Shopping King Louis: Episode 13

by LollyPip

The most important lesson that Louis has learned in his recent adventures is the importance of family. He grew up without much of a family, but losing his memory allowed him to create one of his own, crazy and unconventional though it may be. What defines a family more than anything else is love, and if there’s anything Louis has to give in abundance, it’s his great capacity to love others just the way they are.

EPISODE 13: “This is the Moment”

On the night that Louis and Joong-won had stayed over at Bok-shil’s mountain home, Louis had woken up in the middle of the night urgently needing the outhouse. Scared to go alone, he’d whined Joong-won awake and begged him to take him, so the two had traipsed outside in their ajumma pants.

Joong-won had guessed the outhouse was probably haunted, freaking Louis right out. Louis had asked Joong-won to sing for him, then bravely ventured into the nasty outhouse. Joong-won had sung “This is the Moment,” getting into it like he was on stage (damn, I love his voice).

The lyrics had reminded of when Louis asked Bok-shil her most memorable moment, and she’d answered, “This moment,” leading to their first kiss. He’d thought that there was a moment when someone cared for him when he had nothing, and a moment when someone else, Jae-sook, had been proud of herself for finding him. “Such a moment awaits my grandmother, Choi Il-soon.”

We head back to the present, when Louis answers the phone call from Scarface. Director Baek comes running in like his hair is on fire, and looks like he wants to grab the phone away when Louis tells him who is on the line. But Scarface hangs up, and Director Baek breathes a sigh of relief.

Director Baek lies that he came to see Grandma, but she’s gone to bed. Relieved, he turns to go, but Louis invites him to stay for ramyun. Director Baek lets down his guard as they eat, and when Louis mentions Bok-shil, he asks if things are over between them.

He chuckles that he was surprised to see Louis only days after he supposedly went to France, and Louis casually tells him that his memory is back. Still playing it cool, Louis asks why Director Baek lied to him about being best friends with Ma-ri, when he remembers her bullying him when they were children. Director Baek stammers that he thought they were close, and Louis affably lets the subject drop, though the gleam in his eye tells me this is far from over.

Director Baek thinks he’s home free when he finally gets out of there, but he finds Scarface waiting for him by his car. Scarface wants money so he can flee the country, now that the police are onto him. He shows Director Baek a USB file where he’s recorded him giving Scarface orders, letting Director Baek know that he has the upper hand now.

Grandma has a dream that chestnuts are raining onto her as she lies in bed. The chestnuts are big and healthy, and in the dream, Grandma is thrilled. It’s such a strange dream that when she wakes, she wonders if it could be a conception dream.

Bok-shil makes Bok-nam a simple breakfast, but In-sung and his mom show up with a lavish meal, courtesy of Lou- whoops, I mean leftovers. In-sung says that it’s his job to drive Bok-shil to work from now on.

At her office later, Bok-shil is still reeling from finding Bok-nam alive and well. Joong-won asks if he’ll be going to school, but Bok-shil says he’s not a good student so he needs some tutoring first. Joong-won urges Bok-shil to study also, and take the college entrance exam. Bok-shil smiles at him, and he squirms adorably.

Louis dresses for the day, with a little watch PPL included. He goes to Bok-shil’s office to find her grinning at Joong-won, and demands to know why Joong-won is uncomfortable. Joong-won snaps that it’s none of his business.

Louis pitches another fit when he sees Joong-won’s “Daddy Long Legs” nameplate (the movie “Daddy Long Legs” is about a girl who falls in love with her benefactor). When Bok-shil refuses to change it, Louis cutely asks to be called “Oppa Long Legs.” Ha, he’s such a child.

Louis tells Bok-shil that he’s hatching a new plan — oh yay, I love his plans. He says he’s hungry, and Bok-shil teases him for still eating like a horse even after he’s gotten his memories back. They order jjajangmyun, and Louis almost immediately asks for more.

Joong-won barks at him, saying that he’s rich and can eat whatever he wants, and Louis pouts that Butler Kim won’t let him have delivery food. But when Bok-shil also asks for more, Joong-won happily places another order. Louis asks Bok-shil to dinner at his home after work, saying that Grandma wants to see her.

Director Baek hands the cash over to Scarface and gets the USB with his voice on it, though I wouldn’t trust Scarface when he says he didn’t make a copy. Director Baek is unhappy that Scarface isn’t leaving the country for another week, but there’s not much he can do about it but assert that he and Scarface are strangers now.

Louis wants to take Bok-shil for dessert after lunch, against Joong-won’s protests that it will ruin her teeth. But Louis promised to pay her back for the red bean sherbet she brought him that time, and drags her out for a massive bowl of sherbet.

After eating they fetch Bok-nam, and go see Detective Joo-hyuk to fill him on on the events of the night of Louis’s accident. Bok-nam tells how he gave Louis’s car and belongings to the gang leader, then heard the explosion soon after he drove off. By then it was too late to save the man, and Bok-nam ran away out of fear. He sincerely apologizes to Louis, but Louis has long since forgiven him.

In-sung waylays Ma-ri in the Gold Group building lobby, and chases her around asking her to lunch. She loses her temper and shoves him, then topples backwards off her heels. In true drama-hero fashion, he catches her before she falls. But this is clumsy In-sung we’re talking about, and he accidentally grabs Ma-ri’s butt.

Ma-ri screams and slaps him, but In-sung’s mom comes flying over to scream at her for hitting her son. She recognizes Ma-ri from the time she almost hit Louis with her car and screams some more, but Jae-sook arrives and runs over to defend her daughter.

In-sung’s mom turns her fury on Jae-sook, ordering her to make Ma-ri apologize. Ma-ri wails that he touched her butt, and all three pairs of female eyes turn to accuse In-sung, who swears it was an accident. He explains, and his mom is immediately back on his side.

She fusses at Jae-sook and Ma-ri for freaking out over an accident, when in reality he was helping Ma-ri. She scares them so badly that In-sung apologizes for his mother, promising them that she doesn’t hit people, which is her cue to turn and smack him repeatedly, ha.

Joong-won’s mom Young-ae comes running in, here to meet with Jae-sook, and immediately recognizes In-sung’s mom. They share a dramatic moment when they realize that In-sung’s mom is wearing the same designer scarf as the other two moms. It’s so emotional, In-sung gets caught up and slings an arm around Ma-ri, and she even lets him for a second before jerking away (then shooting him an interested glance, hee).

The three moms go for a drink, and In-sung’s mom tells the other two that the scarf was a gift from Louis. She notices the other two call each other Vivian and Audrey, and they decide that she needs a nickname, too. In-sung’s mom suggests Cleopatra because her son calls her that, and they toast to their new friendship.

Bok-shil and Louis go to Grandma’s for dinner, bringing her a gift of Asian pears. The farm owner’s name is “Im Shin-joong,” which means “pregnant,” and Grandma gets excited. She practically goes starry-eyed when Bok-shil runs off to the restroom looking nauseated, sure that Bok-shil is expecting.

Of course she isn’t, she just ate way too much at lunch, and she tells Louis that she’ll be fine. Grandma is all smiles when Louis asks if they can eat some other time, and she even says they should bring In-sung and his mother for dinner.

Joong-won’s dad tells his son that he and his mom went to see Bok-shil, and how they heard that she and Louis are very close. Dad says it’s too bad Bok-shil is taken, and Joong-won tells him that actually, he met her first. Then a stronger candidate appeared, “and tore us apart.”

Louis and Bok-shil go back to her place, where In-sung’s mom is helping Bok-nam study. Louis asks for some soda for Bok-shil’s upset stomach, and In-sung’s mom leaps to the same conclusion as Grandma.

Louis sits to help Bok-nam, and nearly bursts into tears at how little Bok-nam knows. In-sung’s mom teases that Louis can’t even spell, but he says he studied hard and spells perfectly now. That gives him the idea to have Butler Kim tutor Bok-nam. In-sung’s mom fusses at him again, saying that he’s never even gotten Bok-shil’s money back, and Louis promises that he will.

Over at Grandma’s house, Butler Kim tells Jung-ran that he’s planning to propose soon. He says he’s analyzing movies and dramas for good ideas, but she snaps for him to stop analyzing and just do the thing. He grabs her hand, and Louis skips in and shrieks at their skinship, then gives Butler Kim a cheeky grin.

Louis tells the two that it’s fine, and stage-whispers to Jung-ran that she’s Butler Kim’s first love. HA. He offers to help if Butler Kim needs advice, then asks Jung-ran for a favor — he needs her help getting Bok-shil’s money back from those scary high school girls.

Jung-ran calls a friend, and soon she’s sauntering into a noraebang escorted by several burly thugs. With a cheerful grin and her baseball bat slung over her shoulder, she finds the girls and invites them outside for a little chat.

Jung-ran watches, amused, as the girls prepare to rumble. They scream and run at her, and Jung-ran roars like a lioness. Soon the girls are on their knees, arms in the air, looking like they’ve been dragged through a hedge backward. Of course, Jung-ran hasn’t got a hair out of place.

Jung-ran takes the girls to Grandma’s house, and put them to work paying back the money they stole from Bok-shil by peeling garlic. Sooo much garlic. Butler Kim instructs them not to swear or use slang in the house, and Louis arrives to say that for every swear word, they have to peel ten more kilos of garlic.

The girls recognize Louis as the guy they shook down a few months ago, and he tells them the rate at which they’ll be paying Bok-shil back. He even generously offers to knock off a few bucks if they finish within two weeks, and the girls earn themselves another twenty kilos by swearing, heh. Once they’re finished, Jung-ran hands out the girls’ pay, which they immediately have to give back to Butler Kim to pay off their debt. Love it.

Office gossip Hye-joo excitedly tells the Goldline team that Bok-shil is now the president of her own company. Even better, Joong-won is the director of her company. Mr. Lee’s shipper heart guesses that Joong-won followed Bok-shil because he likes her, but Ma-ri snaps at everyone to get back to work.

Butler Kim tutors Bok-nam who, I’m sorry to say, really is a slow toad when it comes to schoolwork. Poor Butler Kim can hardly keep from crying in despair. Before Bok-nam goes, Butler Kim says that he always thought Bok-shil looked familiar and he feels the same way about Bok-nam, but Bok-nam doesn’t think they’ve met before.

Louis goes back to Bok-shil’s office, this time for business. He tells them that Goldline is restructuring, and they need a company that delivers vegetables direct from the growers. So he’s here to offer Singsingline a contract to be a branch of Goldline, though they’ll still be able to operate independently.

Louis wonders what’s wrong when Joong-won and Bok-shil don’t answer right away, and Bok-shil says they need to think about it. Since Singsingline is getting off the ground well on its own, they have to discuss whether working with Goldline is a good idea.

Joong-won asks some questions about the contract, and decides that it’s not a bad deal. He tells Bok-shil that he thinks they should accept Louis’s offer, and she says she’ll do it so long as they don’t have to raise their prices. Louis agrees, and they shake on it.

Joong-won grouchily breaks them apart and refuses to shake on the deal as well, since he’s on sabbatical this year. He says he’ll just stay home, so Louis offers to give Joong-won his old office with its bed and fully-stocked pantry.

Remembering his nearly-identical offer for Louis to live with him when he was homeless, Joong-won thinks Louis is making fun of him, but Louis just grabs Joong-won in a big hug and says he likes him. Aww, that makes Joong-won blush, and he agrees to participate.

They all head over to the Goldline office, where the Goldline team is (mostly) thrilled to have Louis back. Louis introduces them as the new Singsingline branch managers, and he assigns them the meeting room as their office. Louis has a plain little table brought in for his desk, which seems strange to everyone.

Bok-nam is back at Grandma’s for another tutoring session, while the high school girls peel garlic on the steps. Louis and Bok-shil bring In-sung and his mom for dinner as they promised, and Grandma joins them.

Louis offers to play a song to help the girls with their hard work, and he sits at the piano and sings “This is the Moment.” He has a lovely voice, and soon everyone stops what they’re doing to listen. Bok-shil moves to sit with Louis, love shining in her eyes, and Grandma looks around at her house filled with the people whose lives Louis has touched.

Later, Grandma talks to Butler Kim about how busy her home has been since Louis came back. She says sadly that she’s always lived alone in this big house, and even sent Louis away, but she doesn’t think Louis will make her same mistakes. She thinks that losing his memory taught Louis an important lesson about how to live with others.

She asks if Butler Kim looked into “that matter,” and he says that he doesn’t think there will be a baby Louis any time soon. Grandma is confused, sure her dream was a conception dream, and Butler Kim smiles then seems to realize something. Heeey… is it Butler Kim and Jung-ran who are expecting? Butler Kim, you old dog!

Grandma also asks about Louis’s treasure box, and Butler Kim says that Louis finally remembered that he hid it in the attic of the Busan house. Grandma sends him to Busan to look for it right away.

On his way out, Butler Kim asks Jung-ran if she could be pregnant. He tells her about Grandma’s conception dream, but she frantically shushes him and tells him to get out.

Louis arranges for Bok-nam to stay with Grandma so that he can spend more time studying. He walks Bok-shil home, wrapping her up in his coat with him just for the extra snuggles. They walk in the door to see a covered dish waiting, which Louis says In-sung prepared for them.

Bok-shil lifts the cover to reveal a diamond ring. Ohmygoodness, he’s proposing! Louis tells her that this one is real, and Bok-shil realizes that it’s an exact replica of the fake ring she admired on their first trip to Busan. Louis had promised to get her a real ring one day, and now he’s making good on that promise.

Bok-shil is struck speechless as Louis slides the ring onto her finger. He says softly that this is his sincere heart, and that if he’d had the money that day in Busan, he would have bought her that ring. Bok-shil can only thank him, and her simple words seem to encompass everything he’s done for her.

Louis looks down and kisses the ring on Bok-shil’s hand, then pulls her close. He leans in to kiss her, but she stops him and says it’s hot in the room. He pouts a little at her evasiveness, and when she says they should go out for coffee, he says he’ll make some so they can stay in.

He goes to the kitchen for the coffee mix, and Bok-shil asks how he knew where it was, since she reorganized after he moved out. He grows serious, and confesses that he came here every day while they were apart. He tells her that he would watch her go to work every day, and stay until she turned her lights out at night.

Ashamed, Louis apologizes for watching her when she told him to stay away. But instead of being angry, Bok-shil gives Louis a backhug, and thanks him. Louis turns around in her arms, and leans down to give Bok-shil a kiss. Their fingers entwine as they reaffirm their love for each other.

Louis leans back to kiss Bok-shil’s forehead, then holds her tightly in his arms. He says softly, “Let’s never be apart again.”

Butler Kim travels to Busan, but when he looks in the Busan house attic, in Louis’s hiding place under the floor, there’s no treasure box. He calls Grandma and tells her the treasure box isn’t there, and they think Louis must have forgotten where it is. But he didn’t forget — somehow, Director Baek now has possession of the box.

Louis goes to see Jae-sook at her bookstore, and she gives him a box of his favorite chocolates. He remembers that she brought him the same chocolates when he was a little boy crying for his parents, even though Grandma forbid those kinds of treats. They’d thought the chocolates had been a secret, but Butler Kim had known all about them.

Jae-sook cheerily says that ever since Louis came home, Grandma has been much happier. She asks him to visit the bookstore often, then they’re interrupted by a visitor.

Uh oh, it’s Scarface, and he tells Jae-sook that he’s the one who spoke to her on the phone the other day. He looks a bit nervous when he spots Louis, and Louis also remembers speaking to him.

COMMENTS

That’s a bit of a strange place to leave off, but I’m chalking it up to the fact that the airing order has been off since the pre-emption a few weeks back. This is really the first time I’ve thought a cliffhanger seemed awkward, though, and it does leave me concerned about what Scarface is doing in jae-sook’s bookstore. I don’t trust him not to have made a copy of the USB he gave to Director Baek, and it was suspicious that he was staying in the country for a whole week before leaving, but I can’t figure out what he wants. He just got a huge chunk of change to leave quietly, so what else could be possibly be after?

But on to the big moment of this episode – holy cats, Louis proposed! Well, he pretty much proposed, that gorgeous ring did the deed for him. His surprise was so sweet and simple, and I love that he made good on his promise to get her a ring like the one she saw on the street cart, but real this time. I’m equally happy that he confessed to taking care of Bok-shil when they were separated — it was the last secret between them, and now they can share their life together with no more obstacles. But mostly I’m just excited that they will be spending the rest of their lives together, because I just can’t imagine anything else.

I’m glad that Joong-won has graciously stepped back from pursuing Bok-shil, but I also appreciate that the show hasn’t forgotten that he likes her. Often when it becomes clear that the main couple are together early-ish in a drama’s run, the second lead’s feelings just disappear like they never existed, which always seems too convenient for me that the conflict goes away once it’s not needed for the narrative anymore. So I find it more true-to-life that Joong-won still acknowledges his feelings, he just knows that Bok-shil and Louis are meant for each other, so he’s choosing to support her in a different way. But he doesn’t forget that he has feelings for her, and it feels real to watch him struggle with his lingering jealousy. Plus, it maintains that fun tension between Louis and Joong-won, where they’re jealous of each other’s feelings for Bok-shil, but deep down they actually like each other. Their frenemy relationship is the cutest thing ever, and I’ll never get tired of Louis’s pouty faces or Joong-won’s annoyed grumpy growl.

Another trope-twist I’m glad of is that from early on, I’ve been fully expecting Louis to get his original memory back, but lose his memories of his time with Bok-shil. I’m so happy the show didn’t even go there other than to troll us a bit, and that as I’d hoped, regaining his memory hasn’t changed Louis in the slightest. The writer has cleverly been integrating the new Louis and the old for several weeks now, having Louis grow up slowly under Bok-shil’s care, so that when he got his memory back there was virtually no change in him, personality-wise — the two Louis’s integrated so seamlessly that I wasn’t sure he’d gotten his entire memory back until he said so. He’s even still retained some of his mannerisms that cropped up when he lost his memory, like the way he walks, his splayed hands, and the blinking he does when he’s nervous or excited. Which is wonderful, because I don’t want Louis to change one single bit!

Louis can be very cagey when he wants to be — he’s proven that well enough with his little schemes in the past. But I’ve wondered for a while if he’s playing a long game with Director Baek, the way he asks him questions like why he didn’t say he knew Louis when they met in the hotel. This episode pretty much clinched my theory, when Louis asked Director Baek to stay for ramyun then nailed him with the news that he’s recovered his memory. Louis may not know exactly what Director Baek is up to — or maybe he does? It’s so hard to tell — but at the very least he knows that something strange is going on with this guy.

And I’m really starting to think that Louis and Bok-shil met as children, and that possibly their parents were killed by the same landslide. It makes sense that that would be why Louis named his dog and his penguin statue “Koboshi,” which sounds so much like Bok-shil’s name. Even Butler Kim thinks that Bok-shil and Bok-nam look familiar, which would seem to suggest that he was there when the children all met each other. We know that Bok-shil’s grandmother took the children when she was called to the accident site, and if Butler Kim and Louis were there too, it would explain a lot. But there are still so many questions… Was the accident not really an accident, and did little Louis see something that he then hid in his treasure box? Is that why Butler Kim and Grandma have been looking for the box, because they suspect there’s a clue in there? Was Director Baek involved, and that’s why he’s stolen the box now? It’s so refreshing to have a show give us mysteries that remain true mysteries until the end, but I’m dying to know!

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