Nine: Episode 17
April 24, 1993, 11:00 am. It is raining
as people walk into a church. According to the Dramafever subtitles
the announcement board in front reads Groom: Park Sun-woo, Bride: Kim
Yoo-jin. That is wrong though; it's Park Jung-woo, the older brother. Young-hoon (young
Dr. Han) greets hyung and Shi-ah (young Min-young). Hyung has sent
Sun-woo to look for Yoo-jin's passport. Evil Minion, pretending to be
from the high school, calls the priest to find out where Sun-woo is
and heads for Yoo-jin's store.
Young Sun-woo can't find the passport
(Yoo-jin finds it in her bag) and heads back to the church. Evil
Minion pulls up to him, confirms his identity, and attacks; but he
gets away and locks himself into the store.
Adult Sun-woo stops his car in traffic
as he remembers getting stabbed, and registers scars on his arm and
shoulder. Then Choi's goons arrive and there is a short car chase
until Sun-woo looses them by pulling a fast U-turn on a busy street.
When Chief Oh calls he asks him something we don't see. Then he calls
Min-young to tell her he is going to try to stop the wedding. No one
is happy; her mother has become a widow twice. The incense thing has never turned out well, but he still has to try as long as there is hope. He asks
her permission and she agrees. He sets his watch, lights the incense,
and disappears. [fourteenth time travel 17:38]
Evil Minion knocks on the glass door
while young Sun-woo tries the phone, which unfortunately has been
disconnected.
1993 Dr. Choi is finishing paperwork in his hospital office before going to the wedding when in walks adult Sun-woo with a
baseball bat. As he recognises him as the witness from the night Dad
died, 2013 Dr. Bug-eyes in his hospital gown remembers it. He now
knows where Sun-woo is and gets dressed. He leaves the hospital,
followed by reporters but not apparently the police. (I thought he was
a prisoner?)
Adult Sun-woo ties up Dr. Bug-eyes with
duct tape and finds his address book. He calls Evil Minion and orders
Dr. B. to find out where his young self is. Luckily Evil Minion's car
phone rings just as he is getting a hammer to break the door with. He
reveals the store location and Sun-woo is so busy with his memory update that he misses the chance to have Dr. B. countermand the hit order.
But he does say that it will be worse for Dr. B to lose twenty years
of glory than to get killed. And he walks out.
Just as young Sun-woo is wondering if he is safe, Evil
Minion pops in front of the door with the keys he had dropped in his
panic. He backs away and throws things at the attacker, but just as
Minion makes an impossible-to-dodge swing with the hammer, there is a
commercial. No, adult Sun-woo shows up and takes over, and it is
hammer vs. baseball bat. When Minion gets knocked out, Sun-woo gives
his younger self an assignment. We don't hear what that is either.
Sun-woo sends his younger self in
a taxi to the police station with another copy of the videotape,
saying it is about the hospital fire, and that his father dying was
an accident. He promises him he will have a good life and be happy.
Another call comes to the priest's office for Jung-woo, and adult
Sun-woo tells him he is the witness and has given the tape to his
brother. Jung-woo can either marry and run away or
stay and pay for his crime. [37:48] Sun-woo looks at his watch; there
are five more seconds. He waits in the phone booth in the rain for a
time jump.
April 24, 2013, 11:55 am. Dr. Choi and
his aides pull up in front of the hospital and see Sun-woo's car with incense still burning inside. He tries to break in.
Sun-woo's friend calls Chief Oh with
the news that Choi is on the loose. Chief Oh remembers Sun-woo asking
him an hour ago where he had been on that day in 1993 and what his
pager number was. And had added that he had the most integrity of
anyone he knew. Flashback to April 24, 1993, 11:55 am. Then-reporter
Oh with long hair and horn-rim glasses is arguing with the police
chief about covering up a case. He says he had watched something. Is
it the same case? Adult Sun-woo had told younger self to go to
Reporter Oh for help, and he was often at the police station. As
Reporter Oh is leaving, a clerk tells him someone wants to talk to
him.
Back at the church the wedding is
beginning. Jung-woo comes out of the priest's office and hesitates
before the chapel doors.
At the police station, young Sun-woo
introduces himself to Reporter Oh.
Dr. Choi rifles his trunk for a golf
club and is swinging it at Sun-woo's car window, when it disappears
with a dribble of smoke. As Dr. Bug-eyes stares at it, his aides
disappear in a similar way, as does his car.
Adult Dr. Han paces nervously when he
is suddenly stopped by a new memory change. Adult Min-young registers
something as well. The wedding guests start looking for the groom,
but only young Shi-ah checks the front door. Young Jung-woo gives
her a look and then continues walking away.
At 12:00 Adult Min-young sees the
mourners disappear, then the photo of her dad, and then her mother.
She realizes she is standing outside the church in a wedding dress.
The announcement board reads Groom: Park Sun-woo, Bride: Joo
Min-young. She sees her mother in a lavender hanbok with a smile on
her face. Lucky her, at least she knows what is going on. Everyone
else has been dropped into a different timeline without noticing.
Is it a new timeline or just the
original one again? The first big change was the wedding between
Sun-woo's brother and Min-young's mom, and that has been put
straight. However, this time around Jung-woo and Choi are going to be
caught by the police. So it's a new timeline.
I'm pretty proud of Sun-woo for asking
Min-young's permission to change things and to let her know what he
was up to. He cares about what she thinks, which is a change from the
beginning of the show when he was blowing her off. The sad thing is,
he was trying to make his brother happy but it didn't turn out.
Jung-woo wanted to make Yoo-jin happy,
but that didn't turn out either. Now there are three versions of
their story. (1) They broke up and never got together. (2) They broke
up but got together again and married and then he suicided. (3) They
broke up, got together again, and he jilted her at the wedding. He
made her unhappy each time.
Running count – time travels: 14;
remaining incense sticks: 0; Timelines: Past7, Present6.
