Our Blooming Youth: Episodes 7-8 » Dramabeans MGG

Our Blooming Youth: Episodes 7-8

by alathe

Trust is hard won, and easily lost. Our hero’s paranoia has led him astray: in one fell swoop, he’s axed any chance of solving the mysteries that plague him, and alienated the closest friend he’s had in years. As for our heroine? It’s been a long, exhausting road, and she’s close to breaking. Still, ominous prophecies wait for no one’s broken heart, and circumstances may bring our protagonists together once again…

 

EPISODES 7-8

Jae-yi peers at the peonies in the incense bowl. Suddenly, she’s assaulted by a barrage of memories. There were peonies the day her family died. And while she was preparing breakfast — someone caught her hand. Young! Horrified, she rushes to share this news with Hwan. This is in some ways convenient, because Hwan has already sent for her. In every other way, it’s awful. Hwan has decided to banish her from the eastern palace. Riding a heady wave of paranoia and self-righteousness, Hwan shoves Young’s suicide note at Jae-yi: proof, he claims, of her deceit.

Jae-yi scarcely has time to struggle before the man she trusted has her flung bodily out of his household. Tearful, she wracks her brain for memories of the day her family died. There’s nothing. Just the faintest recollection of Young, and the certainty there’s something she’s missing. Hwan is hardly the picture of mental wellbeing himself; wide awake, he broods the night away. Two years ago, his father urged him to trust nothing and no one — not even him. He’d made Jae-yi the exception. He’d thought she was the ally he was waiting for.

Meanwhile, Ga-ram has her own fears: her face has joined Jae-yi’s on the wanted posters. If captured, she’ll be branded on the cheek and consigned once more to servitude. Dodging the guards who come knocking on her door, she finds solace in the quiet of Myung-jin’s laboratory. Sure, there’s a body in the back room, but that’s just how her teacher rolls! (Gulp.) Except — as Ga-ram musters up the courage to twitch back the sheet, she finds herself facing a startled, still-breathing Jae-yi.

Barred from her palace room, Jae-yi too has sought sanctuary in the lab-slash-morgue. She’s devastated to hear of Ga-ram’s dilemma, even as her sworn sister plasters on a brave face. Jae-yi has reached the limits of her own resilience. Could it be, she asks, numbly, that Young was her lover — that her own amnesia is to blame? Firmly, Ga-ram dismisses this as nonsense. Meanwhile, across the city, Myung-jin muses sadly at the posters of Jae-yi and Ga-ram. He’d aid them in an instant… if he only knew how.

Hwan too is beginning to doubt himself. He catches himself asking if Jae-yi slept well. As she goes about her day doing ordinary eunuch things that don’t involve murder trials, autopsies, or secret satsuma consumption, he shadows her like a half-ashamed puppy. But the real nail in the coffin of his resolve comes when Sung-on brings up the topic of his missing fiancée. Sung-on’s devotion to Jae-yi is unswerving. All evidence suggests she’s a murderer? Well, the evidence is wrong! And even if she did fool around behind his back — she’s still the one he swore to protect.

Perhaps this is why Myung-jin, Ga-ram, and Jae-yi are soon greeted by an old friend: the tall, hot, and dorky Scholar Park. He’s here — ostensibly — to help investigate the Head Shaman’s odd incense habits. Nothing more. It’s not like he likes them or anything. This doesn’t prevent Myung-jin from launching himself at him in glee, declaring them brothers. Hwan, who never learned a healthy attachment style in his life, sharply denies this — whereupon Ga-ram, scenting blood (or, repressed affection) merrily joins the teasing.

As for Jae-yi? Her wounded look speaks volumes. Even the most plaintive of puppy-dog eyes from Hwan can’t soothe it. When Jae-yi speaks, it’s only to give the bare facts. She saw Young in the kitchen the day her family died. Her memories remain scattered. But, try as she might, she can’t envision a world — even a hypothetical, forgotten one — where she was in love with Young. This confessed, she turns on her heel and departs, leaving Hwan remorseful and still speechless. Apologizing not by telepathy is hard!

At the palace, their paths cross again. A eunuch’s burden is to be forever lifting heavy items of furniture: this time, Jae-yi plods across a bridge with a chair in each hand. Halfway, she sits down to rest. And, staring into the pond — she breaks. You, she declares, are a heartless bastard. Your heart is smaller than a soy sauce plate. You’re — you’re a stupid butthole! Sometimes, the only response to a problem is to pout, cry, and wriggle your legs with angry abandon!

Unbeknown to her, Hwan has taken a seat in the opposite chair. Frowning, he listens to all the reasons he ought to have trusted her. Then, as she wheels around to deliver a final screw you!, he gives her a flat look. Jae-yi gasps, steps back — and plummets towards the water. Without missing a beat, he catches her by the waist.

The moment of reckoning has arrived. Jae-yi, with earnest eyes, explains that she was hurling abuse… at the pond. The pond, agrees Hwan, soberly, must have hurt her. She shrugs, turns, and issues a loud apology. To… the pond. Then, as she begins to leave, Hwan asks — was he that harsh?

Yes. He was. Jae-yi understands why he was frightened. But, she says, consider this! Confucius once said that trust was the most important foundation of government — more fundamental than food. And Hwan, after a moment of effort — agrees. He shouldn’t have kicked her out. His heart, he declares, is smaller than a soy sauce plate! But when she asks if she can return to the eastern palace, something flickers in his face. He remembers Sung-on’s unwavering devotion. No, he says, she cannot.

To Jae-yi, this looks like rank obnoxiousness. So, when the annual polo competition between the army and royal guard wheels around, she tells Hwan to his face: her money’s on the army. Meanwhile, the ludicrously adorable Princess Hayeon has been toiling for hours — well, ordering your court ladies to do it counts, right? — on the perfect full-face makeup to snag Sung-on’s attention. He’ll spot her in the stands. Any minute now. And when he does, he’ll be dazzled into submission by her perfectly natural blush!

Sung-on’s got more on his mind, alas. In a spate of sheer bitterness, Hwan will be competing personally. Does it put his arm at risk? Sure does. But, if Jae-yi’s supporting the army, what choice does he have?

The match is brutal. Hwan and Sung-on are unrivalled champions of scooping up small balls with loopy sticks whilst on horseback. Jae-yi, who is not immune to pettiness, leads a very pointed cheer for the army. However, in the end, the victory is Hwan’s. Sung-on is no sore loser. In fact, he’s delighted to prove his devotion to the prince. He’s not the only one devoted. As he tells “Eunuch Go,” she might have been cheering for him… but she couldn’t take her eyes off Hwan. (Jae-yi scowls. Very rude of Hwan to be so cool.)

Elsewhere, Ga-ram spots a familiar face: the man she once almost mowed down in the marketplace — the one with the weird fish! Turns out, his name is MONK MOOJIN (Jung In-gyeom) — Myung-jin’s master. What’s more, she finally remembers where she’s seen him. On the day of the Min family murders, Monk Moojin was in Gaeseong, collecting rice from Young.

She can’t glean any more details. Myung-jin is too distracted with his latest genius scheme: posing in front of every noblewoman he meets! The hope is that one of them will turn out to be his betrothed, whose face and personality remain a mystery to him. Alas, ignorance might have been preferable. When he does encounter the much-vaunted third daughter of the Minister for General Affairs (Jang Yeo-bin), she baldly rejects him. A self-respecting girl of her ambitions wouldn’t be caught dead with a man who thinks monkey bones constitute accessorizing! Poor guy. Maybe if he toned down that laugh…?

Ultimately, our protagonists face bigger problems than Myung-jin’s wreck of a love life. The Head Shaman’s trial looms — and she’s determined to meet her end cackling. The king offers her the chance to live, provided she reveals the name of the letter she’d meant to carve on the final corpse. She laughs in his face. Meanwhile, throughout the capital, giant lanterns appear in the sky. At the touch of an arrow, they burst, sending red paper raining down. Each leaf reads, ‘song ga myeol yi’. The Song family will destroy the plum tree. Everyone knows what the plum tree stands for: Yi, the royal family.

Thunder begins to clash overhead. The Head Shaman screams that soon, the Yi family will be destroyed in its entirety. The king snaps. Sword in hand, he hurls himself forward — but it’s too late. An amur viper, the same snake whose venom once poisoned Hwan, writhes under the Head Shaman’s clothes, looping its way around her neck. Before it can launch itself at the king, Sung-on cleaves it in two. But the Head Shaman has already been bitten. Freshly carved onto her rapidly-cooling wrist is the final letter: yi. The curse, it seems, has been sealed.

Outside, there’s chaos in the courtyard. Lightning strikes a plum tree. It explodes into unextinguishable flame. Arriving at the scene, Hwan demands that someone fetch Eunuch Go.

Jae-yi, however, has her own worries. Amid the falling letters, she spots shadowy figures atop the roof, black-clad and masked. She, Myung-jin, and Ga-ram immediately give chase. After some frantic parkour through the crowds, Ga-ram scoops up a couple of laundry sticks from a startled housewife. Armed with her weapon of choice, she corners one attacker, as Myung-jin cuts off their escape. They meet each other’s eyes. Grin. Ga-ram swings back one of her sticks and hurls it at the enemy…! Aaaand, the enemy ducks. The stick cracks Myung-jin square on the nose.

Okay, so if there’s one thing we’ve learned this week, it’s that teamwork takes practice. Nonetheless, Jae-yi manages to scramble after her quarry solo. The second attacker leads her to a deserted street, whipping out a bow and arrow. Jae-yi dodges in time to evade the worst of it, but an arrow swipes her hat, slamming her off balance. Before she knows it, she’s sprawled out on the dirt — with a boot at her chest, and an arrow at her throat.

Trust is a tricky thing. For Jae-yi and Hwan, it’s all or nothing, life or death: trust me wholeheartedly, or lock me out completely. It’s intimate, and it’s scary, but their first instinct is to return to each other. To stare when the other isn’t watching. And ultimately, the most unsettling thing for both is being unable to trust themselves — Jae-yi, in doubting her own memories; Hwan, in second-guessing his ability to discern truth from lies. The solution for Jae-yi is to look inward, relying on her own self-knowledge. For Hwan? He’s looked inward for far too long. For him, the best solution lies in accepting that to trust someone, you’ve got to be prepared to give a little back.

Meanwhile, for Ga-ram and Myung-jin, trust is in the little things. They’re on the same wavelength, and halfway to working as a team; every time they grin and put their heads together over a problem, it’s incredibly sweet. Still, they don’t quite fit together yet: when you can’t work out when to duck, eventually, someone’s going to get whacked on the head with a laundry stick. Jae-yi and Ga-ram worked seamlessly together in the past, but now they both have to branch out and adapt to someone who doesn’t quite know their patterns. Still, if there’s an upside to being obliged to thwart a treasonous prophecy together, it’s that it’s a great group bonding experience! I can’t wait to see how our spiky, damaged, delightful group of miscreants bounce off each other in future episodes.

 
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