Like Flowers in Sand: Episode 2

by missvictrix

With nothing to do all day now that he’s declared himself retired, our hero spends most of his time thinking about the arrival of the mysterious young woman in town. He’s the only one who’s convinced of her true identity, but he has nothing to go by except his heart of gold.

Editor’s note: Weekly drama coverage will continue.
 
EPISODE 2

Is it too soon to declare my favorite hero of 2024, because if I thought Baek-du stole my heart in Episode 1, it’s only worse now. I’m whipped. He’s so simple and sweet and thoroughly genuine. He’s a 32-year-old man who still gets slapped and scolded by his mom, who talks to himself all the time in a way that’s hilarious and relatable, and who has found himself a bit at sea in life, unsure of his decisions and where they’ve led him.

But there’s one thing Baek-du is sure about, and that is the fact that this pretty young girl who just moved into town is his old friend Doo-shik. We see a wonderful and nostalgic flashback to Baek-du, Doo-shik, and the other neighborhood kids, and see how rough and tumble Doo-shik was. With her masculine name and tendency to beat the boys to a pulp, it’s no surprise that people assumed she was a boy when they heard her story.

But a boy she’s not. She’s super pretty now, and we see that as a kid she was teased over her looks, which is part of why she became such a fighter. Also, her dad was a famous ssireum athlete, too.

As we saw at the end of Episode 1, Baek-du is convinced on he spot that she’s Doo-shik, and after he gets up from getting thrown on his back, he tells her as much. He’s insisting — adorable, emphatic — why she has to be her, but after the girl denies enough, he switches to polite speech and aww I love him even more.

But the girl’s denial doesn’t change Baek-du’s surety, and it’s this thread we follow for most of the episode. He has absolutely nothing to go on except his intuition. All his pals that were also friends with her see no resemblance (as they peek not-so-stealthily over her backyard wall lol) and Baek-du’s cop friend in particular — CHO SEOK-HEE (Lee Joo-seung) — can’t see how an ugly kid could have grown up so pretty.

A neighborhood meeting creates the perfect opportunity for not-Doo-shik to meet her neighbors. Though she sits alone at a table (in a topknot and white blouse, drinking her makgeolli), Baek-du can’t stop staring at her as if he’s trying to pierce a hole in her armor. His mother notices, and pretty soon the other ajummas are needling info out of her in their incredibly unsubtle way. We learn that she’s here for work as “a civil servant” and that her name is OH YOO-KYUNG. We don’t get to hear her answer if she’s married, but we do see how she’s uncomfortably listening to them talk about the man who drowned in the town reservoir.

This is a great scene on a lot of levels, but I love how the drama captures Baek-du’s fixation on Yoo-kyung. It’s clearly so much more than attraction or romantic interest. He’s desperately hoping for little facts or tidbits that will prove to him his hunch is right. In fact, he’s so emotionally invested in Yoo-kyung being Doo-shik that he follows her after the meeting and she confronts him with exactly that question. He bumbles adorably, as we have come to know him, and explains that they were very very close friends. “Soulmate,” he sputters, using the English word, and absolutely shattering my heart.

Yoo-kyung denies her identity again, and Baek-du admits that he’s the only one who thinks she’s Doo-shik — no one else sees it, or recognizes her, or anything else, but he can’t shake the feeling that it’s her. It’s not until he offhandedly mentions he retired from ssireum that there’s a little glimmer of something in Yoo-kyung’s reaction. She takes it personally and goes on a “How could you do this to Doo-shik if I was Doo-shik” rant that causes Baek-du to positively gleam. “You sound just like her right now,” he says.

When next we see him, Baek-du is more convinced than ever that Yoo-kyung is Doo-shik, so much that he unfortunately ignores the screeches of his laundry-folding mom and is soon sent to the gym with an ajumma cart to collect his shorts from his locker. I mean, just watching Baek-du walk through the neighborhood with the cart to fetch his stuff is enough to squeeze your heart, but when he sneaks into the locker room through the back door so he doesn’t have to see his teammates? As in keeping with Episode 1, we don’t really know what Baek-du is feeling yet, but the long, slow take as he looks over his locker photos and paraphernalia gives us our first clue.

Baek-du’s about to escape with his shorts without attracting attention, when he’s stopped in his tracks. The team suddenly has not only support from the mayor, but a new manager: Yoo-kyung. Baek-du is literally floored and stuck to the window watching this whole thing unfold. The wrestling team dudes are obviously not sure what to do with this skinny girl who’s suddenly supposed to be telling them how to fight, but when she recites the play-by-play of one of the athlete’s recent humiliating losses, and then uses an advance technique to throw him on his back — well, they’re convinced.

This scene would be great on its own, but it’s even more fun because we’re watching with Baek-du from the sidelines, and we get his live commentary warning his team not to let Doo-shik’s temper flare up, and so on. He’s even more convinced than ever that Doo-shik has returned.

Thus far, Baek-du’s famous wrestling father KIM TAE-BAEK (Choi Moo-sung, yesss) has been a bit of a mystery. It’s unclear what sort of relationship they have, and if his parents even still live together at first. We heard that Dad retired to become a ginseng digger, and we saw him attend Baek-du’s final championship, but now we get a one-on-one interaction between father and son when he drags Baek-du back to the gym.

Dad’s simple “have a match with me before you quit” is not as simple as it sounds. Of course, Baek-du loses round after round and there’s only so many times you can get slammed to the sand before your emotions come flying out. It’s here we learn that Baek-du doesn’t know what he wants or what to do. He threatened to retire, but he expected people to stop him. When no one did, he didn’t know what to do. Even more so, when his dad tries to prod him into trying again and finally proving himself, Baek-du worries: what happens if I don’t prove anything even after trying again. It’s another great scene, and we feel all the immobility and self-doubt that Baek-du does, stuck between what he once dreamed of, and what he’s afraid to hope for now.

The scene is only made more important because Yoo-kyung has been in the office and seen the whole thing play out. We also got an important scene with her moments before this when she looks at the ssireum roster, giggles at Baek-du’s huge smile in his picture, and slips into her old satoori talking to herself. Aww, she’s as cute as he is, goshdarnit.

This night gym scene leads to the final confrontation between Baek-du and Yoo-kyung. Baek-du is laying on his back in the sand sorting through his feelings (which seems to be his MO), and Yoo-kyung comes over, first telling him to leave, but eventually breaking her cover entirely with banmal, full-on satoori, and telling him, “Thanks to you, my plans will be ruined. Since when did you catch onto things so fast?”

But just when she’s about to answer his question for the millionth time about whether she’s really Doo-shik or not, a dude that’s been lingering around the gym pops in and calls her with a “Yeobo!” (a.k.a. there’s a 98% chance they’re a married couple.) Baek-du is as crestfallen as I am.

What a great second episode! Though the plot moves slowly, it also moves carefully, and Episode 2 continued weaving in deeper emotional layers to our characters – and also hinting at the mystery of Doo-shik’s past, her reappearance, and whatever the heck that has to do with the reservoir drowning (now possibly more of a strangling). But for those darker corners of the story, the drama also maintains its sweetness, and that’s wholly because of Baek-du. Our pure-hearted and somewhat bumbling hero is the flesh and blood of this story, and I’m here for it.

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