49 Days Episode 1

Down below, a traffic jam strands three young ladies in a cab, with an engagement ceremony fast approaching. The stressed-out bride — er, fiancée-to-be — is about to lose it; SHIN JI-HYUN (Nam Gyuri) has many nicknames, one of which is “crybaby,” and she’s about to prove its aptness here.

Averting disaster is her stalwart best friend, SHIN IN-JUNG (no relation) (Seo Ji-hye), who urges Ji-hyun and their third friend PARK SEO-WOO (Bae Geu-rin) to make it on foot. When Ji-hyun’s heel breaks, it’s In-jung who gives up her flats and runs on in her stocking feet.


Elsewhere, an architect works at his desk, only looking up when he is reminded that the engagement ceremony is approaching. This is HAN KANG (Jo Hyun-jae), who dresses in his suit and heads toward the venue.

A classic misdirect makes us think (if we haven’t read the plot synopsis by now) that he’s the late groom-to-be, and he tugs nervously at his tie like a bachelor with cold feet. But no, it’s a fake-out: He bursts into the ceremony as it’s just winding down.
The happy couple isn’t greatly disturbed so there’s no big drama here — at least, until we pan back to Kang’s uncomfortable face and realize that no, he’s not the fiancé. He’s the guy who wishes he were.
Ji-hyun greets Kang with friendliness, but he coldly ignores her and focuses on talking to his hyung, fiancé KANG MIN-HO (Bae Soo-bin). We get the sense Ji-hyun is used to being snubbed but keeps trying because she wants to win Kang over, but he’s not having it.
Min-ho asks Kang to hold Ji-hyun’s hand because she keeps tripping over her dress, and he stutters an excuse to avoid it. She’s miffed at his rejection, but Kang is working in self-preservation mode here, and just trying to get along without being found out.

The only person to pick up on something in Kang’s behavior is Ji-hyun’s dad, who looks at him quizzically. Min-ho explains that they met while he was studying for his MBA in the States. Kang is a high school classmate of Ji-hyun’s, and “practically a genius” as an architect.SONG YI-KYUNG (Lee Yo-won), who hunches in her tiny apartment eating a bowl of instant ramyun for dinner, looking like all the life has been drained out of her eyes. She trudges lifelessly to her soul-sucking job at a small convenience store, where she works in a dull daze. Even when a customer tries to engage her with a friendly smile, she looks right through him and dismisses him.

Ji-hyun’s father is called away from the engagement ceremony with an upsetting call, and he stumbles home drunk that night. Guess the news must’ve been bad, because he urges the kids to marry right away . The hasty wedding isn’t what Min-ho or Ji-hyun had planned, but they dutifully go along with it, and Min-ho makes his official proposal to seal the deal. Then, they call their wedding party for dinner that night. The happy couple reminisces about their first meeting, which spins us off into a flashback to a hiking trip that Ji-hyun had gone on with In-jung. What started off sunny and invigorating had turned dark and rainy, and the girls had been separated in the woods. Min-ho had found her huddled and shivering in the woods, and carried her to safety and called an ambulance to tend to her. Ji-hyun goes shopping for her bridesmaid’s dresses, taking particular care to find a dress that’ll look pretty on In-jung, since she’s picked out a groomsman to match her up with. She takes the dress with her to have her friend try it on.

Hot Reaper Boy speeds along on his motorcycle, on his way to a scheduled, uh, appointment. Pulling over, he consults his smartphone… er, smartdeathwatchdevice. He’s got five minutes till the scheduled demise of a Mr. Kim Jin-soo, and settles back to wait.
At the same time, Yi-kyung stares dully at her calendar — okay, lady, you’re starting to be a real downer — which is fixed on an old date: March 15, 2006. She puts on a black dress, suggesting that she lost not only a loved one but also herself on that day.

Yi-kyung takes the bus to a particular location, carrying a desiccated rose, not noticing that she is passed by the Reaper or that she is being followed by a man.

She crouches by the road, next to a warning sign indicating a dangerous accident-prone area. A flashback takes us back to some time ago, when the bloodstain was fresh on the road. A young man’s body had hit the ground here.

Making a sudden decision, Yi-kyung rashly steps into the busy road, directly into the path of an oncoming truck. She closes her eyes to await impact.But a man dashes into traffic to spin her out of harm’s way, and they hit the ground safely.

The truck, on the other hand, swerves to avoid her. What results is a multi-car pileup on the highway, which catches the Reaper by surprise The Reaper sighs in frustration, just as the guy in front of him — stuck in traffic in his car — clutches his heart. Ji-hyun isn’t initially caught up in this nightmare wreckathon, but when a motorcyclist skids in front of her, she swerves to avoid running him over… and that sends her into a truck, the force propelling her out the windshield.

Landing on the ground, her eyes flutter open and she gets to her feet, apparently unharmed. She looks around to get her bearings, glancing over at the nearby car — hers — where people yell at the young woman inside. Which is her. Shock. Her real body is hunched over and bloody. Ji-hyun tries to touch something, but her hands only ripple into the man in front of her, and nobody can hear her. Oddly enough, one dude looks straight at her, to her relief. But the next moment, he’s gone.

Ji-hyun gets into the ambulance with…herself…and watches her body failing to respond to revival attempts.
In the hospital, Yi-kyung’s rescuer watches over her body. He’s the kindly fellow who’d tried to smile at her at the convenience store the other night, which doesn’t entirely explain his presence but suggests he may have been trying to gain her attention for a while now.Reaper Boy walks through the hall, and Ji-hyun remembers that he’d seen her at the accident site and chases after him. The rules of her condition establish that she cannot travel through solid objects, though, so she has to wait on the other side of a door until a living person opens it for her.

She joins the Reaper in another hospital room, where he awaits his time to step in. Spotting her, Reaper Boy gripes, “Shin Ji-hyun! Why don’t you pay attention when you drive?!”But before he can talk to her, he’s got a job to do. The man in the hospital bed flatlines, and his soul literally leaves the body just as the doctor pronounces him dead.

Reaper greets Dead Man and leads him away, where a celestial portal opens up with a wave of the Reaper’s hand. Dead Man steps inside the elevator, on his way to the After.

The Reaper indicates that she should follow him, and he takes her to the rooftop for a chat. She asks if he’s the Angel of Death/Grim Reaper, but he’s indignant to be called such a passé term: “I’m a Scheduler.” His job is to be there when a person’s scheduled lifetime is up. She asks if she’s dead, which he confirms. Although his work today hadn’t been about her, thanks to the accident, the plans had a last-minute hiccup: “It’s the case we Schedulers hate most — when our Schedules get messed up!”Ji-hyun wasn’t scheduled to die today, and Mr. Not-A-Reaper explains that every so often, a troublemaker arises to mess things up. Like today’s attempted suicide.

If there’s anything worse than dying, it’s finding out that you weren’t supposed to die. Ji-hyun clings to hope that he’d made a mistake, insisting futilely that she can’t be dead.And true, Ji-hyun’s not dead yet, not technically. But she is as good as gone, and the Scheduler shows her what he means by taking her to her hospital room.

Her friends burst in, in shock and grief, and listen in horror as the doctor declares her body in a vegetative state; she’s “practically brain-dead.”The Scheduler tries to lead Ji-hyun away. She freaks out, thinking he’s about to guide her to the hereafter, she tries to run. But you can’t cheat death, and there’s no escaping him.

He tells her he won’t force her on that elevator to heaven. Which means, she’ll have to decide to get on it herself.In his time as a Scheduler, he’s had two previous cases like hers, where the people died as a result of someone else’s unexpected action. She has two options: Either decide that she’s ready to move on to the afterlife anyway, or find three people in the world who truly love her. This she can prove in the form of tears shed while thinking of her. The Scheduler adds caveats — family members are excluded — but Ji-hyun is thrilled, since this plan seems pretty easy to her. After all, her hospital room was host to more than three tears already.

But the Scheduler smirks — not all tears are created equal. She must collect three pure tears. To illustrate, he takes her to a funeral and instructs her to observe carefully the tears of the attendees.

The Scheduler describes what she’s seeing: That lady sheds tears of pity, that one is crying in consolation to herself, and the other lady is forcing them out of courtesy. When the tears drop, they dissipate into a puff of color, indicating that they’re not “pure” tears of love. By contrast, pure tears of love burst into a flare of white mist, as demonstrated by one funeral-goer. That woman, therefore, truly loved the deceased. Too bad she’s her sister, which would negate her tears in Ji-hyun’s case.

On the other hand, the deceased’s husband cries green tears — they’re sad, but still tinged with hope for his own future. The Scheduler tsks-tsks as he looks over the other color-tainted tears in the room, sighing, “Humans sure are complicated.”Still, Ji-hyun is confident she can accomplish this in her allotted 49 days, and accepts the task.

Next, the Scheduler takes her to the convenience store and briefs her on the profile of the woman whose body she is allowed to use: Yi-kyung is 28, grew up in an orphanage, and graduated from university after studying hotel and tourism. She worked in a Seoul hotel for two years, was unemployed for a year, then had a string of convenience store gigs.

Ji-hyun doesn’t approve of her Body — that disheveled hairstyle, and those clothes! — but the Scheduler tells her that this woman is connected to her. He doesn’t clarify what Yi-kyung’s critical role was in determining Ji-hyun’s own fate.Ji-hyun is instructed to act only after Yi-kyung falls asleep, so she waits in Yi-kyung’s dingy apartment till her host comes home from her graveyard shift.

Once Yi-kyung falls asleep, Ji-hyun hovers over her as her soul is absorbed into the body. Moments later, Yi-kyung awakens — or should I say, Ji-hyun’s Soul In Yi-kyung’s Body. (We need a name for this. Ji-hyun-kyung? Ji-hyun’s Soul? The Host?)

In any case, Ji-hyun’s Soul gets up in her unfamiliar body, and acquaints herself with her new (temporary) home. Trembling in excitement, she declares tearily, “I’m…Shin Ji-hyun!”