As I said in The Ghost Roundup, all the ghost encounters are like road signs to understand Manwol’s progression toward her ending. They’re her life lessons or, to be more precise, her death lessons.

The Mayor from Episode 1
“How can living things not know their own sins?”
“I was also crazy like him and I carried a sword around.”

The tiger from Episode 2
“He came here without a pack, without a mate, living alone to the end.”
“He is dead. They made him look alive like this”
“You don’t need to put anything meaningful here. Because everything he cherished is somewhere he cannot return to.”

The warrior ghost from Episode 2
“If you get attacked by those who hold deep grudges, you can get killed. Try to differentiate them.”

The student from Episode 3
“It’s the law that you have to pay for everything you have done.”
“She has become a real parasite…The student will have a hard time looking at her body every day. It’s sad.”

The old man and the dog from Episode 4
“Bark. You have to bark so you can live. If you stay here like that, you’ll die. (I think the Viki subs got the the pronouns wrong. The old man wanted the dog to leave him to die, and to save itself but the dog chose to die with him. To me, this is a foreshadowing of Manwol’s departure and Chansung’s devotion.)
“In these cases, it’s alright to open the door slightly.”
Let’s go together.”

The blind woman from Episode 4
“If she holds his hand, she can feel who it is.”
“If the ghost wanders around a long time, it’ll forget important things. Sometimes they only remember what they want to remember.”
“Important memories are mostly similar for all ghosts. The memories of when they die.”

All these quotations summarize the key points in her character development. They also hint at the direction of the plot.

In Episode 5, the main take-away here is the quote from the Old Woman’s clone. She told the ghost of the wannabe-bride that “You’ll need to make a bigger decision to let go than to hold on.”  Simply put, letting go is more difficult than holding on but, in the end, letting go is for the best.

The wannabe-bride wants to marry her beloved because she clings to the idea of being together in death. However, she doesn’t want to leave him and wants to tied to her. But she also knows that this desire of hers is self-centered because he’s still alive. To tie the knot with him means his death.

That’s why Manwol looks contemptuous,

while she looks conflicted when she hears that her man was coming to marry her.

Man: (greeting her) Sumin.

He takes out the red pouch from his breast pocket and walks to her. In the grand hall, Chansung paces and bites his nails. Belatedly, he senses that something’s not quite right.

Manwol explains in a voiceover, “At the end of the wedding, the man will die.”

The image of the door closing on the wannabe-bride and groom-to-be represents the finality of the bride’s decision. She’s consigning him to death.

Manwol continues, “The bride will take her man to the afterlife with her. I wonder if ChanSung noticed.”

Note: We aren’t told what Chansung is supposed to have noticed but I think she means TWO things. I’ll explain in a bit….

Chansung purposefully strides down the hallway then breaks into a sprint.

Manwol says, “That’s why the man’s parents tried to marry her off with anyone through a ghost wedding.” The bellhop asks, “The man’s parents? They weren’t the bride’s parents?” Manwol enlightens them all, “It was the man’s parents who requested to hold the wedding. They were afraid the woman would take their son with her.”

In a flashback, the parents of the groom-to-be is shown sitting at his bedside. The mom tells him that Su-min is already dead but they won’t allow him to go with her. She tries to remove the engagement (or couple) ring to no avail.

The mom begins to plead, “Sumin, please let my son go. Please…”

The groom-to-be appears to be in a coma. That’s why the groom-to-be is sitting outside the hospital room when the student/intern approaches him, and shows him the picture on her phone of his girlfriend.

Now, we are led to believe that the groom-to-be is real when, in reality, he’s a spirit, a disembodied spirit. He’s still alive but his spirit wanders outside his body because he’s in a coma.

This is ONE of the things Manwol meant earlier when she wondered aloud whether Chansung “noticed.” She meant whether Chansung had realized that groom-to-be was a spirit and not human. It wasn’t possible for the human groom-to-be see the spirit of his bride. Even his friend Sanchez only saw the ghost wannabe-bride in a flash. He couldn’t see the ghost wannabe-bride despite her being in the same room with him.

Well, better late than never. Chansung realizes his mistake and tries to open the door. He calls out, “Ms. Lee, stop. You shouldn’t do this.”

Inside the wedding room, the groom-to-be tells the dead bride, “Let’s be together forever.” Meanwhile, Changsung desperately bangs on the door, reminding the bride, “Ms. Lee, he’s still alive. Stop right now.”

The wannabe-bride holds back her tears as the guy moves to kiss her. I’m sure she’s guilt-ridden because she knows (even if the groom doesn’t) what this will cost him. At the last second, she changes her mind. She says, “No. We must stop. Go back.”

The guy asks, “What’s the matter, Sumin?” But Sumin screams at him, “Go back!” as she transforms into an ugly spirit in front of him.

To me, she reveals her true form to scare him away. She wants to save him from herself…because her resolve may weaken again and she may beg him to wed her and join her in death.

Thus, he bolts out of there as if he’s seen a ghost (literally). Then, Chansung steps inside the room and sees the red string that connects both the groom-to-be and the wannabe-bride. It stretches out and tautens.

Manwol joins Changsung. The wannabe-bride looks at the red string and recalls the Old Woman clone giving her the pair of scissors. The Old Woman clone tells her, “You’ll need to make a bigger decision to let go than to hold on.”

So the wannabe-bride does the right thing and snips the string.

In a hospital elsewhere, a ring drops to the floor, and the groom-that-almost-was finally awakens.

The wannabe-bride cries and says, “I love you. Please be happy.” The red purse vanishes.

Now, that’s the encounter with the wannabe-bride.

To me, her story relates to the Manwol and Changsun because they too may be reluctant to let go of each other when the time comes for Manwol to die. They, too, may do something desperate, like the wannabe-bride. Manwol seems already ready to leave without clinging to him, and she wants Changsun to do the same thing, too.

Manwol: Do you still see me in your dreams?

Changsun has a flashback of his latest vision of her in red bridal dress and blood dripping from her. He answers, “Yes.”

Manwol: (smiling wryly) Keep on taking good care of me in your dreams, then try to send me off well. That’s what Ma Gosin wants. I’ll become your last client because I like you. Gu Changsung, when you send me off, don’t feel lonely.

However, we all know that talking about a faraway, nebulous concept is different from facing the actual departure. Who knows if she’ll want to bring him with her, too, like the ghost of the old man and the doggy.

Now, I already mentioned ONE thing that Changsung was supposed to have noticed.

The OTHER thing that Changsung should have noticed was the ring on the ring finger.

lol. I thought Manwol was teasing him when she displayed the rings on her hands at the jewelry store. She seemed to drawing his attention to her rings so he’d pay attention to the wannabe’s ring.

How he could have missed the ring on the wannabe-bride’s ring finger is beyond me. The ghost showed it to him a couple of times.

The viewers saw it a few more times, too.

Had Changsun been more observant, he could have seen that couple ring. He should have checked out her story to look into her relationship status. If he did, he would have found out that she was already attached to someone AND she concealed the relevant fact to him.

I also thought Manwol was right to disabuse Changsung of the fanciful notion that the wannabe-bride didn’t want to get married. She corrected him, saying, “She’s a ghost that is MAD about getting married.” She was right to screech at him that red pouch contained the “desperate wish” of a woman who insisted on getting married before she left for the afterworld.

lol. I think the problem with Changsung is that he isn’t only weak-hearted but he’s awfully naïve and gullible. He easily believes the sob stories he hears from the ghost without doing a background check. It’s a good thing that Manwol is a cynical bitch.