Alright, episode two here we go. This episode picks up from right where we left off from episode one. Just like clockwork, we get more awesome Jeong-hyang scenes and of course, we still get Hong-do raining on our parade.

I tell you now, these people at the studio who were in charge of this had to have been divided into two separate shippers just like the audience! And while the plot said that Jeong-hyang was END-GAME, that didn’t mean that the journey there wouldn’t be filled with both sides fighting it out to the death. The amount of Hong-do/Yun-bok is too much it is sickening! That trend went throughout the series and it stays true even in this episode.

Still, no matter how many scenes Hong-do has with Yun-bok, the chemistry between Jeong-hyang and Yun-bok always wins by the end of the episode, even if it was just one scene in total.

Enough rumbling, let’s get it on with the episode.

 
 

dat twist tho
 
 
 

U mad Bro?

If I’m Superman, this is like Kryptonite!

Creepy Dad is creepy!
 
 
Dad is supporting this Bro love so hard!
 
 
 
 

 
 

Episode 2 and we are already reminiscing? Fuck no!
 
 
 
 
 
 
In another Universe they would be so perfectly shippable.

As I mentioned, this episode takes place right in the same timeframe as the last scene of the first episode. Hong-do saves Yun-bok from falling who was too shocked to find out that the same man was the renowned Tam Won. Hong-do takes advantage of the surprised and has Yun-bok carry his wind-screen for him. They were both heading in the same direction, which was the classroom Yun-bok attends.

Hong-do is the new teacher, well, he was brought in with the sole purpose of finding out which student exactly drew that painting of the Queen Mother. The students don’t know any of this of course.

Oh yeah, I am going to discuss the plot first before I get onto the Jeong-hyang/Yun-bok goodness so if you don’t care for the story, jump ahead after the next collection of caps.

The wind screen Hong-do had brought with him was one of them any secrets tests he had thought of that would help him identify who the student was. Having studied the painting in detail, he had come to a conclusion that the student was very talented and he had to have a special eye for him to have drawn all the detail in the Queen’s controversial portrait.

The first thing he does is observe the students. Three of them stick out like a sore thumb. The first one of course being Yun-bok, whom Hong-do had already bumped into and already had Hong-do’s attention. The other is the oldest student in the class. He is in fact older than Hong-do and they had this funny discussion about titles. He is already married and even has a child by the way. The last but not least is the rival Hyo-won who turns out to be the class rep too on top of his father Pil Chul, who is actually one of the main villains of the story.

Hong-do begins his test by having the students sketch the painting on the wind screen that he had brought along with him. Hyo-won of course shoots off his mouth and says that they had done a hands-on portrait the day before. And so Hong-do turns the screen upside down and asks them to draw the picture again. This puts a lot of students off and understandably so. Can you imagine if someone turned a house upside down and asked you to sketch it? Madness!

During the exercise, Hong-do asks the students what is a ‘portrait’. It seems there was no textbook answer and it was more up to the individual person and their interpretation. Many stumble while others give the wrong answers but all through this talk, Yun-bok was busy sketching away the upside down picture. Hong-do turns the attention onto to her and asks the same question.

The answer she gives did not hit me with its importance until I was re-watching the series for this post! I have seen the show three times already (minus this one) and all those times I did not catch what the answer Yun-bok gives here means in the long run.

Subs sucked majorly so this is all summary but what she says is that to her a portrait is the physical embodiment of the painter’s feelings of love and longing. When they look at that painting the long for something which they can’t long for unless they already love. A portrait is their way of freezing those feelings in time.

Thinking of this and then thinking about that ending, or better yet that opening sequence and all the dots come together. Thinking of this made me love the ending even much more. It makes Yun-bok’s decision all that telling but that is still a long way to go, 18 episodes in fact so let’s not think of it for now.

Not done yet Hong-do leaves home work for the class to connect the six dots in a square with a single stroke of the brush. I think I did that exercise once and it was hell to crack but once you get it…

Meanwhile the Council is growing more restless as the Queen thinks them incompetent to bring in Hong-do to solve their own mess. The stakes become real and when one of the generals comes to pay Pil Chul (Hyo-won’s father) a visit to get an update on the matter of the student search, Hyo-won and his lackey get wind of the hand-crushing punishment through eavesdropping.

They misinterpreted the information and what they tell the student back at school is completely wrong. What they thought was that the exercise that Hong-do had given them to complete by the end of the day about the dot was a test and that if they did not complete it, their hands would be crushed.

And so the whole class spends the evening trying to figure out the answer over hot pot and a guys sleep over. All give their views but none is right. Yun-bok tries to think outside the box but of course Mr Rival the class rep doesn’t let her and so by the time the next day rolls around, they hadn’t yet cracked the code.

Hong-do wasn’t please to say the least. These students are the ones who wanted to go and work for the Royal family? They didn’t even know what a portrait was and lacked a sense of imagination! And of course the answer he gave them to his exercise went out of the boundaries of the rules but it was the students who had limited themselves to these invisible restraints so…

Knowing that it was okay to spread your wings, Yun-bok offers a different approach that would required even less turns. The explanations is a winded one but she basically just draws a ‘Z’ which actually makes sense. This wins her more points but also brings her closer to her doom! For as we find out later when Hong-do speaks to his friend about the results he has gotten so far, the prime suspect is Yun-bok.

The boys are happy to learn that they wouldn’t be getting their hands crushed and it was class rep’s birthday so he organised a party where he invited some female entertainers, got some alcohol and also invited the musician Jeong-hyang. He is obviously crushing on her majorly, just like any other man in town really so hilarity ensued at that party.

But before we get to said party, Hong-do had asked his friend to keep quiet about his already having found the culprit because he wanted to talk to Yun-bok in person first because what he was going to do the boy (according to him) was something un-forgivable. To him Yun-bok was a very rare talent and that talent was about to be lost the next day when his drawing hand gets crushed.

So later at night when the boys sneak out to go to the Rep’s party, Yun-bok also disguises herself as a boy disguised as a man and goes out to do what he usually does. He wasn’t going to the party in the first place, you know him and the Rep being on such bad terms but that red thread people, the power of that red thread….

Any way, Hong-do shows up at the Shin house to talk to Yun-bok but as he gets there, Yun-buk is in the midst of sneaking off somewhere. Hong-do decides to hide and follow him secretly.

Yun-bok was a secret artists as we found out the first episode and she sometimes draws art which she sells illegally to the local dealer. She sees things differently from the boys so her art has a certain charm to it the way she puts little details in them that are always seen differently and this is the selling point of her art. Actually the inevitable super villain (mostly because he is actually worse of a threat when it comes to Yun-bok/Jeong-hyang than Hong-do later on) was also interested in this secret artist’s art. Little did he know that their paths were destined t cross each other.

Anyway Yun-bok has another picture to sell and goes in town just to do that. Hong-do tails her but Yun-bok knows she is being followed so she tries to lose him and partially succeeds. She sells the picture for a mere 5 bucks but when she sticks around to wait and see how much the dealer actually sells her drawings for, it turns out that what she got was less than 5% of the actual cost. But Yun-vok was satisfied wit the complements she had gotten with her efforts this time so she let it slide.

Hong-do had caught up to her though and they have the talk! They argue about Yun-bok wasting her talents on such things but at the same time Hong-do sees himself in Yun-bok. He too was one of a kind in his early days and it felt like a connection talking to someone who understood art like he does. Too bad that the main reason of this get together was a less happy one.

Hong-do drops the bomb that the next day the person who drew the Queen’s portrait would have their hands crushed. This happens after Hong-do asks Yun-bok why she had drawn the Queen in such a way as she had. So Yun-bok knew very well who the person was that were to meet their end tomorrow.

Well, it was actually not the end but to an artist, to someone that loved art as much as Yun-bok, losing the use of your hands might as well be the same as being dead. Yun-bok does what every other person in her shoes would have done, she high tails it out of there!

Yeah, episode two and the feels are already out of the roof! I swear Korean drama some times! And when you get good actresses and actors like the assemble of this drama’s cast, well, you best be prepared because if the plot is already full of angst then the acting will multiply that by about 1000! That was the same case here watching Yun-bok wandering the town like a ghost with no direction. And that background music yo >.<

This then brings us to the actual meat of this post…

 
 

 

I am very sorry Jeong-hyang
 
 
Get a room you two!

 
Go home Yun-bok, you are drunk!

 
You dead fool!
 

Jeong-hyang’s ‘Don’t give me ur shit’ face!
 
 
 
 
Seriously you two!
 

 
 
So good she played them into a different dimension!
 
 


dat smile ^^

It takes some time but when Jeong-hyang shows up, everything is right with the world. Before she shows up though, our emotionally broken Yun-bok finds himself in front of the Gisaeng District where her fellows students just so happened to be having the party at. One of the ladies who knows the students recognises Yun-bok and so she leads her to the others.

The party was already ripe, some of the students were already drunk, the ladies were everywhere but no sign of Jeong-hyang! Rep is of course surprised and very not happy to see Yun-bok, especially when he sees that she did not bring any gifts, it was it darn birthday bro!

Yun-bok fires back that his heart made it and that should be enough! Um yeah, about that Yun-bok, I don’t think that your heart is actually here. Anyway it seems Rep felt the same way because he challenges Yun-bok to drinking to show that she was being serious. Any other day I don’t think that Yun-bok would have drank but then again, any other day she wouldn’t be caught dead at this party but this was not any other day. Yun-bok’s life had just been turned upside down and it might as well be ending the next day so it was the perfect opportunity to do everything she had ever wanted to try and more.

Yun-bok takes up that challenge and shows all that she is not so girly after all (well she is you they don’t know that and after this day they wouldn’t be questioning her manliness no more). Rep lets her join the celebrations and I guess Yun-bok drinks her socks off because later when Jeong-hyang finally shows up, Yun-bok looks totally wasted!

Jeong-hyang chooses to sit at the end of the table that is near the entrance which put her opposite Rep. He asks her to go drink with him by his side to which Jeong-hyang says that she is a musician not a female entertainer (prostitute in less minced words).

And I have to take this opportunity to apologise to Jeong-hyang because I have made that mistake last episode calling her a female entertainer. Now sure I meant it in the way that Japan classifies Entertainers but still, I feel compelled to apologise.

What happens next? Well, the reason why I thought these two resembled KumiRei last episode in that they start to flirt fight with one another right in front of the whole party! Yun-bok says that Jeong-hyang is indeed a flower full of thorns to which to which Jeong-hyang replies that all beautiful flowers have thorns. Yun-bok laughs at that saying that it is the first time she has heard anyone calling themselves beautiful like that. Jeong-hyang fires back saying that does one saying they are not beautiful change the fact that they are?

Oh yeah, so made for each other these two!

Some drunk food is getting impatient with Jeong-hyang because she is not playing and he throws a drinking china towards her. It still had alcohol and everything in it. The thing breaks two strings off her music instrument and the alcohol splashes all over her. I sit there waiting for all hell to break lose but other than shouting at his smashed classmate, that stupid Rep does nothing but apologise. Jeong-hyang says there is no use in apologising, the deed had already been done. Rep tries her again and invited Jeong-hyang to drink with him since her instrument is broken that thus thinks she can no longer play.

Bitch please

Jeong-hyang not only plays but she plays like the instrument wasn’t even broken. But really, what is there to be surprised about when you think of who she was playing for? Her eyes were all for Yun-bok and the way Yun-bok was drawn in by her music, you could tell that she was playing just for him.

It was so effective a song that Yun-bok had his whole life flash his own eyes listening to Jeong-hyang play. The two were like in their own world during the whole piece and I am not afraid to say it – I cried! Four times I have watched this series and I still cry every damn time. They were in their own world, like literally! It was exactly what the Doctor had ordered for Yun-bok.

When the song ends, Yun-bok is sober again and as she leaves, she turns to Jeong-hyang and complements her that her playing was very beautiful. The first positive exchange between the two since their meeting. The look on Jeong-hyang face at those words though >.<

 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 
Whatcha gonna do Jeong-hyang? U can’t refuse that face!

Later when we go outside, we find out that Yun-bok was still around. Really, I would so be the same. What would be the meaning of life in her position? We find out what she was thinking about when Jeong-hyang finally comes out and is returning home. Yun-bok jumps out of the shadows and blocks her way, giving the two a fright in the process.

By the way, I couldn’t help but notice Jeong-hyang’s helper. She is a cute one and kind of familiar. I wonder where I have seen her before…Anyway Jeong-hyang uses her as the mediator between her and Yun-bok despite being less than a meter away from one another. It will get complicated so I will summarised it.

Yun-bok offers the five bucks she had gotten for her painting earlier that night. Jeong-hyang asks if she is crazy. What kind of play was she looking for with a mere five bucks? But Yun-bok tells of her situation and how those five bucks will be the last money she makes with her paintings.

Yun-bok says that she wanted to used up those precious five bucks on one final night listening to Jeong-hyang’s music. She wanted to spend her final night alone with Jeong-hyang! This is what she said. I am not making it up!

That is where the episode ends! Literally Yun-bok asking Jeong-hyang out on a date, nay, it is no date! She wants to spend the night with Jeong-hyang!!

This is episode 2?!!

Sorry, no time for final thoughts, tie to go watch episode three, like, now! I need to hear Jeong-hyang’s answer! If she said yes then all the rivals need to disappear because Yun-bok just won the Jeong-bowl!

Ja