Reunited Worlds: Episodes 33-34

by LollyPip

The clues are beginning to come together, forming a clear picture of the night that Hae-sung died. Armed with this knowledge, Hae-sung prepares to set the record straight, hoping to make the truth known so that those he loves won’t be haunted by a lie anymore. But there’s someone else out there who knows the truth, someone who’s prepared to do whatever it takes to keep the real story a secret.

 
EPISODE 33 RECAP

Hae-sung reviews the video he’s making for Jung-won for her to watch after he’s gone. He stays cheerful in the video, but as he watches, he breaks down in tears. Jung-won knocks on the door, and Hae-sung scrambles to hide the video camera, shoving it under the couch just as she comes inside.

She’s too excited to notice that he seems preoccupied as she tells him that Ho-bang thinks that he can find Dong-seok, the boy in the cast who was at the school the night Kyung-chul died. She tells Hae-sung that they caught Dong-seok on CCTV getting into a taxi, so they can use the license plate and Dong-seok’s credit card to find out where he went.

She finally notices that Hae-sung is still crouched on the floor, and she teases him for looking like a dog. She pets his head and tickles his chin like a good little puppy, then heads off to work.

After she finishes at the gallery later that night, Jung-won finds Hae-sung waiting to walk her home, much more cheerful than he was earlier. They sit in a playground to have a beer, and Jung-won mentions a necklace that Hae-sung got her for her eighteenth birthday that she lost when their group of friends all went to the beach.

Wistfully, Jung-won says that it was the last birthday present she ever received, because she couldn’t bear to celebrate her birthday without Hae-sung. She trills that she’s getting a present this year again (since he’s back). Remembering that her birthday isn’t until winter, Hae-sung reminds her that she used to tell him what she wanted all the way back in the summer.

Jung-won confesses that she had a list of things she wanted from him for future birthdays: gloves on her nineteenth, earrings on her twenty-first, and lipstick on her twenty-second. Hae-sung notices that she skipped her twentieth, but Jung-won shyly avoids answering.

At Hae-sung’s questioning, she finally blurts out that she wanted a kiss as her present. She jumps on the merry-go-round, embarrassed to admit to having such thoughts, while Hae-sung looks stunned.

Things are still awkward as they wait for their bus. Jung-won tells Hae-sung to get her gloves for her next birthday, since it was the next thing on her list, though she warns him cutely that she expects all the things she wanted for the next several years. Hae-sung promises to get it all for her, then their bus arrives.

But when it leaves, they’re still standing there, with Hae-sung gripping Jung-won’s wrist. He says, “I’ll give it to you now. Your twentieth birthday gift,” then pulls her in for a long, slow kiss.

Hae-sung continues making videos for Jung-won, who catches him and jokes that he should make videos of the dog, pointing mischievously at his face, hee. She shows him a cartoon she drew of a girl who finds a dog, explaining that the dog is the girl’s deceased pet come back to life, which the dog knows, but the girl doesn’t.

Hae-sung tells her that he’s going forward with opening his own restaurant, but Jung-won asks how he’ll afford it. He tells her about Mr. Mystery, who came back like he did. He says that the landlady brought him a package from his friend, who asked her to hold it until now, a few days ago.

Inside was a note from Mr. Mystery asking Hae-sung to accept a gift for his siblings’ sake, directing him to a subway locker. Inside was a backpack filled with cash, enough to start up the restaurant. Hae-sung says that Mr. Mystery is somewhere that he doesn’t need the money anymore, adding that he plans to ask Hae-chul to be his partner.

Jung-won goes to the gallery, where she spills Hae-sung’s “secret” about opening a restaurant to Min-joon and Grandmother. They somehow manage not to laugh at her, having both known for ages, ha.

After Jung-won leaves, Min-joon asks to speak to Grandmother in private about Hae-sung leaving them soon. He asks what she thinks they should do about Jung-won, who doesn’t know yet. Grandmother says sadly that Hae-sung needs to tell Jung-won soon, so that she can appreciate what time she has left with him.

Hae-sung offers Hae-chul a partnership in his restaurant, explaining that it will make it easier for him to fight for custody of Gong-ju. Hae-chul immediately agrees, bouncing off to work with renewed energy.

As Hae-sung heads off, Dong-seok passes him in his car and recognizes him. But Hae-sung is gone when he looks again, making Dong-seok wonder if he saw a ghost. Seeing him brings back memories of the night that Kyung-chul died — we sees flashes of the two boys fighting, and Dong-seok shoving a heavy bust off a cabinet and onto Kyung-chul’s head.

Dong-seok wonders if Hae-sung’s ghost came back because he was unfairly accused of the boy’s murder. He’s also curious why Jung-won keeps showing up in front of him, asking about that night.

He calls Yoo-min (Gong-ju’s mother) to meet with him, and she tells him that Jung-won and Hae-chul grew up together, like siblings. She hands over Jung-won’s business card, saying that she’s already saved her number in her phone.

Alarmed, Dong-seok tells her sharply not to talk to Jung-won anymore. He says that she’s only trying to get on Yoo-min’s good side to give Hae-chul an advantage in the custody case, but Yoo-min thinks Jung-won seems nice, unconvinced that she has an ulterior motive.

Dong-seok goes to the gallery to stare through the windows at Jung-won while she works, wondering how much she knows about that night.

Hae-sung sees Dong-seok as he’s getting back in his car to drive away, but it takes him a minute to recognize him from the CCTV picture Jung-won showed him. He runs back outside, but Dong-seok is long gone. He goes inside to pull up the video from the building’s surveillance camera and sees Dong-seok standing on the sidewalk watching Jung-won. He tells Jung-won, and the two of them go to Ho-bang, whose leads all unfortunately went nowhere.

Ho-bang did learn that Dong-seok was only in Canada for a short while, then moved to the U.S. There’s no official record of him entering Korea, so Ho-bang thinks he must be an American citizen and that he changed his name.

Jung-won is worried about Dong-seok’s reason for coming to her workplace, and Hae-sung wonders to himself if this means Dong-seok actually killed Kyung-chul. But he’s confused, because if Dong-seok is the killer, then what about Tae-hoon?

Meanwhile, Young-joon is planning a small wedding with Seo-won, and he lies to her mother, Director Sohn, that his parents will be coming to the wedding. They run into Soo-ji with her doctor, and Soo-ji quickly leaves when she sees her brother.

Director Sohn notices that Soo-ji has the same name as her doctor’s daughter, the one who died. Her doctor says that Soo-ji has chronic bilateral pyelonephritis, a life-threatening infection in both kidneys, and that she’s going to have to have a transplant soon. Young-joon seems to struggle to hide his reaction to this bad news.

Ho-bang is waiting for Jin-ju when she arrives home, and he bellows at her when she tries to sneak off. He chides her for avoiding him ever since she nearly ruined the sting operation, making her think that he’s here to arrest her. He stomps off and she follows him, resigned to her fate.

Eventually Ho-bang stops and asks for Jin-ju’s hand, which she assumes means he’s going to handcuff her. She holds out her wrists meekly, but Ho-bang just smacks them away then presents her with a ring, and finally says, “I like you.” Awww!

He stammers that he’s tried to say it in cooler ways, but that in the end, this is the best way to express how he feels. Apparently that’s all he ever had to say, because Jin-ju instantly melts and nods vigorously when he asks her to be his girlfriend.

Ho-bang slides the ring onto Jin-ju’s finger, and her heart pounds as she looks at it. Then she screams in abject horror, upset that she’s wearing ratty old sweats instead of the slinky dress she bought just for this moment. HAHA. She demands that he let her change and redo the whole thing over.

But Ho-bang grabs her hand and asks her not to wear skimpy dresses anymore, because it makes him jealous when other men look at her. Charmed, Jin-ju grumbles that she won’t listen to him. Ho-bang just sighs and offers to take her for chicken feet, and she grins that he knows her so well.

 
EPISODE 34 RECAP

Hae-sung takes Min-joon to see the location he’s chosen for his restaurant. He asks Min-joon how long he thinks it will take for the restaurant to get successful, wondering out loud if he’ll get to see it. Min-joon looks at Hae-sung sadly, knowing he has limited time.

Min-joon asks what Hae-sung plans to do about Jung-won, and Hae-sung admits that he’s having a hard time telling her the truth. Min-joon points out that she should have time to prepare herself for his leaving again.

Hae-sung says that when he’s gone, he wants Min-joon to be there for Jung-won. They both wish that the accident that took Hae-sung’s life had never happened, and Min-joon apologizes on his father’s behalf. He grows angry, upset that his father isn’t apologizing himself.

Elsewhere, Tae-hoon calls his father for the first time in days and agrees to go to his office to talk. CEO Cha thinks this is about Young-in, but Tae-hoon says that it’s about the incident from twelve years ago.

But Min-joon arrives at CEO Cha’s office first, and he begs his father to apologize to Hae-sung and his siblings before it’s too late. CEO Cha scoffs, and Min-joon raises his voice, saying that Hae-sung was only nineteen when he died and left behind everyone he loves. He pleads, saying that a simple apology isn’t so hard.

Neither of them sees Tae-hoon standing outside the partially open door, listening to their conversation with growing alarm. He turns and staggers away, stunned by the knowledge that his own father killed Hae-sung.

CEO Cha barks that he will never apologize, then orders Min-joon never to set foot in his office again. Min-joon retorts that because of this decision, CEO Cha will never be forgiven.

At home, Ho-bang tells Hae-sung that the investigation into Kyung-chul’s death was rushed and badly managed because of the apparent evidence against him. He says he just learned that Kyung-chul had an injury inside his right cheek, consistent with having been punched, so he had to have been punched by someone’s left hand.

Dong-seok, interestingly, was wearing the cast on his right arm. Ho-bang says that the more he learns, the more certain he is that Dong-seok was the real killer.

Tae-hoon calls Ho-bang just then, asking to meet him at the station in an hour. But when he shows up, Hae-sung is there waiting to talk to him. Tae-hoon says he plans to expose his father’s lies then turn himself in, but Hae-sung asks him not to do it.

He tells Tae-hoon that he’s leaving soon, and that he’ll take responsibility for everything. Instead of taking the blame, he asks Tae-hoon to stay with Young-in and make her happy for the rest of her life, and to look after his siblings when he’s gone.

Hae-sung says that Tae-hoon may not be responsible for Kyung-chul’s death, explaining everything they’ve learned about Dong-seok. Tae-hoon confirms that Dong-seok was there that night, revealing that he saw him coming out of the art room.

Putting together what they know, they conclude that Kyung-chul and Dong-seok went into the school together that night to meet up with Tae-hoon and deliver a beating for mouthing off to them. Dong-seok had gotten a call from the girl he liked and gone to the hallway to talk. Tae-hoon had seen him, but Dong-seok hadn’t noticed Tae-hoon.

Tae-hoon had gone into the classroom, where Kyung-chul had predictably objected to Tae-hoon telling him to leave Young-joon and Hae-sung alone. He’d slapped Tae-hoon around, but Tae-hoon had bravely stood his ground, threatening to tell his father and get Kyung-chul kicked out of school.

Kyung-chul had grabbed Tae-hoon by the throat, threatening to kill him, so Tae-hoon had given him a hard shove and fled the room. On his way out he’d heard a loud thud, which had worried him so much that he’d stayed at the school, wondering what to do.

He’d gone back to check on Kyung-chul, and had found him on the floor next to the bust, blood gushing from a head wound. Tae-hoon had assumed that when he’d pushed Kyung-chul into the cabinet, the bust had fallen and killed him. He’d run all the way home, only to hear the next day that Hae-sung was blamed for the murder.

Hae-sung asks Tae-hoon if he punched Kyung-chul with his left hand. Tae-hoon says he only pushed him, and confesses that he didn’t actually see the statue fall on Kyung-chul. Hae-sung says that Tae-hoon may think he killed Kyung-chul, but that in reality, that may not be true at all.

He asks how much time passed between his leaving the classroom and going back to check on Kyung-chul, and Tae-hoon says it was five to ten minutes. Hae-sung thinks that’s enough time for someone to enter and leave the classroom, wondering if it was Dong-seok.

Dong-seok is busy drinking himself into a stupor, trying to forget what he knows about that night. We see that when Tae-hoon pushed Kyung-chul and ran, the bust had fallen off the cabinet, but it hadn’t hit Kyung-chul. Vowing to kill Tae-hoon tomorrow, Kyung-chul had put the bust back on top of the cabinet, but since it was heavy, he’d left it right near the edge.

Dong-seok had come back to the classroom furious with Kyung-chul, having learned that he’d hit on the girl he likes. He’d punched Kyung-chul (with his left hand), then thrown the bully to the ground. In his fury, Dong-seok had grabbed the heavy bust and slung it at Kyung-chul, hitting him squarely in the head.

Kyung-chul had dropped like a stone, bleeding profusely, and Dong-seok had been terrified at the sight of so much blood. He’d run from the room, leaving Kyung-chul lying there unconscious.

In the present, he downs another drink and fumes about Jung-won digging up the past. He growls that if she keeps it up, he’ll kill her, before smashing his glass against the wall.

Hae-sung outlines his theory to Tae-hoon — that Kyung-chul was fine when Tae-hoon left the classroom and that Dong-seok went back and killed him. The two friends hug, relieved that Tae-hoon probably isn’t guilty. Hae-sung says that all they have to do is find Dong-seok and prove what really happened.

Jin-ju is completely smitten with Ho-bang now that she’s admitted she likes him, and as soon as they’re alone at his place, she decides that it’s time they take things to the next level. Ho-bang is scandalized, wanting this moment to be more romantic, but Jin-ju aggressively shoves him into a bookcase and starts to climb him like a tree.

They — along with the bookcase — topple over, and Jin-ju attacks Ho-bang’s face. But the loud crash brings Jung-won running, where she finds her friends making out on the floor, HAHA. They jump up, both of them disheveled and covered in lipstick, nervously claiming that they were just leaving as they run out the door.

Jung-won is left behind, giggling at their antics. She cleans up the bookcase and finds Hae-sung’s video camera in the wreckage. She turns it on to see if it’s broken and finds Hae-sung on the screen, speaking directly to her.

He says that by the time she watches this video, he probably won’t be in this world anymore, and she freezes. Her face falls as he continues that coming back and being with her has made him happy, then she drops the camera as she realizes what his words mean.

Hae-sung arrives home just then, and he immediately knows by the expression on Jung-won’s face that something is terribly wrong. She looks at him pleadingly and asks if the video means he’ll disappear again, tears spilling from her eyes. Unable to say the words, Hae-sung takes a step towards Jung-won, but she backs away from him and runs out of the room.

 
COMMENTS

Hae-sung has got a lot of explaining to do to make up for the horrible way that Jung-won found out about his leaving. Not only that, but the video proves that he was considering not telling her at all, which is even worse. I understand that Hae-sung is afraid to tell the truth to those he loves and break their hearts all over again, but it’s going to happen one way or another. Letting them find out after it’s too late to prepare themselves or say goodbye is the coward’s way out, because then Hae-sung doesn’t have to see their grief. Besides, they’ve already suffered through losing him suddenly and unexpectedly once before, so he should be seeing his return as his chance to say goodbye as well. That way, when he’s gone, none of them are left with regrets like they were the first time.

I’m glad that we finally know the full truth about Kyung-chul’s death, and that Tae-hoon wasn’t responsible after all. It wasn’t an accident as I’ve assumed for weeks now, but I also don’t think that Dong-seok intended to kill Kyung-chul… they were violent boys who let their anger get the best of them, with tragic results. But Dong-seok has spent his life running from the past, even changing his nationality and his name to escape the fact that he killed someone. It makes me curious as to why he came back and risked being seen by someone who might recognize him.

Putting the clues together, it seems as though Dong-seok met Yoo-min in America, and for some reason he talked her into coming back to Korea and suing for custody of Gong-ju, which is odd considering her previous comment that she’d never even thought about doing that on her own. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but whatever he’s planning, I have no doubt that his mild-mannered lawyer act is nothing but an act. When he snarled that he’d kill Jung-won, it didn’t sound like just a turn of phrase — it sounded like he truly means to kill her if she threatens him by turning up the truth about Kyung-chul.

Advantages continue to magically, conveniently, fall into Hae-sung’s lap, which is admittedly a bit frustrating, and smacks of lazy writing. Even though the whole point of Hae-sung being back is for him to do all the things he never got to do when his life was cut short, I would still have liked to see him getting these chances to improve his siblings’ lives for a reason that doesn’t involve convenient meetings with people who have convenient gobs of cash. But it does make sense for Mr. Mystery to have left Hae-sung the money that remained from selling his ginseng, so maybe I’m being too critical. If it wasn’t that so many of these things have happened to make Hae-sung’s return charmed and easy, maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much. I’ll just choose to see it as the Universe’s way of making things right after taking him so unfairly at such a young age.

What this drama does have going for it is its endearing characters and unrelenting cuteness, so that even though the plot is unrealistic (well, beyond the whole “back from the dead” thing, which I signed up for from the beginning), it keeps me coming back just to see the characters interacting with each other. I’ve said before that any one of Hae-sung’s siblings’ stories would make an interesting drama, and I only wish they got more screen time, especially Hae-chul and the adorable Gong-ju. Min-joon is one of the sweetest second leads ever, and I’ve particularly enjoyed watching Ho-bang’s fumbling attempts to court and win Jin-ju. I think that I’m not as frustrated with the problems in the plot as I would be normally, because the characters are all so enjoyable, so I’m glad for that, at least.

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