Scholar Who Walks the Night: Episode 6

by girlfriday

I really love the array of Lee Yubi’s swoon faces in this drama. They’re so blatantly adoring, or in this case, mad at herself for swooning while swooning. It’s too cute. Everyone’s on a collision course today, and it’s vampire against vampire in a battle to get to our heroine first. The episode speeds by (danger and mayhem will do that), dropping some big revelations in our laps and stirring up emotions as our heroine prepares to say goodbye forever.

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Eun Ga-eun – “슬픈 바람” (Sad Wind) for the Scholar Who Walks the Night OST [ Download ]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 
EPISODE 6 RECAP

Sung-yeol scours the marketplace looking for Yang-sun, after having witnessed where all the booksellers were taken after getting yanked off the streets. They’ve been sent straight to Gwi, who begins his interrogation by biting a man’s neck.

It sends the entire crowd of booksellers into a frightened frenzy, but Gwi just calmly waits for the man to die and then wake up a vampire, and eggs him on to feed his thirst. (I would really like a clearer explanation of the siring rules in this world.) He does that again and sits back to watch as the booksellers feed off each other and all turn into vampires.

Sung-yeol follows the trail to Yang-sun’s last location, and is alarmed to find her hawthorn necklace lying on the ground. He’s convinced she’s been taken, but checks the one-armed merchant’s store just in case, and finds her rooting through books in the library.

He scares her and sends her tumbling off the ladder, and super-speeds over to catch her fall. She’s doubly startled that he caught her when she could’ve sworn he was standing way over there.

Sung-yeol asks angrily what she’s doing here, and she says that she’s looking for Prince Jeonghyeon’s diary. His concern for her erupts in anger as usual, and she says that she wanted to search one last time because now she believes that the Vampire Tale isn’t fiction, and won’t get another chance to help him because she’s going far away.

He reties the hawthorn necklace around her neck, and she wonders if he’s been looking for her. He doesn’t answer, but says that he’s found it for her twice now, so she can’t lose it anymore. Maybe you should triple-knot the sucker for her, just in case.

He leads the way to walk her home, and Yang-sun trails a few steps behind him until she realizes that he’s slowing his steps waiting for her to catch up to him. She happily walks in step with him at his side, and then stops when she looks down at his shoes and starts to think about her not-a-dream from last night.

She screws up the nerve to ask him if he came to see her last night, and says that she knows it has to be a dream even if it doesn’t feel like one. He plays dumb and asks what the dream was, and she says he brought her shoes and placed them on her feet.

Her heart starts to race the same way it did in her dream, and she stares intently at his face. Sung-yeol starts to fidget when he sees her staring at his lips, but continues to play it cool: “And?” She says as if mesmerized that it feels so real even after waking up, and asks if it was a dream or not.

She waits and waits for an answer, and this time he says nothing and just stares back at her as intently. The tension builds… and then Yang-sun is the first to break the moment with a laugh and babbles about how she knows it couldn’t possibly be true. Aw, you should’ve held out just a little bit longer!

She slaps herself silly for opening her big mouth, and Sung-yeol smirks to himself as he walks ahead of her.

When they reach her house, she says that she’s leaving for Tamra tomorrow, and will probably be away for a very long time. She knows this is probably goodbye forever, and wishes him luck in finding Prince Jeonghyeon’s diary.

He thanks her for her hard work until now, and she gets teary-eyed as she thanks him in return. She says that it was a short time, but she won’t forget him.

Prince Yoon scours the palace looking for signs of someone fast and strong enough to have made all of Eumlan Seosaeng’s flyers vanish into thin air, and comes to the conclusion that there must be another vampire—one that can walk in the daylight.

Yang-sun stays up late to pack her books and stops to flip through her tale of the night scholar, full of drawings of her swooniest moments with Sung-yeol. Her sister asks if she said goodbye to the kids and muses that Yang-sun will miss them, and she sheds tears as she thinks of Sung-yeol and answers that yes, she’ll miss him very much.

She cries quietly in bed and sighs, “Thinking that I might never see [him] again makes my heart hurt so much.”

Gisaeng Su-hyang tells Sung-yeol that all the preparations have been made for Yang-sun’s journey, and asks if she can stay by his side tonight, not as a woman, but as a friend. She says that she’s never seen him like this before, and even offers to find some way to keep Yang-sun here instead of sending her away.

Sung-yeol admits that he thought Yang-sun was pretty—the way she lived as a man just to feed her family, the way she never gave up hope even when it looked like nothing would improve in her life. Watching her reminded him of his past, and the human emotions like passion and hope that he had forgotten: “The memories of the past that I can never return to.”

Su-hyang thinks to herself that it includes love. He says as if reminding himself, “It was just a momentary dream. A dream that disappears the moment you wake up,” and tells her to send Yang-sun to Tamra as planned.

Yang-sun and her family are warned that they have to move quickly in order to escape undetected, and plan to take the first boat to Tamra the next day. Meanwhile, Yoon reassigns one of his bodyguards to protect Yang-sun at all times (I’m gonna die laughing when all of the guys who are following Yang-sun around town start running into each other).

Yoon passes by Myung-hee’s doppelganger Hye-ryung in the street, and picks up a handkerchief that she drops. Something about the way Hye-ryung looks at him makes the encounter seem premeditated, but they each continue on their way.

Yoon goes to see the prime minister and finds the courtyard covered in blood from last night’s interrogation, and asks why he wasn’t made aware of the proceedings.

The prime minister asserts his authority to search for Eumlan Seosaeng without interference, so Yoon gives him a thinly veiled warning to make sure there’s no evidence left behind, just in case a nasty rumor spreads about a vampire eating all the booksellers in town.

The prime minister’s men pile the booksellers’ bodies in a ditch (ugh that’s a frightful sight) and torch them to get rid of the evidence of last night’s bloodbath. Sung-yeol watches from a distance.

Yang-sun ignores the warnings to lay low and makes her way to the one-armed merchant’s shop in broad daylight, thinking she’s being super stealthy with a fan. She might as well be wearing a neon sign that reads, Suspicious antics here, but somehow avoids being detected by the guards policing the streets.

She does all this to retrieve something she wants to give to Sung-yeol, and wonders to herself if he’ll like the gift.

Sung-yeol goes to a fight ring to chase down a lead on a few of Prince Sadong’s men who were sold into slavery. The man who runs the fight ring is a slave trader who’s famous for being a brute, and happily takes Sung-yeol’s money before telling him that he has no idea where those men are now because they escaped.

It’s not a total dead-end though, because Sung-yeol finds it suspicious that the slave trader’s personal collection of books includes difficult texts about government, and decides to follow him. He trails the man deep into the woods, where he disappears into a heavily guarded shack.

Sung-yeol speeds his way around the guards with ease, and finds a crack in the wall where he can peer inside. He’s shocked to see One Arm kneeling on the ground tied up like a hostage, and the slave trader reporting to a man about the meeting he just had with Sung-yeol.

On the table is a stack of Eumlan Seosaeng’s flyers, and then the man in charge turns his head. It’s Yoon, of course, and Sung-yeol is floored. He and Hak-young refer to One Arm as Choi Do-gab (confirming Sung-yeol’s suspicions), and Yoon says that tonight they’ll proceed with the next flyer.

Sung-yeol follows Yoon all the way home and sneaks in to take a look around. He finds a cabinet full of books and rifles through them, then decides that there’s something funny about the shallow wall behind them, and gives it one good shove.

It flings open to reveal a long corridor to a whole hidden wing of the house. It leads to Yoon’s inner chamber where we’ve seen him meet with Hak-young, and Yoon walks out just before Sung-yeol enters, missing each other narrowly.

Hye-ryung robotically feeds the fish in her pond, ignoring the protests from her maid that she’ll overfeed them to death. She throws the entire bowl of food in and replies impassively that that’s what she’s trying to do—kill them—and reminds her maid that she hates the fishy smell of them.

The maid worries because her father dotes on the fish, and then Dad storms in, incensed that his precious pet fish are all dead. Ah, her father is Prime Minister Choi, Gwi’s puppet official who does his bidding.

Prime Minister Choi pitches a fit when Hye-ryung ignores him and asks if she doesn’t see her father. She whirls around and asks, “Would someone who offered up his daughter as food to a bloodsucker for his own advancement look like a father in my eyes?” Oooooh. Innnteresting.

Yang-sun waits around for Yoon and calls out to him in the street, again thinking she’s being stealthy even though she hasn’t even noticed the lumbering bodyguard who’s been looking over her shoulder all day.

Yoon beams to see her, and takes out ink and paper to make her sign a contract detailing the debt she owes him. She pouts that he’d need a contract for that, but he says Tamra is far and she’ll be gone a long while, and money is money.

She picks up the brush and begins to write as he dictates: “I, Jo Yang-sun, promise the following to Lee Yoon: At least twice a month, I will write letters about how I’m doing.” Awww. She looks up in surprise, but he continues sternly, while thinking the next phrase to himself: “I won’t ever get sick, I will always eat well, and sleep well…”

Instead he says aloud, “I will return safely, and soon.” She laughs and says that she can promise everything else, but not the part about returning in a short time. She expects that it’ll be a few years, but Yoon insists that he’ll make it happen.

Sung-yeol tells his people about Yoon being Eumlan Seosaeng, and they’re shocked that the playboy scholar who draws scandalous pictures is actually the prince, and Eumlan Seosaeng on top of it all. Su-hyang wonders if they should be working with him, and Sung-yeol says that figuring out if the one-armed merchant has Prince Jeonghyeon’s diary is their first priority.

Late that night, Yang-sun’s father sneaks back into his house and starts digging into the ground until he pulls out a box. He shakes as he dusts it off and opens it… and inside is Prince Jeonghyeon’s lost diary.

He also has the other half of Yoon’s brush case that he gave to his childhood friend Jin, and holds the two items as he thinks to Prince Sadong that he will never let these things be found: “So that I can keep Yang-sun safe, so that she can live her whole life as my daughter.” Huh. Is she Jin after all? If you tell me that she’s a boy masquerading as a girl masquerading as a boy, my mind will be blown.

Yang-sun peers over Sung-yeol’s wall and paces around it like a stray cat, and finally gives up waiting for him to come home. She leaves a gift and letter on his stoop and bows in farewell, giving one last wistful look toward his door before walking away.

Sung-yeol watches from around the corner as she goes and then opens up her letter. She writes that she’s leaving for Tamra early in the morning and wishes him well, and that she got him something to use when he writes at night. He opens the gift to find a candle.

Yang-sun tries to keep her face hidden as she hurries back, and at the same time, a black-clad figure roams the streets. Oh crap, it’s Gwi, and he’s carrying Yang-sun’s book bag to take whiffs of it as he seeks her out.

He wonders if Sung-yeol already killed her, just as Yang-sun walks right past him. Everything slows… but Gwi keeps going. Guess that hawthorn necklace is doing its job.

Yang-sun walks on, but something makes Gwi stop in his tracks. It dawns on him that her necklace could be made of hawthorn to put him off her scent, and turns around to go after her.

She stays ahead of him for a little while because she’s trying to avoid the patrol officers, but she’s moments away from being discovered when Sung-yeol swoops in to pull her away just in time.

Gwi runs through the neighborhood chasing after her scent, and Sung-yeol throws his arms around Yang-sun as they hide behind a wall. She thinks to herself that this definitely is not a dream, but when she starts to ask him something, he quickly covers her mouth with his hand. What, no lips? That’s so unlike you, scholar-nim.

She thinks in her head that this time, there’s no way that she’ll forget. They narrowly avoid being discovered by Gwi, and then Sung-yeol tells her to run to his house immediately, and not come outside until the sun rises. She nods in understanding, and he runs off.

He comes out to face Gwi head-on, and Gwi is happy to see him after 120 years. When Sung-yeol doesn’t respond in kind, he acts offended that Sung-yeol isn’t happier to see him. He asks if the owner of this book bag is the reason he’s come out of hiding, and Sung-yeol lures him into the woods to find out.

Gwi asks what’s so important about this book bag’s owner that Sung-yeol is fighting to protect him, and guesses that it might be Eumlan Seosaeng. Sung-yeol thinks he’s worried that they’ll discover the hidden diary, and Gwi argues he should know that it doesn’t exist since Sung-yeol’s been following him like a dog for 120 years.

Sung-yeol asks why Gwi is here then, sniffing around like a dog because he wants to steal his dinner. They growl as they bare their fangs and clash in a fight. Sung-yeol fights with all his strength, but he’s no match for Gwi, who can tell that Sung-yeol hasn’t had human blood for a long time.

When Gwi has him by the topknot on the ground, Sung-yeol sees his chance to snatch the book bag and speeds past him, freeing his hair in the process. He dangles the bag out in front of him as bait, and uses speed against Gwi to confuse him in the fog as they go at each other’s throats again.

Yang-sun reaches Sung-yeol’s house safely, but raises alarm when she returns alone and has no idea where Sung-yeol is.

The fight wears on until Sung-yeol is bloody and limp, but he manages to hurl the book bag off a cliff and into the ocean so that it can’t be used to trace Yang-sun anymore. Gwi fumes that he’s going to rip him to shreds and lurches at him, but Sung-yeol times the moment perfectly to the sunrise and drops to the ground as the sun rises behind him.

Gwi’s face starts to sizzle in the sunlight, and Sung-yeol uses the chance to stab him with his hawthorn dagger. He growls that Gwi will have to kill him to leave this place, and as they struggle, Gwi uses his last burst of energy to turn Sung-yeol’s own dagger against him and stabs him in the gut.

Gwi uses the moment to run away into the woods, and Sung-yeol collapses in a bloody heap, gurgling on his own blood. Gwi races against the sun, but gets trapped by a clearing that he can’t cross.

He looks up at the sun with disdain and sticks his hand out into the light, but has to withdraw when it starts to burn. He says that even with Hae-seo’s abilities, Sung-yeol won’t survive that kind of blood loss.

Hye-ryung comes out from the palace and thinks to herself that the sun is up, but he isn’t underground. She must be talking about Gwi.

Yang-sun is beside herself with worry, and Su-hyang is ready to slap her in agitation. Ho-jin stops her and they head back out to continue their search before the sun rises any higher, and Su-hyang warns her that if anything happens to Sung-yeol, she’ll make her pay.

Yoon’s bodyguard reports that Yang-sun is safe, only to turn around and report to the king about Yoon’s activities over the last few days. Dammit, he’s a spy? He shows the king Yoon’s secret corridor and tells him everything about Yang-sun, and the king doesn’t seem surprised—he must know that Yoon is Eumlan Seosaeng. Has he known all this time?

Sung-yeol limps his way through the woods towards a shack, but he’s so weakened that he falls to the ground before he can make it there. Thankfully Yang-sun finds him and rushes to his side, but when she says that he needs a doctor, he gasps for her to take him to that shack.

She drags him inside, where he again tells her not to get a doctor and says that the boat will be arriving soon, and she needs to leave for Tamra. Yang-sun cries that she can’t go and leave him here alone, and then Sung-yeol starts to fade and passes out.

 
COMMENTS

Will this be a way for Yang-sun to discover that Sung-yeol is a vampire? Sinking his teeth into her doesn’t seem like the best way to find that out, even if his life is on the line. I’m torn because I want him to survive, but he’s already swimming in self-loathing for being a beast on a good day; I don’t really want to know what happens if he drinks the blood of the woman he loves a second time. What are the odds a boar will happen by right when we need it to?

This show is consistently fast with the reveals, which makes me wonder what, if anything, we’ll have left to uncover in the latter part of the show. I was surprised at how quickly Sung-yeol discovered that Yoon is Eumlan Seosaeng, and that the king might even have known all this time too. It’s good for the good guys if they can manage to work together, but so far Sung-yeol doesn’t seem all that interested in playing with others, probably in part because he feels that the burden to rid the world of Gwi falls squarely on his shoulders alone. But I like Yoon so much when he’s with Yang-sun (that contract was so adorable today) that it makes me trust his motives as Eumlan Seosaeng, even if his methods run counter to Sung-yeol’s. There’s risk in outing himself to join their team, but Sung-yeol can’t do this without gaining people’s trust.

Right now I’m most worried about Yang-sun’s father, because he can’t be long for this world if he’s the only one who knows where the diary is. His concern for Yang-sun and his wish for her to continue living as his daughter makes me think Yoon was right all along in believing that she was Jin (but does that mean she was dressing as a boy even as a child?). I’m definitely more curious about her backstory now that there’s more than Yoon’s hunch to go on. Hye-ryung is far more intriguing after today’s episode as well, because her defiant attitude towards her father makes me root for her to find a way out of this horrible deal. I mean, I know that the slimy prime minister is under Gwi’s thumb, but offering up his daughter to be vampire food is a new low, even for him.

I know it can’t happen too often, but I like the energy when Gwi and Sung-yeol are together, music video fog and rockstar hair notwithstanding. Gwi always talks to Sung-yeol like they’re old friends, and it’s a little sad how obvious he is about wishing he could turn Sung-yeol to the dark side so that they could be bestest buds forever and ever. Not like, sympathetic, mind you—just a tiny bit human in his warped wish for companionship. Sung-yeol still seems a little naïve if he thinks he can fight Gwi one-on-one without amassing the same kind of strength (by drinking human blood), though I was impressed by the sunrise maneuver. It’s the one advantage that Sung-yeol has over Gwi—that he can walk in the light—and though it’s an obvious metaphor of light vs. dark, good vs. evil, it’s effective in illustrating that they are fundamentally different. Gwi can only exist in the shadows, but Sung-yeol has the power to move between the two worlds, and by extension, a choice to give into his inner beast or live among the people. Getting the tortured hero to believe that that means he deserves a shot at happiness, well, that’s another story entirely. But for a guy who’s convinced he can never have a happy life, he sure does like to test his limits.

 
RELATED POSTS

• Scholar Who Walks the Night: Episode 5
• Scholar Who Walks the Night: Episode 4
• Scholar Who Walks the Night: Episode 3
• Scholar Who Walks the Night: Episode 2
• Scholar Who Walks the Night: Episode 1
• From the press conference for Scholar Who Walks the Night
• Lee Jun-ki the scholar walks nights, breaks hearts
• Character stills for Scholar Who Walks the Night
• Red-eyed and book-hunting Scholar Who Walks the Night
• The bloodlust is awakened in Scholar Who Walks the Night