My good friend @staygold asked this:

I was curious why the cola can stopped after hitting Da Il’s foot in the tunnel. Was it because it was twilight zone of a tunnel? Or because he is finally accepting that he is a ghost.

I’m writing my response here so it’ll be easier to read by those are wondering the same thing.

Remember this is MY explanation. I’m sure there are other possible explanations out there.

The first part of my post on being a Fetch is here:

*****************************

@staygold,

I assumed that the tunnel was some sort of twilight zone where ghosts frequented.

That was why the biker wasn’t scared of the Creepy Ghost and didn’t run over Da Il as he was walking down the tunnel. Da Il glanced back – curiously – as the biker passed him by.

I interpreted that glance as his realization that he was in some sort of “twilight zone” — as you described it. In the real world (as seen in Episode 2), living people would walk through him because he was invisible to them.

That’s why the second biker braked and stopped to avoid cycling through the Creepy Ghost. In the ghost world (or this twilight zone), bicycles and cans cannot go through ghosts. Here, ghosts have a physical body ergo Da Il could grapple with the Creepy Ghost and hold Chae Won’s spirit mother’s arm.

As for the folded umbrella, I think the spirit mother was trying to prove a point, that in the real world (outside this twilight zone), Da Il will be unable to hold that umbrella.

I think when Da Il returned to the tunnel that night, he asked the Creepy Ghost the secret of holding objects in the real world. Remember, the Creepy Ghost/spiritual mother said that she had been successful in stabbing her Fetch with the murder weapon and killing it. This meant that she was able to break one of the rules of the human world.

Da Il wanted to learn her secret because it frustrated him that he was unable to protect YeoWool because he couldn’t manipulate objects. Simple tasks like opening the box containing YiRang’s knife or searching the internet were impossible for him because of this inability to hold objects.

Rewatch Ep 4, starting at 44:41.

He prayed “Please!” so he could move the laptop’s mouse. And he was frustrated with his powerlessness.

Next, he had flashbacks of the Woman in Red taunting him, “Do you think you save her next time?” and YeoWool’s request to please find the Woman in Red who killed her sister.

After that, he remembered YeoWool offering him a hand to stand up and he grabbed it, but he was unable to grab the manager at the rooftop and rescue him. He couldn’t touch anybody else but YeoWool because he was a ghost. And he wondered why.

Then, we see him running hard.

I originally thought he was running to the hospital, but he was actually running back to the tunnel to confront the Creepy Ghost. He figured out that YeoWool was going to catch the Woman in Red and kill her to avenge what she did to her sister YiRang.

But in order to stop YeoWool from doing this “suicide” mission on her own (suicide because in HIS mind, YeoWool was definitely going to get killed by the Woman in Red), he needed to be the one to stab the Woman in Red. But he could only stab the Woman in Red if he knew how to manipulate objects, open doors, and hold THE knife.

That’s why he returned to the tunnel at night, although Chae Won warned him to go in the afternoon because he wouldn’t be able to handle the Creepy Ghost/demon spirit at night.

He wanted to protect YeoWool, and he was willing to pay the price for it.

As for “accepting that he is a ghost,” I always thought that Lee Da-Il already accepted his reality as a ghost. It’s the fangirls/viewers who did NOT want to accept that he’s turned into a ghost. They insist that he’s comatose somewhere because they want to have their romance/ship/delusion/whatever with YeoWool and Da-Il.

hahaha.