Having witnessed her beloved ones in pain firsthand, our heroine has resolved to live as herself and not as the shadow of her past life. She might be a little late, though, as both her first love and younger sister identify the two as one. Now she has to make a choice. Either bury it to the end or come clean and face all the music this step might entail.
After opening up to Ji-eum about it earlier, Seo-ha dreams of the moment he had to let go of Joo-won’s hand for the paramedics to take her. While sleep-talking, he grabs Ji-eum’s hand, asking her to stay with him. That scene gets memories flooding to Cho-won’s mind. On the funeral day, she yelled at Seo-ha, accusing him of causing her sister’s death. Which gets her crying her eyes out, believing that her hurtful words might be why Seo-ha keeps away from her.
When they later talk it out, Seo-ha reassures Cho-won he did that because she kept reminding him of Joo-won since they were like two peas in a pod. Whenever he saw Cho-won, he wondered what a grown-up Joo-won would look like. Something he couldn’t handle at this time. And who could blame him after all the difficult times he went through at a young age?
Unlike he expected, the one who keeps reminding Seo-ha of Joo-won whenever he spots her isn’t Cho-won but Ji-eum. And things get more intense when our quartet goes on a beach trip and ends up staying for the night at Cho-won’s family’s vacation house because of the rain. Assuming everyone else is asleep, Ji-eum walks around the house. She keeps dropping hints it is not her first time there. Be it finding the toy hidden in the grandfather’s clock or knowing the place of Cho-won’s height stick.
Since it is drama land, there is no way this will pass by without someone catching Ji-eum red-handed. She is double-caught, though. First, by Cho-won, who doesn’t buy the looking-around-after-going-to-the-bathroom excuse. And then by Seo-ha, who surprisingly doesn’t ask any questions and saves Ji-eum from getting further investigated by Cho-won.
Earlier on the beach, Ji-eum gave Seo-ha her first confession. And when she follows him out that night, Seo-ha hands Ji-eum his reply and unsurprisingly turns her down. Yet, Seo-ha’s words and actions don’t match at all. He says he doesn’t like Ji-eum but won’t stand it if the evil stepmother harasses her when Ji-eum jumps to his rescue.
Also, when he gets a call from Dong-woo’s creditors, whom he can’t care less about, the slight possibility of Ji-eum being in danger has him running, though with no clue what awaits him. Luckily, Do-yoon’s younger brother, Do-jin, comes to his rescue. And soon, the loan sharks flee away after hearing a police siren. Except, it isn’t the police officers but Ji-eum who has devised that “simple” solution. Her multiple-lives experience comes in handy in the most peculiar and hilarious ways.
Seo-ha might prefer to brush it off and not bring it up, even when he keeps imagining Joo-won whenever he is with Ji-eum. But Cho-won is different. She asks Ji-eum to meet and lets it all out about how she finds Ji-eum identical to her dead sister. But now (no thanks to a suspicious Do-yoon), she is heartbroken to think Ji-eum might have approached her on purpose to learn about Joo-won and use that intel to get Seo-ha.
Throughout her 19 lives, I think this is the first time Ji-eum finds herself in that situation. She can’t put it off any longer. Either she will tell Cho-won the truth or keep it hidden till the end while silently witnessing her beloved ones suffering from that excruciating pain or worse, having to watch them from afar without being able to get close. Though she might regret it in the future, Ji-eum goes with the former, revealing the shocking truth of being Joo-won and remembering her past lives.
At first, I thought Ji-eum would keep the act till the end. Yet as the drama proceeded, it seemed she wanted to tell everyone the truth but was too afraid to follow through. It is hard to tell what might happen in the wake of that confession, but I hope they won’t try to play it off as a joke or give us a fake out. Who knows? Perhaps this might be a silver lining in a cloud working in our heroine’s favor.
We also welcome two fresh faces, both as mysterious as each other, and seem to know more about Ji-eum than they let on. The first is the new part-timer at Ae-kyung’s restaurant, Kang Min-ki, who is there to keep an eye on Ji-eum. And the other one is a young woman who seems linked to the hotel. Seo-ha’s mother’s reincarnation, perhaps?
