RECAP: Nine ep 2

We start the first scene as doctor Han Young Hoon escapes to his office. He gets a call from Min Young, she asks him if he knows anything about Sun Woo.

She returns to the car after the phone call, she looks fine but when they get on the road she starts to cry. We flashback to the phone call, Young Hoon tells her about Sun Woo and angrily addresses how Sun Woo refuses treatment. The phone call reveals that Sun Woo has a tumor, and has basically given up on treatment. Young Hoon asks her to try and convince Sun Woo get treatment. At this point she really isn't listening, she understands that Sun Woo will inevitably die. The odd six month proposal was because that is all Sun Woo has left.

We go to Sun Woo, he is visiting his mom who is giving him the cold shoulder. He gets a message from a co-worker who says that because of his odd questioning of Chairman Choi hell has broken loose.

When Sun Woo gets home the station president comes to him and tells him the case of Chairman Choi might be one worth taking on.

Sun Woo enters his home, the only sign of life is a note from the housekeeper stating she sent hyung's red parka to the dry cleaners. He gets another head-splitting pain, and when it wears off he decides to light the incense again.

He picks up his phone to finish checking his hate mail, when suddenly he loses his internet connection.

He looks up he is still in his room, but it looks different. There are basketballs, Michael Jordan posters and things scattered all over the floor.. He hears a sound and finds a pager sitting on the nightstand. He picks it up and sees it has a message.

He hears a voice calling for Jung Woo and  freaks out when he recognizes the sound of his mom’s voice coming from downstairs. Without realizing it he puts the pager in his pocket. He goes downstairs, to see his mom healthy and talking to him as if he's Jung Woo. She freaks out when she sees a strange man (Sun Woo) standing in her house, and young Jung Woo comes out holding a bat. Sun-woo’s so happy to see his brother that he doesn't even register that the bat is meant for him, until it starts swinging in his direction. He runs downstairs and gets backed up against the giant aquarium in the center of the house, and Jung-woo swings full-force, breaking the glass.

Some of the glass lodges into the back of Sun-woo’s neck, and the fish come spilling out. Sun-Woo runs back up, confused, and sees Dad come out to ask what the commotion is. By the time he scrambles back into his room to catch his breath, it changes back into his present-day room. He kinda shakes it off and doesn't notice that his shirt collar is soaked with blood.

He gets a call from Chairman Choi asking to meet when he lands in Korea tomorrow, but Sun-Woo refuses. The chairman says he offered to help Sun-woo’s family, but he was the one (along with Jung-woo) who refused his help. He acts like they’re the ones stabbing an old man in the back, and asks why they can’t work things out. He asks to speak to Jung-Wwoo, thinking he’ll get somewhere with him, but Sun-woo’s face hardens at the mention of his brother, and finally spits out: “He’s dead!” It’s news to Chairman Choi, who asks why. Sun-woo: “Why are you asking why? You’re the one who killed him!” He hangs up. Chairman Choi orders his minion to look into Jung-woo’s death.

It’s only after the call that Sun-woo notices the blood dripping from his neck, and his eyes widen in shock.

He’s getting stitched up at the hospital when his buddy Young-Hoon finds him and sighs at him like he’s a misbehaving child. He takes over the stitching and barks at him that this is just the beginning of who-knows-what kind of blackout. He’s heartbreakingly sincere about it, but it’s also hilarious because there’s this doctor standing in the middle of the emergency room, swearing at a patient and calling him a bastard. Sun-woo just smiles and calmly takes it in stride. He says the last time this happened he dreamt he was on a mountain, but this time he wasn't even asleep .The two friends go out to eat afterwards, and Sun-woo promises he’ll quit work soon, which is still not soon enough for Young-hoon. He wants Sun-woo in the hospital now, but Sun-woo says he’s got all sorts of stuff he wants to do, like go on dates with Min-young. He says he can handle pity from anyone but her.

Young-Hoon stops short at that — didn't she call or say anything? He tells Sun-Woo that she called asking about him, thinking his behavior weird, and when she asked outright if he was sick, Young-Hoon couldn't keep it from her. I love that he even tries to backpedal after that: “It’s not my fault!"

Sun-woo heads back to work the next day, and struggles through another splitting headache. What do you plan to do if this happens during a live broadcast? He runs to his desk to pop another pill, when he sees a live feed to Min-young, ready to do her report in the Himalayas.

The guys in the editing room notice that Sun-woo’s near the news desk looking at her on the screen, and they guess that he came by just to see his girlfriend. Guess it shouldn't be a surprise that news travels fast in a newsroom. They connect her audio feed and alert her that Sun-woo can see and hear her right now, and suddenly her face changes. She can barely hold back her tears as she tells the rest of the crew that this is only meant for Sun-woo… and sticks her middle finger up at the camera. She’s great. The crew wonders if maybe they had a spat, or Sun-woo cheated on her or something. He doesn't betray any emotion in front of the staff, but she runs off to cry alone.

Sun-woo calls soon after, and says in his normal even-keel tone that she sure is being ballsy—is it because he proposed, or because he’s dying that she figures she can act this way? She holds in her tears without saying a word, and when he eggs her on for an answer, she finally bursts: “You are, in one word, a son of a bitch! There will never ever be another son of a bitch like you!” She says he’s the one overstepping with that proposal nonsense, and tells him he can live alone and go alone. Angry tears stream down her face as she mutters at his unbelievable proposal. She tells him to come up with some sort of excuse.

He asks if she wants fact or fantasy, and doesn't really give her the option, as he answers factually: when he found out he was dying, he had two thoughts. One was worried for Mom, and who would take care of her when he died. That’s why he went to find Jung-woo. Two was Min-young, or more specifically, how he wouldn't be able to die without regret if he didn't sleep with her. You really have this knack for being unromantic. He says (like an oppa, giving her love advice) that she isn't to trust any man in the future who says differently. Sun-woo: “Do you want the fantasy version?” He says that for the past five years, Joo Min-young was nothing but a troublesome hoobae who had so much to learn. “But the moment I learned I was dying, I realized… that during those five years, I had loved her all that time.” He continues: “I know now that there was never one moment when I didn't love her. But it’s too late. So I wanted to spend my remaining few months with her, doing everything I could for her."

He says that if she found out he was dying, he was scared he’d never see her bright smile again, which is why he kept it a secret. “What’s so important about some smile, you ask? Right now I’m using all my strength to gather some energy, but countless times a day I want to cry. It’s not just a smile. To me, right now, it’s everything.” And then he wraps it up with a tacked on: “…If any man spews this kind of fantasy at you, he’s lying. Don’t be fooled.” She asks why the fantasy version sounds more real to her. He wonders why, insisting they’re just a bunch of lies. Uh-huh. He hangs up with another lie that at least with a clear rejection from her, he has no regrets.

A little while later, Sun-Woo gets a call from the housekeeper, who found his pager going off inside his closet. She says he left it in his suit pocket, and he says it isn’t his and hangs up, not thinking much of it.

But then it dawns on him—the pager he picked up on the nightstand during his “hallucination.” He calls her back to ask for the number being paged and tries it, but the number’s been disconnected. But it’s the same number, over and over. You know, I’d ask how a pager from the nineties is getting calls in the present day, but these are the Inhyun people, so I should just be glad it’s not also a teleporter. He sends a messenger to pick it up, and calls Young-Hoon to ask if maybe that incense he found among hyung’s things could be laced with a drug. Young-Hoon thinks it possible, and a good sign if it is, since that means he’s not going crazy yet.

But the pager is tripping him up, because if it’s not his brain tumor, and it’s not drugs… what could this be? He puts a minion on pager-tracking duty, and tells him to find out anyone who’s had that number that’s being paged, since the time that the pager was made until now. He sits down in the dressing room and thinks over the events, and decides to give the incense another try.

He lights it, and ends up in the same dressing room… but this time we get a clear split-screen of Sun-Woo and another reporter, in the same space, just not at the same time. He looks over at the tv off to the side, and there’s Seo Taiji, singing and dancing. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a newspaper sitting on the table, and the date printed on the front page is December 21, 1992. In the present day, the staff starts to freak out because Sun-Woo has up and disappeared, with seven minutes to live broadcast.

They scramble to find a backup anchor, and everyone, including Min-young who’s listening in from her post, starts to panic.  Sun-Woo starts to clue into what’s going on, and picks up the phone to try calling the number on the pager. Someone picks up—a teenage boy.

He asks if the ajusshi has his pager, and Sun-Woo freezes at the sound of the boy’s voice. It’s familiar, and he asks who this is. Kid: “Park Sun-Woo."

Dude. Are you talking to your teenage self? I like that he’s actually standing in front of a literal mirror as he does this. He asks who the ajusshi is and why he has his pager. Sun-woo looks back at the date on the..

Sun-woo: “Myungjin High, second year, class 5… Park Sun-woo?” Teenage Sun-woo starts to get nervous and asks how this ajusshi knows all that and who he is. “I know it all because… I’m you."


Episodes Recapped: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20