Extraordinary You theory/guess: Haru and Danoh came from a historical (probably Joseon?) romance manhwa.

(For some reason all the images/links disappeared 😩 Reposted in full in the comments!)

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    There’s also this scene where Haru leads Danoh to the little enclave with (what could be the) flowering trumpet vines (shoutout to my fellow manhwa author @saner! 💘).

    Anyone who likes a sageuk knows that flowers are always used to symbolise some kind of love/destiny/fate between the two main characters. We saw this recently with the cherry blossoms in 100 Days My Prince:

    Haru also asks Danoh if she knows the place he’s brought her to, but since neither of them have their memories, she says she doesn’t know, and Haru himself admits to Dried Squid Fairy later on that although Danoh is familiar to him, he doesn’t know the answers to any of his thoughts and questions.

    So what is this place, you ask?

    Why, it’s gotta be our couple’s secret/romantic meeting spot, of course! Where else have we seen something like this? None other than everyone’s favourite fusion sageuk of 2016: Moonlight Drawn By Clouds.

    There’s probably more stuff I could add to this post (correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there a throwaway line somewhere Danoh calls herself a princess?), but it’s already so long, LOL. If you made it all the way to the end, thank you! I had so much fun writing this.

    Happy Friday Everyone! 😆

    (gif credit)

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    I do think he comes from another Manhwa, as a matter of fact, it is the other one that Jin Mi-chae has “Flower”, it makes sense to me that Haru somehow travelled to this world without knowing and if you realized the lines he says are the ones in Flower, the two Manhwa world are now connected because of him, his character is a main lead in that one and now is forcing his way into Secret, but how did he get here and why? I know he is here for Dan-oh but there is still so much we need to know!

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      I’m 100% with you on that, and the ‘Flower’ in question is the red flower that keeps blooming around him! I wonder if Flower was something that got shelved after the first volume, leaving the characters kind of floating around, and Haru came into the world of Secret through that weird portal we’ve been seeing. On the other hand, I feel like when Jinmichae talks about things going wrong if the story changes, he seems to be alluding to Haru as well.

      Another guess of mine is that Haru’s character in Flower became self-aware and tried to change the narrative, which got him written off (maybe killed off?) in Flower, which then somehow led to him entering the world of Secret. But how? And what about Danoh? Something tells me they definitely knew each other from before the events of the drama, but where and why? SO MUCH still to be answered, and now, Kyung’s really thrown a spanner in the works after the ending of ep 6 😂

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        I’m herre! Thank you for calling me to this very tasty thread!

        I agree that it’s basically (TV version) canon that Haru came from the Joseon period with his artwork, music skill and smashing the Hangul test…but totes failing English.

        Joseon love stories are ripe for tragedy and heartache with all the social boundaries and restrictions in place, as well as the strong social adherence to Confucian ideals.
        A sad ending might explain why the norigae (great spot!) burned when it touched Haru’s scar – they’re clearly connected.

        I wonder if it’s less about Haru changing the story and more his presence reverting the story to his….which seems like it had a very tragic ending and maybe JinMiChae is trying to prevent that ending leaking over to their world?

        You often hear about writers wanting to write something light and fluffy after writing heavier things for so long….And death and the promise to meet each other ‘in the next life’ is a very common tragi-romantic trope.

        But maybe their love in the previous manwha (especially his love/protective instinct for Dan Oh) was so strong that it’s breaking through pages, worlds and portals…hence the flowers, which bloom more rampantly if it’s been warmer/hotter in the summer.

        In this week’s episode see that even if he is aware that changing the scene may result in his pain and disappearance, Haru is still determined to follow his heart…and Eun Dan Oh.

        *tears up*
        *sniffle*

        I don’t think Kyung will have had a hand in Haru’s disappearance…but he seems like the kind of person to find it ironic and have a wry laugh about it (“So I’ve been suffering all this time with my dad because of some writer? If my life is just a joke to them, then I’ll just laugh about everyone’s situation.” His life is a concept [his Dad’s] within a concept [the writer’s]) but I’m hoping having read that Dan Oh doesn’t have much time might soften him….at least slightly? That scene in the hospital gave me hope. He hasn’t had the support to accept it so easily like Dohwa, DanOh and Haru have…

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          A sad ending might explain why the norigae burned when it touched Haru’s scar – they’re clearly connected.

          I would be extremely surprised if it was anything but a sad ending. The norigae must have been a gift from Joseon Haru to Joseon Danoh while they were in love, but something must’ve come between them (war? politics? literal death?).

          I do love the idea of their love breaking through the worlds (you’re right, it’s like the ‘in the next life’ trope, but kind of better?). Them falling in love in the Secret world is not something the writer intended, so they’re going to have to keep fighting! I am ready to get hurt again.gif

          I don’t think Kyung is responsible for Haru’s disappearance either, though I can see why people are feeling suspicious given how threatening he seemed in that last scene LOL. Dammit, Kyung, here I am, rooting for you against the advice of other people, and you just have to go be all scary in the library. I better get lots of gentle/cute Kyung moments in the next episode as compensation. I saw that three-legged race. I have HIGH hopes.

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    I saw pics in twitter of sightings of them filming in historical clothes.

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    Omg, I have no idea why all the links and photos have disappeared all of a sudden 😤 If anyone knows why this issue comes about, let me know!

    Here’s the original first part of the post:

    For starters we’ve got the obvious references from last night’s episode:

    Why, yes, I believe Haru is indeed from the Joseon dynasty, as evidenced by his random prodigious ability to play what I think is a piri (피리), or a traditional reed instrument used in classical Joseon court music.

    That aside, though, I think we could definitely look at some stuff we’ve seen in the drama so far as clues.

    The ornament Haru and Danoh find while they’re on the school trip in episode 4 (or 7-8) looks like it could be the remnants of a norigae (노리개), which was a common accessory used to adorn and decorate women’s hanbok in the Joseon dynasty.

    This is the ornament we saw in the show:

    And this is a beautiful norigae designed by a contemporary Korean designer, available online:

    They don’t look entirely similar, of course, but norigae come in all sorts of designs, and the round centrepiece can be made from cloth, metal (like the ornament in the drama) or a precious stone material (like the one available online, which looks to me like jade). The piece Haru and Danoh find also looks it’s been weathered with age, which would make sense if it had been buried and hidden for a good 500 years.

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      Yeah it was pretty obvious in episode 6. The Flower Manga Dried Squid was reading, plus him being able to do all these old fashioned things (all of a sudden I might add, why now exactly? convenient to the plot? ahem) without knowing why or how, plus the flower symbolism from before…

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        It didn’t feel all of a sudden to me, Haru talked to Jin Mi-chae and told him that he’d made his mind about wanting to exist and change his fate along with Dan-oh’s, from that it was clear to me that he was going to be taking actions to be noticed and seen by others, he was trying to stand out and he succeeded at that by getting his name written on his name-tag, being recognized as a character, although it had other consequences later!

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          No no I mean the sudden flurry of scenes of him doing ancient artwork… lol
          I get that it might’ve seemed like it was just him trying to be noticed, but to me it was deliberate directing that said “See look? he’s from the PAST have you noticed yet? here let us do another scene on his skills in case you missed it”…

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