Tomorrow With You: Episode 6

by gummimochi

Keeping the spark alive won’t be easy when the secrets our hero keeps threaten to drive a wedge in his most important relationship yet. So-joon might have good intentions when it comes to keeping his loved ones in the dark, but he’ll soon learn that trying to adjust the present for the future isn’t the way to make a marriage work. Having his and hers is a cute idea for some things, but it can easily spell disaster if he means to live his and her separate lives.

 
EPISODE 6 RECAP

Ma-rin walks home feeling proud about the fine man her husband grew up to be, and at the same time So-joon races to Doo-shik’s apartment, but nobody’s home. So he leaves behind a note explaining the dark future he saw in 2018, one where he was long gone.

“There was something strange about you,” So-joon writes. “March 25, 2019. My last day. Now the future me who could’ve told me how Ma-rin and I could’ve avoided the accident has disappeared. First, I have to find out why I disappeared.”

He finds Ma-rin waiting for him outside their house, though she says it still feels like the house belongs to him. He jokes that he should add the name Kkot-soonie on the mailbox.

Later, Ma-rin pulls So-joon in front of the TV to watch a news story about a donor who has been giving anonymously for twelve years running. She’s impressed with how anyone could remain so tight-lipped about doing a good deed for so long, and thinks he’s too modest when it comes to donating to charity.

Those people are like a real-life Batman in her eyes—just like how the Dark Knight protects Gotham, those philanthropists protect their country. So-joon has heard enough, and Ma-rin fawns over him as they retire to bed.

He’s half-asleep while she keeps questioning why Batman always worked so hard in protecting his true identity: “Why would people hate bats?” Bats could be quite cute, and while they dwell in caves, having wings and feet makes bats a friend to both birds and rodents.” Lol, what?

So-joon agrees as much: “I have a hard enough time understanding you. I don’t know why I have to understand bats.” Her point is that Batman needn’t live in such secrecy; she feels sorry for him because he must get lonely. If he had a wife, surely he could tell her that he’s also Bruce Wayne by day, right?

So-joon snores in response, and doesn’t answer when she asks if he’s really asleep or pretending to. Tucking him in, she whispers, “You could tell me.”

Later that night, Doo-shik returns and reads So-joon’s note with a heavy heart.

The following morning, So-joon tries wriggling out of a personal photo shoot with Ma-rin. She pouts that he once stood as a model for her and asks if things have changed now that they’re married.

He concedes to be photographed, and the next thing we know, he grumbles, “I won’t do this.” Hah, they’re at the supermarket, and Ma-rin pops out from behind him and instructs him to act natural.

Avoiding the camera, So-joon asks if this is an attempt to make him go grocery shopping with her. He eventually gives in to her demands and strikes up a conversation with the fishmonger, and Ma-rin finds his inability to differentiate various types of fish downright adorable.

He’s much more familiar with ramyun, though, and despite feeling awkward in front of the camera, he tries out different poses and faces for Ma-rin. He cringes in embarrassment, and when she doesn’t put down the camera, he asks what she’s doing. Ma-rin answers: “Just… seeing what you look like. Watching over what man I’ve staked my life on.”

Holding out his hand, he adorably asks her to stop snapping photos. She puts down the camera to tell him how she once told a photographer that she pursued photography to prove that what people see on the surface isn’t everything. Everyone has a part of themselves they keep hidden, and she wants her photos to capture their true selves.

She shyly says she wants to keep taking photos of him. Looking at her lovingly, he points to his lips and puckers up, but when she takes the bait, he pulls away, teasing, “Were you always that easy?”

At Happiness for Humanity, Se-young is the only one who voices dissent towards Ma-rin’s portfolio, which is full of pictures of So-joon. Little does she know that Ma-rin can hear her on the other side of the door, so she feels awkward when Ma-rin enters moments later.

When Se-young voices her concerns to Ma-rin directly, Ma-rin doesn’t shy away from the criticisms. In fact, Ma-rin quotes the organization’s vision statement, arguing that her portfolio reflects the idea of a happy home filled with loved ones, like her husband. She plans to focus the commemorative book on the people inside the homes, rather than on the houses themselves.

She catches Se-young shaking her leg and advises her to stop lest all her blessings fall away.

So-joon is on the train headed to the future when Ma-rin calls with good news: She’s using her talents for a good cause by working with Happiness. Noticing the lights turn off above him, he quickly tells her they can talk about it at home and literally poofs away.

Ma-rin is upset that her new job didn’t elicit any reaction out of him, but she’s invited to have coffee with Se-young’s father. He thinks it was wrong of him to tell her about So-joon’s connection to Happiness before So-joon did, and Ma-rin carefully reveals that she didn’t know about So-joon’s parents either.

She understands that it’d be difficult for So-joon to talk about his family, explaining that they both survived the subway crash. She guesses that none of So-joon’s friends know about So-joon’s parents’ deaths if she only found out today, and Se-young’s father awkwardly nods in agreement.

So-joon returns to Ki-doong’s abandoned home in 2018. Unable to get through to Ki-doong, he sends a text asking his buddy to call him. He waits for hours before finally giving up.

So-joon narrates that it took three years for him to master his ability to time travel. He’d usually restrict his trips to once per day because of the physical side-effects, but today he had no choice but to make multiple trips if it meant finding out when things began to go awry.

So So-joon works his way backward from 2018, traveling back and forth, and after many failed attempts, he finally returns to a furnished house. He checks the vent again and finds his journal. An entry reads: “Ajusshi’s identity? Why did he teach me about time travel? Why did he approach me? Director Kim.”

Speaking of whom, Director Kim gives his secretary the night off while he conducts a secret meeting with… Doo-shik? What in the?! Evidently Doo-shik has called himself one of Soo-joon’s investors, and he asks for permission to lay all the cards on the table.

Poor Ki-doong has to tell his apologetic mother that finances are too tight to send his younger brother to grad school. So-joon catches the tail-end of that call and asks why Ki-doong’s future self ignored his calls.

He knows Ki-doong wants to live as normal a life as possible, confessing that he was desperate to get a hold of him today. But now he’s got a massive headache and wants to rest his eyes, and Ki-doong asks how long he plans on keeping Ma-rin in the dark about his biggest secret.

Ki-doong thinks things could be even better if she knew, and So-joon could package their future together in a pretty bow for her if she gets too curious. And now So-joon finally admits that his future with Ma-rin isn’t all that great.

In his car, So-joon muses that he thinks he disappeared less than three months from now, on November 30. “Why could I have disappeared and left Ma-rin behind?” he wonders.

As soon as he heads inside, Ma-rin asks where he popped off to earlier. He nearly trips over a futuristic robot vacuum which Ma-rin is fascinated by. While they get ready for bed, she asks why he didn’t say anything about her working for Happiness.

He says it’s because he thought it was a contractor position, and while that’s true, she wants to keep in contact with Se-young’s father. She plays dumb when he asks if Se-young’s father made mention of anything else, but he quickly drops the subject.

She gives him an opportunity to tell her anything, so So-joon posits, “What would you do if I disappeared one day?” Ma-rin says she’d wait for him—but why is he asking? Turning towards her, he says, “Let’s live together for a long, long time. Even if we’re angry, disappointed, or get sick of one another, stick by me like we were born as a set.”

“If you were to disappear one day, I might lose my mind,” he tells her. Swooon.

When Gun-sook whines over Ma-rin’s absence at their friends’ outing, the others are quick to catch on that Gun-sook harbors an ulterior motive. They don’t believe her excuse that she’s trying to patch things up between her and Ma-rin, and Gun-sook points out that practically no one knows anything about the MyReits CEO.

According to her sources, So-joon became rich overnight, and no one knows how he pulled it off.

Elsewhere, Ma-rin blushes when a Happiness employee formally addresses her as “Photographer Song.” Se-young invites her out for a drink, and the mood is, well, awkward.

Every time Se-young tries to establish that she doesn’t feel awkward around her, Ma-rin cuts her off, saying that it’s the same with her. Se-young brings up that Ma-rin must have a bone to pick with her, to which Ma-rin replies, “You hate me.”

She even noticed that Se-young has her number saved as “Bap-soonie,” and points out that it was Se-young who wanted to speak plainly. She’s used to people hating her, though she notes the relational distance Se-young sets between them. She claims not to be curious about people who hate her, and sips her wine. Se-young pushes past her frustration and extends a hand to clink glasses.

The camera zooms in, then zooms out as So-joon arrives at the wine bar hours later, only to find Se-young alone, plastered and surrounded by empty bottles. He’s surprised to see her so drunk since she usually has a high tolerance, and she hides her face because she doesn’t want to see him.

So-joon entrusts her to Ki-doong when he arrives shortly afterward. Se-young is a rowdy drunk who can barely walk, and Ki-doong sweetly lends her his ear as she gripes about Ma-rin.

But then she mistakes him for So-joon, asking why he married Ma-rin. “Aren’t I better?” she asks drunkenly. Though Ki-doong laughs, he seems concerned because he’s never seen Se-young like this before.

Thinking that she’s still talking to So-joon, Se-young asks him, “So are you happy with her? Do you love her to death?”

Ma-rin miraculously finds her way home, and when nobody’s home, she thinks So-joon is playing hide-and-seek with her. She hugs the robot vacuum, which disappears beneath the couch to fetch a dropped coin.

She bends down to chase it and finds a magazine from the future whose cover features a new president of South Korea. This is how So-joon finds her, trying to discern between what’s real or not.

He snatches the magazine out of her hands and quickly tells her the headline is positing a what-if scenario, even arguing that the exclamation mark is really a question mark. But she’s convinced that she’s read it correctly, and So-joon resorts to scolding her for scaring him because she’s imagining things.

“Are you scared of me?” she asks, slurring her words. “I’m scared of this country.” He decides that it’s time for bed and scoops her up and carries her away. A thunderstorm brews outside, and Ma-rin wakes at the noise. She shuffles over to the door, then sends a dark look at a sleeping So-joon: “Why did he lie?” Geez, that shade of red makes it even scarier.

She mulls over the situation in the living room, convinced that she wasn’t imagining things. But she can’t be completely certain, and as the storm rages behind her, she thinks about all the times when So-joon accurately predicted the weather or when he explained away strange objects as products in development.

Pieces of the night start returning to her, like Se-young drunkenly telling her that So-joon has no friends who work in research and development. She jumps when a barely awake So-joon appears—he finds her sudden use of jondae weird and tells her to come back to bed.

Ma-rin tells So-ri about the magazine she found beneath the couch—she tried to be understanding that her husband is a businessman, but she can’t shake off the feeling that So-joon is keeping something from her. “Maybe he’s more like Hong Gil-dong than Batman.”

She’s afraid to bring it up in case So-joon is leading some secret life where he’s doing good deeds. But she’s even more upset to hear that Gun-sook has taken a personal interest in solving the mystery that is So-joon’s success and his hasty marriage to Ma-rin.

Ma-rin admits she’s been having doubts about So-joon too, and agrees that it doesn’t hurt to directly ask her spouse what’s going on. She sends him a puzzling text, asking which fictional hero he would save from drowning: Hong Gil-dong or Batman?

He ignores it and is called up to the roof by Ki-doong, who asks why he sent Ki-doong’s family money behind his back. Not wanting his friend’s charity, Ki-doong promises to return the money and warns him against ever doing this again.

So-joon doesn’t find it a big deal, but that’s the very issue, Ki-doong states—while that’s easy money for So-joon, he finds it an offensive gesture. Rather than acknowledging his error, So-joon laughs and makes light of the situation, which only stresses Ki-doong more.

So-joon says he meant well because he couldn’t ignore his friend’s plight, and after chasing him for a hug, he asks his buddy for a favor: to meet at Ki-doong’s house on December 3rd. He knows Ki-doong doesn’t want to know too much about the future, but there’s something he really needs to ask him that day: “Please be at home that day, no matter what. I’ll explain everything then.”

That night, Ki-doong circles December 3, 2016 on his calendar. So-joon travels to that date to meet the future Ki-doong, who has been expecting him. And So-joon comes right out with it: “I disappeared.”

Future Ki-doong knows that’s why So-joon came to see him today, and reassures him that his disappearance isn’t related to an accident. He explains, “You left for overseas. You broke up with Ma-rin.”

So-joon can’t believe that his marriage to Ma-rin was always rocky, and asks, “Did she find out that I’m a time traveler?” Future Ki-doong doesn’t know what exactly drove a wedge between them, but apparently the future So-joon suddenly left one day. Furthermore, their marriage was never officially registered.

Future Ki-doong has no idea where the future So-joon went, but So-joon counters that he has no reason to leave Ma-rin. Ki-doong advises him to return to the present and break up with Ma-rin while he still can, for both their sakes.

Ma-rin waits up for So-joon, hoping to have a serious talk tonight. Mom insists on staying the night (and pfft, she wears a hairpiece?), while in the future, So-joon discovers that he’s missed the last train.

He walks through the snowy streets and looks at his phone, only to realize that no one would be calling him at this time. His feet take him down a quiet street, where he sees the future Ma-rin walking alone.

He trails behind her and watches as she narrowly avoids an oncoming scooter and falls. A drunkard offers to help her up and recognizes her as Bap-soonie, and Future Ma-rin heads inside the house. While So-joon stands outside their home in the future, the shot beautifully blends into Ma-rin waiting for him outside in the present.

So-joon doesn’t return home in the present until the following morning. Annoyed, Ma-rin heads in the opposite direction when she sees him approach, and he chases her down.

He swears he didn’t stay out all night on purpose, but she coolly replies that she doesn’t want to pry into his privacy, and skips away.

He sticks to her like glue when she comes home, swearing that he passed out drunk at Ki-doong’s place. But Ma-rin tells him not to give excuses because she’s trying hard to stay out of his business. She suggests that they can have one of those marriages where each spouse freely lives their own lives.

Speaking of which, she proposes that they put off making their marriage official on paper, a statement Future Ki-doong warned So-joon about. So-joon asks if they have to go that far because of one mistake he’s made, and Ma-rin says she agreed to work with Happiness; she’ll be away next week for an on-location photo shoot.

He remains silent, so she repeats herself, adding that she knows he was the one who re-established the organization. He says he thought it wasn’t necessary to bring that fact up—if he really wanted to keep it a secret, he would’ve deterred her from working there.

“But I wished that you had told me,” Ma-rin replies, “because I thought I was someone who was important enough to share that [fact] with.” She says there are so many things she wants to know about him, but can’t bring herself to ask him because she can’t help but think that he’s keeping something from her: “Is this all I am to you?”

“If I kept something from you, it’s probably because I didn’t want to hurt you,” So-joon says in his defense. “Because nothing good can come from you knowing.”

That indicates to her that there is something then, and So-joon says nobody can be completely truthful. Eep, that’s not what you want to say right now. “Could I know everything there is to know about you? I can’t, and that’s the same for everyone,” he adds. Ahh! Stop, stop!

“But what’s important is that in my head… we’ll live happily together… for a long, long time!” he stutters. The words get caught in his throat, and he yells, “I’m only worried about what lies ahead for us!”

She wonders why he’s getting so angry and overcomplicating things when she’s merely upset that he’s keeping secrets from her. To her ears, he sounds like he doesn’t want any added stress from her when he’s working so hard at the office.

She walks off, and they retire to different rooms. It’s only now that So-joon sees the stream of worried and frustrated messages that Ma-rin sent last night. “I did come home,” So-joon pouts. “I waited outside in the cold.”

Elsewhere, Gun-sook tries to persuade her husband to move anywhere in the world in so long as it’s cockroach-free. Director Kim reminds her that no such place exists, and wonders if her sudden desire to move is because she can’t handle losing to Ma-rin. Reassuring her that he’ll keep his promise to make her a CEO’s wife, he thinks back to his dinner with Doo-shik, who had promised to invest a large sum with him rather than with So-joon.

Later, So-joon notices Ma-rin on the swing and tries sending an apology text with a cute emoticon. Aw, I love that he has her saved as “My Kkot-soon.” But Ma-rin won’t have any of it and calls him out for trying to be cute. He tries to convey his sincerity with another emoticon, and it totally backfires. Lol, he’s so terrible at this.

He barely gets through his third attempt before Ma-rin writes that this is no matter to be resolved over text. Defeated, he shrinks away. He comes downstairs and apologizes in person, but Ma-rin is in no mood to talk.

She notices him shuffle towards the door and asks, “Where are you going?” When So-joon murmurs he’s just going to pop out for a bit, he sees Ma-rin yelling at the robot vacuum instead. “Where are you going?! There’s no dust there! Why do you do things your own way!”

He has no idea those words were also meant for him and heads out for some fresh air, and finds Doo-shik huddled in a corner. Instead of greeting him, this Doo-shik hides his face. Oh, could this be an accidental encounter with one of Doo-shik’s time-traveling selves?

Realizing he can’t avoid a conversation, Mystery Doo-shik says that he came to see how So-joon was doing, and acknowledges that he read So-joon’s note.

Ma-rin, however, wonders what’s taking So-joon so long and pops her head outside, only to hide behind the gate when she sees the two men talking. She overhears Mystery Doo-shik affirm that he did tell So-joon that his life would reset if he got married and that everything in his future would change.

Soo-joon: “But now I think my future is even more messed up than before.”

 
COMMENTS

Gah, damn you cliffhanger! We’re on the edge of one of the most anticipated moments of this series, where Ma-rin finally finds out about So-joon’s ability to time travel. I wouldn’t be surprised if this conversation is how Ma-rin finds out the truth—straight from the horse’s mouth. If in the event that So-joon’s last line here is the only one she does overhear, however, I’d think that would only add to the many misunderstandings that have stacked on top of one another.

And while big misunderstandings are the bread and butter of drama conflicts (which can sometimes be frustrating), they feel naturally sewn in here because of the often confusing way Ma-rin and So-joon communicate with one another. More and more we see that So-joon is so caught up in what might happen in the future that he fails to see how that overcomplicates the present—the only time Ma-rin, his friends, and everyone else can see. His fear of a dark future blinds him to an understanding of why his new marriage would already be on the rocks, and his clumsy attempts to make up, whilst adorable, aren’t enough to patch things up with Ma-rin, who simply wants to hear the truth from his own lips. He may think that he’s protecting her by remaining tight-lipped, but much like how he secretly sent money to Ki-doong’s family, his good intentions alone aren’t always what his loved ones need.

I have no reason to doubt Future Ki-doong’s words about how So-joon’s marriage to Ma-rin failed, but I do wonder what he means by advising his friend to end the marriage while he still can. Ki-doong might simply want to save his friend from heartache or perhaps he knows something else he can’t bring himself to break to So-joon just yet. In terms of their friendship, I fear the day when So-joon will think he’s done another good deed for his friend, only to realize that the act will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. He may have met up with Ki-doong in three months’ time, but his friend is long gone by 2018.

Lastly, I have to wonder which Doo-shik So-joon is currently speaking with, since present-day Doo-shik would be in casual clothing and evidently 2018 Doo-shik looks drab and exhausted. I’m inclined to think that this is an accidental run-in, given that this Doo-shik wanted to avoid contact with So-joon. I hope that our hero realizes soon that this may not be the same ajusshi who claimed to have gone on vaycay, or maybe he’ll have to learn things the hard way.

 
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