Light Shop: Episodes 1-4

by lovepark

Welcome to the Light Shop — a beacon at the end of a dark alley, a space between the living and the dead — but beware, not all who pass through these halls are what they seem. Bonded strangers, locked doors, keen eyes, and select outsiders weave together a story about death and what it means to linger in a world that is neither here nor there.

 
EPISODES 1-4

This horror story begins with the man on a bus (Uhm Tae-gu) and the woman who waits (Seolhyun). Every night, he gets off, and every night, she sits, tapping her finger on the bench. As his curiosity grows, he finally gathers up the courage to ask the woman why she is there, but her response startles him: “Don’t you recognize me?” A tale about the lost and forgotten, Light Shop follows the stories of a handful of individuals each trapped in their own nightmares, but the true travesty is that no one can hear their cries.

Or at least, so it seems. A small light shop shines in the darkness, calling out to those gone astray in the night. Its owner, a mysterious man in sunglasses (Joo Ji-hoon), keeps the doors open until the sun rises for any and all guests to stumble inside his beaming haven. While some are merely customers, others wander in as if drawn by the glow from the windows. A man with sand trickling down his ears, a shivering man kept awake by a barking dog, and a drenched woman who remains eerily silent — the light shop owner bars his doors to none yet keeps his distance with the strange.

Among his varied patrons, a young student JOO HYUN-JU (Shin Eun-soo) visits the light shop every night, running errands for her mom, and meets one of these “ghosts.” As she escapes the footsteps and song following her, she runs into the warmth of the light shop where the owner greets her with a smile and candies. When she recounts her earlier scare, the owner cautions her of the unknown. “Be wary of strangers,” he advises, but if she happens to notice one, then pretend to not see. This warning, though, applies to all as the camera pans down to the owner’s reflection of a wrinkled old man.

Along this empty alley connected to the light shop, a cantankerous lady (Kim Min-ha) moves in, lured by the price despite the dilapidated state of the place. As she tidies up the rooms and turns it into her home, something feels off about the flickering lights and the creaks in the night. Then one day, as her entire house goes dark, a strange glow comes from the locked room she was told was forbidden. This time, the door opens, but the only thing inside is a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

She turns it off, thinking nothing of it, and a song drifts in through the window — the same one that keeps playing every night. She confronts the singer, a timid high school boy (Kim Ki-hae), but as she scolds him, he screams in fright and runs away. Despite his fears, the boy returns to the alley since this is the only way home, but rather than walk it alone, he asks a passing woman for help: the bus stop lady from the beginning. She carries her suitcase with blood dripping down it — the first man from the bus nowhere to be seen — and accompanies him.

The boy tenses as they reach the spot he fled, and he tells the bus lady about the strange sight he saw. A women appeared in the window, but behind her another figure stood as well. Inside the house, the woman feels the presence of the looming shadow and darts for the door. She screams for help, and in the alley, the boy notices the bus lady’s fingers — or more accurately, her fingernails. She stares at the boy with cold eyes and tells him that they aren’t so different, and the boy looks down to see his mangled legs. Though he runs down the street hoping to escape this never-ending darkness, he arrives once more at the house where the lady cries, both trapped in this loop with no way out.

In this world of imprisoned souls and a glowing shop, a hospital nurse KWON YOUNG-JI (Park Bo-young) has the ability to see what others cannot. Working in the ICU where life and death coexist along a delicate border, Young-ji watches over her unconscious patients with attentive care. Alas, no amount of medical intervention can save everyone at death’s door, and the doctor informs the anxious guardians that only the patient’s will can wake them now.

For many, his words offer empty comforts, and a woman corners Young-ji in the restroom, asking how comatose patients are supposed to find the will to live. As someone who also came back from the brink of death, Young-ji can only tell the woman that she survived because others wished for so on her behalf, but her answer angers the woman. She shakes the stall, flickers the lights, and screams at Young-ji to save her loved one, and our kindhearted nurse cowers in fear until her surroundings return to reality.

The parallels between the ICU and the light shop, between Young-ji and the owner, foreshadow a secret that will twist the truth, but before the big reveal, the show introduces another individual, a detective (Bae Sung-woo) with a tenacious streak who notices little details, including the unknown. He believes cases aren’t complete until everything is resolved, so when the others rule the latest death of an elderly man as natural cause, the detective investigates on his own.

Minute irregularities in the crime scene from a misplaced remote to a stained outline lead the detective to a noodle restaurant run by a reserved man (Kim Dae-myung). The detective recognizes him from the station for a similar natural cause death, and his hunch tells him that the restaurant owner is the culprit. However, without any concrete evidence to prove his theory, the detective spends the next month poring over documents until he finally catches the suspect in the act.

On a rainy evening, the detective lunges at the restaurant owner mid-chase while a panicked woman flees. The restaurant owner asks if he can see her, too, and the detective watches in horror as he sees the dead victim from a previous case stand in front of him. As blood streaks down her face, the restaurant owner explains that she cannot be here and runs after her. The two men tussle in the street until the headlights of a vehicle wash them in light, and the detective notices the strange yellow eyes of the restaurant owner.

The detective ends up at the light shop where the store owner just sent Hyun-ju home after the drenched woman cracked and stretched into a harrowing image. Inside the store, the bus lady attempts to leave, but the detective spots the drops of blood on the floor. She tells him that it’s that time of month, and memories of his pregnant wife — presumably dead based on his empty apartment — make him drop his guard and offer his coat to the stranger. As the detective turns his attention to the light shop owner, the latter asks what brings him here, not to the store but this place.

At the hospital on a restricted floor, an embalmer prepares the body of JUNG YOO-HEE (Lee Jung-eun) and speaks to her restless spirit so she may move on to a better place. He treats the deceased with respect — neither fear nor disgust evident in his demeanor — and his calm rapport with Yoo-hee suggests that these conversations are commonplace for this embalmer. As he reassures her that she will find comfort and forget about this world, the woman weeps.

In the basement, Young-ji arrives to work and rides the elevator with a deliveryman soaked from head to foot (Park Hyuk-kwon). She asks what floor he is going to, and he tells her the eighth. She informs him that the ICU prohibits visitors at this hour, and the deliveryman asks if the patients from the accident will wake up. When she tells him that they were critically injured, the man cries uncontrollably, filling the elevator with his tears. Young-ji begs him to stop as she drowns, but once the elevator reaches her floor, the water and the man disappear.

Young-ji resumes her duties as if nothing happened and offers to discharge the alcoholic patient to the general ward. With the head nurse’s permission, she shares her own story with the patient about the time she almost died. Like him, she also experienced delirium, but she worries that the longer the patient continues seeing them, the closer to death he will get. The patient asks who the person is — the man with sand in his ears — and Young-ji explains that he is also an ICU patient wandering between life and death. He was buried alive by his creditors, but Young-ji hopes he won’t give up since she will wait for him like those who did the same for her.

The woman trapped in the room, the boy running through the alley, the fellow shivering in the cold, the man on the bus, and the keen-eyed detective all lay unconscious in the ICU — not ghosts but lost souls blowing in the wind. As Hyun-ju runs home after encountering multiple strangers, she tells her mom about her day, but she is unable to reply since her mouth is stuffed with cotton. Hyun-ju smells flowers on her mom, and Yoo-hee lies in a coffin, surrounded by them. Outside their apartment, the bus lady peers in, wondering if they recognize each other.

An eerie start to a melancholic story, author Kangfull adapts his comic yet again for the small screen, depicting the humanity of his characters against a backdrop of horror and mystery. Like his previous work, he adjusts accordingly to the strengths of the medium while keeping the heart of the original alive. For a directorial debut, actor Kim Hee-won captures the otherworldly tone of the universe well. There’s something off-putting about this world that makes it feel real yet fake, cozy yet uncanny. Things are too clean with certain spaces coming across as set dressing for a play, and this disconnect — this sense of unease — created by the characters’ surroundings, particularly the places revealed to be part of the “ghostly” realm like the light shop and the alley, establish a distinction between reality and the paranormal. It’s an interesting choice to make and indicative of what I find to be Kim’s strength: the power of storytelling through absence.

Plenty of shows like to dump information quickly and efficiently at the start to introduce the audience to the characters, the central conflict, and the setting. Light Shop does this as well, but simultaneously, the creators omit key details. The lack of names, acknowledgements, and history are all deliberate choices made by the creators to not only add suspense but tell a story. The unconscious souls wandering a different plane have lost their sense of self, instead driven by a singular passion. For some, that means leaving a dark alley, and for others, it means finding a dog that barks incessantly. There’s no discernible reason for their goals, they simply exist, transfixed within a space and time that strips them of their agency. They have no names yet because they, themselves, do not know who they are or why they’re there. Thus, the awkward moments in conversations and the strange behaviors of characters stem from this absence of reason, a deviation from the expected. It’s subtle — like the way sensor lights don’t turn on for our non-living friends — but this continued omission of commonplace occurrences not only foreshadows but establishes the mood of the show.

These characters are lost, but at the same time, not everyone who wanders is. While many of the central figures are nameless, a few are, most notably the mother-daughter pair. Hyun-ju remembers her mom, and her mom remembers her daughter. They tether each other to this world, allowing them to exist with their sense of self intact, and though they, too, seem trapped, unlike the others, they aren’t alone. It’s also interesting to note that Yoo-hee is dead and not comatose, which means not all the strangers are in the hospital, either. Some might linger because of regret or possibly vengeance like the stalker victim who died in a fire, but others like Yoo-hee or the drenched woman are clearly clinging to life in order to save their loved ones. However, not all loves manifest into something beautiful, and sometimes a strong emotion can twist into something ugly if not tempered with reason.

 
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