Shopping King Louis: Episode 7

by LollyPip

Bok-shil gets a taste of the good life, and gains a few life lessons as well, mostly in the area of how (not) to cater to a king. Louis isn’t having such an easy time of it, as he experiences things like jealousy and anger for the first time, as far as he remembers. Personal growth is painful but necessary, and luckily for Louis and Bok-shil, they have a magical ability to become stronger together no matter what they’re going through.

EPISODE 7: “Perhaps Love”

When Joong-won finds Louis’s note saying he’s going back to Bok-shil, he follows Louis all the way back to the rooftop apartment. He arrives in time to see Louis embracing Bok-shil, relieved that she’s safe and sound. The sight makes Joong-won pause, and he thinks, “I want to know what it is that I’m feeling.”

When the schoolgirls later tell Bok-shil (for a hefty bribe) that her brother often sleeps in a certain pool hall, she runs right over. But when Bok-shil arrives, she’s told that nobody has seen Bok-nam in over a month.

While she’s out, an intruder sneaks into Bok-shil’s apartment where Louis is waiting, and when he finds a man inside, he slams a hammer down on his head. Bok-shil returns home to find her street swarming with cops, and the neighbors saying the serial murderer has returned. Assuming the assaulted man is Louis, she jumps into the back of the ambulance.

But as soon as she sees the victim’s face, she realizes that it’s not Louis who was attacked. Ohthankgoodness. Louis is just as concerned when he comes home to learn that someone was attacked, but luckily In-sung is there to tell him that the person he found was a stranger.

Bok-shil calls In-sung’s phone when Louis can’t answer his (it’s inside and the police won’t let him in), and Louis tells her that he wasn’t home because he went to pick her up. Bok-shil tells him to stay at In-sung’s until she gets home.

The investigating detective, who happens to be Joo-hyuk’s work friend, gathers some information from Louis. He’s surprised when Louis sheepishly says he doesn’t know his family name, and In-sung explains about his lost memory. The detective gives Louis a close look, and decides to fingerprint him.

Joo-hyuk arrives to check out the scene and recognizes Bok-shil’s address. He asks Louis why he didn’t tell him they lived in a home where a murder took place, and Louis says that they didn’t know.

Ma-ri reports her findings to her father — that the person who died in the accident wasn’t Louis, but Bok-shil’s brother (she thinks). She says that Louis is living with Bok-shil until she finds her brother, but as far as she knows, Joong-won isn’t involved. But Director Baek can’t shake his feeling that Joong-won knows something.

He makes a call, but a nurse answers the phone. She says that the owner of the phone is in emergency surgery for a head wound, and Director Baek hangs up, shaken. Oh no, was it Scarface who was attacked?

The police can’t identify the victim, and Joo-hyuk thinks he may be an illegal immigrant. He heads to the hospital to get the man’s phone, hoping his call history will give a clue as to his identity.

Bok-shil and Louis confront In-sung and his mother for not telling them their apartment was the scene of a murder, and In-sung’s mom offers to let them stay at her place to make it up to them. The four of them go to bed on the floor packed in like sardines, and Mom explains that she never expected another attack to happen or she would have told them.

Bok-shil tells Mom that she was out tonight looking for her brother, but she couldn’t find him. In-sung and Mom gasp at the amount Bok-shil paid for the clue (nearly a thousand dollars, and Mom asks incredulously if it’s Bok-shil’s job to get conned, ha). Louis tells Bok-shil he’ll get her money back, and Mom tells her not to believe a dummy like Louis.

Bok-shil wonders if the man who was attacked was a burglar, but Mom is more worried about the identity of the attacker. They wonder if a serial killer lives in their neighborhood, and when Louis asks why the detective asked him so many questions, In-sung thinks they might be suspecting him. Louis and Bok-shil both pop up at that, and Mom screams for everyone to go to sleep.

In the morning, Mom makes breakfast, and Louis asks Bok-shil for ham and coffee. Bok-shil sweetly asks Mom for them, earning a glare, but Louis gets his wish. He hogs all the ham, blissfully unaware of everyone else’s discomfort, then asks Bok-shil to get him water and more ham. Bok-shil jumps up to get them, but Mom blows up when Louis orders fish for dinner.

Reporters are crawling all over the apartment, and soon the attack is reported on the news. Director Baek, Jae-sook, and Ma-ri all see the news report, and Ma-ri thinks the building looks familiar. Director Baek looks like he’s in shock as he turns off the television, and he cryptically tells his wife to go to Busan and make sure Grandma doesn’t watch the news.

Jae-sook goes, but not before posting on social media that she’s unhappy to be going alone. Joong-won’s mom Young-ae sees her post, and wonders what Jae-sook does for a living if she travels alone. She analyzes the selca Jae-sook posted, noting the nice car and that Jae-sook seems to have a chauffeur.

Joo-hyuk doesn’t find anything on the victim’s phone that leads to his identity, and all the calls are registered under someone else’s name, so he wonders if he’s a hitman. His friend found Louis’s fingerprints on the hammer, but Joo-hyuk defends him, saying there’s no way he was the attacker.

Bok-shil and Louis are brought in for questioning, and Louis meekly says in his defense that he used the hammer to peel garlic. Bok-shil swears Louis is a gentle person, as Louis sits there looking like a kicked puppy.

Joong-won spends his day off with his parents, and lucky for him, his father insisted on doing the cooking. When his mom runs off for the plum extract, Joong-won and Dad both go face-down in their bowls, scarfing down the food before she gets back and ruins it.

Mom asks Joong-won to reassure her that nothing’s going on between him and the naked kid, and he says he just took him in out of pity. They see the assault report on the news, and Joong-won recognizes Bok-shil’s place. He calls her, and rushes over to the police station on his bike.

The detective’s personal questions seem to have depressed Louis, and he sadly asks Bok-shil how old he is. She figures he’s younger than her since he acts like such a kid, and he moans that not knowing anything about himself is scary.

Bok-shil says that he may have been a monk who didn’t know about the world, or a rich kid who spent a lot of money. Louis pouts that maybe he was an orphan or chased by loan sharks, or even married. Bok-shil looks dismayed at the possibility.

She tells Louis, “You’re a kind, beautiful, and lovely person. I can tell.” Louis looks like he could cry, and grabs Bok-shil in a big hug. Hee, they get a round of applause from a gang of thugs.

Joong-won stomps in and bellows when he sees them hugging. He learns that the fingerprints on the weapon make Louis look pretty guilty, and since he left his phone at home they can’t track it to prove he left the house.

Joong-won offers to be Louis’s personal reference, and Joo-hyuk speaks up that he will, too. He hands over a photo of the victim’s shoeprints, and Louis’s brain immediately recognizes the tread pattern. They’re an expensive custom-made brand of cycling shoes, which makes the tread unique to each individual wearer.

Louis is released, and he’s curious how he knows so much about cycling shoes, so he asks to borrow Joong-won’s bike. He can’t even get upright, which kills that theory, ha. Joong-won tells them both to stay at his place for now, for their safety.

The police let them get their things, and since Louis is still sore, Bok-shil carries most of it. Joong-won can’t let that stand and drapes their bags over his bike, then has to struggle to keep it vertical, ha. He curses Louis the entire way, grumbling that they must have been enemies in a past life.

Jae-sook brings Grandma Louis’s watch, which she had restored (after Director Baek used the blood for the DNA test). Butler Kim asks Jae-sook privately why she moved the box where he kept Louis’s baby teeth, and why one tooth is missing. Jae-sook admits that her husband asked her to take it, but she doesn’t know why.

Assistant Jung-ran eavesdrops on them, and she calls Director Baek to ask why he wanted the watch and tooth. He’s horrified, but he pretends it’s nothing important while he orders Ma-ri to call her mother. But Jae-sook is too busy talking to Grandma to answer her phone.

Bok-shil is impressed by Joong-won’s place, and Louis asks her to draw him a bath (while telling Joong-won to man up as he staggers under the weight of their stuff, lol). Joong-won stops Bok-shil, and tells Louis to draw him a bath instead, and Bok-shil snarls at Louis until he grudgingly complies.

Bok-shil apologizes for Louis while he’s out of the room, which just makes Joong-won angrier. He snaps at her to stop apologizing, and also to stop saying thank you. Instead, he tells her to get Louis to say it, and to stay out of his way.

He gives Bok-shil his study to use as a bedroom, and tells her not to touch his things, to help herself to the fridge, and where to handle laundry and trash. She wonders why, if he wanted to be left alone, he keeps hovering around her.

Joong-won brings Bok-shil some blankets and offers to make the bed for her, but she tries to take them to do it herself. They wrestle over control, and Joong-won trips and falls onto the couch, dragging Bok-shil on top of him. Someone’s heart pounds, and they freeze, until Louis walks into the room.

Bok-shil starts to explain, and Joong-won stops her and says there’s nothing to explain. He stomps out and Louis asks Bok-shil not to get so close to Joong-won. She tells Louis to be nice, so he flops on the couch and demands a backrub. She smacks him instead, and he flounces out like a pouting toddler.

Grandma wants to watch the news, and Jae-sook is unsuccessful in redirecting her attention. They see story about the police looking for a man who was seen running through the streets topless covered in pain patches, and everyone stares to see Louis on television, alive and well.

Butler Kim’s eagle eyes scan the man on the TV, and he concludes that it really is their Louis. He rushes to look into it, and Jae-sook calms Grandma when she hyperventilates.

Joong-won watches incredulously as Bok-shil and Louis greedily tuck into dinner, both making huge messes of themselves. Louis demands another bowl of noodles, which Joong-won refuses, until Bok-shil also asks for more — soon they’ve put away several bowls each.

Louis demands, “Bok-shil, water!” and again Joong-won stops her when she starts to jump up. He gets the water and fills Bok-shil’s glass first, then Louis spills his glass all over the table. Bok-shil leaps up to get a towel, and Joong-won yells at her and tells Louis to clean up after himself.

Hee, he gets one little tissue to soak up a whole glass of water, and Joong-won huffs at his helplessness and grabs a towel. He suddenly realizes that he’s become Louis’s butler, and clenches the towel in his fist and growls.

In Louis’s defense, he offers to wash the dishes, but Joong-won tells them to just go watch TV. They catch a drama about a guy with amnesia whose girl leaves him, then regrets it when he turns out to be a chaebol, ha. Louis calls to Joong-won for a cup of coffee, but when Bok-shil says she’ll do it, Joong-won gets the coffee just to keep her from having to.

Jung-ran calls Director Baek again, to tell him they saw Louis on television. Butler Kim went to Seoul to look for Louis, and Grandma had to take a tranquilizer to calm down. Director Kim slumps, and tells Jung-ran to just look after Grandma for now.

He immediately gets the same call from his wife, and he looks like he swallowed a cat when she preens that she was responsible for Grandma seeing a show. He screams, “Why are you doing this to me?!” and hangs up on her.

When Joong-won catches Bok-shil soaking rice for breakfast, he tells her to let him handle meals. He tries to take the bowl but she hangs on tightly, and they end up dumping the rice all over the floor. Bok-shil smiles and decides to give Joong-won a nickname, “Only-Bad-in-Words,” because he sounds mean but his actions are nice.

He scoffs that he was ever nice, and orders Bok-shil to clean up the mess. She says again that she’ll make breakfast to pay him back for letting them stay, and gives Joong-won the sweetest smile when he turns to look at her. He goes all gooey, seeing her in soft fuzzy lighting with sparkles all around her.

Louis walks in and sees this scene, and he goes to bed cranky. He tosses and turns, wondering what exactly he’s feeling.

He’s got panda-eyes the next morning from lack of sleep, and he tells Bok-shil honestly that his heart feels uneasy. She doesn’t know what he means, and he watches closely as she sets up breakfast until she snaps that he’s bugging her.

Joong-won enters the room, and OMG he’s wearing one of the limited edition Louis Sssaton jackets, Number 100. Louis happens to be wearing his knockoff jacket, and Joong-won makes sure he knows that his jacket is genuine. Louis sniffs, and mutters that his gut is telling him he used to wear Number 1.

Feeling peevish, Louis knocks the food off Joong-won’s chopsticks every time he reaches for something. He tells Joong-won that only he can eat the food that Bok-shil cooks, and he repeats it to Bok-shil when she asks what’s wrong with him. He’s so upset that he even refuses the money Bok-shil offers when she leaves for work.

He doesn’t want Joong-won taking her to work either, and invites himself along for the ride. He scoffs at Joong-won’s nice car, saying that he thinks he used to have a nicer one, and over a hundred pairs of shoes, and a house like a castle. Louis jumps in the front seat when Bok-shil opens the door, just to keep her from sitting next to Joong-won, pfft.

Butler Kim goes to talk to the PD of the show Louis was featured on, and they agree to search for Louis together. Grandma asks Jung-ran to go to Seoul and help Butler Kim, and though she objects at first, she eventually packs a bag.

She pouts to Jae-sook that she hates Butler Kim, but Jae-sook tells Jung-ran that he’s a good man. Jung-ran asks why he’s still single if he’s so great, and she betrays a tiny grin when Jae-sook guesses he just hasn’t met the right person. When Jae-sook offers to ask Grandma not to send Jung-ran, Jung-ran is all, Well, I should obey orders…

Louis spends his morning repeatedly texting the schoolgirls, “Give back the money.” He gets blocked, so In-sung instructs him to call them and say he’s from the Financial Supervisory Service, just like when he got voice phished. Louis tries it (sounding hilariously familiar), but he just gets cursed out so badly his phone practically smokes.

Joong-won leads his team in planning a Black Friday event, and yet again, Mr. Lee is the first to complain about the increased workload. Joong-won tells him to hire some part-timers to pick up the extra work.

In the restroom, Ma-ri recalls her father’s request that she find out where Louis is living. She pretends to be so very concerned about the attack at Bok-shil’s house, and asks where Bok-shil is staying now. Bok-shil seems to sense something off, and fibs that she’s staying with the downstairs neighbor.

Ma-ri goes to check the place out, and runs into In-sung. When he sees her pretty face he goes all wobbly, and it takes him a minute to collect his wits. He says that the investigation is still ongoing if that’s why she’s here, then loses it again, actually giggles, and introduces himself. OMG, he totally dorked out.

Director Baek makes his way to the hospital, but the victim’s door is guarded by cops and he can’t get in. A nurse tells him that the victim is stable but still unconscious, and mentions that someone else asked her the same questions earlier.

Butler Kim is also at the hospital, and his inquiries aren’t yielding many results, either. He spots Director Baek on his way out, and the two men ask each other what they’re doing here.

Bok-shil treats the men to pork belly, and while she’s cooking, Joong-won finds a coin in the dryer. It has a smiley-face sticker on it, and he asks whose it is. Louis’s eyes go wide and he snatches at the coin, desperate to get it back, and in the scuffle the coin falls on the hot grill.

Louis barely hesitates before grabbing the coin, burning his fingers in the process. Bok-shil jumps up and grabs Louis’s hand, and asks why he burned his hand for that coin. Louis says it’s the first coin she ever gave him, and Bok-shil looks at Louis as if she’s seeing him for the first time.

Louis notices the look on her face, and Bok-shil just pouts and calls him an idiot. He fires back that she’s the idiot and makes her smile, and soon they’re grinning at each other like silly kids. They’re entirely wrapped up in each other, and Joong-won watches them sadly, feeling like the fifth wheel.

Late that night, after they’ve all gone to bed, Joong-won’s doorbell begins to ring insistently. It wakes up all three of them, and they pad to the front door, wondering who’s demanding entry in the middle of the night.

Joong-won turns on the video screen, and he’s surprised to see Director Baek standing on his doorstep.

COMMENTS

I was actually glad to see Joong-won step up in his awareness of his feelings in this episode, because it’s just silly that a man his age wouldn’t know what romantic attraction feels like. The show hasn’t made the age difference between Bok-shil and Joong-won much of an issue, and I can see how Joong-won might mistake his feelings for protectiveness and concern for a short while, but it was time for him to recognize that his interest in Bok-shil goes deeper than that. Unfortunately for him, he’s just all wrong for her — and even if he weren’t, Louis and Bok-shil are so tightly bonded by now that there’s no way Joong-won has even the slightest chance with her. I’m actually hoping that he knows it (and it looks like he does), and that instead of trying to break them up and make Bok-shil turn to him, that instead Joong-won’s journey will be about becoming a more open and loving person in general.

I do appreciate that he’s taking offense to the way Louis orders Bok-shil around, and doing something to stop it (though I wish he’d make Louis do things for himself instead of doing them for him in Bok-shil’s place). It’s the one thing Louis does that bothers me, and though I don’t think it comes from a place of egotistical entitlement — rather, he’s just so used to everyone catering to him that it comes naturally even when he really likes a person — it’s time for that little habit to get broken. As much as we all love Louis, there’s only so far charm can get you in the world, and it’s well past time for him to start learning to be self-sufficient. At the very least, he can pitch in while Bok-shil is at work, and make sure she comes home to a clean house and a warm dinner.

Interestingly, even though Bok-shil seems to cater to Louis’s every whim, I never feel like she’s a doormat. I believe that when she lived isolated with her grandmother and brother, she just fell into the role of caretaker because she was the child and the noona. It’s in her nature to take care of others, and her habit to do as she’s told, so she doesn’t see Louis’s bossiness as anything too out of the ordinary. But she also needs to learn that her doing things for Louis isn’t helping him become independent or capable. She can say no, and he can learn to take care of himself.

I find it interesting that it’s Louis’s jealousy over Bok-shil that seems to be getting him in touch with his memories, though they just sound hilariously like petty boasts to Bok-shil and Joong-won. I would love to see him regain his memory not from another blow to the head, but because his love for Bok-shil is so strong that his mind wants to remember so she’ll love him for himself. It would be an interesting twist on the amnesia trope, for Louis to actually will his own memory back, to impress his ladylove and show himself to be better than the competition.

That last scene between Louis, Bok-shil, and Joong-won, when Louis burned his hand, was a great example of what makes this show so good. There were so many different things happening in that scene, all without a relevant word being said. Louis’s treasuring of the coin for no other reason than because Bok-shil gave it to him, Bok-shil realizing that there’s more to Louis than she thought when he would save money for sentimental reasons, and Joong-won watching the two of them and realizing that he’ll never be a part of their little world. While I was so happy for Louis and Bok-shil and their growing feelings for each other, it also made my heart squeeze to see Joong-won, wanting so badly to connect with someone and knowing that he never will — not in the way he wants. Bok-shil and Louis belong together, and though I do expect that Joong-won won’t give up without a fight, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that no matter what happens, Bok-shil and Louis have a bond that can’t be broken.

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