Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter: Episode 3

by LollyPip

The more our prickly professor tries to deny having any association with his new fairy acquaintance, the more wrapped-up he seems to get with her. He tries to deny being drawn to her, but it’s difficult when she keeps showing up nearby with her gifts and her amazing coffee. Sooner or later he’s going to have to drop the tough guy act and give her a chance to talk to him, if only to find out exactly what’s going on.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

Ok-nam tells Yi-hyun the story of how she met her husband, but none of it rings a bell. In desperation, she shows him the charm she believes her husband left behind the last time she saw him, but that’s not familiar to him, either.

He tells her that he’s not the person she’s looking for, and he asks her how he keeps seeing her as a young woman. She changes now, and when she hears this, Ok-nam thinks, “He is one of us.”

She takes his hands and puts them on her face, just like her husband did before he left her for the last time. She asks him to try one more time to remember, but he just struggles to get free.

We see Ok-nam in her old life in the heavens, wearing her winged butterfly clothing, and she smiles when another immortal being (a deity?) approaches her. She narrates, “Is it strange for an immortal to love a human? Why? It’s the immortals’ duty to love and serve deities, and the deities love humans, whom they created. It’s natural for us immortals to love and respect humans as well.”

Yi-hyun oversleeps the next morning, and he makes it to his classroom with seconds to spare. His students whine at him to cancel class anyway, but he snarls at them to appreciate the fact that they can afford to go to college and take his class, shaming them into staying.

Ok-nam continues to narrate: “Immortals serve deities in nature. They go with the flow of the universe, connect the deities with humans, and create harmony between the corporeal and incorporeal. They sometimes live in the fairy realm and sometimes in this realm with people.”

“They have no greed for fortune. They’re free of desire for money, power, and honor. Instead of being swayed by the illusions of the visible world, they see the truths inside. They live around people without anyone knowing. Some of them aren’t aware of their true identities as they exist in this realm.”

Geum finds the ajumma pants that he bought for Ok-nam, strangely hanging in his own closet. He chuckles at the memory of her fitting her whole body inside them. He chooses something nice to wear today, caring more about fashion than he admitted to his lab partner Jung-min.

Unable to stop thinking about Ok-nam and the way she held his hands to her face, Yi-hyun lurks in Dr. Lee’s office before she even arrives. He calls her to hurry up and get there, and he borrows her tablet while he waits, and on it he finds Jeom-soon’s yaoi fanfic. Despite himself, he gets all caught up in the love story between the young master and his servant.

Dr. Lee stops at the coffee kiosk, where Ok-nam sends a second coffee for her to give to Yi-hyun, surprising her by knowing that she’s about to see him. When she gets to her office, Yi-hyun teases her about her reading choices.

She makes like the fanfic is interesting to her because of the cultural commentary, and Yi-hyun jokes that it probably appeals to those whose desires aren’t met in real life, ha. Dr. Lee gives Yi-hyun the coffee she got from Ok-nam, but he spits it out when he hears who made it.

He regards Ok-nam’s coffee with suspicion, and he takes the carafe back to the kiosk, where Ok-nam is having a conversation with some moody flowers. Geum beats him to Ok-nam, so Yi-hyun watches them and wonders if Geum sees her as a young woman, too. Geum’s expression bothers him because it reminds him of the way goats look when thinking of mating, ha.

Geum shocks Ok-nam by ordering the Black Water coffee. While she works, he asks her where she learned to brew coffee. She says that she learned a long time ago, in the fairy realm, from an Ethiopian exchange fairy (cue fairy/goat dance party for her ability to choose excellent coffee beans, lol).

She tells him that coffee was originally a drink enjoyed in the fairy realm by fairies and immortals, and that hers was a favorite among the immortals. Geum invites her to see a movie with him this weekend (Yi-hyun perks up at that), and she says she’s only been to one movie but she missed the ending, so she accepts.

Back in the village, Shin-seon packs everything he owns for the trip to Seoul, while Master Gu seems to be going in nothing but the clothes on his back and a bar of soap to wash them with. Shin-seon fusses that Master Gu expects Fairy Oh to provide everything, but when Master Gu refuses to help him carry his stuff, he sneakily removes several bags of rice from the bag, hee.

Jeom-soon finds her mother embroidering a bird. Ok-nam explains that years ago, civil servants had cranes embroidered onto their clothes, and since her husband was reincarnated as a scholar, this bird is for him to wear. Embarrassed (Ok-nam isn’t very good at embroidery), Jeom-soon begs her not to give it to him when she’s around.

Jeom-soon heads out to write, but first she gets writer’s block, then her laptop dies. Nearby, someone films her with a wrist-mounted camera, and all we see of them is a charm on their bag of a golden tiger’s head. Judging by his clothing, the same guy approaches Dr. Lee, and tells her that he’s a student, and even saw her for some sessions briefly last year.

Dr. Lee seems unsettled, especially when she notices the camera he’s wearing, which is still recording. He turns it off, explaining that because of his own difficulties in the past, he’s making a film about young adults struggling in a competitive world, and he asks her to be in his documentary.

When she returns to her office, she looks him up, and finds that his name is Uhm Kyung-seul, and that she treated him for bipolar disorder and Ripley’s syndrome (when a patient builds a delusional fantasy based on lies because they’ve failed to achieve their goals in reality). She texts Kyung-seul and offers to help him with his film.

Geum arrives in the lab to find Jung-min in despair — she’s behind on a project, but there’s a faculty get-together today. Kyung-shik tells Geum that Yi-hyun is looking for him, and after Geum leaves, Kyung-shik grabs his tumbler of Black Water coffee and gulps it down.

Yi-hyun has a plan for the faculty dinner that involves eating as much as possible and leaving as soon as possible, to avoid getting stuck with the bill. He has a vendetta against a certain Professor Park, who waits until everyone gets drunk then eats all the food and never pays, due to having a similar plan worked out with his team.

Tonight, Yi-hyun has decided to sit far from Professor Park, wait until he starts pontificating, and then act drunk and leave. Geum’s job is to guard Yi-hyun’s wallet so that nobody can take it and use it to pay.

Jung-min interrupts them, very worried about Kyung-shik, who’s manically typing on his project at the speed of light. Geum asks him if he’s okay, and he answers as if he’s still writing, even speaking his punctuation out loud. Jung-min tells Geum that Kyung-shik drank his coffee as Kyung-shik suddenly finishes his report and collapses on his keyboard.

Bong-dae complains to Ok-nam about her numerous physical ailments, like herniated disks, carpal tunnel syndrome, and dry eyes… all caused by her gaming habits, lol. She’s working the kiosk as a break from gaming, so she gives Ok-nam the day off and suggests she take a tour of the campus.

She confesses that she overheard Ok-nam’s conversation with Yi-hyun last night, and she’s grumpy on Ok-nam’s behalf at Yi-hyun’s failure to remember her. But Ok-nam just grins and takes that walk, enjoying the chance to be around young people and remembering her own days of study as a young fairy. Fairy Oh had been in her class, and was a bit of a troublemaker, hiding contraband reading material in her schoolbooks.

Ok-nam finds Yi-hyun giving a lecture and sits in on his class, the flower in her hair distracting him when he spots her there. He drops his pen in surprise, but when he picks it up, Ok-nam is gone again. She appears again when the class is over, scaring ten years off Yi-hyun’s life, and asks if they can talk.

He fusses at her for showing up in his class when she’s not even a student, but she’s undaunted by his bad mood. She remembers her husband, who worked hard to chop wood but didn’t sell much, and she tells Yi-hyun that she’s thankful her husband was reincarnated as a scholar who doesn’t have to worry about selling goods.

Yi-hyun scoffs, asking if she thinks he’s her husband, but when she says she’s not necessarily saying that, he looks a little disappointed. She gives him the shirt she embroidered, and when he says he’s forbidden to take gifts, she points out that she’s not a student. She leaves as soon as he takes it, and he gapes at the odd embroidery.

Ok-nam narrates that a day in the fairy realm is a year in the human realm, so the six hundred ninety-nine years she’s been waiting on Earth didn’t feel very long to her. She wishes for her husband to come to her in his own time, and she’ll be right beside him.

Jung-min is still working on her report while Kyung-shik snores contentedly on the couch. After confirming that it was Black Water coffee Kyung-shik drank, Jung-min runs out with her carafe in hand. Uh-oh. She’s disappointed when she finds Bong-dae at the kiosk instead of Ok-nam, so Bong-dae tries to make the coffee herself, but of course it doesn’t work, to Jung-min’s chagrin.

Master Gu, Shin-seon, and Fairy Oh arrive at the train station, planning to take something called the Train Pigeon to Seoul, but they’re told that their only option is the KTX. The confusion nearly sparks a fight between Master Gu and Shin-seon (not that it takes much), but Fairy Oh just drags them over to the ticket booth.

Geum recognizes Jeom-soon’s backpack and confronts her, since he doesn’t recognize Jeom-soon herself in human form. He asks to look inside and she refuses, and as she tries to pass him, they collide and he drops the documents he’s carrying.

Some of Jeom-soon’s favorite sausages also hit the floor, and Geum accuses human Jeom-soon of doing something to cat Jeom-soon. As Jeom-soon grows upset, her tiger tail pops out, which just makes the seat of her jumpsuit bulge weirdly. In frustration, she decks Geum with a left hook, then she feels bad and explains that she is Jeom-soon.

Geum is more upset about his bloody nose than the fact that she can turn into a cat, ha. He apologizes for not earning her trust enough for her to be honest with him, and Jeom-soon grins that she’s just glad to have someone she can tell the truth to. She complains that her laptop has been losing its charge, so Geum offers to buy her a new one.

When Jeom-soon gets home, she tells her mother that she ran into Geum on campus, and Ok-nam says that she’s seeing a movie with him. She invites Jeom-soon to join them, but Jeom-soon remembers the last time they went to a movie. They’d seen Gone with the Wind, and Jeom-soon’s tail had popped out when Rhett kissed Scarlett, so Ok-nam had dragged her out of the theater.

Jeom-soon is worried it might happen again, since it seems like everything gets her, um… worked up these days. Ok-nam tells her to stop eating meat, which reminds Jeom-soon of the jerky she hid before they left their cottage. That reminds Ok-nam of the friends they left behind, so she decides to write them a letter.

They’re currently on a train, which is quite the novelty for Shin-seon and Fairy Oh. Master Gu brags about all of his Seoulite friends and offers to show them the town, and soon all three have dropped off to sleep, unaware that they’re on the entirely wrong train and they’re speeding away from Seoul.

At the faculty dinner, Yi-hyun gets annoyed when Professor Park tells him that a TV show is planning to shoot an episode in their department and wants to interview Yi-hyun. He declines, unimpressed with the show’s focus on entertainment over credibility, but Professor Parl says that they need someone with his good looks.

Both Yi-hyun and Geum take notice when Professor Park’s team starts talking about the new barista halmoni at the coffee kiosk. They make fun of her for saying she’s a fairy and wonder if she has dementia, and Yi-hyun gets angry. He stands up, looking furious — then gives them a charming smile, making them forget their conversation.

The three immortals don’t realize that they’ve disembarked in Mokpo instead of Seoul. Although they hear some people outside the station speaking in satoori, they decide that all kinds must live in the big city, and set off to explore what they think is Seoul.

Soon, Yi-hyun is three sheets to the wind, drunkenly debating scientific theory with Professor Park while Geum sighs and wonders when they’re going to leave. Suddenly Professor Park starts heaving and throws an arm around his assistant, which is the sign that he’s about to bail and leave someone else with the check, so Yi-hyun quickly does the same thing.

He and Geum run full-speed out the side door, and once they’re home-free, Yi-hyun drunkenly yells at Geum for dragging him to his hometown on Chuseok and causing him all kinds of problems. They belatedly realize that they left their phones at the restaurant, so Geum offers to go back and get them, leaving Yi-hyun to wait on a bench. The restaurant is empty when Geum returns, and to his horror, the owner has their phones and she hands him the bill for the evening.

Still very drunk, Yi-hyun slowly tips over and falls asleep on the bench. He’s approached by a massive tiger, which watches over him as he dreams of a small girl sitting beside a grave. Her hair is messy from the wind and she’s missing her right pinky finger.

Yi-hyun opens his eyes and sees the tiger, and he whispers, “Jeom-soon-ah…” The tiger gently licks his face, and he falls back to sleep. Tiger Jeom-soon somehow picks him up and carries him to Ok-nam, scared that he’s dying.

Ok-nam sits with Yi-hyun’s head in her lap, and he whispers in his sleep again, “Jeom-soon-ah, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to grow up without a father.” Ok-nam cries, taking this as certain proof that Yi-hyun is her reincarnated husband.

 
COMMENTS

We learned a bit more about the fairy world in this episode, particularly the fact that it’s possible for immortal beings to live on Earth and be completely unaware of their true nature. I think this must be the reason that Geum can understand animals, and why he’s so fascinated by Ok-nam, and so easily accepting of her explanation that she’s a fairy. Geum grew up on the same mountain where she’s lived for centuries, and where other immortals also live, so it’s entirely possible that Geum is somehow an unaware immortal (or at least half immortal). He has a very human mother, but he’s never mentioned a father, so my theory is that he’s part immortal on his father’s side.

That doesn’t mean that he’s not Ok-nam’s husband, though — even though the show keeps presenting her husband with Yi-hyun’s face, something makes me hesitate to believe that that makes it a done deal. Geum is definitely involved somehow in everything that’s happening, and his interaction with Jeom-soon in human form felt very fatherly to me. He’s physically only a couple of years older than her (technically she’s way older than him), but he referred to himself as “ajusshi,” offered to buy her a laptop, and even said she grew up well. There’s also Jeom-soon’s brother in the egg, which responded to Geum’s touch by cracking — very mysterious.

I haven’t read it myself, but I know who the husband is in the webtoon, and while that doesn’t mean it will be the same in the drama, it definitely gives me pause. Yi-hyun exhibits signs of being Ok-nam’s husband, particularly in regards to his dreams. Ok-nam may not seem familiar to him, but he knew Jeom-soon’s name when she was just a cat, and that sleeping apology for her having to grow up without a father seemed to indicate that he’s also part of the story. But I can think of reasons why both men would be doing the things they’re doing and still not be the husband.

Anyway, knowing dramas as I do, there’s no telling who the husband is or whether that’s even who Ok-nam will fall in love with in the present time, so for now I’m just in “wait and see” mode. What I really want to see is more about Ok-nam and what her life was like in the fairy realm — how she ended up stuck on Earth with a family, and what she’s been doing for seven centuries. Right now she’s a very bland, if sweet, character, and I think the show could do a lot more with her. Hopefully something shakes up things soon and gets the plot moving, because I do enjoy the show, but there’s not a lot actually happening.

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