Tuesday, December 13, 2011

49 Days Episode 15






Min-ho goes up to the counter and calls Yi-kyung by her name and she calmly responds, “Yes, Kang Min-ho-sshi?” It surprises him, but not as much as it startles her, and an instant later, Yi-kyung’s eyes dart back and forth, wondering where that came from, and why she knows this man.

He asks her what she’s doing here and if she recognizes him, but she tells him to go and turns around before she gives anything else away. Min-ho doesn’t look like he’s going to let it go, but luckily, Dr. Noh walks in just in time.

He calls Yi-kyung by name, and can see that she’s disturbed, so he sends Min-ho away. Once Min-ho leaves, Yi-kyung sits down with Dr. Noh, who asks if she knows that man. She shakes her head no, and then nods her head yes—she doesn’t know him, and yet she knew his name, and could feel that he was bad news.

Dr. Noh then asks if she remembers seeing him yesterday. Nope. He tells her that she didn’t recognize him, and looked different too. He concludes that she likely has multiple personality disorder, brought on by her trauma.She tells him that it’s not some made-up personality; and it’s not a ghost either. She tells him that she can feel this other person living with her, and caring for her, worrying for her. Aw. “It’s the first time, since then… the feeling that someone is genuinely concerned for me.”

She finally recounts her origin story: she was abandoned at an orphanage at the age of five, and never even knew her real name. Yi-soo, who had been there since infancy, came and told her she’d be called Song Yi-kyung and gave her chocolate.

“Yi-soo took away the pain of being abandoned by my mother. Like siblings, like an oppa, like a friend, we were together for eighteen years. That Yi-soo… abandoned me.”Yi-kyung: And then he died. I wasn’t ready to let him go. There were things I wanted to say. Something I needed to ask him. But Yi-soo left. Being abandoned my mom, I was able to forget that because of Yi-soo. But after being abandoned by Yi-soo… I can’t trust anyone anymore… because I’m someone that nobody wants.Yi-soo finds that he’s crying. He wipes a tear away and wonders what this is.Dr. Noh asks if she hasn’t considered moving but she says that despite being scared, she can sense that this woman (Ji-hyun) is earnest and sincere. The doc is worried, but he leaves for now, and Min-ho follows him out. At home, Ji-hyun worries that Dr. Noh might’ve said something about running into her last night, and notices that she’s feeling really weak all of a sudden.Min-ho goes home to find In-jung waiting outside, and she anxiously asks him if he checked to see if it’s really Ji-hyun in Yi-kyng’s body. He yells that it’s not, and that it was a ridiculous idea in the first place. Seems like he’s trying to convince himself as much as anything. In-jung isn’t satisfied, but he dismisses her and goes in.Once alone, he betrays more confusion than he let on. Looking at his engagement photo, he says over and over, “It doesn’t make sense.”

Ji-hyun waits nervously, and when Yi-kyung comes home, she asks her to please go to sleep early for her today, because it’s the day of her dad’s surgery. Perhaps Yi-kyung can sense what she means but she goes to bed right away. Ji-hyun comes bounding out, only to run into Kang, who’s there to take her to the hospital. He of course says it in his totally unsubtle roundabout way, telling her that she ought to accompany him because he’ll be bored otherwise, and that they should go see him early before other people get there, because she shouldn’t be overstepping like she usually does, crying all over the place; it’s not like she’s their daughter or anything.He adds that In-jung could also blurt out that she’s dating Ji-hyun’s fiancé, out of spite. She says that she’s NOT dating Kang Min-ho. He fires back, “That pretending to date, then… He takes her to the hospital to visit Dad before surgery, and he’s touched that Ji-hyun has such loyal friends. Aw. He asks her to visit often when Ji-hyun wakes up, and to keep Mom company too. Ji-hyun asks if she can hug him, and she does, patting him on the back and surprising him in a gesture of warmth. She runs out to the hallway before the tears come tumbling out. Kang tries to comfort her, practically yelling at her to stop crying, and tells her that he’ll keep watch over Dad’s surgery. Min-ho walks up behind them just in time to see her crying buckets, and Kang putting his hand on her shoulder. His jealousy flares up, and he makes it abundantly clear. Min-ho: “Why are you here, with my woman?”

That just makes Kang’s jealousy spark in return, and they start to butt heads over who should be here right now and with whom. Seeing that it’s going to cause problems, Ji-hyun goes to Min-ho and puts her hand on his arm.She asks to go with him, and Min-ho makes sure to put his arm around her, just to make it clear who’s won. Kang bites his tongue knowing why she’s doing this, but it still kills him. With his fist clenched, he watches them go and says, “I might go crazy.”

He wonders to himself what on earth she’s trying to find out from him, and how much longer she has to keep putting on this act.Ji-hyun arrives at Heaven to find Manager Oh arguing with his wife, who’s still upset that he won’t tell her what he’s up to these days, with all his secret conversations with Kang and cryptic questions about how to prove your sincerity.He snaps that it’s the anniversary of Kang’s mother’s death, and that despite requesting in her living will that it not be observed, there are still things to prepare. Ji-hyun thinks to herself: “It’s the anniversary of his mother’s death, and yet Han Kang is watching over my father.”

Time for the boys to go into battle mode. Kang meets with a friend who’s done some digging into the Haemido project, and tells him that there’s definitely something fishy with the cost at which they bought the land. He speculates that there’s a separate account where money is being siphoned. If only they could get some evidence…

At the same time, Min-ho meets with the waiter from Kang’s restaurant. He baits him with money to pay off the rest of school, and then a job with him when he graduates. He just needs him to prove his loyalty first…On her way back into the hospital, Ji-hyun runs into a strange man who does a double take as he walks past her. It turns out what he notices is her tear necklace, because he’s got one too, only his is empty. Taken aback, she asks if he’s a 49er too.

He’s down to his last day without a single tear, and asks curiously how she managed to get a tear. He also provides some insight into her physical state, saying that with 13 days left, she must be feeling weak in her spirit state. He tells her that it just gets harder every day, and that it’s going to get increasingly difficult to pop in and out of the host body.He wonders if he’ll have enough time to see his family one last time before he has to go, and Ji-hyun puts some money in his hand, and tells him to wash up before going to see them.He looks at her gratefully, and says that the 49 days are really cruel. I suppose it’s cruel if you’ve got nothing but regret at the end of it. In-jung sees this from a distance, and tries to bribe the man for information about Yi-kyung, but no dice.

Dad’s made it out of surgery okay, but he needs to wake up before they can rest assured. Kang runs out to tell Ji-hyun the good news. He suggests they go back and keep watch, but she says that they should pay their respects to his mom.Kang tells her that his mom didn’t leave behind a single picture; just this piano, that she used to play after a glass of wine. He finally opens up about her, how his father used to travel back and forth to the States for work, and how she opened this wine bar. He hated it, thinking that his mother was selling her smiles and was divorcing his dad because she had met someone else.

He says that it never occurred to him that she might have been lonely. Then all of a sudden one day she moved them down to Jinan, and told him that she needed him by her side. He rebelled and never once treated her well or looked her in the eye.As a tear falls, Kang tells her that she was dying of cancer, and he never knew. He confesses that her last memory of him must be one full of regret for ever having him. Ji-hyun cries and puts her hand on his, and tells him that if she left the piano, it means that she left him everything that was valuable to her.

He lets her comfort him, and even cracks a smile at her gurgling stomach. From outside, we see that they have an audience, as Min-ho looks on angrily. We flash back to when he had followed Dr. Noh that night, at which point the DOCTOR told him what Yi-kyung said about being possessed by a spirit.Kang makes Ji-hyun some pasta, and over dinner she asks him what he meant when he said that he owed Shin Ji-hyun. He cheekily says she ought to know if she’s Ji-hyun’s friend, but she thinks that Ji-hyun doesn’t know.

He tells her that he’d bought a plane ticket to America, to run away, but then as soon as they arrived in Jinan, he sprained his ankle because of Ji-hyun, and was forced to stay. Then when his mother had made him birthday soup and he’d thrown a tantrum, she forced him to eat it—something he’s grateful for to this day, because if it weren’t for her, his mom would’ve died and he’d never have once eaten her birthday soup.She’s surprised by his reaction, only remembering what a brat he’d been that day. Still, she says that it’s not really anything to be indebted to someone for. He adds that the last thing is that he feels bad for never having the chance to apologize and make things right with her before they both left Jinan.

He tells her that they had fought over nothing, but then he’d lost the chance to say that he was sorry. And then he takes her bracelet out of his pocket, and hands it to her. “Give this to Shin Ji-hyun. You’re her friend, right?” Ji-hyun stares down at the bracelet as she takes it in her hand. She flashes back to that day when she had seen him throw the tantrum over birthday soup, when she introduced herself to Mom and promised to make him eat it.

Afterwards, she went back to return the lunchbox dishes to her at home, and Kang’s mother was pleasantly surprised that Ji-hyun could curb her stubborn son. She took that bracelet off her own wrist and put in on Ji-hyun, saying that she doesn’t have a daughter, so she’d always intended to give it to Kang’s girlfriend. At home, Ji-hyun thanks Yi-kyung and tells her the good news about Dad. She’s not worried anymore, since Kang knows everything and will tell him about Min-ho and In-jung. She decides to spend her remaining twelve days doing something nice for Yi-kyung, because she doesn’t want to be like that ajusshi she met, full of regrets.

Seo-woo comes home from the hospital in high spirits, only to discover an incoming call from Min-ho on In-jung’s phone. In-jung’s reaction is what triggers her suspicions, because she looks guilty, and makes a move to go into her bedroom to answer the call.

She finally puts it all together, letting herself believe what she wouldn’t before. She screams at In-jung, asking how a person could do this to someone that she owes so much to. Ji-hyun goes to the hotel where Yi-kyung used to work, and explains her memory loss excuse to her coworker to ask what happened. She tells her that she was always with Yi-soo, who used to work there too, but then he left to go be a singer, and they broke up, and he died, and then she collapsed and never came back.

She gives her the contents of her locker and on her way home, Ji-hyun wonders what her life must’ve been like, to have stopped just like that. She gets a call from In-jung. In-jung shows up to meet her with a bruised face, admitting to being found out by Seo-woo. She begins to volunteer her side of her relationship with Ji-hyun, recounting how grateful she was that her friend so selfishly gave her everything.And yet, that’s the thing that eventually divided them, and what made In-jung feel pathetic—she describes Ji-hyun as endlessly giving and yet completely clueless to what she took for granted. She began to wonder if Ji-hyun wasn’t born into her cushy circumstance, if she would have anything.She drops the final bomb: that it was HER who asked Min-ho to bring Ji-hyun down a few pegs, to make her the same as In-jung. If she was so generous and giving, then she could give In-jung her father’s company, and her fiancé. She’d take it all.

Shocked, Ji-hyun can barely hide her reaction, and when In-jung gets up to leave she does manage to say, “But Ji-hyun’s love for In-jung, that was sincere.” In-jung responds in kind, “I sincerely loved Ji-hyun too.”

From outside, In-jung watches Ji-hyun/Yi-kyung cry, and pretty much confirms her suspicions.Ji-hyun cries outside for a while, and decides that it still doesn’t make sense. She opens the box of Yi-kyung’s belongings, and finds some cute pictures of her with Yi-soo. Only right after, she finds more pictures of Yi-soo… with another girl.That PLAYER!” She gets all fired up in Yi-kyung’s defense, and stomps over to the studio to give him a piece of her mind.

She shows him the pictures and tells him that he was right, and that it’s all his fault. He starts getting defensive, insisting that it’s not what it looks like. She lays into him, not only in defense of her unni, but because she identifies with the betrayal.She asks if all human beings are like this, if betrayal is their specialty, like he’s been saying all along. Nice reversal to have her be the one to throw that back in his face. He insists that it’s not that woman, that it’s not what it looks like.

The conversation starts taking on the sounds of a typical couple, having a universal fight. He insists she’s got it wrong; she tells him the proof is right there. He tells her that it’s not what it looks like, over and over again, and she says, “Just because it isn’t what it looks like, doesn’t mean that it’s not nothing!” And that triggers Yi-soo’s memory. He screams back, “It’s not! Song Yi-kyung! Why won’t you believe me?!” Omo, omo!

He starts seeing Past Yi-kyung right in front of him, and the line between past and present starts to blur. He relives the exact same fight they had when he was alive, over that exact same photo, when she had said the exact same words that Ji-hyun just did.

Ji-hyun’s jaw drops as she realizes what’s happening, and it takes Yi-soo a moment, and then it finally dawns on him…

He REMEMBERS.

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