Better late than never. Part 1.

I like the approach to death in this episode: elegiac. I’ll go over the lines in Episode 1 that are odes to death, and give you my thoughts on them.

“It’s glioblastoma.
It seems like multiple tumors.
The fact that you are dizzy and throwing up
Is all because of this.”

Our heroine, Tak DongKyung (DK), hears the diagnosis of the doctor like a death knell, and she’s dumbstruck. She stares at him with wide eyes then turns sideways to gaze at the x-rays.

Doctor: To know more in detail, we have to conduct a biopsy. But the location seems to not be good.
DK: (still gazing at the xray, she nods her head) I see.
Doctor: Yes.
DK: (squinting at the xray) The biopsy… Do you do that on the weekends, too?
Doctor: We don’t do weekends.
DK: (frowning at the xray) How many days does the examination take?
Doctor: (turning to look at the xray too and circling the tumor with his laser pointer) At least a week.
DK: That won’t do.
Doctor: (rising from his chair to block her view of the xray) What?

Here. At this point, the Doctor finally realizes that DK isn’t reacting to the news like a normal person. She’s too calm, too poised, too in control of her emotions. He was expecting her to sound incredulous and to break down in tears. But we’ll find out later that she hasn’t cried since she was 10 years old.

What do we learn from DK’s character here? She’s stoic.

DK: (shifting her head to continue looking at the xray) Then, I can’t.
Doctor: (finally standing up to grab the xray off the glass). A biopsy?

The doctor’s frustration with her is visible. Why isn’t she in hysterics over the news?

DK: I already used a few days of my annual leave, so I can’t take a week off.
Doctor: Taking time off work doesn’t seem to be the issue here.

Meaning, taking time off should be the least of her worries. Her health is on the line here, so her top priority is getting the biopsy done as soon as possible. No task is as important as survival. Work can wait.

But DK begs to differ.

DK: I don’t know. I can’t take a week off.
Doctor: (leaning back and sighing) Then let’s not do the examination. If you the surgery, you’ll live for one year. If not, about three to four months. Even so, you won’t be able to live normally for that year. You may get hemiplegia, speech disorder, or cognitive impairment. The biopsy itself can be dangerous, too.

Here, the Doctor doesn’t mince his words. To me, DK’s equanimity has provoked him to react this way. The thought probably entered his mind that she was trivializing her condition. He was exasperated with her composure and wanted to rattle her cage.

DK: Dangerous?
Doctor: Yes.
DK: Am I going to die?
Doctor: Yes.
DK: Oh. I see… Yes.

DK stands up to take her leave. The Doctor looks at her with – I don’t know…. he should be looking at her with compassion, but I think he’s also looking at her with anticipation. He expects her to have a mental breakdown. He must be confused to see her nonreaction as much as she’s confused to hear his diagnosis.

Then, she breaks into a smile and grabs a packet from her tote bag.

It’s an “Event Plan and Schedule Report” she planned for his fictional book, “Doctor King Yeomra.” Her demeanor changes 180 degrees. While she was barely speaking a moment ago, she suddenly becomes all chirpy and talkative. She explains that the forms in the packet will help him stay on schedule. Even if he’s busy, he needs to turn in his 70-episode draft by the beginning of the following month.

Doctor: (meekly) Yes.
DK: You must be busy with your main job, but there isn’t too much time left until the event, so please work hard for a while longer.

Do you see how she turned the tables on him?

Just like he had a due date for her terminal illness, she had a due date for the completion of his life’s work. But unlike him, she’s able to convince him to get started on his writing to meet the deadline. He, on the other hand, couldn’t even get her to agree to a biopsy.

The doctor doesn’t seem to know what came over him because now she’s in control of the situation.

Doctor: Yes, I will contact you.
DK: Yes.
Doctor: (meekly) Editor, please contact me as well.
DK: Yes. (assertively) Writer, fighting! You seemed like a real doctor today, and seemed cool. Thank you for using your connections to cut me in line for the MRI.

How could she be so cheerful and flatter him like this after he’d just given her the most devastating news? To me, her attitude indicates that she can compartmentalize her emotion extremely well. She can dissociate herself from a serious problem like her glioblastoma, and continue functioning as an editor as if her world hadn’t been turned upside down. She can disconnect from one painful reality and switch to another reality without much effort. It’s an excellent defense mechanism that she acquired young.

Doctor: No worries. I’m a real doctor.
DK: Then. (nodding goodbye)
Doctor: Editor… (awkwardly) Fighting!

“What kind of face—
I know that I’m handsome. But I’m busy.”

While she met the news of her impending doom, the glioblastoma, with serenity, she encounters the personification of doom, Myeol Mang (MM), with curiosity.

Eyes downcast, she walks the hospital corridor and stumbles as they cross path. MM catches her.

I think her face registers more expression when she met MM than when she heard the doctor’s diagnosis.

Her reaction:

Her reaction:

She begins to wonder “What kind of face…” but MM interrupts her inner thought with a vain assumption that she’s admiring his beauty. Grinning, he says, “I know that I’m handsome, but I’m busy.”

He sounds flirtatious but when he turns away, his face hardens. His change in demeanor tells me two things:

One, he knows her. lol. *That’s my theory.* I think he stops her in mid-thought because he knows what she’s going to say. Perhaps she said this before at their first encounter, and he doesn’t want her recalling so he deflects her line of thinking. Or perhaps he knows her well enough that he can read her mind.

For me, it isn’t hard to imagine that these two had a shared history. Her parents died and left her and her brother orphaned. This means that at least once in her life, doom aka MM entered it. It wouldn’t be hard for me to imagine too that it was MM who contrived to set her up with her Auntie. At the funeral, none of her relatives wanted to take care of the two siblings, yet she and her brother were raised by an Auntie.

Two, he’s two-faced. He cannot be trusted. He intends his words to have an ambiguous or double meaning, and he exploits the misunderstanding. But note here: I’m not saying that his dishonesty signified depravity. Perhaps he’s being cruel to be kind. What I am saying is that we the audience have to parse what he means by his words. He’s being cryptic for a reason.

For instance, his statement “I know that I’m handsome, but I’m busy” sounds narcissistic since he’s implying that DK wants him to linger around for a while, and keep her company. It sounds as if he’s snubbing her when he declines her request because he has another medical issue to attend to – a suicide.

But on another level, his statement can be perceived as a warning not to let his face beguiled her, because his kind is lethal to a human like her. If she discovered “what kind of face” he really has – the face of doom – she would be running away.

Note that he uses his “handsome” face with the ER nurse, and the ER nurse falls for it. With DK, however, his beauty has less effectivity. In fact, when he knocks on her door that night, he shows her images of Switzerland and Italy, instead showing his handsome face. It’s as if he knows that showing his handsome face alone won’t be enough for her.

“Can I pay in monthly installments?
For how many months?
(If you do surgery, you will live for a year.
If you don’t, around three to four months.)
Can you do three months?
Okay.”

lol. I like how this drama treats death as a commonplace. This conversation between DK and the loan officer tells me three things.

First, she treats death as a matter of fact. In no time at all, she’s come to accepted her death in three months, and is planning accordingly.

Second, she intends to die with no standing arrears. She wants to pay off her loan before she dies. She’s going to do the responsible thing, and won’t impose a burden on anybody. She’s taking care of her “business” as if she was an impartial bystander to the whole process of dying, instead of the main participant.

Third, and most importantly, she has three months to live, and every month, she’ll have a reminder that she has an overdue debt to pay. I think this is a metaphor. She’s living a “borrowed” life, and it’s only payable in full upon her death. Poetic, right?

“To make a comparison:
it’s as if you parked terribly at my parking spot.
So my mood is terrible.
Take out your car!
You must have not known this.
But doom is not within your jurisdiction.
But mine.
Since you careless handled my jurisdiction,
I’m going to do the same now.
I’m going to collect the doom that I sentenced to you for a moment.
Don’t worry, I’ll return it to you when it’s time.
You’ll be only waiting for that day.
From now on, you’ll find out what’s even more dreadful than doom: It’s life.”

His long speech is quite revealing.

It reminds me of the biblical passage when the wrathful God said, “Vengeance is mine!” But instead of vengeance, MM’s claiming, “Doom is mine!” He’s enraged that the man who stabbed people in the crowd is avoiding the doom that MM has ordained for him by killing himself. Death is within MM’s purview. He has the final say on who dies, and lives. Like a driver illegally parking in MM’s spot, the murderer is encroaching on MM’s domain when he slit his own throat. Thus, MM is rescinding death he planned for the murderer. His death will be postponed to a later day. In the meantime, he’ll suffer the consequence of his rampage.

Two, the lives of murderer and DK are diametrically opposite.

Although MM spared the murderer from death and gave him a reprieve, in reality, the murderer’s fate is worse than doom. On the other hand, although DK was shown her fated doom, her life is going to get better because doom is literally walking beside her in the form of MM.

How poetic is that? MM promises her that if she walks with death, she’ll safe and secured.

“You are a butterfly.
For the flowers in my garden.”

This is an interesting metaphor.

I don’t know if the writer knows this bit of information, but I’m quite sure that MM is unaware that butterflies exist in an IMPERFECT garden. Butterflies do not grow in lawns that are well-tended, and gardens that have been sprayed with pesticide.

Butterflies come from caterpillars, and caterpillars don’t drink nectar like their adult version. Instead, they eat the foliage of plants, and weeds. Although many gardeners welcome the sight of butterflies flitting in the garden, some aren’t as thrilled by the sight of caterpillars. Caterpillars chew on leaves, flowers, and fruits, and end up damaging the host plants. The metamorphosis of a butterfly occurs in a messy, wild garden.

Here’s the dialogue again between MM and the child.

Child: You should’ve at least changed your clothes.
MM: I didn’t change so I could show you.

Then, he brushes the bloodstain away with a flick of his hand. I think he wants to show the child deity that his life is so much more difficult that hers. He gets bloodied doing his job while she can lounge about in a hospital bed.

MM: Some kind of god, having the world at her whim. Huh. Are you tried of the hospital life now, too?
Child: You should try being sick. There’s no time to be bored.
MM: Again! Again! Acting all pitiful.

He means that she’s trying to play the pathetic victim card again. But the deity denies that.

Child: I said, I’m just like a gardener. Planting, watering, and wishfully waiting for it. That’s all.
MM: So you’re saying you have no responsibility.

MM meant that if the deity is doing the minimal care for the plants, i.e., planting, watering, and watching them from the sidelines, then she isn’t really taking full responsibility for them.

Child: (ignoring his accusation) Some don’t even get the chance to sprout. Some bloom later, and others bloom and immediately fade away. Some are medicinal herbs, and others are poisonous plants. Some even kill everything around them. Is that my fault?
MM: Pluck those out, and plant the ones you want. Out of those, you should cherish a few.
Child: The garden does not belong to the gardener.

Ha! This argument between MM and the child is nothing more than a rehash of a 17th century debate between the theist and deist, respectively.

The child diety = the deist’s point over of view

The deist believes that god (or multiple gods) exists, and that this god created the universe. The deist also believes that this god won’t ever intervene in human affairs. Once he’s created the universe, he maintains a “hands-off” approach.

MM = the theist’s point of view

Like the deist, the theist believes that god (or godS) exists, and he created the universe. However, their views diverge when it comes to intervention. The theist believes that, as creator of the universe, the god still intervenes whenever there’s a crisis. God still listens to people when they implore his assistance, and cannot turn a blind eye or ear when he’s called upon. Based on MM’s intervention in the case of the man who stabbed random people in the crowd, MM is responsive and easily moved by the human plight.

MM: Then what about me? What am I in this garden of yours?
Child: You are a butterfly. For the flowers in my garden.
MM: Until when exactly?
Child: Forever.
MM: (scoffing) You’re too cruel to someone on his birthday.

I must agree. When the child deity said “Forever,” I wanted to wipe the smug smile look off her face. The apathy of this deity is the reason for her demise. What’s the point of believing in such an unfeeling and unloving god? Good riddance, I say.

Child: Birthday? Human? Were you every born? Were you ever human?
MM: (speechless)
Child: Go! Go and become someone’s wish. Today is the only day you can do such a thing.
MM: Even my birthday isn’t for me.
Child: For humans.
MM: Damn these flowers. It’s time for them to wilt.

MM is feeling this way because love is missing in his life.

*****

Stopping here for now because I don’t want to overload you all with my thoughts. Besides, I need screenshots.

Will continue later.