Between breaking curses and casting spells, our amateur shaman has her hands full. Our cursed leading man is no better as he gets into yet another unwanted entrapment. But falling under a spell isn’t so bad, especially when it has destiny written all over it.
EPISODES 3-4
It turns out that Shin-yu was headed to see Na-yeon when Red Hand came to cuddle, leading him to crash his car. And of all places to crash into, it had to be the newly decorated median strip — which was Hong-jo’s project. Ha! Ms. Red is indeed no respecter of the competition. Well, it’ll please her greatly to know that Shin-yu has cold feet about his impending marriage to Na-yeon (because he doesn’t want to burden her with his sickness). Or he’s really not that into her because hesitation is never a good sign in a relationship.
Cold feet? Pfft. Hong-jo can’t relate. She happily skips to work the next morning armed with her love potion, and sneaks into a conference room to spike Jae-kyung’s water with it. I mean, what could go wrong with her perfect plan… aside from not getting the chance to see if Jae-kyung actually drank the water because she’s soon called away to inspect the wreckage of the median strip. Hehe.
Naturally, Hong-jo comes for a consultation with City Hall’s legal representative, Shin-yu. “A lunatic has crashed into the flower baskets on my median strip. What should I do?” Ermm… allow insurance to cover the damage? Nah. Hong-jo chooses violence and rains fire and brimstone on the lunatic, threatening a lawsuit and whatnot. Shin-yu calmly defends said lunatic while laying out the facts of the case, and Hong-jo is slightly flustered when she realizes that he was the one who got into the accident.
In the meantime, Shin-yu wants his spell ASAP, and to the overly busy and overworked Hong-jo, he tells her to hand over her task for the day to her less busy colleagues. You know what, maybe she does need the bratty Shin-yu to teach her how to stand up for herself.
Hong-jo gets the day off and they go to get the wooden box from her house. She teases Shin-yu for believing in superstitions, but when he points out that the love spell is missing, she tries to wrestle the spell book out of his grip and they get transported into a scene from crash landing on the couch. Classic K-drama moment! Next thing you know, our OTP is on a road trip to Shin-yu’s vacation villa up in the mountains — where Hong-jo bursts all my bubbles by saying that pork belly is more attractive to her than Shin-yu is. Girl, I know food is life, but why are you lying?
Our OTP goes hiking to find a plant to be used for the spell, and Hong-jo guesses that Shin-yu wants to use the Cure Disease spell. He admits he is cursed. And when she tells him to go to the hospital if he’s sick, he asks if she has ever been so desperate for something to the point that she’d grasp at straws. If I already didn’t, now I feel sorry for Shin-yu. Hong-jo is the first to find the plant and of course, she’s too short to reach it. So he leans in with his longer limbs and they have another K-drama moment. Knock it off, you two.
It’s a full moon at night, and Shin-yu comes out in a suit while Hong-jo is in a white dress. Nice! I didn’t get a proposal, but I guess this is also fine. Except these two aren’t out to say their vows: they’re here to cast a spell. At some point, Shin-yu goes down on his knees and I’m thinking, where’s the ring? But it’s all part of the ritual process. Pssh. When they’re done, Hong-jo asks how he feels. His heart rate has spiked and his body moves how it usually does when Red Hand is about to show up. Oddly enough, Ms. Red is nowhere to be found. Still, Shin-yu can’t let down his guard around Hong-jo, and he tells her to go inside.
Hong-jo insists on staying by his side, and she doesn’t get why he’s so mad at her when she came all the way out here in this “strange” dress to help him. “What’s strange about it?” Shin-yu retorts. “I think you look pretty in it.” Aha! And you wonder why Ms. Red has refused to show up. She has obviously gone green with jealousy! But for Shin-yu’s sake, I hope it’s because the Cure Disease spell worked.
Meanwhile at City Hall, Jae-kyung tracks down the source of the gossip about Hong-jo’s confession to him and unsurprisingly, her colleagues, SOHN SAE-BYUL (Park Kyung-hye) and YOO SU-JUNG (Mi-Ram) are behind it. He scolds them and makes them take down the video, but he can’t help feeling bad for Hong-jo especially when he learns that she took a day off. He calls to make sure she’s all right and asks to meet up when she returns. And that’s all the proof Hong-jo needs to be convinced that the love spell worked. Cheer up, Shin-yu! If it worked for Hong-jo, it’ll work for you, too. Heh.
Hong-jo returns to work to meet two new developments: 1) Mr. Gong drank out of her love potion! Ha! (Next time you prepare a love potion, try not to leave your tumbler lying around for thirsty folks to see); 2) the head of their department, MA EUN-YOUNG (Lee Bong-ryun) is back after her husband’s affair and their subsequent divorce. Eun-young is a no-nonsense yet very inclusive boss, and I liked her from the moment she showed up to work. Eun-young calls for a compulsory team dinner with the Park Maintenance Team, and it yay for Hong-jo finally getting to eat with her team. But nay for postponing plans to meet up with Jae-kyung.
Speaking of which, rather than keep postponing marriage plans with Na-yeon, Shin-yu ends their relationship. Honestly, I can’t say I feel bad for her, but after two years of dating, she deserves to know why, at least. “What reason can you accept?” he asks, further driving a hole into her heart. She asks for time to process the breakup.
Shin-yu will also need time to think about why the symptoms of his disease have disappeared — or more accurately put, why the symptoms have been replaced with heart palpitations whenever he sees Hong-jo. An alarming thought crosses his mind, and to confirm his suspicion, he checks the CCTV recording of the conference room. Sure enough, he sees the moment Hong-jo spiked Jae-kyung’s glass with the love potion. Unfortunately for him, since he sat beside Jae-kyung in that meeting, he was the one who drank the water! Bwahahahahaha! See? This is why we don’t go around drinking other people’s things.
Obviously, no amount of urination will break the spell, and believe me, Shin-yu tries. Left with no other option, they visit Shaman Eun-wol, and the shaman has a private conversation with Hong-jo. Hong-jo can’t bring herself to tell Shin-yu what was discussed, and Shin-yu becomes convinced that the answer lies in a kiss. Yunno, like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Just say you want some skinship, dude. Heh. But poor Hong-jo is in a pickle because aside from whatever it is that Shaman Eun-wol said to her, the spell book also warns that a disaster will befall anyone who recklessly reverses a spell.
Hmmm. Is that why there’s a stalker on the prowl around her house? Thankfully, Shin-yu likes her well enough to abuse his power at work to get the streetlights along the alley fixed. He spies her phone’s wallpaper (a picture of her younger self in hanbok for a school play), and is surprised to see that she bears a striking resemblance to the girl from his dreams. Shin-yu often dreams about a girl plucking berries and a boy helping her bend the stem of the tree, in what seems to be like a Joseon setting. Interesting. So, Hong-jo is the girl of his dreams? “No wonder my dreams felt so refreshing,” Shin-yu says. Lol.
In other news, Hong-jo’s landlady rents out the first floor of the house, and the new tenant is…*drumroll* Jae-kyung! In a quick flashback to their eventual meet up earlier on (where a love-struck Hong-jo had requested for a hot iced latte lol), Jae-kyung had asked her why liked him and Hong-jo replied that it started when she saw him volunteer at a dog shelter. For someone who’s nice to animals but cold to his family, Jae-kyung advised her to meet someone better than him. But watching Hong-jo now introduce herself to him as a neighbor in an idol group member style, I think Jae-kyung just might have fallen for her.
We round up the week with Shin-yu’s persistence in hounding Hong-jo to break the spell, and she gives him a clue: the first letters of the words Shaman Eun-wol said to her. But try as he might, Shin-yu can’t decipher the sentence from the first letters. He even follows Hong-jo all the way to a beach to commemorate her dad’s death, but she largely ignores him throughout the journey. Only when she’s done and she turns to stare at him in the dreamy sunset glow, does it hit him in slow motion. The answer to breaking the love spell: “Your destinies cannot be severed. Accept it.”
Accept what? That our OTP is meant to be? I already accepted it. But the problem is they haven’t, yet. Thankfully, the reason we’re on this journey is to watch them fall into their destined love, and I for one, cannot wait until Shin-yu falls in love with Hong-jo for real. I just know he’s going to be a menace if his current behavior under the love spell is anything to go by.
I enjoyed this week’s episodes better than the first, and yes, I grew to like Shin-yu a lot now that he has loosened up a bit. Our OTP’s bickering gives me life, and Shin-yu being at Hong-jo’s mercy while under the spell is so unintentionally hilarious. Other relationships I’m looking forward to exploring as we go on are Mr. Gong and Eun-young as colleagues because he seems to really care about her, and Jae-kyung and his yet-to-be-seen dad. A second male lead with daddy issues? Hell yeah, sign me up!