The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry Episode 2

Naturally this does not make Min-jae happy, and he chases her outside, where a friendly bystander points him in the direction of the running woman.

He doesn’t know that the helpful bystander is her cameraman, and with Min-jae out of their hair, they continue with the report.Shin-young meets with a few more hiccups, first when her car is burgled and her bag stolen. It contains all her work on her current stories, and also the engagement ring she was going to return to her ex.

Then, she’s reassigned to a different team at the broadcast station. Her boss has put her in the planning department and tells her to throw together some ideas for a nice program on society, culture, and economics. This does not make her happy, since she had long wanted to be on a different beat, but the boss sticks to his decree.Then, her ex-boyfriend Sang-woo has the nerve to ask for a meeting while she’s at work. She’s been daydreaming of a reunion with him, so she primps before she goes out — only to be presented with a wedding invitation. He wanted to be sure she would come to the ceremony, which is something she has no great desire to do. When he presses her to promise, she loses her temper and grabs a prop sword from a nearby actor. We get to know Min-jae and Ban-seok a little better when the latter treats Min-jae’s ankle (twisted in his pursuit of the crazy cord-cutting reporter lady). Ban-seok’s last date didn’t go so well, despite Min-jae’s advice on how to act. Ban-seok doesn’t want to meet a woman who only picks her men based on a checklist of wants; he seems to have a more idealized view of romance which no doubt has hindered his dating life.The three friends go out for dinner together, and Da-jung now sports a new haircut and new attitude. She has decided she will marry this year, and when she cites the qualities in her type of man, it’s pretty demanding — good job, brains, family, money, looks.

Shin-young says that those kind of men are all looking for younger women, and Bu-ki cautions, “If you live that naively, you’ll get hurt.” But Da-jung’s sunny optimism is undaunted by Bu-ki’s cynicism. Shin-young, on the other hand, has decided she won’t marry at all. Da-jung needs a new place to stay (rumors have spread about her embarrassing scene), and Bu-ki offers to let her move in with her. She certainly has the space. Da-jung looks around the lavish apartment, marveling at her sense of taste and style, as well as proof of her professional success. She hadn’t always been this way, however, Shin-young explains. Bu-ki had previously been a doting girlfriend to the man she dated for ten years, since her first year at university. She had done everything he wanted and never deviated from his wishes, but that meant she always found herself doing the dishes at his mother’s house. Year in, year out, the only memories of her twenties are of doing the dishes. Finally, she couldn’t take it and broke up with him when she was thirty, and now she has reinvented herself into a completely different, self-sufficient career woman. According to Bu-ki, breaking up may seem horrible and frightening at first, but later on you realize it was nothing.Shin-young fills in for her sunbae by teaching a university class on reporting, albeit reluctantly. Things are going fine until she comes face to face with a late student: Min-jae. Both are surprised, but Min-jae takes pleasure in needling her and being a smartass. She does apologize for cutting his guitar cord, though she points out that he wasn’t very civil, either.

She asks him to drop the class, and he answers that he will, but only after he does the homework she has assigned, which is to come up with a story idea. Min-jae relates an odd occurrence he’d encountered with a man selling obviously stolen electronics to students. This idea piques her interest, because her own bag was stolen and there has been a rash of burglaries in the area. Working together, she poses as a student, whom Min-jae introduces to the thief as a friend who is in the market for a new camera. (Hence the purposely youthful clothing.) The scene is pretty fun, because Min-jae has to treat her as a fellow student for their cover to work, but he also enjoys purposely talking down to her (in a way that he can’t speak to her in normal circumstances because she’s older). In front of the thief, they talk to each other as though they’re longtime buddies, and it’s very cute.

Once she’s in the man’s storeroom of stolen goods, she looks around for her stolen ring, and finds it in a tray of jewelry just as the police raid the place.A few days later, Shin-young is doing research at the university library, trying to find possible new ideas for her program, when Min-jae comes upon her. This time, their exchange is friendlier than in the past. He comments that a different person gave the report of the crime bust half-teasing that she must be bad at her job. She answers that it wasn’t her beat.

When she asks him to help with her books, he says no with a smile and pretends to leave. Shin-young grimaces, but he catches up to her and takes the books anyway.

As they part ways, he suggests, “Next Friday, I have a performance. Want to come?” She answers, “I don’t have time,” and he returns, “It was just empty talk” as though he didn’t mean for her to take the invitation anyway. Min-jae doesn’t seem greatly disappointed but the invitation does seem sincere, since his parting words, uttered oh-so-casually, are, “You should dress like the other day. You looked pretty.” Shin-young dives into work over the next few days, while Da-jung moves in with her — she had turned down Bu-ki’s offer, preferring to room with her old schoolmate.

Shin-young works so hard for a full week that when she wakes up at her desk the day she has to shoot her program, she makes a horrifying discovery: she can’t talk. Her jaw has stiffened — and at a skewed angle — and she can’t open her mouth.

She’s insistent that she’ll do the interview, but it’s obvious that she can’t. So her sunbae offers to do it instead and rushes off to take over her interview.Shin-young cries furious tears at home, only managing to grunt unintelligible words. Da-jung — ever the interpreter — listens closely and is able to guess correctly what Shin-young is moaning (“What did I do wrong? However long I wait, a good man doesn’t show up, which is why I gave up on marriage and said I’d work on my career”).

In a hilarious bit, Da-jung keeps interpreting Shin-young’s grunts, but goes off-track and starts talking about her own grievances instead. And amidst all the bickering, Shin-young’s jaw twists even more.