Our unlikely pair is roped in by more murders and ghostly shenanigans that might just shed light on their own ghost predicament. With no telling how long our heroine can maintain control, they dive headlong into their supernatural investigation. Their quest for answers leads them to the past and a tragic event with far-reaching consequences.
EPISODES 3-4
We open on a young man scribbling furiously while hyperventilating and repeating, “Die!” as one does. Heels clack down the hall. There’s a loud knock on the door. He opens it (uh oh), and we see a pair of red high heels. The young man falls to the ground, seeming to choke.
He’s merely one of several students to die recently. There have been three suicides in the past week, all seniors at the same university. Rumors around campus say that each death was preceded by the sound of high heels and knocking.
Mun-chun and Hong-sae investigate and discover all three students had a friend in common, a student named Tae-young who suspiciously disappeared after the deaths. CCTV footage from the apartment buildings show a woman wearing red high heels (so not a ghost, it would seem) that the landlord identifies as Tae-young. Oddly, she visited each of the three students weekly on a regular schedule. However, she doesn’t appear on any of the neighborhood CCTV footage outside the buildings.
Coincidentally (or maybe not), these deaths happened in the area that used to be Jangjin-ri, the place Hae-sang and San-young discovered in Gang-mo’s notes. They make a trip there and start canvassing the elderly residents, trying to find someone who’s been there long enough to help them. They luck out and find an elderly man who tells them about the sacred tree on their makeshift map. It’s known as Dukdali Tree after the old practice of childhood burial; children were typically either buried in jars in remote areas without a headstone or their bodies were hung from trees (yeesh). The tree was also known as the Suicide Tree after many people hung themselves there.
The elderly man also knew Gang-mo who used to visit his younger brother who has since died. He gives Hae-sang and San-young his great-niece’s address, so they make a trip to her dorm… just as the high-heeled woman/ghost visits. The woman/ghost disappears, but they do run into Mun-chun and Hong-sae. After Hae-sang sees a ghost tree with three corpses and an empty noose, he warns Mun-chun there will be another victim.
For Hae-sang, it’s obvious they should now chase after this suicide ghost, but San-young has a life outside of ghost hunting. One that she’s had to put on hold to focus on ridding herself of the evil spirit that’s attached itself to her. San-young couldn’t take the exam she’d been preparing for with Se-mi and has been avoiding her mom since she can’t tell her what’s going on.
Her mom further adds to her stress after she gets a call from the police about San-young’s grandmother’s death. San-young calms her down by saying she wasn’t involved with her grandmother, but then it’s San-young’s turn to panic. Her mom says her grandmother left her an inheritance, and given their money troubles, she encourages San-young to accept it. San-young freaks out when she then clearly hears the voice of the ghost possessing her order, “Accept it.”
While Hae-sang focuses on identifying and locating the Dukdali Tree, San-young tries to find Tae-young, hoping for answers about her own possession. No one has been able to reach her, and one of her coworkers seems way too interested, especially when San-young mentions Tae-young’s family. He asks for her great-uncle’s contact info, supposedly to send Tae-young’s things she left behind, and San-young hands the address over with way too little suspicion.
Things take an odder turn when the man then introduces San-young to his boss after overhearing her on a phone call with her landlady. The boss offers to help her with money. Thankfully, San-young is suspicious of that and leaves without taking him up on it. He sends her away with a fish (even as the owner of an aquarium shop, that’s just bizarre) and encourages her to return.
Everyone’s investigations lead to the same place – Tae-young’s family’s property. Hae-sang determines Tae-young is the ghost’s next target, while the police learn from the great-aunt that Tae-young went into hiding because debt collectors were after her. When San-young returns to the aquarium shop, she finds debt collection contracts and discovers it’s a front for an illegal loan shark business. On her way out, she sees a reflection of the Dukdali Tree in her mirror. (Tae-young threw pieces of a torn family photo with a ghost inside, according to Hae-sang, in an aquarium to keep the moneylenders from coming after her family.)
The boss catches San-young on her way out, but San-young somehow escapes and calls Hae-sang to check on Tae-young’s family. Hae-sang is already there, and a scream leads him to the shed where one of the moneylenders, dressed in a woman’s outfit and red high heels, attacks Tae-young. Everyone, including the police, arrive just in time to arrest the man and save Tae-young. So it seems the deaths were a human-ghost collaboration (even if unintentional) with the moneylenders terrorizing students a suicide ghost then latched onto.
But it’s not over yet. Hae-sang learns that the moneylenders gave a fish to each of the victims, with San-young being the most recent fish-receiver. This might be one time the possession comes in handy because Hae-sang finds San-young on the bridge unaffected, tossing the fishbowl into the river.
Not San-young turns to him with a chilling smile and greets him, “It’s been a long time.” Hae-sang rattles the ghost when he shows her the hair accessory and recalls it was gifted to young girls as a talisman for health and safety. As the ghost retreats, San-young repeats the numbers “21” and “176.” Then, San-young returns to herself, frightened and confused. She’s been getting worse, feeling less like herself and having more blackouts. Hae-sang tries to comfort her, but the situation is bleak.
At least one of their problems is an easy fix (if you’re rich, that is) – Hae-sang lends San-young the money she needs to keep their house, although he vastly misjudges how poor they are and gifts her 45 million won too much, ha. She’s reluctant to accept, but he tells her their weaknesses can be targeted by ghosts: she needs to pay her debts, while he gets rid of all his alcohol.
They next investigate the numbers the ghost repeated, starting at Gang-mo’s office. Their search yields nada; however, San-young does find out something interesting in the room her parents used to share at her grandmother’s place. There, she spots an old calendar with a due date for a baby… when she was already five years old. Once again, it looks like her mom’s keeping family secrets.
Tae-young provides them with a clue, at least, when she recounts a visit between Gang-mo and her grandfather the previous year. He’d been asking after Lee Mok-dan, a village girl who went missing in 1958. And yes, it’s the same girl with the hair accessory who was killed by the shaman. After painstakingly going through old newspaper articles, San-young and Hae-sang find an article about Mok-dan being killed as part of a yeommae ritual which, in its most gruesome form, was done by starving and killing a child to create a vengeful juvenile ghost. That’s when San-young realizes the numbers are page numbers in her father’s book on this topic.
Since Baekchagol Village is mentioned on those pages, they take another road trip. The elders are happy to see Hae-sang again – he did research there years ago – but awkward Hae-sang is happy to let San-young steer the conversation and make small talk with the villagers. And here San-young unearths yet another of her mother’s lies: Baekchagol is her hometown, not Seoul as she’d always claimed.
There’s no time to dwell on familial revelations, though, since wandering ghosts crash the party. After elder dies suddenly, Hae-sang and San-young work to protect the others. The village is known for its straw doll festival that’s meant to ward off these wandering ghosts, but someone sabotaged it this year.
An elderly, ghost-seeing resident couldn’t bear to send off her daughter who is now a wandering ghost, so she burned all the straw dolls that could’ve protected the village. San-young manages to save one elderly woman who is pushed in front of a Truck of Doom by a ghost, but then she’s followed by several wandering ghosts. We end as San-young sees her ghost father in the reflection of a store window.
Since these wandering ghosts don’t seem capable of conversation, I don’t expect San-young will be able to get much out of her father. But it would certainly be helpful if he could nudge her in the right direction or provide some info on why she’s involved in all this. Between his abandonment and her mother’s lies and bad decisions, poor San-young has really had to fend for herself. It’s not great when the only person you can trust is a ghost-obsessed stranger you just met.
I do wish we spent less time with the police investigation since I find that the least interesting aspect of the drama. Dramaland is overflowing with criminal investigations, so I’d much rather spend the time on the ghostly bits. We did confirm this week that our ghost is that little girl who was tragically murdered (when in doubt, it’s always a little girl ghost). Now that they know the ghost’s identity, maybe they’ll be able to make some headway on what she wants and how to get rid of her.