Nine: Episode 20
Here we are at the last episode. It is
the story of the new timeline created when Sun-woo went to Reporter
Oh with the videotape. Jung-woo and Choi both go to jail, and in fact
we only see Choi at the very beginning, when he rams the phone booth.
We don't see what happens to him after he gets out of jail. Sun-woo
grows up with Reporter Oh as a mentor.
We begin with little Min-young standing
in the alley by the wrecked phone booth. The man in the next house
comes out to check the weather and sees it, and immediately calls out
to other people and they get the police. Yoo-jin comes looking for
Min-young and hustles her away. I wouldn't want my child watching a
homicide scene either. Look, they both have yellow raincoats. Cute!
They fly away to a new life in America.
Hyung knocks on Sun-woo's door and we
see handcuffs and the police standing behind him. Sun-woo refuses to
talk but he looks out the window as they leave through the gate to
the weeping of the housekeeper. He is still moping when Reporter Oh
calls him up and takes him out to dinner. Oh tries to console him by
saying his brother's sentence will be light, and he's seen lots worse
stuff happen. Sun-woo decides to be a reporter because they were able
to catch criminals that the police couldn't. Oh says that he ought to
be a good reporter, and someday he will hire him and give him a
chance. One of the few heartwarming scenes in this whole thing.
Young Sun-woo gets a phone message from
his older self. [7:00] He was going back at noon and couldn't return,
so to forget about him and just live his own life. “Every decision
you make will make me. If you live every day the right way, you will
find me in the mirror after twenty years.” Young Sun-woo writes a
message to himself in his diary and leaves it at that.
Fourteen years later in 2007 we see
young Sun-woo, now grown up, as a reporter at the scene of an
accident. He jumps in front of a truck to rescue the victim's severed
arm, and is nearly run down himself. So he's still the reckless type.
Now-Chief Oh calls him about a company party. When he walks in late
he accidently hits rookie Min-young with the door and is told off to
take her to the hospital. Being pretty drunk, she pulls his hair and
throws up on him in the cab and says embarassing things. Later he
gets after her and says he hates people who can't control themselves
when drunk. She just looks at him with stars in her eyes and asks,
“Do you have a girlfriend?” hahaha.
She worms her way into his taxi and
flirts until he tells her to lay off, and suddenly his worried face
in the dark reminds her of the ajusshi she had seen in the phone
booth. Immediately she wants out. The next day she asks a co-worker
if Sun-woo has a criminal record or anything. She makes such a fuss
that Sun-woo asks why. (Although dragging her by the arm is a bit
much.) She says she's had trauma, and she likes him but she's afraid
he'll ruin her life. He thinks she's nuts. [25:35] At least her hair
is good in this timeline. Now we get some vignettes showing how their
relationship develops over the next few years.
2008. Min-young walks into the green
room to find Sun-woo sleeping on the couch. She goes in for a closer
look and (Who would do this? It's sexual harrassment.) lifts up his
collar to peek at his chest. He wakes up and she tries to run off but
he pins her down on the sofa, saying she had been treating him like a
rapist and now she does this? When Chief Oh walks in, she calls for
help and he asks for the police. Chief Oh merely says, “Look at you
two having fun!”
2009. Min-young gets into the news van
and sits next to Sun-woo, who complains that she can't sit by him or
he'll ruin her life. He falls asleep later, though, and when his head
flops down on her shoulder she smiles and takes a selfie. He wakes
and snipes at her, but then turns away and smiles to himself.
2010. Min-young in her cute colored
apartment is overjoyed that Sun-woo calls her up to go to a movie.
She spends a lot of time getting ready only to find that the whole
department is there. She sobs during the movie that enough time has
gone past and he could have called her but he demurs why should he?
And then gives her a fond smile.
1011. Min-young wakes Sun-woo with a
phone call. (His phone has the picture of her with the parka, and she
hasn't even been to Nepal yet.) She's coming in from New York and
wants him to meet her at the airport. It's her vacation. He objects
but hops out of bed.
December 2012. Now we're up to when the
drama started. [36:32] Sun-woo meets Jung-woo at that cafe. Hung is visiting, and there's no clue whether he's a doctor or not. They
mention that their mother speaks sometimes. Jung-woo remarks that
Sun-woo looks more and more like that man who helped them twenty
years ago. Sun-woo looks a little conscious and says he doesn't
remember. What? Doesn't hyung remember the other timeline? Did
Sun-woo never tell his brother about the time-traveling? They ask each
other about getting married and Jung-woo just shakes his head. He
seems hesitant, not confidant. Does he still think about Yoo-jin?
Sad. Sun-woo says that if he ever marries, he has a girl picked out
who would never let him get depressed. So I guess he gets depressed.
Jung-woo says he is going to Nepal (he has his red parka) and Sun-woo
says Min-young is going there too, on assignment.
When Sun-woo gets back from lunch the
other news staff are just leaving for the airport. He asks for
Min-young and finds her in the green room. She complains he hadn't
said good-bye and they bicker, and then he locks the door and lifts
her onto the counter. He almost kisses her and then pulls back. “That
reminds me,” he says. “I promised never to touch you. You said I
would ruin your life.” She backpedals, someone knocks on the door
and he goes ahead and kisses her. She leaves but comes back to tell
him that this is how he is ruining her life, because he teases her
and she will never get married. She tells him that long ago she saw a
man who looked like him and had said to avoid anyone who looked like
him because he would ruin her life. [46:00]
They replay the scene where he says
that in the phone booth, but we can't tell if Sun-woo is remembering
it. But he asks questions and she tells him that this man was really
hurt, he told her that, and then he died. It was when she went to
America, so 1993. She leaves with a co-worker but he remains, stunned
by the news. He puts things together and figures out that his other
self died.
She answers her phone on the plane just
as they are telling people to put away their electronics. He asks her
why she didn't stay away? What will she do when he dies? He looks at
his last entry in the diary, which reads, “Did you get back safely?
I will trust your words. I will understand my brother some day.”
He orders a ticket to Nepal and as he packs he sees himself in the
mirror [51:20] and the words come, “If you live every day the right
way, you will find me in the mirror after twenty years.” And there
he is. The same person he had seen as a boy. The image flashes
several times between the young and adult versions, and perhaps at
this moment his memory merges and both versions become one. “I will
trust that I will make the right decisions.”
At the airport he turns in his bag (how
did he have room in that little bag for that big puffy coat?) and
buys the watch he used in all his time travels. Dr. Han calls and he
tells him that he's going to see Min-young because she is the key to
his fate. There was more trouble than the brain tumor; his future
self from 2013 died in the past in 1993. Could that be a set fate, or
can he avoid it?
December 4, 2012, he boards the plane
and sits on the other side from before. He records a message to
himself: I can no longer live without caring about the future. (Does
that mean he has been flippant because his past trauma made him want
to avoid making connections and being hurt again?) He wonders if
these events were true. If so, he can save his future self and keep
Min-young from being unhappy. But he decides it's a fantasy and that:
I will believe what I want to believe and just love the girl I love.
Running count – time travels: 14;
remaining incense sticks: 0; Timeline: Past7 has taken over.
