I’ll Find You on a Beautiful Day: Episode 3

by quirkycase

We get a little insight into our rather opaque bookshop owner this hour, but we’re left with more questions than answers. As things go wrong for our heroine, he gets the chance to step up and be there for her. They inch closer to each other through understanding and the shared need for emotional connection in these two lonely souls. It’s clear their reliance and trust in each other is growing, providing a bit of comfort they both need.

 
EPISODE 3: The Wolf’s Silver Eyelash

Bo-yeong’s arrival brings Hae-won’s fun to a crashing halt. After getting over her shock, she grabs her umbrella and leaves without a word. We flash back to when Hae-won lived in Seoul and came home to find police stationed outside her cordoned-off home. Her mother was sentenced to seven years for striking and killing her husband with their car.

Hae-won had confided in Bo-yeong who cried upon hearing the story and pinky swore not to tell anyone. After the rumors spread, Bo-yeong had begged Hae-won to hear her out. She’d cried as she claimed she didn’t intentionally tell anyone. Hae-won angrily shook her off.

From that point on, everyone ostracized and talked about Hae-won viciously. Hae-won retreated further into herself. She’d even gone to a lake with the intent of drowning herself, but a voice shrieked, “Mok Hae-won!” stopping her in her tracks.

In the present, Eun-seob brings Hae-won’s bag over—she’d left it at the bookshop in her haste. They return to Goodnight Bookshop together where Eun-seob quietly fixes her tea and turns on the heater before leaving. At the rink lost in thought, Eun-seob shows no acknowledgement when Seung-ho persistently tries to get his attention. He finally snaps out of his reverie when Seung-ho wonders if he sees ghosts.

It’s time for another book club meeting, and Hyun-ji (with assistance from Hwi) tells the story of an injured crane that was saved by an elderly couple and returned in the guise of a young woman. The crane flew off when the couple broke their promise not to look in the room where it was using its own feathers to weave fabric.

The story makes Hwi ponder why telling someone not to do something makes doing it more appealing. Hyun-ji argues Hwi is the same way, and Seung-ho cuts in that he doesn’t understand why people are like that. Jang-woo responds it should be simple to not do what you’re not supposed to, but Eun-seob chimes in that human nature gets in the way. Hae-won sits quietly, looking thoughtful.

Soo-jung goes next. She tells the story of a girl named Yeon who is forced to find herbs in the dead of winter by who else but her evil stepmother. Geun-sang is familiar with the story and continues it. Yeon meets Young Master Willow who takes her to his cave and gives her herbs. But the stepmother kills him for his kindness. Gil-bok picks up from there. Yeon found a flower that she brewed into a medicine which revived Young Master Willow. Geun-sang finishes that they lived happily ever after.

Hyun-ji wonders what kind of folktales Eun-seob likes. Hae-won looks at him in interest. He names “The Wolf’s Silver Eyelash.” After the meeting is over, Eun-seob locks up and walks through the forest towards a cabin as he tells the story in voiceover.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who was mistreated by everyone. People would take advantage of his innocence to trick and betray him. One day, he met a wolf on the mountain who gave him one of his eyelashes. We see Hae-won taking out a blue feather in her room and staring at it. The wolf told the boy that if he looks at people through this eyelash, he’ll see their true forms.

A teenage Hae-won stands on the roof of a building and looks through that feather at her classmates. Through the eyelash, the boy saw cunning foxes and mean pigs, but he didn’t see any real people, so he went in search. We see Hae-won staring at Bo-yeong from the building. Hae-won asks in voiceover if the boy found them, but Eun-seob replies that he didn’t. In the present, Hae-won stares through the feather.

At Hodu House, Myung-yeo tries to unfreeze their pipes with a hairdryer. Hae-won suggests wrapping them in hot towels, but Myung-yeo points out they can’t get hot water for the towels without running water. Fed up, Myung-yeo is ready to call the plumber until Hae-won reminds her it’s 2 A.M.

They hear a noise and realize the heater is out too. Myung-yeo uses her trusty hairdryer on the heater, which of course has little effect. Myung-yeo decides they should stay in a motel for the night, but Hae-won worries they won’t let them in with the dog.

Hae-won hesitantly brings up staying at the guesthouse nearby, but Myung-yeo shuts that idea down. She won’t stay somewhere that put her out of business. When Myung-yeo tells her to call someone then, Hae-won reveals that she tossed her phone. Oooh, that explains her using a payphone last episode. And what?! Girl, I hope by tossing you mean selling the expensive phone.

Exasperated, Myung-yeo pulls out her phone and shoves it at Hae-won, nodding toward Eun-seob’s bookshop. Hae-won balks and they argue over who should call. They settle on Hae-won sending a text, which makes Eun-seob bound off the couch.

Eun-seob lets them in to stay for the night and says he’ll sleep at his parents. So I guess he does live at the bookshop. Eun-seob runs off to get fresh blankets for Hae-won who’ll be sleeping on the couch. Her eyes widen when he brings out a huge stack of bedding. She gives a small laugh when he asks if that’s enough.

Hae-won stops him as he’s leaving. This morning … knowing what she’s going to ask, Eun-seob offers that Bo-yeong left without saying much. That night, Hae-won dreams about the bullying she experienced in high school. Hae-won had silently taken it until a couple girls put strawberries in her shoes. She’d physically fought the girls and gotten in trouble.

In the principal’s office, her grandmother knelt and begged for forgiveness. The mothers were furious, so her grandmother had pleaded with Hae-won to apologize. Then one of the mothers had attributed Hae-won’s behavior to her mother being a murderer.

Her grandmother followed Hae-won into the hallway where Hae-won cried that everyone has been treating her like this. They wrote nasty notes on her desk, put strawberries in her shoes, and hid her clothes. She yelled to the listening parents that the judges, prosecutors, and her dead father didn’t blame her, so what right do they have?

Hae-won wakes from her nightmare and attempts to go back to sleep but is startled by a loud bang. The next morning, her and Myung-yeo return to their icicle-covered house. Myung-yeo uses a blowtorch to try to unfreeze the pipes per internet advice, but they end up catching fire instead. Not only that, but the freezing cold caused the old water pipes to burst. She advises Hae-won to pack anything she doesn’t want to lose before they escape.

Soo-jung pulls up to pick up Myung-yeo, and Myung-yeo tells Hae-won to fend for herself. Ha! Myung-yeo looks like she’s on the verge of losing it as she throws her head back and laughs that this happened on top of her killer headache. Since everything is lost, she’ll just be homeless from now on.

Hae-won exclaims that Myung-yeo claimed she wasn’t getting headaches now. “I lied!” Myung-yeo reveals. Well, at least we got some honesty. Hae-won worriedly calls after her aunt, but Myung-yeo ignores her while Soo-jung drives off.

Hae-won makes calls from the bookshop, but no one can come out until the next week. Over at Hodu House, Hwi is having a grand old time obnoxiously belting out “Let It Go” as she runs around the frozen house taking pictures. Jong-pil and a neighbor worry about the repairs and how expensive they’ll be.

Hwi runs into the bookshop to tell Hae-won the foreman went into the house and hit one of the pipes to fix it, and now water is gushing from it. Ah, the tried and (not so) true method of smacking something until it works again. Hae-won buries her face in her hands in despair.

Eun-seob offers to stay with his parents and let her stay at the bookshop. Hae-won doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Hwi already told her she has to give up her room when Eun-seob stays over. Right on cue, Hwi bursts in to threaten Eun-seob not to come home tonight.

Eun-seob says he’ll just stay at the bookshop too, then. Hae-won thinks it’d be better if she stayed in a motel downtown, but Eun-seob worries about the hour-long bus commute. She starts to say she’ll stay at the guesthouse nearby but thinks better of it. “Nevermind, I’ll just go back to Seoul.” That gets Eun-seob’s attention.

Hae-won has an apartment in Seoul, and she was planning to go back in the spring anyway. Eun-seob looks stricken and drops the stack of books in his hand. She obliviously continues that with her aunt’s nagging and headaches plus the house in this condition, she might as well go back.

“Calm down, Mok Hae-won,” cautions a desperate Eun-seob. He says it’s not a big deal. She can just stay here for five days and get the repairs done. Hae-won isn’t entirely convinced, so he tries to entice her with how warm it is in the bookshop. Sometimes he even falls asleep organizing the books! Pfft. Wow is he grasping at straws.

Hae-won saves him from himself and agrees to stay. But when she says she’ll stay on the main floor he immediately contradicts himself by stating, “It gets cold.” He then has to backtrack that, yes, it’s warm, but the sofa is uncomfortable. She reminds him he said it was comfortable earlier. He immediately agrees, “It’s comfortable for me, but it’ll be uncomfortable for you.” Ha! This poor boy is flailing so hard.

She doesn’t want him to have to be uncomfortable either, so she’ll just go back to Seoul. Eun-seob: “Then I’ll sleep upstairs too.” There are two rooms. Eun-seob waits anxiously while Hae-won mulls it over. She finally agrees to stay for five days. When she turns away, he lets out the breath he’d been holding.

When Hae-won gets out of the shower, she smiles to see a hairdryer Eun-seob left outside of the bathroom. While drying her hair, Hae-won worries about her aunt’s headaches. She and Eun-seob go to the house to snoop in hopes of finding medication or a medical document that can give her a clue.

Eun-seob follows her around with a flashlight. Hae-won comments that he didn’t need to come, but he uses his favorite excuse, “It’s dark.” Ha. She rifles through drawers and stops short when she sees a letter to her aunt from her mom, but she puts it back. They leave none the wiser about her aunt’s mystery ailment.

As they sip tea outside the bookshop, Eun-seob says there are some people who don’t ever share their worries and keep everything bottled inside. He likens it to building a cabin inside themselves and never leaving. They prefer their own loneliness to their families. He wonders if Myung-yeo is like that. Methinks we’re not just talking about Myung-yeo anymore.

The following day, Hwi secretly watches her crush at the bus stop. Hyun-ji suggests she just go talk to him, but Hwi already tried that and got rejected, so now she’s regrouping by gathering information. Hwi watches excitably until it looks like he notices her. She panics when he waves and walks towards them. Hwi runs before she sees he’s waving to a friend of his nearby.

Eun-seob and Hae-won head into the city, and he proposes stopping by Soo-jung’s to see Myung-yeo. He’s going to a bookshop owner’s meeting nearby anyway. Hae-won seems hesitant to see her aunt and would rather wait for him at a café.

Hae-won finally asks him why he calls her aunt “noona,” when he should be calling her “imo” (which means “aunt”) based on her age. Eun-seob awkwardly admits Myung-yeo asked to be called noona. Ha, so it makes him uncomfortable, too? Hae-won apologizes.

Eun-seob lends her his phone so he can call her when he’s done. He asks her not to tell Myung-yeo about their conversation. Hae-won apologizes again for her aunt. Heh.

While waiting for Eun-seob in a café, Hae-won answers his phone, thinking it’s him calling. It’s none other than Bo-yeong who called to get Hae-won’s number. Bo-yeong wants to meet for tea to resolve the “misunderstanding.”

Hae-won finally breaks her silence to say it’s too cold these days as she watches a group of schoolgirls laughing outside. “Let’s meet when the weather gets nicer.” She hangs up, leaving Bo-yeong confused.

At the bookshop, Hae-won reads the poem “To the Daffodil” from the collection “The Person I Love” by Jung Ho-seung. It’s about the universality of loneliness, and Hae-won remembers Eun-seob had read that poem aloud in class in high school.

She smiles and rushes off to find him, and out pops Hwi from the kitchen. Without preamble, she launches into her problems. The boy she likes ridiculously doesn’t like her back, and she doesn’t have any friends. Hae-won is distracted, still looking around for Eun-seob.

Hae-won reluctantly sits when Hwi asks her to. Hwi says she’s an outcast which is all the more reason her crush, at least, should like her back. Don’t think that’s how life works, honey. Hwi admits she doesn’t know why she has no friends and her crush doesn’t like her. She asks for Hae-won’s advice.

Not in an advice-giving mood, Hae-won changes the topic and worries about where Eun-seob disappeared to without saying anything. Hwi ticks off the four places he could be: the bookshop, home, the rink, or the mountains. She bets on the mountain he frequents “like a crazy person.”

Hae-won gets up to go find him, but Hwi warns her it’s dangerous in the mountains at night. Hae-won goes anyway, but once she’s there, the eeriness gets to her. She turns around to leave, and then she turns around again, deciding to brave the forest after all. Has she never watched a horror movie?

Eun-seob putters around at the cabin nestled deep in the mountains. In voiceover, we hear the ending to “The Wolf’s Silver Eyelash.” When the boy didn’t find any true people, he secluded himself and was lonely until he died. Nice little uplifting tale. Eun-seob sits on the porch of his isolated cabin, alone with his thoughts.

As was inevitable, Hae-won gets lost in the woods and starts to panic. She flees, which is probably unwise since she’s lost all sense of direction. But she continues running until she literally bumps into Eun-seob. He asks what she’s doing there, and she starts to cry.

In voiceover, we hear Hae-won say she feels sorry for the boy since he must’ve been terribly lonely. Eun-seob asks what anyone could do for him. Hae-won runs to Eun-seob and throws her arms around him as she replies in voiceover, “We should hug him as hard as we can.”

 
COMMENTS

I like the quiet energy of the romance. Rather than some grand, dramatic love story, it’s a simple connection between two people who comfort each other. Hae-won and Eun-seob seem to get each other without saying much and are comfortable with each other. Well, comfortable in a deeper, emotional sense; Eun-seob’s flailing proves he still isn’t exactly comfortable in her presence. I kinda hope he doesn’t lose his spaz entirely because it’s endearing. That scene with him trying to convince her to stay was great. But they’re clearly both extremely lonely and in need of someone to lean on and trust.

I’m not sure what is going on with Eun-seob, but it’s clear he’s hurting. I love how “The Wolf’s Silver Eyelash” was woven in. The book club is so lovely and provides a way into the inner world of our characters. Regarding Eun-seob, I don’t know if something specific happened or it’s just his disposition that makes him prone to withdrawing from the world. When he was talking about Myung-yeo and how some people keep everything inside and embrace their loneliness rather than choosing to connect with loved ones, that was pretty telling. Especially considering he likened it to retreating to a cabin, which he literally does. He has some serious walls up, and I’m interested in learning why.

Of course, we know why Hae-won puts up walls. She really went through it in school once the rumors spread. It baffles me how people can just think it’s okay to treat a child like they’re tainted by what their parent has done. It’s bad enough she lost her father and her mother like that, but then she had to endure everyone’s scorn simply for existing. Stigma is a scary thing.

I wonder if Hae-won has had any contact with her mom since the incident. We’ve seen the aftermath of the murder for Hae-won in general, but there’s very little mention of her mom in a personal sense. We still have no idea why her mom did what she did and how Hae-won feels about it all. Seeing as her mom only got seven years, I’m assuming there were mitigating factors. Was Hae-won’s dad abusive? At this point, the seven years would be up. Do her and Hae-won have any contact? From the letter Hae-won found, it looks like her mom and aunt are—or at least have been—in contact. And Myung-yeo did mention her that once when she found out Hae-won quit her job, but we’ve never heard Hae-won reference her or indicate they have a relationship. Then again, she doesn’t talk about her dad either. Curiouser and Curiouser.

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