Our heroine spares no effort to prove her worth to our crown prince, hoping he might help her prove her innocence and find the criminal who murdered her whole family. But it looks like her skills alone aren’t convincing enough for our hero to join hands with her.
Picking up where we left off, although he tries to hold it in, Hwan feels intimidated when Sung-on points an arrow in his direction. Will Sung-on really stab him in the back like the so-called ghost claims? Except, Sung-on is aiming at a hawk flying in the sky.
A few moments later, an arrow from an unknown source is shot toward Hwan, but luckily, Sung-on pushes him away in the nick of time. This time they spot Jae-yi hiding behind the trees and chase after her. It isn’t long before Jae-yi finds herself at the wrong end of Hwan’s sword after tripping and falling down.
I find it strange that Hwan doesn’t recognize Jae-yi. Did he never see her again after their childhood encounter? I thought Hwan met her while visiting his teacher. Fearing for her life, Jae-yi tells Hwan about her real identity and the secret letter he sent her father, but Hwan finds it weird since he sent no letters.
Unluckily, their conversation is interrupted by Sung-on’s arrival, so Jae-yi tries to hide her face as much as possible from her ex-fiancé, who is probably heartbroken because of her. Jae-yi keeps insisting she isn’t the one who shot her arrow, but it doesn’t look like anyone believes her.
After displaying his archery skills, it is time for Hwan to write a prayer for the officials to call it a day and head to the palace. Everyone expects Hwan to fail since, according to the rumors, he can’t write because of the curse. But when Hwan actually writes, the officials are put in their place. All is good until, out of nowhere, some blood droplets tarnish the paper.
At first, they think Hwan is injured, but there is no single scratch on his body. Then, where on earth did that blood come from? In order to identify the culprit, Sung-on inspects the guards’ uniforms on Hwan’s orders. Scared to death of her cover getting blown, Jae-yi can hardly breathe, but luckily for Jae-yi, Hwan comes to her rescue and takes her away to his tent.
I can’t figure out if Hwan believes Jae-yi is innocent or not. One moment he is cold to her, and the other saves her. Does he have a plan in mind and act nonchalantly on purpose? It is still too early to tell since there is much info we have yet to learn. At any rate, the hunting is over, and Hwan’s parade heads back to the palace. As undeniable proof of his right arm working fine and in a warm gesture, Hwan accepts some flowers from a young girl among the people who came to see him.
Having yet to learn the truth about the so-called secret letter, Hwan has Jae-yi locked up in a storage room. And when he gets back to her, Jae-yi has already untied herself with her dagger. It isn’t to run away, though. If she wanted, she would flee on the hunting grounds already.
Hwan asks the most important question first. Why come to him instead of her ex-fiancé, Sung-on, who might be more willing to help her? The answer is simple. Jae-yi couldn’t bring herself to ask Sung-on for help, especially with people gossiping about her being in love with another man. And there is also the secret letter and her father’s last words.
However, Hwan gets infuriated whenever that secret letter is spoken of. How can there be a letter when he has sent none? But after Jae-yi brings up the ghost letter and the incident from three years ago, Hwan gets even madder. At first, he believes Jae-yi is only restating the rumors. But, after Jae-yi recites the letter’s contents, it is no longer possible for her to only be reiterating what she heard people saying.
Although Hwan grabs her by the collar, Jae-yi doesn’t stop. She knows he burnt the first letter, but two years ago, he received another one, and after a while, he got shot by an arrow. Hwan couldn’t show the letter to anyone since it is written that he killed his brother to steal the throne, which is absolutely not the truth.
Never has there been a moment that Hwan coveted his brother’s place. Instead, he looked up to his brother as a friend and as a teacher, who he would never surpass. If anything, Hwan’s brother’s death, and the rumors that followed, turned his life outside down.
Even if Hwan gets himself to believe there is a secret letter, why did Jae-yi’s father show it to her when it is supposed to be a secret? In the so-called letter, Hwan asks Jae-yi’s father to send her elder brother to the palace to help Hwan investigate the strange occurrences happening. However, the one who goes around solving the mysterious cases is Jae-yi, not her brother. And considering that she is about to be married, Jae-yi’s father gets reluctant about sending her to the palace.
Despite her desperate pleas, Hwan takes it with a pinch of salt that Jae-yi is the one who solved the cases. He would rather believe everything is the ghost’s dong than go along with her claims. But is there really a ghost roaming around to get him, or is it trickery applied by evil people to scare Hwan? As for the blood droplets incident, Jae-yi explains that messing with his brush and the water he used to wash his hands before writing can do the trick.
When Hwan applies Jae-yi’s theory in front of the royal court, it is proven true, and red droplets are formed, but that changes nothing between them. Hwan is still bent against helping her. If she wants, Jae-yi may as well take the temporary pass and head back to her hometown to prove her innocence by herself.
Having had enough, Jae-yi throws a fit of anger at Hwan. Her late father was his teacher, who always believed Hwan may grow into a wise king. How can Hwan not show the slightest bit of concern as to who had killed his teacher? Being as good as dead anyway, Jae-yi is about to scream and let everyone know about her true identity and the ghost letter. Before anyone hears Jae-yi, Hwan quickly blocks her mouth with his hand.
I didn’t expect Hwan to be that cold to Jae-yi. But after everything he went through, it is understandable how he doesn’t trust anyone easily. Still, we will soon get an alliance between our leads to investigate the secret behind the ghost letter and find Jae-yi’s family’s murderer. The story is darker than I expected, and the mastermind might be the one we expected the least.
All we can do now is cross our fingers that our hero and his best friend remain on the same side till the end. Their friendship is precious, and I want nothing to come between them, although that might be inevitable. After all, we have a love triangle brewing in the background, and there is no telling how it will affect the best friends’ relationship.
On a side note, we might get a cute secondary couple between Ga-ram and the adorable and vibrant Kim Myung-jin. Seeing how he shreds Jae-yi’s composite sketches to pieces, Ga-ram believes Myung-jin might help her prove Jae-yi’s innocence, especially since rumor has it he can tell the cause of the death just by looking at the body.
We don’t know the extent of Myung-jin’s skills yet. But if he can treat a boil and make a solution to turn the flies away, he may be more helpful than his clumsy personality suggests. Myung-jin might believe he is in love with Jae-yi now, but who knows? Perhaps getting entangled with his new apprentice, Ga-ram, might change his mind.
Have you seen “Our Blooming Youth” Episode 2 yet? what are your thoughts on it?
