Mask: Episode 3

by LollyPip

Seok-hoon’s plan swings into action, and while we still may not have a clear idea of what he’s up to, he’s ferociously committed to bringing Ji-sook and Min-woo in line. Though they try to make their own decisions, both are trapped into compliance whether knowingly or unknowingly. But though it’s not what they want, this marriage could be what they need, if they can find a way to band together and make this situation work for them rather than against them.

 
EPISODE 3: “Best Choice, Worst Choice”

“Wake up.” Ji-sook hears a voice, and opens her eyes to see Seok-hoon standing over her hospital bed, looking stern. He gets right to business, ordering her to write down the phrase If your creditor dies, your debt disappears. It’s the only way. Ji-sook doesn’t understand, but complies, and Seok-hoon takes the piece of paper from her.

He tells her hurriedly that her name is now Seo Eun-ha, and that she fell into the pool at her fiance’s house and is suffering temporary memory loss. He tells her that Eun-ha’s parents are on their way, and instructs her not to say a single word to them.

Ji-sook asks what happened to the real Eun-ha, but Seok-hoon is in no mood, and growls at her that he’ll do all the thinking from now on. Her job is simply to obey, not to think.

Min-woo relives his hypnotic memories of strangling Eun-ha with her own purse strap and seeing her fall into the pool. He’s still certain he couldn’t have done such a thing — he had no reason to attack her. Mi-yeon says it’s okay not to be okay, but he’s not fooled by her sisterly act and tells her to get to the point.

She asks him not to go through with the wedding, claiming to be scared he could attack Eun-ha again. But he knows that Mi-yeon’s real fear is that the marriage’s business perks could convince their father to choose him as his heir. He says firmly that he will be marrying Eun-ha.

Mi-yeon’s expression hardens when Min-woo tells her he’s going to see Eun-ha now, so she can tell him herself if he’s really the one who attacked her. Mi-yeon asks if he’ll still go through with the wedding if she says he did it, and Win-woo confirms that nothing will change.

Eun-ha’s parents arrive to see her, and Ji-sook obediently pretends to be confused and speechless. Her father, Congressman Seo, tells her to rest and let the doctors take care of her, and leaves to take care of some official business. In the car, the congressman says that “Eun-ha” didn’t seem herself, but his wife (her stepmother) attributes that to the fact that he barely spends any time with her. She says they’ll create new, good memories with her.

Seok-hoon becomes harsh again once they’re gone, and tells Ji-sook to dress quickly. His henchman (who has a large scar behind his ear) wheels in a gurney and Seok-hoon tells Ji-sook not to scream, and from under the bed, Scar rolls out Eun-ha’s body. Whoa.

They follow behind as Scar pushes Eun-ha’s covered corpse through the halls, and Ji-sook thinks fast, feigning illness to get to the bathroom. It’s too far a drop to jump out the window, so she actually drinks a discarded bottle of face mist. When Seok-hoon drags her out again, she vomits, and ends up back in her hospital room.

Seok-hoon lets her stay, but holds up a baggie with her bloody keys from when she stabbed the loan shark, and reminds her that she drove the car with him in it off a cliff, and now he’s got a note in her handwriting saying that if her creditor dies, her debt is gone. It’s pretty damning, and Ji-sook knows it.

Min-woo parks at the hospital, and for a moment he nearly lets it slide that he didn’t park perfectly straight, but he can’t stand it and goes back to fix the issue. When he gets back to his car, he sees a suspicious figure hide behind a van, but he can’t see that it’s Scar with Eun-ha’s body.

Before he can get too curious, he gets a call from Seok-hoon, telling him that Eun-ha has woken up. He doesn’t see that Seok-hoon is actually watching him from a balcony. Seok-hoon breaks the news that Eun-ha has some memory loss and tries to get Min-woo to go home, but Min-woo is determined to see her.

Ji-sook pretends to be asleep when Min-woo comes in, and Seok-hoon tries again to get him to go home. Min-woo wants to know if he really attacked her, so he says he’ll wait until she wakes. He tells Seok-hoon that he won’t do anything to her, and Seok-hoon is forced to leave or else draw suspicion.

As soon as he’s gone Min-woo says he knows Ji-sook is awake, asking how much she remembers. He nervously asks if he did anything to her, but when Ji-sook stays silent, Min-woo snaps. He tears off her covers and grabs her, screaming in her face to say he didn’t do it.

Seok-hoon runs back in to tear Min-woo off Ji-sook, and tells him to go. It’s scary how fast he flips from his concerned expression towards Min-woo, to snarling at Ji-sook behind his back.

Ji-sook’s family stay up late, worried that something may have happened to her. Eventually, Ji-hyuk gets her text with the video she recorded while hanging off the cliff, yelling at them all to get their lives straight. Mom and Dad seem upset, but Ji-hyuk assumes it’s a drunk-text.

Seok-hoon takes Ji-sook to Eun-ha’s apartment, where she gapes at the size and the fancy furnishings (and larger-than-life self-portrait, which frankly says a lot about the kind of person Eun-ha was). Ji-sook complains that it will be difficult to live as someone with such a different background, but Seok-hoon says it’s not impossible since Eun-ha lived a pretty isolated life.

Seok-hoon gives Ji-sook Eun-ha’s engagement ring, ordering her ominously to make everything hers. She remembers seeing Eun-ha that day at the mall when the ring had rolled to Ji-sook, which now seems like foreshadowing, and slides on the ring. Interestingly, though it never fit Eun-ha even after multiple resizing, the ring fits Ji-sook’s finger perfectly.

The Choi house butler and maid clean Min-woo’s room, taking pride in getting everything perfect. But a glass of juice is accidentally overturned onto the carpet, and the crybaby butler bursts into tears (which seems to be a habit). Butler Nam-chul tells maid Yeon-soo dramatically that it’s his fault, and promises to watch over her after he’s fired, but she breathlessly counters that she’s young and pretty, and can find a new job easily. HA, these two are totally living in a melodrama of their own.

They prepare for the ax when Min-woo arrives, but he waves them away to be alone. Through the window he sees the apparition of a body floating in the pool again, then spots the stain on the carpet which seems to spread like blood. He gulps down several pills, and his vision blurs and he falls to the floor gasping. But instead of calling for help, Min-woo drags himself to retrieve a book which has a key hidden inside.

Seok-hoon is instructing Ji-sook on some things she’ll need to know as Eun-ha, like foreign phrases and music. He gives her Eun-ha’s school yearbook to study, and she sees a note that Eun-ha wrote inside: “If you wear a mask, you’ll never be happy.” She asks how Seok-hoon knows so much about Eun-ha, but he deflects by saying threateningly that he knows much more about her. He starts to leave, but when Ji-sook realizes he’s leaving Scar to watch her, she objects.

In answer, Seok-hoon pins Ji-sook to the wall by the strap of Eun-ha’s purse. He makes it clear that she’s only alive as Eun-ha by his grace, and that if she wants to be Ji-sook and die, he’ll be happy to take care of that right now. He frees her at her nod, and says there’s no going back now — it’s already done.

Ji-sook bravely says that she’s not thinking of going back, and tells him again to take Scar with him. This actually pleases Seok-hoon, who says that Eun-ha would have insisted on getting her way, too. Both men leave, and Ji-sook holds her tears in until she’s alone.

The two remaining loan sharks comb the beach, more upset about the loss of the money that was in the car than the loss of their partner. Director Shim wails at the sky, screaming that he’ll make Ji-sook pay every penny back, and doesn’t even notice when the police arrive to arrest them both.

Ji-sook is locked into the apartment, and a quick look off the balcony reveals that Scar is still there, watching from outside. She tries to make a call, but the phone’s been ripped out of the wall. Meanwhile her family still can’t reach her, and are starting to think they should call the police.

In a secret room Min-woo writes in his journal, asking why these things are happening — did he really see his mother, and strangle his fiancee? Is he crazy? He looks longingly at a photo of his dead mother, and begs her to say it’s not true.

Ji-sook rappels off the balcony on a rope of sheets, and Scar miraculously doesn’t seem to notice. She manages to get all the way to the police station, but the memory of Seok-hoon promising an obscene amount of money to pay her family’s debt gives her pause. She decides to talk to a cop anyway, but he’s distracted by a call, and she staggers to see her face on his computer screen.

Ji-sook steps back, right into Seok-hoon, who looks at her with threat in his eyes. She picks up the baggie with her bloody keys that he dropped, but remembers his threat that he’s got all the evidence against her, and hands them back. He’s ushered into a special room, and leaves Ji-sook with a creepy smile.

She has no choice but to go back to the apartment, where Min-woo and his nervous assistant are waiting to talk to her. She asks Min-woo to leave so she can rest, not ready for this confrontation, but he rips off the scarf she’s wearing to hide the marks from the purse strap.

Min-woo backs off, shaking and assuming that he made those marks on her neck, and tenderly ties the scarf back on her. He apologizes while Ji-sook just stares, not knowing what to think of this man who grabs her one moment then is so gentle the next.

Seok-hoon thinks on previous conversations with Min-woo’s doctor, who is confirmed to be in on the gaslighting of Min-woo. Doctor Kim told Seok-hoon that memories are easy to manipulate — now we see Min-woo’s hypnosis from the outside, where Doctor Kim had planted the memories of him attacking Eun-ha. I knew it.

Doctor Kim also instigated the moment when Min-woo thought he saw his mother, where Seok-hoon paid a woman to wear the necklace that triggered Min-woo at the mall. At the memory of the doctor saying Min-woo sees his mother when he sees the necklace, Seok-hoon himself remembers giving Eun-ha a necklace which she’d been wearing when she died.

On the cliff that Ji-sook drove over, Seok-hoon takes one last look at Eun-ha’s body, gently removing that same necklace. He actually cries at his loss, but doesn’t hesitate to throw her body into the ocean.

Ji-sook’s family eventually report her missing, and the police believe Ji-hyuk’s theory that she was just out drinking all night. But the news comes in that a woman’s body has been found, and the family confirms that it’s Ji-sook. Dad is struck silent, while Mom sinks to the ground in grief.

Ji-sook and Seok-hoon watch the news, where it’s reported that the note she wrote about debt disappearing when your creditor dies was found. It’s assumed that she killed the loan shark and herself, to free her family’s debt. Ji-sook is distraught that she killed a person, but Seok-hoon actually comforts her that Ji-sook did that, not her.

Min-woo’s and Eun-ha’s families meet to discuss the marriage, and it’s awkward and uncomfortable all around. Ji-sook gulps down two glasses of wine in quick succession, prompting questions about her well-being after the accident. Min-woo’s father squashes any discussion of the accident and brings things back to the wedding, but Min-woo suddenly says he can’t go through with it.

He politely explains that he doesn’t have the confidence that he can maintain a happy marriage, and stands to leave. His father barks that if he leaves this room, his chance at the family business is over. He asks Ji-sook what she wants to do, and the whole table waits nervously for her response.

Ji-sook repeats out loud the quote that she saw in Eun-ha’s yearbook: “If you wear a mask, you’ll never be happy.” She also stands, and says that wearing a mask and pretending to love someone she doesn’t love, won’t make her happy. So she’s decided to live while truly loving Min-woo.

She says she just wants to live, loving her family, and sadly the words seem to come from Ji-sook herself. This gives everyone pause, including Min-woo, and the marriage matter is settled.

Min-woo goes to a club after dinner, where his bachelor party is being held. He doesn’t seem happy, and has to fend off some leeches who pretend to be his friends to make a business connection. They get nasty when he refuses, and mention rumors that Min-woo is gay because he never dates. He stays calm until one of them starts bashing his fiancee for sleeping around, and he pushes the guy down and breaks a chair over a table.

Ji-sook goes to talk to Min-woo in his hotel room, where he’s apparently trying to dispel the gay rumors by drinking with a pair of scantily-clad partygoers. She asks what he wanted to talk about,and sits as far away from him as she can manage. But Min-woo is itching for a fight and gets all in her personal space, and tells her the story of the scorpion who begged a ride across the river from a frog.

He pushes Ji-sook down and climbs on top of her, reciting how the scorpion betrayed the frog and stung him halfway across, and they both drowned. When the frog asked why he stung him and killed them both, the scorpion just says he had no choice but to act according to his nature.

Min-woo backs off and orders Ji-sook to call off the wedding, or just not show up — whatever it takes to make this marriage not happen. Otherwise, he’ll end up killing her. He tells her to go, smashing his crystal decanter in an effort to scare her off. It works for now, and he even offers to pay compensation for breaking off the marriage.

Now that Ji-sook has been blamed for killing the loan shark, Director Shim and his other lackey are set free. They go directly to Ji-sook’s funeral, where Director Shim meanly sneers at the family that Ji-sook probably didn’t go to Heaven.

Nearby, Ji-sook is preparing for her marriage to Min-woo, but seeing another bride with her attentive mother makes her long for her own mother. She takes a risk and calls her mother’s phone, but a family member answers because her own mother is sobbing over what she thinks is Ji-sook’s body. Ji-sook doesn’t speak but can hear her mother’s cries, and she runs out of the wedding venue.

Scar sees her go and calls Seok-hoon, who leaves the wedding hall. Ji-sook stops down the street from her own funeral, witnessing her casket being loaded into the hearse and her family crying. She starts to go to them, but a hand grabs her wrist — it’s Seok-hoon.

Min-woo stands at the alter and the bride is called, but she doesn’t step out. HA, the Are you kidding me?! face that Min-woo shoots the officiant when he suggests Min-woo sing to call his bride, is unexpectedly hilarious. But just as Min-woo thinks he’s off the hook, Ji-sook steps into the wedding hall accompanied by Eun-ha’s father.

Ji-sook’s mind is on her family as she walks down the aisle, remembering the threat on Seok-hoon’s face and her decision to go through with this for her family, when she witnessed the loan sharks taking away the condolence money.

Her family cries over Eun-ha’s body, unaware that this is a doppelganger and that their real daughter is now living another life, and marrying a stranger.

Min-woo takes Ji-sook’s arm and warns her one last time, “I’ll kill you.” Ji-sook only calmly replies that when the river overflows, the frog is too scared to cross alone. She says they’ll tell people that she slipped and fell into the pool, and that Min-woo had nothing to do with it.

Surprised, his head whips around, but Ji-sook only says that they’re family now, and family should always be on your side no matter what. Trapped by their circumstances, Min-woo and Ji-sook are married, allies now for better or for worse.

 
COMMENTS

Oh, Mask is just so delicious. The conflicts are being laid out so beautifully, and I find myself intrigued by all of our players, even (or possibly especially) Seok-hoon. I know he’s the villain, but he’s so layered and difficult to read, and I’m dying to know what’s motivating him. It’s easy to assume that he’s driven by power, and greed for his wife’s family business — but if that were the case, then wouldn’t Eun-ha’s death, and the loss of the two families’ alliance, have benefited him more? After all, this marriage seems to offer Min-woo his best chance to inherit the business, so why is Seok-hoon so invested in making sure that the marriage happens? I’m positive that he’s got another agenda which we’re just not privy to at this point. But whatever it is, it’s enough to push him to do anything he has to do to force Ji-sook into his little scheme. Discovering Seok-hoon’s true intentions, and watching him inevitably develop feelings for the woman who he’s already realizing is very like the Eun-ha that he loved, will be delightfully fun.

But he’s not the only one whose motivations are unclear, and I have a hard time reading Min-woo as well. He’s such a contradiction — you can see that he’s not a bad person, and he desperately wants to be sane and normal. But all the evidence proves otherwise, and he’s so afraid of himself that he actually acts out in an effort to push people away and keep them safe. It’s a conundrum: if you’re going to do the time, you may as well do the crime, so he has nothing to lose from his violent outbursts since (he thinks) people already believe him a killer. But I don’t hear his threats to “kill” Ji-sook as true threats, only warnings that he’s not a safe person to be around. I don’t believe for a moment that he has any conscious intention to hurt her, but at this point he’s been so convinced of his own murderous outbursts, that he’s doing what he can to get her to leave him and save herself.

Min-woo is a wonderful character because, though he thinks of himself as a dangerous and violent man, he has those flashes of tenderness and compassion. When he nearly attacked Ji-sook to rip off her scarf, then seconds later gently tied it back on, I legitimately swooned. Those glimpses of the gentle, loving man he could be, if only he could break away from his family and their efforts to undermine his sanity, are so touching. They turn what could be a scary and off-putting character into someone vulnerable and lost, and you just want to pull him in and comfort him. And Ji-sook is already noticing this, and responding to it. I think she knows deep-down that he wouldn’t hurt her, and that now that her own family is lost to her, she has a chance to form a new family. She’s not on board with Seok-hoon and whatever he’s planning… but she’s stuck, so she may as well forge a new family and try her best for a second chance at a life filled with love. It’s what I like most about her — above all, she just wants a family to love, where she can trust and feel safe.

I love the two parables that Seok-hoon and Min-woo tell, both putting Ji-sook in the position of the innocent frog. First Seok-hoon compares her to the frog who doesn’t know any better, and gives up the golden throne to jump back into her pond, calling her stupid for not knowing the smart thing to do. Then Min-woo again draws a comparison with his frog-and-scorpion story, making Ji-sook the trusting and naïve frog to his dangerous scorpion, warning her that he can only act according to his nature and will be her downfall. But it was wonderful how Ji-sook turned that around on him at the end, saying that the frog isn’t stupid or naïve, but can also only behave according to her nature. She just knows that when the water gets too high, you find a friend and trust them to take care of you. Even if you get stung in the end, it’s better to try to live a life of love than to live it alone.

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