Jinxed at First: Episodes 5-6

by mistyisles

As our leads spend more and more time together, love is in the air… but so is danger. There’s an awful lot our heroine is keeping to herself, and the number of people pursuing her is multiplying fast.

 
EPISODES 5-6 WEECAP

While Seul-bi and Su-kwang enjoy their road trip to Busan, our friendly neighborhood loan shark, WANG YOON-HO (Kim Dong-young), gets orders from gang overlords to capture a fugitive for their unnamed client. Yep, it’s Seul-bi, and Yoon-ho tries to throw them off the scent by claiming he saw her somewhere far away. In Busan, to be precise. Oops.

He calls Su-kwang to warn him as soon as he realizes the mistake. Fortunately, the only gang members who cross their path in Busan don’t recognize Seul-bi, as she’s practicing silly-face selfies with the new phone Su-kwang has just bought her.

The warning does make Su-kwang ponder his growing suspicions about Seul-bi. He finally confronts her, asking if they should meet with the people who are looking for her. Seul-bi says no, but won’t explain why. She does, however, confess that she likes him and wants to stay with him forever.

Su-kwang is definitely smitten with her, but can’t bring himself to say so, too frustrated with her lies and too afraid of losing her like he’s lost everyone else he cared about. He lets her question of “Do you not like me?” go unanswered.

Upon returning to Seoul, Seul-bi mopes to her new shop owner friends about being rejected. They coach her on how to win Su-kwang’s affections, which turns out about as silly and unnecessary as most of their scenes, especially considering she already has his affection. And anyway, there are much bigger problems to deal with.

Turns out, there are multiple people after Seul-bi. One of them is Min-joon’s cousin, SUN DONG-SIK (Choi Jung-woo). He’s miffed at being left out of big family secrets, and he’s picked up from eavesdropping that Seul-bi has special powers.

Wanting to see her in action, he launches an elaborate plan to force her hand. First, he lures Su-kwang to an abandoned building with a fake delivery order. Then he has loan shark Dae-sik (the one who tried to sell Seul-bi to traffickers before) kidnap Seul-bi.

Once they’re both tied up, Dong-sik watches via hidden cameras as Seul-bi jostles Su-kwang awake and they struggle to free themselves. Eventually, Dong-sik gets impatient and remotely switches on a bomb he’s mounted on the wall in front of them.

Seeing the countdown commence gives Seul-bi and Su-kwang the burst of adrenaline they need to extract themselves from their bonds. But they’re still locked in the building, and they’ve used most of the ten minutes just getting untied.

With only seconds left, Su-kwang turns to Seul-bi in despair. Taking his hands, she promises everything will be okay. Then she closes her eyes and, for a moment, time stops. When it resumes, the bomb has frozen with one second remaining – but Su-kwang only gets about that same amount of time to celebrate before Seul-bi collapses unconscious in his arms.

That’s when Yoon-ho again comes to their rescue. He’d coincidentally been on the phone with Seul-bi at the time of her capture, and followed the clues she left to the abandoned building.

Finding it locked, and Min-joon engaged in a scuffle outside with Dong-sik’s lackeys (Dong-sik lured him there, too), Yoon-ho jumps into Su-kwang’s truck and crashes it through the side of the building. Then he drives them to safety almost before Dong-sik has time to react.

To be fair, Dong-sik wasn’t actually trying to kill them – the “bomb” wouldn’t have harmed them even if it had gone off. What he really wanted was confirmation about Seul-bi’s power. And he got it, even if he couldn’t see what she did.

Aside from scraped wrists and a sudden overnight fever on Seul-bi’s part, both she and Su-kwang are largely unharmed, but Su-kwang is more disturbed than ever about what Seul-bi isn’t telling him. Again, he asks for answers, and again, she deflects. And then there’s the matter of her necklace.

When Dae-sik kidnapped her, he also stole the necklace, hoping to pawn it off. But the jeweler dismisses it as a worthless rock, and when Dae-sik tries to wear it, it literally attaches itself to his neck and makes him break out in rashes all over.

Desperate, he returns to the fish shop and begs them to get it off him. To everyone’s fearful astonishment, it comes off easily in Su-kwang’s hand, and immediately the rashes disappear.

Yoon-ho further secures his spot as my favorite character by decking Dae-sik and then dragging him up to a rooftop to interrogate him and toss him into a dumpster, warning that this is his final chance to leave Seul-bi alone. Then he tasks Dae-sik with getting to the bottom of exactly who is after her.

The thing is, though, the answer to that question keeps changing. Chairman Sun is going through a weird phase where he decides Seul-bi’s mother is a person after all and that he’s in love with her again. After rescuing her from the oddly murderous caretaker, he starts eating meals with her and letting her out into his office area.

Seul-bi’s mother alternates between resentment and pity, hinting that Chairman Sun might have been a kinder person once, before his father’s influence and greed corrupted him. If it’s supposed to make us feel sorry for him, it doesn’t work, but it does keep me hoping that maybe Min-joon can be the one to break the cycle and willingly let go.

Chairman Sun goes so far as to call off the search for Seul-bi and offer to let Min-joon run the company his way instead of relying on “talismans.” But, of course, as soon as he hears his brother (Dong-sik’s father) is looking for Seul-bi, he wants her back in his own possession again. Min-joon also doubles down on wanting to bring her back and “protect” her, though Seul-bi’s mother ominously warns that he’ll be in danger if he does.

And the final person looking for Seul-bi? Her father, newly released from prison. He gets a tip on her whereabouts and goes straight to the fish shop. He’s so speechless with emotion that he just lets her and Su-kwang believe he’s here to apply as a delivery driver.

Meanwhile, Su-kwang’s feelings for Seul-bi are only getting stronger in spite of himself. He hits a breaking point one stormy evening when he rushes home to find her doing her absolute best to keep his books dry from the leaky roof. They’re his old business textbooks, and when she says she’s protecting them because they’re his hopes and dreams, his heart visibly melts.

Pulling her close for a kiss, he declares her more precious to him than anything else, deciding to focus on the here and now instead of worrying about losing her someday.

And Seul-bi has no intention of leaving, either. A few days later, she surprises him with a renovated apartment and a promise to stay together forever. But the moment their hands touch, her face falls. “Don’t go, Su-kwang,” she begs in her faraway, future-seeing voice.

 
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