Just a few things.

1. Hong Sisters’ “The Master’s Sun”

This is wasn’t a gratuitous homage to the Hong sister’s hit, “Master of the Sun.” It’s key to this episode.

Doha was watching tv while SolHee was googling the names “Kim Do Ha” and “Kim Seung Joo” on her smartphone. Seeing that no articles had linked the two names together, she figured that he just entrusted her with a secret. He flipped the channels to a show reviewing “Master of the Sun.” The narrator was saying, “Gong Sil hides her ability to see ghosts. But when she is near Joong Won, the ghosts disappear. She realizes this man incapacitates her superpower.”

This got SolHee’s attention. Like the female lead in the kdrama, she has an unusual ability that she’s hiding from the public. Whenever she’s with DoHa, her ability to hear lies seems muted. On tv, the female lead is telling the male lead, “If I touch you like this, I can’t see or hear them (ghosts). I’ve never met anyone like you. That’s why you’re special to me. If I’m near you, I think I could sleep better and live a normal life.”

Two things.

One, DoHa has no self-awareness. He’s been sleeping better ever since he transferred to the apartment beside SolHee’s, and he’s gone out to eat like a normal person because SolHee took him out.

He doesn’t yet see how the kdrama’s plot applies to him.

Two, on the other hand, SolHee finds the show 100% relatable. She’s never met anyone like DoHa. When she talks to him, she can’t hear lies coming out of his mouth. And when he played jazz music at the bar, the lies coming from the other people are blocked out. She figures that her ability to hear lies has changed ever since DolHa appeared into her life. But she can’t determine whether DoHa really doesn’t lie, or he was her blind spot (or weak spot) that her lie detector can detect. She doesn’t know whether this change in her a boon or burden is. She tries to confirm his honesty.

SolHee: So do you usually never lie?
Doha: Who doesn’t lie? Of course, I lie.
SolHee: (doesn’t hear a bell)

Haha. What did she expect to say? Tell her, “I never lie.”

DoHa stood up to check the door. While he was up, SolHee spotted the wallpaper on DoHa’s phone. It was the photo the kpop singer took of her and DoHa after winning the award. Their pose looked overly friendly. To SolHee, the photo contradicted DoHa’s statement that he and the singer were only colleagues. She wondered whether her truth-telling abilities had stopped functioning ever since that incident.

The show continued reporting on the drama “The Master’s Sun.” The narrator said, “Realizing they are meant for each other, they tenderly confess their feelings for each other. The male lead said, “Without you, the Earth would end. For you are my sun.” The leads kissed.

SolHee: What do you think that’s like? If there was a girl who lost her ability to see ghosts whenever she was with you?

Ha! I thought she was going to ask him how it felt to LOVE somebody so intensely and so completely that the world would stop existing if she was gone. Instead, she was more preoccupied about the girl losing her ability. She wanted to know if he too would accept the challenges of loving/living with someone with such a burdensome gift.

DoHa: I couldn’t make any promises.
SolHee: Right. It’s a lot to handle, seeing a ghost.

She thought he was saying that it was a nonstarter for him, that he wouldn’t want to love someone with such a weird ability because it was tiresome.

Doha: No.
SolHee: (confused)
Doha: I can’t make promises to stay with a girl who can’t be without me. I’ve tried but I couldn’t help having a change of heart.

From his point of view however, it wouldn’t be the girl’s weird ability that’s bothersome, but her neediness. He wouldn’t like a girl to be totally emotionally dependent on him. He also couldn’t relate to the hero of the show who declared that he was incapable of surviving without the girl, “Without you, the world would end….”
Based on his experience, such love would overwhelm and repel him.

SolHee: I guess you must have tried hard. I tend to let people go as soon as I feel like they’re not the one.
Doha: When do you know they’re not the one?
SolHee: When they start lying to me.
Doha: (taking a deep breath) Then, you need someone who’s an excellent liar. Because there’s no one who doesn’t lie.

My comments:

a. This dialogue establishes Doha’s character and hints at the backstory. He detests clingy, needy women.

It wouldn’t come as a surprise if EunJu tried to force him to stay with her by threatening to kill herself if he left her. DoHa was still suffering from her emotional blackmail even after five years. That’s why he rushed to save the silly kpop singer and towed her out of the water but yelled at her to get out of the car after she whined that she really wanted to die. He couldn’t stand the kpop singer’s emotional manipulation because he already lived through it once.

Note: SolHee knew that the kpop singer was lying, though. Her lie detector pinged.

b. I can see Doha’s karma coming. In the same way that SolHee’s posturing as an omniscient shaman with the mantra, “If I say so, it is so,” has come to bite her in the butt as predicted, Doha’s words, “I can’t make promises to stay with a girl who can’t be without me” will prove to be his undoing. He will make all sorts of promises, excuses, and compromises just to keep the girl aka SolHee staying beside him.

As it is, when he went to rescue SolHee from her ex-boyfriend, he didn’t want to let go of her hand. SolHee withdrew her hand first, but he caught it again. His excuse was that he was walking her home just in case her ex was stalking her. He was late to his club appointment, but he didn’t mind because he had to take SolHee home first.

c. To Doha, SolHee was being unrealistic in her demands because everybody lies. If everybody in the world is a liar, then the only person who can live up to her expectation of “no lies told” will be someone with consummate skills that even she won’t be able to detect his lies.

Someone like Doha, of course, who doesn’t lie outright but knows how to prevaricate, equivocate, omit, dodge, and finesse the truths.

d. After hearing Doha lie in his sleep, will she or won’t she let him go?

As I posted in the Open Thread, loving someone is not all black-or-white.

Loving someone for his sake is taking that person on trust and hoping for the best. There are no guarantees in love. But SolHee bailed out on her fiancé because she could hear his lies. She didn’t hear him out or give him a chance to explain. She just said, you lied, bye-bye.

I said that her “I say so, ergo it is” attitude is her Achilles’ heel. And there you go.

I still maintain that Doha didn’t kill his ex-girlfriend, EunJu. But since she now thinks he’s lying about that event, will she stick around to find out the truth or skedaddle?

2. Their names and aliases

I have to jot this down so I won’t forget.

Mok SolHee: Liar Hunter (I told you that it was weird that her calling card had her “job description” designated as her name instead of her real name)
Kim Seung Joo: Kim DoHa

Note: on the police report, DoHa’s name was spelled Kim Seung Ju. Joo or Ju, I really don’t know if there’s a big difference.

3. Cluelessness

It’s becoming hard to keep track of their lies and truths.

a. DoHa thinks that SolHee still doesn’t know his real identity as Kim DoHa. He’s wrong, though. She knows who he is because she was at his meeting with the plagiarizing composer.

b. DoHa thinks that SolHee believes the men chasing after him were debt collector, and not reporters. He’s wrong.

In the beginning, SolHee thought they were debt collectors. Since she probably grew up with police and debt collectors chasing them because of her mom’s scamming sideline, she assumed that DoHa’s friend was a debt collector and that he was in hiding because of money problems.

But ever since she discovered that he was the famous composer Kim DoHa, she knew that the men waiting outside the door were reporters, not debt collectors, and DoHa’s friend was actually his company’s CEO.

c. DoHa didn’t like it when his friend called him unemployed in front of SolHee. Chalk it up to male pride. He didn’t mind telling her that he was a musician because it was a respectable occupation.

d. DoHa saw that her calling card was different. But to him, being a “Liar Hunter” and tarot card reader didn’t mean anything. He probably assumed that they were one and the same profession.

e. SolHee doesn’t remember that they’ve met in HakCheon before. But funnily enough, he does.

f. They both don’t know that their paths crossed on the night that EumJu went missing. As I wrote before in My First Impression, the timing was critical. SolHee would have to remember that she honked at a man walking on the side of the street with a soccer jersey (#7 H M Son) before midnight. The text that EumJu sent to brother has to be after midnight to establish that she was still alive when he left her.

4. The number of times they’ve eaten together

We like to keep tab of things like this. Have they eaten four times?

One, eating hang-over soup at the restaurant

Two, eating an apple that he sliced for her in her apartment.
By the way, this is a Korean thing. For some reason, it’s supposed to be amazing when someone peels the apple with a paring knife in one go.

Three, walking with a donut
Does this count though? He wasn’t eating the donut

Four, eating monkfish stew at the restaurant
I like how she knew just how to entice him. She knew he opened and read her text messages but was ignoring her. Her bait was the picture of the food. Her texts:

SH: What are you up to?
SH: What to get monkfish stew?
SH: I’m at a famous place, and they only have one party right now.
SH: I see that you read my texts.
SH: See you at the elevator in five minutes.

And that’s weird. If she was already at a famous restaurant, then how could she be at their elevator in five minutes??

DH: What? Like it’s up to her…

Meaning, how could she take his consent for granted? Why was she so confident that he’d meet her outside for food?

Then, she sent him the picture of the food, and he was hooked.

5. One good turn deserves another.

She rescued him from the reporter by calling him “Chagi” (“Honey”) and pretending to be his girlfriend. She did it in a funny and conspicuous way.

He rescued her from the ex-boyfriend by pretending to be her boyfriend. But if you notice, he didn’t tell a lie, and he did quietly. He just let the ex-boyfriend assume things.

DoHa: What’s going on?
Ex-Boyfriend: (asking SolHee) Your boyfriend?
DoHa: Uh…
SolHee: Oh. You said you were busy.

Note: DoHa gave a hesitant response. SolHee gave the affirmative reply. DoHa looked at her and she looked like she was beseeching him to play along. He glanced at the ex and read the situation correctly.

DoHa: (standing by SolHee’s side) I saw you were alone with a guy. I got worried.

Then, he stepped in front of her to block off the ex-boyfriend. This was the same body position he took when he blocked off the weird stranger in Episode 2. He took SolHee’s hand in his.

Ex-boyfriend: I’m sorry. I made you worry for no reason. Bye.

6. The cliffhangers

For two weeks in a row now, DoHa was dead to the world in the cliffhangers. Last week, he was drunk when SolHee unmasked him. This week, he was having a traumatic episode when SolHee heard him say, “I didn’t

How many different ways can this character be unconscious to move the plot forward?