To me, the scene at the lakeshore with the Captain is the mirror-image of the scene at the beach with Chansung. It’s the mirror-image because the two scenes resemble each other but in reverse.
I’ll explain the dialogue when Manwol is sitting at the beach.
MW: (talking to herself) Whether the sun is blazing or setting, the beach looks the same. I should ask them to make the waves stronger.
CS: (appearing out of nowhere) The beach will still look the same.
His action faintly mirrored that of the Captain’s. Like the Captain, he appeared out of nowhere to join Manwol at the lakeshore. Back then, the Captain told Manwol, “From now on, every sight you see with me will look different.” Because he was at her side, she wouldn’t be alone. The Captain was very confident (and I wonder where he got that confidence from) that his presence had an impact on Manwol’s happiness. That was why he said, “From now on, drinking alone here won’t make you happy. Mark my words. You’ll be waiting for me to suddenly show up like today.”
In contrast, Chansung never makes such vain and self-important claim. He says that the beach looks the same. He also sounds a little hurt that Manwol doesn’t want to go to the beach with him. She didn’t need his company so she had dismissed Chansung earlier that day.
CS: Why are you here? You didn’t want to go to the beach with me.
Unlike the Captain, Chansung doesn’t boast that his company’ll enhance her enjoyment of the beach. He knows that she doesn’t require or WANT his services, as a driver or a companion, to the beach.
MW: I just wanted to laugh a little.
CS: You want to laugh? You and your capricious mind.
In the past, Manwol wanted to be alone. She was going to drink alone but Yeonwoo told the Captain where she was and the Captain joined her, uninvited.
She told him to get lost.
In the present, the Bellhop was ordered to keep everybody out of the beach but Chansung arrives unannounced. Manwol is at the beach because (according to the subs), she wants to laugh. I interpreted this to mean that she wanted to brighten up or to relax from stress.
MW: I told you to rest. What are you doing here? (evading the topic)
CS: I did something silly but I can’t tell you what I did because you might laugh at me.
MW: What did you do?
CS: Don’t laugh.
MW: I’m not in the mood. What is it?
Chansung takes out the autographed paper. Written on it are the words, “To Ms Jang Manwol. I love you. Be happy. Kim Joon Hyun.”
CS: Doesn’t it make you happy?
MW: (reading the inscription) “To Ms. Jang Man Wol, I love you”? (she’s shocked) Are you confessing your love to me?
He’s shocked.
I’m shocked, too. lol.
Did she just blurt out a secret desire? To me, she’s projecting. She’s inhibited from confessing her feelings for Chansung so she projects her own wishes onto Chansung. She thinks Chansung made a confession to her.
But I’m also reminded of that time when Manwol told Changsung that the blind ghost only remembered what she wanted to remember. In Manwol’s case, however, she saw only what she wanted to see that in that signed autograph. Aside from the signature, she didn’t read the wish written in English, “Be happy.”
At any rate, she’s flustered to see that autograph.
CS: No! I didn’t write this. This is Kim Joon Hyun’s autograph. Here, “Kim Joon Hyun.”
MW: Kim Joon Hyun? (she inspects it) It’s true.
CS: I ran after him and asked him for an autograph on the streets even though I was so embarrassed. I thought it would make you happy.
Again, there’s an echo here of the Captain. He had freed Yeonwoo at great risk to himself – at least, I’m assuming he got Yeonwoo out of jail by fighting the other guards. He promised to rescue Yeonwoo because he knew Yeonwoo was precious to her.
Likewise, asking for that autograph required Chansung to give up a bit of his dignity and pride. He had to chase after KJH and stoop to begging for an autograph like those young schoolkids. And he’s a Harvard grad.
But he did it because he wanted to make her happy.
CS: Aren’t you happy?
MW: I am. (smiling) I love this.
CS: I knew you’d like it. I felt so shy about asking for an autograph. (switching topic) It’s nice to come to this beach instead of going somewhere far. Although there is no webfoot octopus here.
MW: That’s okay. Because you’re here.
This too brings to mind Manwol’s time with Captain.
In the past, the Captain asserted that the lake had looked beautiful because HE was there with her. In other words, he was the ESSENTIAL one. Without him, her view of the world would become ordinary.
In the present time, Manwol is the one telling Chansung that HE is the ESSENTIAL one. For instance, because he’s there with her, the beach became a nicer place.
Note: the thought that he is critical to her fun at the beach didn’t enter Chansung’s head, lol.
CS: (glances at her and smiles) The ocean looks so beautiful.
MW: Indeed….It makes me sad.
lol. Again, this is opposite of what the Captain said. The Captain told her that the drinking with him, with the beautiful view of the lakeside, would make her happy. But here, Manwol is saying that, despite being with Chansung and the beautiful view in front of them, she feels sad. Not happy, but sad.
Then, Chansung looks at her and waits for her to continue her explanation.
MW: I’m (pause) a little sad…because the ocean looks more beautiful now…than it did earlier.
Back then, the Captain told her, “Mark my words. You’ll be waiting for me to suddenly show up like today.” The Captain seemed to predict that Manwol would be eagerly waiting for him to show up.
But it’s the complete reversal in the present. Manwol is sad (not happy) because she dreads (not awaits) the day when she’ll have to leave Chansung (oh no! Not the day the Captain will show up).
lol. Even lakeside scene is the opposite of beach scene.
The lakeside was a real setting that’s long gone. The beach, on the other hand, is an artificial setting conjured in the Hotel del Luna, but it’s in the present.
Manwol admits that the ocean has become more beautiful because Chansung has joined her. But she’s sad because she knows her time has started to flow again. She’s heedful of the Old Woman’s words to her, “When the leaves sprout, the flowers bloom and wither, the time between life and death will flow again.”
She has started to feel emotions again, and with her transformation comes the keen awareness of her looming death.
Nice comparison and contrast @packmule3! I like it!
I agree with you over her reasons for being sad, when the view has become nicer with CS beside her. And I find that Ko Choen Myung fellow rather too full of himself. I noted that she looked at him with neither favour nor disdain, and that she’d actually been happier alone and had told him to leave. In the present she tells CS to rest but he comes to her anyway, and she does not tell him to get lost.
Although he does not make a love confession, he does admit that he’s not a good hotelier towards her as his final guest. He knows a good hotelier should not have personal feelings for his guests, but he remembers (since he noticed her earrings) that he received two leaves from her, two moments of her personal time, one through his dream and one from picking up her earring. Before I was saying that the leaf could symbolise the merging of her time with his. Also that having the leaf close to him was like having her beside him.
So he has a personal regard for her, and feels tied to her through the shared time (past and present) and space.
And this is interesting because the Pink dressed Crone said, while knitting, that CS might be both the remedy to beautifying the tree and the poison. It would be hard to weave them together, … and she notices that her knitting got tangled up.
So we can see that CS really is the remedy in that he has awoken in MW the care that she used to have for others. Previous to his coming, she lived only a self-serving life. But for the first time, as she sat next to the tree, she thought of his interests first and gave him the day off to spend with his ‘gf’, so that he would not end up alone like Mgr Noh. Her self-sacrifice got the tree to bloom it’s first flower, the first time she had put the interests of another person first.
However his awakening her good nature has also poisoned her time on earth. She now looks with dread upon her future ‘death’.
I thought it was hilarious the conversation they had about her possible reincarnation into a pig, and his meeting her again in hangover soup!!! He was so dead serious and worried about her next/future life. Cute!
However that conversation and how he insisted that she avoid taking advantage of others was part of the remedy, leading the tree to have 1 flower.
I mentioned that he made a ‘leaf’ confession to her. Well unlike 1,000 years earlier at the lake, when she was silent with Choen Myung, she too makes a confession to CS. She says the view is better because he is there. He looked a little startled by this. Then she says she is sad. So she is saying that he both makes her feel better (which makes the view looks better), and makes her sad because her time is running again. He is indeed the tangled combination of the remedy and the poison in her life.
I just scanned this since I’m heading for work now. Please tell me more about the leaf. I like to hear more about the “two leaves.” Thanks.
I haven’t time to watch Viki. It’s subbed at 98% now.
Bye!
Something else … in the past, although Choeng Myung had caught 1 firefly, there were many fireflies around the lake. Man Wol had said that fireflies were all the same.
In the present, there was only 1 firefly around the tree. It was the only one of its kind present, and it landed on a branch of the tree. Possibly, uniquely Chan Sung.
I noticed that ManWol is an easy person to satisfy however mood swings she is in..as long as the other person know how to hit the right button..moreover Chanseong is the person whom caught her fancy..yes she’s jealous, cranky and she spits cynical & fire from her mouth but I understand where she’s coming from..
and it’s funny to hear cute banter between Manwol and Chanseong everytime they argue about something..Chanseong with his hard rock truth and Manwol with her loud & twisted words..
also there is flustered Manwol ask expectantly “what?what kind of personal feeling do you have for me?” at Chanseong after he said hotelier shouldn’t have personal feeling for their guest and the disappointment had cross all over her face when he mentioned about the two leaf he acquired..I was like ‘awww,is she expecting Chanseong to confess his love for her or something?are they gonna address THE KISS finally..?’🤣🤣
I think all of the tragedies happened between them three ( Captain,YeonWoo & Manwol) a millennia ago is because of the princess reincarnated as Mira ( Chanseong ex-girlfriend) because Mago had mentioned that she hope she will not hurt like she did in the past as Mira appear..
Mira must’ve done something bad to these three in the past to be reborn to a poor life & had to borrow money from her friends..
The Leaves
1st Leaf It was a leaf that flew from MW’s past into CS’s present and which MW almost picked from his jacket. CS found that leaf still on him. I feel that Chan Sung sees the leaf as a sign of Man Wol coming more alive, like the tree, of being able to feel and care for others. He was tasked by Ma Go to take care of the barren, spiky tree, and he is told that he had something to do with the tree becoming more beautiful. Every leaf is a sign of the enlivening of the barren Man Wol.
He finds that he has a special connection to her, through her past in his dreams. The leaf of the dream was a precious shared moment of Man Wol’s time, a sign of the link between them (or a merging of their time), and something that he held close to his heart, literally and possibly figuratively.
2nd Leaf
The earring was a personal item that he found on the floor and at first pushed further under the table when Man Wol was looking for it, and asking him to help her find it. He was a bit put out because he was talking to her about how she and the staff had sent him into the dangerous Rm 13, but she was more focused on the earring.
He asked her what sending him to the Room 13 was about, and she admitted that the tree had changed since he came, so they were worried that their time to leave was near.
He asks MW why she saved him. She said that she was not going to intervene but a leaf changed her mind. He takes the leaf from his pocket.
CS: This one?
MW: Yes. A part in me as small as that made me change my mind. (Something had started changing inside her. She had started to care.)
CS: Are you saying that I won by this much? (meaning that your desire to save me was only this much more than your desire to save yourself?)
MW: You’re doing it again! Asking questions when you know the answer …
CS: Asking questions to induce an answer can lead to determining the truth.
MW: …. This is not Harvard so get back to finding my earring.
CS: Is finding it worth another leaf? (Meaning: Will finding it increase my chances of being saved? Will finding it mean you’ll care more about my well being?)
Then in Ep 6 he sees her wearing the earrings and says “That’s the earring that I found” (that’s another leaf that he has got.)
MW: I bought these to wear them when I’m going out to eat webfoot octopus. I’m heading out to eat it now. You must come with me because you found it.
CS: You’re just craving webfoot octopus. Stop coming up with these excuses that make no sense.
LOL. I just love this running joke.
Back to leaves:
If the first leaf was the sign of their shared time, their connection and the start of her caring more for him, (remember that split second when she wanted to sit with him under the tree) then the 2nd leaf meant the deepening of that connection and that care.
Ep 6, In MW’s and CS’s conversation about going to the beach.
(53:45 on the timecount) MW: Are you suddenly being nice to me because I told you I’m going to be your last guest? … What an incredible hotelier.
CS: I’m not that incredible. Hoteliers aren’t supposed to have personal feeling for their guests.
MS: What? What kind of personal feelings do you have for me?
CS: The leaf. You showed me that I got two leaves. How do you expect me to ignore that. (Meaning: We have a connection in which you cared enough to save me, I cannot ignore this, and usually it would mean, the sentiment should be reciprocated.)
Man Wol looks affected and pensive. She turns her head away and talks about not going to the beach that day.
CS had received 2 leaves or parts of the Man Wol tree, which symbolised their shared time, and her connection to and care for him. Being the person that he is, who would (and did) reciprocate, this made him a hotelier with personal feelings for his would-be final guest.
I wasn’t sure whether to post this link here or under Episode 3… @packmule3 can decide and move it. 😄
One of our Beanies, @barbrey, wrote a great piece on how the Hong Sisters took inspiration from Diana and Hecates even, for the characters in this show. Here’s her article: http://www.dramabeans.com/2019/07/hotel-del-luna-episode-5/#comment-3498031
I find that this adds more bulk and other possible angles of thinking about the clues that we see.
All the CM vs CS parallels make me think of the title of a Korean movie “Right now, wrong then”. it’s an artsy piece that shows the original and an almost identical replay of an encounter between a woman and a man, but that is not the point. what I actually wanted to say is that even if nominally the interactions between CS and MW seem to closely mirror her history with CM, the small discrepancies make all the difference. The relationship MW has with CS has a radically different feel to that she and CM seem to have had in the past.