Shopping King Louis: Episode 3

by LollyPip

These two are so cute together, I can’t even stand it. Bok-shil and Louis are growing closer the more time they spend together, finding an easy rhythm and camaraderie as if they’ve known each other for years. It’s easy to forget that they’re both so innocent of the world, that dangers lurk around every corner, waiting to take advantage of a couple of kids who barely know how to survive in the big city.

 
EPISODE 3: “She”

Bok-shil wakes early for work, covering the sleeping Louis with a newspaper and leaving him a few dollars for lunch. Louis narrates, “In my new beginning, she was there.”

Bok-shil makes it to work after taking the wrong bus, then Joong-won slips on spilled water and yells at her to clean it up. As she nears and he realizes who she is, he also narrates, “In my new beginning, she was there.”

Louis sits at home, bored, until he realizes he’s not as alone as he thought. He spots a bug on the wall and freaks completely out, flees the apartment, then just sits on the stairs for lack of anywhere else to go. A man with an umbrella approaches, wearing the same tracksuit Louis is wearing, and grins at him with a cheerful, “Hello, stranger!”

He throws his arm around Louis and leads him down the street, asking personal questions that Louis can’t answer. Behind them, someone in a hoodie watches them walk away together.

Bok-shil recognizes Joong-won right away and grabs him by the shirt, calling him a thief and demanding her money. He pushes her off, not very hard, but Bok-shil falls to the floor unconscious.

Joong-won calls for an ambulance, and one of his employees runs up to their office to spread the gossip. The younger male employee, Do-jin, jumps to Joong-won’s defense, but Mr. Lee says that it’s possible their boss has a hidden violent side. Okay, he creeps me out.

Ma-ri can’t stop thinking about the guy she saw in the elevator, and she checks the building’s CCTV footage. She goes pale when she sees Louis’s face, but Louis is supposed to be dead.

Louis’s new friend JO IN-SUNG (*snort*) takes him out for fishcakes, and Louis tells him about waking up with no memory. He shows In-sung where he had a bump on the back of his head, and In-sung says that he probably got amnesia from his injury. In-sung seems friendly enough, but something about him gives me the shivers, especially when he comments that Louis looks like a rich boy.

As it turns out, Bok-shil collapsed from malnutrition, and Joong-won has her moved to a private VIP room. Her boss comes to bring her street clothes and runs into Joong-won, who pulls her aside to talk.

She swears she’s not related to Bok-shil, worried he’ll expect her to pay the hospital fees, but he just wants to talk about Bok-shil’s job. Her boss says Bok-shil is a hard worker, but she’s obviously poor and shabby. She mentions that Bok-shil was swindled out of a valuable ginseng, and ha, Joong-won’s expression goes all shifty.

Back in Bok-shil’s room he looks at her clothes, sighing at the state of her raggedy shoes. Bok-shil finally wakes, and the moment she recognizes Joong-won, she pops up and starts shaking him again, heh. She belatedly realizes she’s in a hospital bed, and Joong-won defensively says that he didn’t shove her to the ground, or steal her ginseng.

He hands Bok-shil an envelope containing four thousand dollars, nearly the full value of the ginseng (and four times what she asked for it). Bok-shil thanks Joong-won profusely, and he informs her that starting next week, she works for his department. She starts to argue that she doesn’t even know what merchandising is, but he tells her to just obey.

Louis waits on the patio for Bok-shil to come home, and he lights up like a Christmas tree when he finally sees her trudging up the road. He runs down to meet her, and she tells him excitedly that she finally got paid for her ginseng. Louis gasps at the cash, then pouts that he wanted to find the guy for her. You cutie.

She brings him hotteok for dinner (pancakes filled with sugar and nuts), and he’s so hungry he shoves one in his mouth whole. He tells her he can’t go inside because there’s a bug, taking her in to show her, then he screams like a little girl when he sees it again.

Bok-shil grins at the tiny thing, and gently takes it outside while Louis squeals, ”It has so many legs! Don’t touch it!” HEE. Bok-shil turns back and gives Louis the biggest smile, and it’s his turn to be stunned. She looks like an angel, all backlit and beautiful. He has a quick flash of a memory of her face, but when he asks if they’ve met before, Bok-shil says that they haven’t.

Louis’s grandma refuses to eat when her secretary Jung-ran sets out a meal for her. Butler Kim steps in and offers Grandma Louis’s favorite breakfast, but when Grandma shows interest, Jung-ran yanks Butler Kim into the house.

She gets right up in his face with a frightening smile, and cheerfully asks if he wants her to break his nose. He’s in her territory, and she makes it clear that he’s not to interfere with Grandma again. Okay, I ship these two.

Bok-shil takes Louis out for a big breakfast, then on a shopping spree with their newfound money. Louis discovers his talent for spotting quality goods, pointing out the best things for Bok-shil to buy for their new home.

They stop for lunch and Bok-shil asks how Louis is so good at shopping, and he tells her that the items tell him to buy them (and she calls him crazy, heh). Louis suggests they go clothes shopping next, complaining about being stuck in Bok-nam’s obvious knockoff tracksuit, and Bok-shil cries that she bought it for him. Louis goes into this complicated explanation of the Louis Ssaton online promotion, which goes right over Bok-shil’s head.

Louis has fun strutting his stuff for Bok-shil, then declares everything she tries on to be pretty. After they make their purchases, Louis thinks they should get cell phones, pointing out to Bok-shil that everyone has a cell phone. He tells her you can shop, watch TV, even take pictures with them, and she remembers Bok-nam begging her for a phone.

She’s unconvinced, until Louis says that a cell phone can help them track Bok-nam. Soon they both have brand-new phones, and the first thing Louis does is take Bok-shil’s picture, ha.

He gets all whiny when it’s time to lug all their new stuff home, then they’re both surprised when In-sung pops up right under their noses. Bok-shil is nonplussed by In-sung’s oddly personal questions, but Louis thinks he’s just the bee’s knees, and they’re both impressed when he takes them grocery shopping.

Bok-shil goes to show her detective friend her new cell phone, sure it can help them find Bok-nam. He says it’s not that simple, that Bok-nam would have to have a phone for that to work, and her face falls.

She goes home to set up her and Louis’s apartment, while he pouts because she’s putting up a curtain to separate their sleeping spaces. In-sung shows Bok-shil how to use the gas range, then both guys watch as she deftly does the laundry. Louis comments that she would make a great maid, and In-sung gives him this weird look.

Bok-shil finds Louis’s fancy undies, which he snatches away from her shyly. He reads the name stitched on the back, “Louis,” and it’s odd how he instinctively knows the company doesn’t usually make underwear. They decide that Louis must be his name, and he smiles, liking the sound of it.

At dinner that night, Ma-ri asks her mother if Louis had a twin. Jae-sook says he was an only child and didn’t have any birth secrets, and Ma-ri’s father looks worried when she says she saw someone at the company who looked just like Louis.

We see what happened on the day Louis arrived in Korea — Director Baek had picked him up as planned, but he’d ignored Grandma’s edict not to let Louis drive, and given him the car keys. He’d made a call, and soon after, Louis’s car was hit by a truck and flipped. We see Louis lying bloodied in the flaming car, then Director Baek in his office, smiling, saying that Louis was dead.

But he somehow survived, and now he’s sitting down to a barbecue with Bok-shil and In-sung. In-sung digs in first, grabbing up all the meat, making Louis whine that he’s not getting any.

Bok-shil tells the guys that she’s going to be working in the merchandising department from now on, though she’s uncertain what they actually do. In-sung thinks it’s a ploy to get rid of her after she accused Joong-won of being a swindler, by moving her to an area where she’ll fail and quit. Louis chooses to see the positive side, that Joong-won saw potential in Bok-shil.

Bok-shil’s boss wanders upstairs, and AHA, it turns out that In-sung is her son. She also helps herself to the meat, though Louis tries futilely to save some for Bok-shil when she goes inside for sauce.

Louis and Bok-shil lie on their sides of the curtain that night, but neither of them can sleep. Bok-shil is thinking about her brother, wondering if he’s eating, and Louis promises to get his memory back and find Bok-nam. Bok-shil muses that they still don’t have a lot of things, but Louis tells her to let him buy them and not to worry.

Bok-shil says a sweet, “Sleep well, Louis-ya,” and Louis thinks to himself that she finally called his name.

In the morning, Louis trails after Bok-shil as she leaves for work, thinking she should wear her new clothes instead of her mother’s old dress. Bok-shil refuses and Louis follows her all the way to the bus stop, then pulls out a handkerchief. He folds it into a rose and pins it to Bok-shil’s throat, getting veeery close in the process, and Bok-shil definitely notices.

Louis gives her this adorable grin, as if he has no idea the effect he has on her, and says the rose makes her look pretty. Well, swoon.

Bok-shil makes her way to the merchandising department, where Joong-won introduces her as their new teammate. He says she’ll intern for a month, after which they’ll decide whether to hire her on permanently.

Joong-won discusses his department’s plans with Director Baek, who asks about his hiring a janitorial worker for his team. Joong-won says he thinks they can groom her into a good team member, but when he goes back to his office, he finds his team complaining to Bok-shil’s face about how little she knows.

He interrupts to send her for coffee, but she grows overwhelmed when everyone else places an order and she has no idea what the fancy words mean. Suddenly Ma-ri offers to go with her to help, and Bok-shil looks at her as if she’s an angel, wings and all. But when her back is turned, Ma-ri gets an evil glint in her eye that I don’t like.

When Ma-ri easily rattles off everyone’s orders at the coffee shop, Bok-shil is blinded with admiration. It’s Ma-ri’s turn to get a backlit slow-mo moment, as Bok-shil gazes at her adoringly.

Louis uses his new phone to google people named Louis, looking for a clue to his identity, with no luck. In-sung shows up just in time for lunch and helps himself to Louis’s food, then tells Louis that they need a rice maker. It takes Louis about five seconds to order one with his phone.

Later, In-sung wants coffee, but Louis doesn’t know how to boil water. In-sung teaches him, telling him to buy a stove and electric kettle, which Louis does right away. In-sung wonders how Louis could know nothing of kitchen equipment, and asks if he was possibly kept locked up for years. Cue Oldboy spoof, ha.

But In-sung decides that Louis has to much of the rich vibe for that, and next he thinks maybe he was terminally ill. But no, he’s too healthy for that. He figures Louis was just a spoiled rich kid, hitting it right on the nose, but Louis’s love for cheap instant coffee has him dropping that theory almost immediately.

Joong-won’s mother sighs sadly over the death of the chairwoman’s grandson, then wonders when Joong-won will settle down and get married. He may be closer to meeting someone than she thinks, as Bok-shil barrels into Joong-won racing the elevator door, and his heart goes pitter-pat at the close contact. He fusses at her, asking rhetorically if she’s got someone special waiting at home, but her guilty expression gives her away.

Joong-won stops to buy some shoes on his way home, and a sweet little pair of heels catches his eye. He contemplates the heels, remembering Bok-shil’s tattered old sneakers.

Louis is glued to the television as Bok-shil mops around him, and he sees a place that looks really familiar. He even knows what’s around the corner of the street being shown onscreen, though the show he’s watching is about Europe.

In-sung calls them outside and tells Bok-shil that he and Louis have started a new company, dedicated to finding Bok-nam. They’ll go around passing out flyers and Louis will even sing, and she just has to pay them for their food and travel expenses. Huh, sounds more like In-sung figured out a way to get paid to stand around.

Bok-shil falls for In-sung’s scheme, and signs the agreement he’s drawn up. In-sung tries to coax Louis to sing the song they wrote, but Louis has an attack of the shy in front of Bok-shil.

In-sung fibs to his mother, saying only that he’s gotten a job with flexible hours, though he does pass out flyers with Louis for a little while before talking him into going shopping. Louis uses his ability to spot quality items to score them some nice stuff, and when In-sung calls him a “shopping king,” Louis thinks it sounds familiar.

He hears a little knick-knack calling his name — just a little penguin music box, that sings “When You Wish Upon a Star.” But the tune sparks a memory of a little boy saying a prayer, then a car spinning out of control, and Louis doubles over in pain.

He won’t let go of the trinket, so In-sung has to pay a shocking amount for it since it’s a limited edition. Louis goes straight to bed, and Bok-shil notices that the music box is stamped “Gold Department Store.”

Louis’s grandma looks over Louis’s favorite beach, remembering when he used to play here with his dog, which he named Koboshi. Nobody knew what the word “koboshi” meant, and little Louis would only say it was a secret. Koboshi had lived for fourteen years, and Louis had been bereft when he died.

The following morning Louis researches the music box, and discovers that Gold Department Store only made thirty of them, in honor of the store’s thirtieth anniversary. Bok-shil tells him to stay home and rest today, though she smiles when Louis insists on going out to look for Bok-nam.

Bok-shil asks why Louis follows her around all the time, and he says matter-of-factly, “Because I like you.” Oh. She fusses at him for making her blush, but he just shoves more ham in his mouth and grins at her.

At work, Bok-shil uses her new computer to search for Gold Department Store, and the article about Louis’s supposed death pops up. She makes the connection that Gold Department Store and the company she works for are owned by the same entity. Joong-won sees her searching online and accuses her of slacking off, berating her in front of the entire team.

Louis gets a call from a scammer claiming to be from the Financial Supervisory Service, asking if he’s lost his ID card. Louis says that he has, and asks what his name is, and the scammer says it’s Song Joong-ki. HA. Louis doesn’t know any better and believes him, and the scammer knows he’s got one on the hook.

He tells Louis that a ring of scammers has targeted him, works him up into a tizzy, and instructs him to send all of his money to a designated bank account for safekeeping. Louis falls for it and sends all of Bok-shil’s remaining money to the scammer, and doesn’t realize until after the jerk hangs up that he’s been robbed.

Bok-shil arrives home that night to an empty apartment, and finds a note from Louis saying not to look for him. He’s too ashamed to face her, and when he’d gone to In-sung for help, he’d whined that he just wanted to know who he was. Awww.

He sits on a bench late into the night, and he happens to see a dog wander by without its owner. He experiences a dim memory of his old pet, and he chases the dog, calling out to it, “Koboshi!” (which sounds an awful lot like “Go Bok-shil”).

The dog stops next to a fire hydrant, which triggers another memory of Louis falling and hitting his head on a similar hydrant. He calls to the dog again, then hears an angry voice nearby, and he looks over to see Bok-shil.

She looks furious, and she strides over to confront him, glaring at Louis without a word.

COMMENTS

Aww, I feel so bad for Louis (even as I’m laughing at the cheeky nod towards Seo In-gook’s last drama, Police Unit 38, by having him get swindled the same way he swindled others), but I guess it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to trick him out of the money. And as worldly as Bok-shil seems next to Louis, it’s easy to forget that she’s also extremely innocent in the ways of modern technology and society, so she was just as likely to be swindled as Louis. It was only dumb luck that he was the one who got tricked first.

I’m honestly surprised that Louis is getting his memories back so soon, and so quickly, because there’s so much comedy gold to be mined from his haplessness in the big wide world. I love his and Bok-shil’s relationship, and the way they’re already forming their own little family. I could watch them go shopping and just enjoy each other’s company all day long, and never get tired of Bok-shil’s enthusiasm or Louis’s wide-eyed admiration of her. But Louis’s glimpses of his old life also make me eager to see where the story will take us if he regains his memory so quickly — so long as it doesn’t veer too far from the cute and get bogged down in business maneuverings. Director Baek makes a menacing bad guy so long as there’s not too much of him, but I’d hate to see the show go the way of, for example, Rooftop Prince, which started out so fun, but let all the cuteness be displaced in the last half by company feuds nobody cared about. Keep the focus on Louis and Bok-shil and their wonderful chemistry, please!

Speaking of chemistry, I’m dismayed at the lack of such between Joong-won and Bok-shil. Thankfully they’ve finally started spending some time around each other, but I’m still left scratching my head at Joong-won’s attraction to Bok-shil. It’s like we’re being told he likes her, but the show isn’t really showing us much, and it’s confusing when Joong-won stares wistfully at a pair of pink heels one minute, then publicly humiliates Bok-shil the next. We know he doesn’t like conventionally pretty woman, but we’ve been shown very little to explain why he seems to like Bok-shil in particular, so the moments where we’re supposed to see that seem oddly disconnected. I believe it’s a flaw in the writing and not the acting, as I’ve been a fan of Yoon Sang-hyun for years now, and I know that he’s capable of generating chemistry with just about anyone when he wants to. But this show just isn’t giving him much to work with — though it’s still early days, I want to see him given more of a chance to connect with Bok-shil.

In the meantime, I do like the way Louis is slowly regaining his memories in little bits and pieces, even if I’m surprised at it happening so soon. They’re just enough to unsettle him, but not so much that he’s desperate to learn more. On the contrary, Louis looks to be alarmed and scared by them. It feels like he’s trying instinctively to hang onto his new life, knowing that he has more love and friendship here than he had before. And I’m appreciating even more that his memory loss didn’t cause his basic personality to change, because I wouldn’t want him to have gone from a cold chaebol to this cuddle-kitten, and risk losing the sweet Louis we know now once he remembers who he is. Even when he finds his memories again, he’ll still be the thoughtful, silly, warm-hearted Louis we’re all falling for, Bok-shil included.

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