gets even weirder.

She says that Do-kyung is in a lot of pain, but Hae-young thinks he should be relieved now that it’s all over. From now on she plans to live like Soo-kyung, not needing a man, independent and strong. But then she notices that Soo-kyung is dressed very conservatively, and that “mole” on her face is actually food. Ew.

The other Hae-young also approaches our Hae-young to apologize, but our Hae-young says that her public humiliation actually made her feel better in the end. She has nothing left to hide, and this is what she’s worth. Awww, that’s sad.

She talks about their teen years, and how she always felt like a sore loser. She laughs ruefully that she still feels that way, and looks the other Hae-young in the eye as she says that she wants to overcome it.

The other Hae-young smiles that she hasn’t changed, the way she can get up and move on so easily. Our Hae-young seems a bit stunned to hear something so complimentary from the woman she’s always felt interior to, and this time she agrees to have that drink with the other Hae-young. Some day. She tells the other Hae-young that she and Do-kyung are over, and wishes her luck with him.

The other Hae-young thinks about it, that our Hae-young and Do-kyung broke up, but not because they didn’t care for each other. It’s clear to her that they love each other, so why did they split? It makes her sad that she’s not Do-kyung’s most painful love anymore — just when I was starting to think she wasn’t a selfish brat.

Hoon and An-na are back together and snugglier than ever — did I miss something? Anyway, Hoon rushes out when he gets a call from Hee-ran regarding his script, freaking out because if she approves of it, this could be his big break.

That peek up Hee-ran’s skirt still rattles Hoon, and this time he focuses on her low-cut shirt. He snaps out of it when she says she likes his characters, and promises to send the script to some actors. She leans in to discuss a certain scene, giving Hoon an even better look down her blouse. He has a hard time focusing, but promises to make the needed changes in two days.

The neighborhood ajummas are shocked to see Soo-kyung step off the bus sober and demurely dressed, but they still don’t offer to walk her home safely, even when she asks politely. She mentions her pregnancy, which works, and the three of them end up in a cafe discussing the fact that Jin-sang thinks it’s another man’s baby.

Soo-kyung’s biggest concern isn’t that Jin-sang is a notorious player — she hates the fact that he defends lowlifes in court. She gets herself all worked up about it, then remembers the baby, and whispers that the babydaddy is complete trash… but she still likes him.

The ajummas think she should give him a chance to do right by her and the baby, but Soo-kyung is against telling him. He doesn’t even know they slept together, and it would be too much of a shock.

Jin-sang calls Soo-kyung just then, from a bar, naturally. He tells her that he’s polled his friends, and they all said that if they got a woman pregnant in a one night stand, they would tell her not to have the baby. And as for him, he says he would flee the country.

On Soo-kyung’s request, he tells all his friends that she’s forty-four and wants to have the baby, and asks them this time — would they rather know they had a child out there, or continue to be unaware?

More guys vote that they would rather know about the baby, and Jin-sang says that he feels the same way. He urges her to tell the father of the baby right away, and Soo-kyung says softly that she’ll definitely tell him.

Hae-young and Do-kyung’s deal regarding the house (where Do-kyung promised to pay her rent when she moved out) is discovered by the landlord, and he is not happy. He assumes that they’re still antagonistic and that Do-kyung kicked Hae-young out, but he tells Hae-young that she’s still on the hook for the rent for the length of her lease, refusing to accept Do-kyung’s agreement to pay it.

He says that he’ll see Hae-young in a year when her lease is up, but she barks that she wants to end this now. I don’t think she’s talking about her lease anymore, and Do-kyung hangs his head, remembering the part of his vision where he’d discussed this with someone we don’t see. But this time he goes against his vision, and asks, “Can you just move back? I’d like it if you moved back in.”

He follows when Hae-young storms off, but she refuses his offer of a ride home. Her phone rings, and Do-kyung remembers this from a vision too, and knows that it’s Tae-jin calling her. He turns away, and so he doesn’t see that she doesn’t answer the call as he expects.

Hae-young does meet Tae-jin for dinner, and blames her subdued mood on her cold. Tae-jin apologizes for hitting Do-kyung, saying that he assumed he’d ruined his business in order to get to Hae-young. Hae-young shuts down any talk of Do-kyung, then apologizes for being too harsh. Out of nowhere, she breaks up with Tae-jin, but he asks for some time to hang out and see what happens.

Hae-young falters in the morning when she reaches for a pair of shoes, and finds Do-kyung’s shoes in with hers (the ones he put in her entryway to deter overenthusiastic suitors). She pulls herself together, but she broods on the bus ride to work.

Tae-jin visits Do-kyung at work, and muses that he was a CEO once too, until someone took all that away. He makes not-so-veiled threats that he can do the same thing to Do-kyung if he chooses, but Do-kyung invites him to do whatever he wants — he’s not scared.

Tae-jin reminds Do-kyung that he admitted his ruining his business was an accident but hitting his car wasn’t, and asks, “You were already falling for her then, weren’t you?” Now he understands why Do-kyung attacked him then, but he doesn’t get why he’s still dragging this out.

He says that now, they all need to go back to their rightful places. The implication is that if Do-kyung does as he’s told, Tae-jin will let all this drop and not seek revenge. As he leaves, he turns back and says the words he said in Do-kyung’s vision: “Somehow we’ve ended up back with the right people.”

Hoon fails at fixing the problems with his script, and he knows it, so Hee-ran suggests they work on it together at her place. Hoon has trouble because of Hee-ran’s scantily-clad legs, and when she lies down for a nap and tells him to keep working, it doesn’t help his concentration. In his defense, she’s wearing a slip and not much else.

He panics and falls all over himself when Hee-ran’s bare legs get too close for comfort, practically throwing himself down the stairs in an effort to get away. She finally realizes what he was thinking, and kicks him out.

Do-kyung goes to the movies, and a fight scene onscreen morphs into his tussle with Hae-young, when he’d kissed her. He recalls their brief happy times, then their breakup, when she’d asked him to just stay with her a little longer. As he’s walking home he sees her coming towards him on the sidewalk, but she walks past him without saying a word.

He asks where she’s going, and she just keeps walking. In his vision of this moment, Do-kyung had turned and apologized for speaking to her, but this time when he speaks, it’s to tell her to change her shoes, because they sound uncomfortable.

And this time, instead of meeting Tae-jin and taking his hand like she did in Do-kyung’s vision, Hae-young refuses Tae-jin’s outstretched hand. But again Do-kyung turns away too soon, and misses this change.

Jin-sang tries to cheer his friend up, saying that he has exciting news that will make Do-kyung forget everything. Soo-kyung pops her head out of her room to say that she has news that will shut Jin-sang up, but Jin-sang motions that he’ll talk to her later.

He offers to take Do-kyung out, but Do-kyung just lies on the floor in defeat. The position reminds him of the end of his vision, where he’s lying in the street dying.

Do-kyung was right about Hae-young’s shoes — she hobbles him with bleeding feet from wearing the heels all day. She’s still feeling run-down and says she’ll be sleeping the next day, and Mom wonders why the medicine isn’t working.

As Hae-young lies in bed exhausted and ill, she thinks that at least wearing those uncomfortable shoes distracted her from thinking of Do-kyung all day. Everything reminds her of him — the shoes, even her bra insert that went flying when he caught her. Everywhere she looks, she’s reminded, and she almost welcomes the painful distractions.

She thinks about seeing him today, and how even as she walked away, her mind was crying at her to turn back. The pain her shoes cause keeps her going, because the physical pain distracts her from her emotional pain, if temporarily. “Even if I’m sick, I feel better.”

The next morning, Mom sees that Hae-young hasn’t been taking her medicine, and finds her unconscious and unresponsive. She’s rushed to the hospital, and in her fever-driven haze, she thinks she sees Do-kyung there. Once she’s a bit better and wakes, she’s angry that her first thought is of him.

She sits up and the nurse pulls back the curtain around her bed, to reveal that Do-kyung is there in the next bed, getting an IV for exhaustion. They look at leach other for a long moment, then Hae-young reaches out… and pushes her curtain back in place.

Do-kyung stands to leave, then stops, and remembers his vision where he’d called back to her Don’t get sick. Instead, he says, “I’m glad to see you. It was unfair that I was the only sick one. I’m so glad you’re sick, too.” You tell her, buddy.

He continues that if he could turn back time, he would ruin her wedding the exact same way. He’d make sure she moved in next door and meet her again. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But I’m not sorry I ruined your wedding, dammit!”

He almost leaves then, but he turns back a second time, to deliver a softer apology. He says this is how he truly feels, and that he got sick because he couldn’t hug her. This time, he really leaves, but as he walks home he hears running footsteps behind him.

He turns, and catches Hae-young in his arms. They hug, then pull back and smile at each other, and Hae-young kisses him.

COMMENTS

Okay, putting aside any advice I would give if these were real people and remembering that this is “just” a drama… at the point that these two are making themselves sick just to avoid feeling their emotional pain, I just want them to get together to make the hurting stop. They can just be dysfunctional together, and everyone will be happy, right? This level of self-abuse can’t be good for either of them, and they seriously needed to either give in and get back together, or someone was going to end up dead. Oh wait…

Strangely though, our Hae-young’s very public humiliation seemed to have somehow given her an emotional reset, and she definitely has come out the other side calmer and more accepting (still damaged, but better, you know?). Maybe it wasn’t the best way to do it, but she seemed on a dangerous emotional spiral, and feeling like the whole world was laughing at her sort of caused her to just stop everything and think. She’s realized that embarrassment isn’t the end of the world, and being compared to someone else isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Sadly, it also caused her to give upon Do-kyung, though I can’t blame her — she hung in there a lot longer than I think most people would, considering that he wasn’t just pretending to be apathetic, but actively pushing her away. In Hae-young’s defense, Do-kyung’s actions have been confusing from the beginning, the way he would care for her like a boyfriend then tell her he didn’t want her that way. But I do think that this is what needed to happen, that they both took a step back and did some serious thinking.

It’s a step in the right direction that Do-kyung is finally thinking about how he relates to others, and how he never opens up his heart. Ever since his father died (because young Do-kyung seems like an open and happy child) and he was left with his needy narcissist of a mother, he’s had to shut down inside just to survive and grow up mostly sane. It’s been his primary problem ever since he met our Hae-young — that she’s forcing him to confront his inner feelings, and he’s never done that before. I think that all of his excuses not to get close to her were really just walls he was throwing up to protect himself once again from actually feeling anything, because if he feels something, he might get hurt. But our Hae-young got in anyway through sheer determination, and now Do-kyung has some hard work to do, because while he’s gotten her back, he still has to figure out how to keep her.

I do believe that Do-kyung thought he loved the other Hae-young, as much as he’s capable of loving anyone that isn’t Hoon, Soo-kyung, or Jin-sang. As he explained, he felt pity for her, which is as close to love as he’s ever let himself get. She loved him, and made him basically happy, and I think he was willing to settle for mostly-happy. I believe that his hurt over the way she left wasn’t so much true heartbreak, as feeling that once again, he let himself open up even a little to someone, and they left him.

So it was good to see him fighting his visions, making small changes and refusing to do or say what he saw himself doing and saying. He’s finally taking responsibility for his own actions, making his own emotional choices and moving out of his comfort zone. And it worked, the small changes affecting small reactions, such as when he changed the vision and asked Hae-young to move back in, and soon after, she didn’t answer when Tae-jin called as she did in the vision. Then later he said something different to Hae-young when he saw her on the street, and she didn’t take Tae-jin’s hand as she did in the premonition. I practically cheered when he yelled at her that he was glad she was sick too, and that he’d gladly ruin her wedding again, because it was the first time he’s let himself act out on his own anger and frustration at this situation, and you know it felt good. I was starting to get frustrated myself at how Do-kyung keeps missing the altered results of his actions, but then that hug happened, and I got goosebumps. There’s still the small matter of Do-kyung’s looming accident, but by proving that he could change what he saw in his visions, I have faith that he can find a way to avoid his death, as well.

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