49days: episode3
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49Days: Episode3TRANSCRIPT
Written By Mr. Panha
49Days: Episode 3
Ji-hyun (in Yi-kyung’s body) catches her fiancé meeting
clandestinely with her best friend, which sends her reeling. The
room service waiter asks after her in concern but soon grows
suspicious at the weird lady crouched in the hallway, and his
raised voice is overheard by the cheating cheaters in the hotel
room.
Min-ho steps out to ask the waiter what the problem is, and
grows concerned at mention of a strange woman sitting outside
his room. Ji-hyun barely steps inside the elevator in time to
avoid being caught by Min-ho — not that he’d recognize her as
herself, but that’s sure to be one awkward confrontation.
Min-ho shrugs off the incident, but picks up an small
ornamental ball on the ground outside his room. It had fallen off
Yi-kyung’s shoe, surely to make a reappearance at an
inconvenient future moment.
Written By Mr. Panha
We’re already seeing the darker side of Min-ho peeking out, as
he wants to go find Ji-hyun’s official seal (which, in Korea, is as
valuable as — or more than — a social security number, as it
gives the bearer legal rights). He explains that Ji-hyun’s father is
in no frame of mind to deal with “the matter of Ji-hyun’s land,”
but In-jung is appalled that he’d ask her to dig around secretly to
get it, in these circumstances.
In-jung cries that she feels like her heart will tear into pieces, to
which he replies evenly, “But it won’t tear.” Yes, but what of
your moral fiber?
He assures her that they aren’t responsible for Ji-hyun’s
condition. It’s an argument that would make sense in most
circumstances, only in this particular case, they ARE directly
responsible. In-jung cries, “It could be because of us!”
A flashback takes us to the afternoon of the accident, when In-
jung had met Min-ho in his car. They’d both confessed to being
afraid, which makes me think they’d planned on doing
something secret — something greater than their affair — with
weighty consequences. In-jung had even suggested breaking off
the relationship rather than go through with it: “I can’t go this
far.”
That’s when Ji-hyun had called In-jung, moments before she’d
spotted the cheaters from across the intersection. Now, a guilty
In-jung thinks that Ji-hyun may have followed them that day,
since her accident occurred nearby.
Written By Mr. Panha
Min-ho asks, “But if we end it here, what kind of guy does that
make me?” Um, what about the guy you already are?
He declares that he’s going forward with their plans, with or
without In-jung, which makes me think they’re plotting a shady
business scheme. Company takeover, perhaps?
In-jung shakes her head no, saying she can’t do it. Min-ho tells
her to remember “Why we began this — why things came to
this. If we run away now, do you think we can be happy? If we
quit, will that bring Ji-hyun back?” It’s an example of that
convoluted K-Drama Logic that spurs evil villains into more
evil villainy, which doesn’t make sense in the Real World but
drives a disproportionate number of dramas forward. It’s like,
we’re a little bit guilty now, so we may as well
be incredibly guilty! It’s also why these villains seem not to
understand the distinction between misdemeanor and felony.
But it tells us pretty eloquently what kind of guy Min-ho is,
even if he’s only flirting with the dark side at the moment.
Written By Mr. Panha
Running away from the hotel, Ji-hyun pushes her Scheduler
panic button, angry that her spiritual guide didn’t divulge the
reasons for her accident. The Scheduler fumbles for an answer,
landing on the catch-all excuse: “It’s a secret of nature.” HA.
Not fair, dude, ’cause what’s an earthbound girl to say in protest
to that?
Ji-hyun looks at him with angry-tearful eyes, and although he’s
fully aware of the manipulative nature of lady-tears, he’s not
immune to their power and sighs. He does insist that he’s
completely indifferent to her love triangles and melodramas,
though, and refuses to indulge her need to know more about her
friends’ affair.
He retorts that if she wants to know so badly, she should just ask
the dude. She throws his own words back at him — he’d warned
her not to tell anyone she’s really Ji-hyun — and that catches the
Scheduler off-guard. Heh. I love that she’s tripping him up at his
own game.
He starts to walk off, but he can’t help feeling sorry for her, so
just as she’s about to break down into waterworks, he reappears
— poof! — to remind her to worry about the present and her 46
remaining days.
Written By Mr. Panha
That brings her back to the reason she went to the hotel in the
first place: To get Yi-kyung’s work history. She returns to the
restaurant, where everyone’s written her off as a liar who
falsified her resumé.
So Kang is surprised when she not only shows up, but presents
her hotel employment papers. Gruffly, he reminds her that he’d
given her an hour, and she’s way past that.
Starting to tear up, Ji-hyun stammers about seeing a friend with
her fiancé together at the hotel. Proving that he’s really a softy
at heart, he tells her to show up to work tomorrow and accepts
her papers — only to have her collapse at his feet in exhaustion.
Written By Mr. Panha
He carries her inside the restaurant to his attached quarters. (So
his home is his restaurant is his architect’s studio? How
convenient, drama.)
Kang watches her sleeping and wonders why she was so
interested in Min-ho if she had a fiancé, an indication that at
least he believes her story, as crazy as it sounded. As he
watches, a tear slips from her eye. He even thinks to ask the
ajumma to send along some soup to Yi-kyung (“and lots of
rice”), anticipating that she’ll be hungry.
When Ji-hyun wakes up in Kang’s studio, she’s a little surprised
at this evidence of Kang’s thoughtfulness, and is relieved she
wasn’t fired. A sudden idea strikes her, though, and she bolts out
of the room, not even stopping to take her handbag with her.
The employees are puzzled and look through her bag,
wondering if she’s up to suspicious behavior. The sight of a
whistle on a string makes Kang think back to Ji-hyun’s whistle,
which she’d had the day they first met.
Ji-hyun arrives at Yi-kyung’s apartment in order to eject her soul
from her host. It’s still daylight and she has hours left in the day,
but she has things to do today that are easier done in her spirit
form than her corporeal one. She’s learning, too, and remembers
to leave doors open to allow her spirit to leave.
She heads to her father’s company just as the workday is
ending, waiting for In-jung to leave the building. Inside, In-jung
pushes aside her own misgivings to heed Min-ho’s ominous
words (about proceeding without her), and rifles through Ji-
hyun’s desk for her seal. (I guess daddy’s princess did have a
job at the office — in the promo department — though I suspect
Written By Mr. Panha
she didn’t do as much working as she did taking home a
paycheck.)
No seal. In-jung leaves the office, followed unknowingly by Ji-
hyun, who is alternately angry, confused, and pleading. Though
she can’t be heard, Ji-hyun asks her friend how the affair started,
trying to make sense of it.
To her surprise, In-jung arrives at Ji-hyun’s own house, where
she heads for Ji-hyun’s room. Just as she’s about to start looking
through her things, though, Mom comes in and asks why she’s
here. Mom’s having a hard time accepting the accident, and
takes offense to In-jung’s presence in Ji-hyun’s room, because it
suggests that everyone’s acting as though she’s already dead.
Written By Mr. Panha
In-jung can’t very well continue in the face of that argument, so
she leaves the house. Ji-hyun (still outside, having gotten stuck
outside the gate) overhears her phone call with “oppa” about not
being able to find “it.” Ji-hyun, not known for her smarts, isn’t
so good at putting two and two together, and just thinks the
“oppa” is a little odd since In-jung’s brother lives out of the city.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Dad asks Min-ho about the contract
for Ji-hyun’s land. Min-ho says that he took care of it — which
explains why he’s so keen to get that seal, if he hadn’t actually
quite wrapped up the matter when he was supposed to and is
now trying to fix that mistake.
Ji-hyun finds Min-ho as he arrives at his apartment, and follows
him inside while talking aloud (to herself, really) about his
infidelity, trying to make sense of it — it was so clear that he
loved her, and he gave her all his passwords, and he’d wanted to
see her in all his free time.
When he steps inside, though, Ji-hyun is stunned to find In-jung
waiting for him inside. Not only were they meeting in secret
hotel rooms, but In-jung was close enough to know his
passcode?
Her outrage takes a backseat, though, once she catches the drift
of their conversation about her seal, which he needs for some
kind of deal. Ji-hyun had actually given her seal to Min-ho
before the accident — or so she thought, except it turned out
that in her absentmindedness, she had accidentally handed over
lipstick instead of the seal.
Written By Mr. Panha
If Min-ho were merely trying to fix a mistake, there’d be
nothing too weird about his need for the seal now. However, he
adds the suspicious warning, “If Ji-hyun has land left to her, our
plan fails. And I worked so hard to include that land.”
Ji-hyun may not understand the finer details, but this much is
clear: These two are more than just cheating cheaters, they’re
quite possibly underhanded cheaters with plans to backstab her
father financially as well.
Ji-hyun leaves Min-ho’s apartment, crushed in her
disillusionment. She recalls the Scheduler’s task to collect three
pure tears — looks like it won’t be quite as easy as she’d
assumed.
That night, she enters Yi-kyung’s body briefly, just long enough
to close and lock the door before giving up the body again. I
suppose she could always follow Yi-kyung out when she leaves,
Written By Mr. Panha
but it’s also indicative that she’s given up her desire to venture
out into the world. Shell-shocked, she slumps on the ground, not
caring to do anything.
Yi-kyung takes an envelope of cash with her to work that
evening, to pay back the Good Samaritan for her hospital fees.
He gives her the requested receipts, and she hands him the cash.
He asks if she’s curious to know who he is, or why he was there
at her accident site, but she’s not interested. He momentarily
piques her interest by asking, “What if I told you I knew why
you went there?” but she dismisses him. Rather than press the
issue, he just says that he’ll see her tomorrow.
Yi-kyung has her first clue that something’s different when she
brushes a hand through her hair and notices that it feels different
today. Clean, perhaps.
Written By Mr. Panha
When Yi-kyung comes home from work in the morning, Ji-hyun
sits there listlessly, having sat there all night. She doesn’t bother
to take her allotted time today, either, and just lets Yi-kyung go
about her dreary life. Is it weird that I’m just relieved that this
means The Body will have one good night’s rest?
There’s a nice mirroring as the two downtrodden ladies face
each other all day and night, lifeless and weighed down by their
respective burdens. Ji-hyun wonders if Yi-kyung went through a
similar betrayal that she lives so miserably now.
Another night turns into day, leaving 44 days on the calendar. Ji-
hyun shoves aside her Scheduler cell phone/alarm clock, but it
shoots back to her like it’s on a tether. She throws it away, only
to have it caught by Mr. Scheduler himself, here to check up on
her. She orders him to leave, saying that she can’t continue
living.
Written By Mr. Panha
Hyperbole, perhaps, but just the thing to get her ass in gear. Ah,
he smiles, then should he call the Elevator To Heaven now?
Does this mean she’s giving up her three-tear quest?
Ji-hyun scrambles to her feet, that threat lighting a fire under her
spectral butt. When the Scheduler warns her that she wasn’t
given 49 days just to piss ‘em away, she meekly promises not to
do that anymore.
That means she has to go back to Kang’s restaurant with head
bowed to try to explain her absence. Thankfully, his attitude
toward her has relaxed into resigned-but-unsurprised territory,
rather than his initial irritated-into-firing-her mood. He even
asks if she’s eaten, and offers her a meal (albeit in his gruff
way). Ji-hyun thanks him mentally for his generosity — I
suspect Kang was never this obvious about his concern for her
when she was Ji-hyun — then gets to work.
Written By Mr. Panha
Kang and his manager ajusshi are so startled to see that she has
improved her serving skills that they stare, agape. I guess she set
that bar pretty low that they’re astonished that she can pour a
glass of water competently. Way to manage expectations.
Seo-woo arrives that evening, and Ji-hyun is happy to see her
non-backstabbing friend, but her smile downturns the minute
she spies In-jung with her.
While taking out the trash, she comes face to face with Min-ho,
also arriving to meet his friends. She ignores him, but he
remembers Yi-kyung and thanks her for her help the night he
was drunk.
Ji-hyun glares when he asks if she remembers him, pointedly
asking, “Am I supposed to remember you?” She walks away in
tears, leaving him confused.
Written By Mr. Panha
They discuss Ji-hyun’s condition while she stands by trying to
make sense of the conversation. The girls have decided to take
turns caring for Ji-hyun, since her parents are running ragged at
this point. To prove that Kang’s the better man, Min-ho’s the
guy who mentions the difficulty of managing Daddy Shin’s
company, while Kang argues that the company isn’t nearly as
important as Dad exhausting himself into collapse.
Ji-hyun’s nerves are rattled to hear that her mother is doing very
poorly, unable to eat or sleep, and she drops a pitcher of water.
Kang sees how shaken she is and stops her from picking up the
broken glass with her hands, sending her away to rest.
Outside, Ji-hyun steals a moment for herself, sobbing, “I’m
sorry, Mom.”
Her crying session is cut short by her phone — it’s the
Scheduler’s warning that she has an hour left to get her body
Written By Mr. Panha
back home. Alas, she hadn’t realized that her work hours were
until midnight, and braces herself to ask the boss for permission
to go home early.
The two men are below, talking business in Kang’s office —
Kang has been hired to design a building on Ji-hyun’s land,
which is the project Min-ho is handling. Ji-hyun bursts in to ask
Kang for an amendment to her work hours, pausing briefly to
shoot daggers in Min-ho’s direction.
She explains to Kang that she can only work until eleven — that
someone at home is waiting for her, who “can’t move till I get
there.” Grudgingly, Kang consents to the schedule change, and
that’s unusual enough that Min-ho asks why he’s so lenient with
her — he’s always so particular about business matters.
They’re unaware that Ji-hyun is still in earshot, listening around
the corner as Min-ho asks, “So that kind of woman is your
type?” Kang protests, probably too much, while Min-ho teases
about never being able to get a handle on his type before.
Written By Mr. Panha
Kang comments that Min-ho is doing a good job of retaining his
sense of humor despite the tragedy, which reminds Min-ho that
he’s probably not supposed to be doing such a good job. He puts
on a (faux) brave face and says, “I’m trying. It’s what Ji-hyun
would’ve wanted. She would’ve wanted me to hang in there and
act as I did before.”
I love that Ji-hyun scoffs at this, protesting that NO, that is NOT
what she wants, thank you very much! Seeing Min-ho through
new eyes (literally, har har), she asks, “Oppa, were you this kind
of person?”
And what better way to stick it to her unfaithful man than by
keeping his most desired object away from him? She decides
she’ll have to retrieve her seal first to keep it out of his hands.
Ji-hyun calls the Scheduler to plead with him to give her the
power to move things — just long enough to get her seal.
Written By Mr. Panha
Annoyed, he says what she really needs is a voice recorder that
reminds her: “BEEP! The Scheduler stays out of human affairs.”
She protests that she thinks they’re planning something with her
father’s company, and even tries asking the Scheduler to get her
seal for her. Ha. Sending the Grim Reaper on her errands? The
girl’s bold, I’ll give her that.
He refuses and turns to go, leaving Ji-hyun pouting indignantly
at his back. And whaddaya know, maybe she’s got magical
pouty powers to add to her teary ones, because the Scheduler
casually mentions that if she repeats a phrase (a version of
“Open sesame”), she might find that doors open to her.
Alas, Ji-hyun’s lacking a few necessary IQ points to make the
connection, and she grumbles that he was no help at all. SIGH.
Written By Mr. Panha
Ji-hyun has another favor to ask her long-suffering boss,
prefacing it with the reminder that she’s totally broke, and that
he can’t fire her over this request, and that she’s paying him
back for the taxi fee she’d borrowed that first day, and that she
just needs to pop out for three hours today, but it’s totally those
three hours when nobody’s in the restaurant anyway, is that
okay?
Kang’s soft spot is no longer so secret, so Ji-hyun wheedles her
way into his assent, and he’s almost even charmed by her pluck.
I’ll give him two more episodes before he’s totally smitten.
So in her afternoon off, Ji-hyun arrives at her house, timing her
arrival to match with the housekeeper’s departure, and uses the
passcode to let herself in.
Written By Mr. Panha
She sneaks upstairs to her room, grimacing at the happy photos
of herself and Min-ho, ignoring my exclamations of What are
you doing, woman, get the damn seal and leave! But no, she
takes a moment to linger and rest on her bed before getting
down to brass tacks and rifling through her drawers.
To her credit, she doesn’t give in to the temptation to take cash
(remembering the Scheduler’s warning), but she isn’t successful
at locating her seal. Complicating matters is the unexpected
arrival of Min-ho, here bearing gifts as an excuse to search for
the seal himself.
He’s concocted a pretty good excuse, now that he’s been warned
by In-jung, and says he wants to take some of Ji-hyun’s favorite
Written By Mr. Panha
things to the hospital. That plays on all of Mom’s hopes and
fears, so she happily grants him permission to select a few
things from Ji-hyun’s room.
Knowing that time is ticking, Ji-hyun hastens her search to find
her seal before Min-ho gets there. She stiffens as the door opens,
and he steps through…