Our heroine has to take matters into her own hands if she wants to be with her gumiho and help him turn human. As she learns an important secret that might help him achieve his goal, they go through a break-up, make-up, and then fall prey to some campus gossip.
EPISODES 13-14 WEECAP
I’ve been so happy with the pacing of our drama that I guess it makes sense we need to hit a bump at some point, and for me, this week’s episodes were that bump. The stakes were high and tension was amping up last week — as we saw what a desperate Woo-yeo is really capable of — but this week the story dials back the drama, and turns back towards rom-com.
Woo-yeo and Dam break up and endure their requisite periods of misery, but it doesn’t last very long. Once again, Hye-sun becomes one of the best mediator characters in drama history, and she tells Dam the truth about the fox bead, and how it turned blue for the first time in centuries when Dam had it. Armed with context, Dam is able to forgive him — and she goes all in to help. Except Woo-yeo refuses said help.
The more Dam insists on taking the fox bead back and helping him become human, the stronger he refuses, and pretty soon he’s teleporting all over the place just to get away from her. That’s when Dam hatches a new plan: good old-fashioned jealousy.
Though Jae-jin knows he’s falling in love with Hye-sun, he spies her holding hands with Woo-yeo. Not realizing she’s giving him energy, Jae-jin thinks that they’re a couple and he’s being played. And so, he goes along with Dam’s plan: the two pretend they’re dating as loud as possible, all for the benefit of Hye-sun and Woo-yeo. It’s not the last time this tactic will be used in dramalamd, but it was particularly funny here, since Jae-jin and Dam are so grossed out by each other that they literally stop in the middle of the street to use hand sanitizer after they were forced to touch each other, hah.
Dam reaches a point where she knows that supernatural intervention is required, though. The mountain spirit is still poking around into their business, and in a fit of desperation, she stops on the street, picks up a pretty huge knife that’s sitting right on the sidewalk (say what?) and attempts to cut the fateful red thread.
This act pulls her from reality into another dimension where she’s face-to-face with the mountain spirit. Dam’s gumption is rewarded; in the end she learns the truth about the bead. The mountain spirit says that what turns the marble blue is not human energy, as everyone believes: it’s humanity.
The mountain spirit was unpleased by the way Woo-yeo cut himself off from humanity and emotion after the death of his first love, and wanted to push him to realize the truth. But, it wasn’t until Woo-yeo met Dam that something began to change. In the words of the spirit himself, she made Woo-yeo care about life and becoming human again. She leaves this exchange determined to help Woo-yeo “find his humanity” and become human.
I like this little twist that the drama tried to pull here — and yet I kinda don’t? It was much more fun to think of their dangerous attraction, and the fact that in order to fully live, Woo-yeo had to take energy from the woman he wanted to live for. However, now the state of affairs is quite different.
Dam requests to return as his roommate, and then flexes her emotional intelligence, explaining to Woo-yeo the things that she does, feels, and even what Woo-yeo does and how it makes her feel. Kudos for communication and clarity, even if this course change doesn’t thrill me.
While Woo-yeo is inadvertently learning to be human, we have the very unceremonious departure of Sun-woo, our lovely second lead. Used and abused by this story at its convenience, he now decides to give into the pressure from his chaebol father and go study abroad.
But before he leaves, he delivers a lovely confession to Dam, saying she can choose to take it as a confession, or a goodbye. She chooses the latter, and as she walks away, the red thread of fate snaps. Sun-woo is left there to weep alone (and I’m left feeling salty about how the drama treated his character).
The last hurdle for our almost-human couple is that some students notice them out on a date, and post their couple-y picture to the university’s message board. Cue the outrage! People are scandalized, but Dam has no patience for their drama. She announces that she was dating him long before he became a professor there (true), and that to clear up any conflict of interest, she’ll drop his class (which she does).
Then, there’s just the shock of Jae-jin and Soo-kyung to deal with, but they’re quickly won over, even though it’s more than a little awkward to see them all at a pizza place trying to be informal with their professor. Just wait till they find out he’s not human.
The other clincher of Dam’s exchange with the mountain spirit is that she made him guarantee her safety — and yes, that means what you think it means. Woo-yeo no longer has to worry about draining her life force, or hurting her in any way through skinship. And so, that means it’s time to make out again. And with that, the curtains fall on our penultimate episode.