[KD] Miss Ripley: Episode 2

Hee-joo cheerily gets ready for work, and heads to Hotel A where she
works as a maid. We see a photo on her nightstand of her and Miri as
children, from the orphanage.
Yoo-hyun starts his research into the hotel biz, and finds that Jang
Myung-hoon of Hotel A is his biggest competition. (I seriously want to
smack the person who named the hotels. Hotel A? Like Point A to Point B?
Or A Hotel, like A Key, A Nose, A Barrel of Monkeys?)

He takes his friend Chul-jin home with him to visit his parents. I
like that the hero is actually a nice guy with good parental relations
(though I suspect that Mother is his stepmother, they seem to have a
good relationship).
He tells Dad that Jang Myung-hoon is the first person he ought to
meet and learn from in this business, and that he could just as well
become an ally as well as an enemy; it remains to be seen. The thing he
respects is Myung-hoon’s work ethic—though born of privilege, it seems
our hero doesn’t take most things for granted.

Dad seems satisfied with his son’s goals for work. But what about
love? He reminds his son that he’s no spring chicken, and wants to see
Yoo-hyun married soon. Yoo-hyun betrays a smile, so Dad suspects that
he’s got someone in his life. He cops to having someone in mind, but is
still in wait-and-see mode. Um, don’t you mean
trying-to-get-her-to-know-I-exist mode?
Dad adds the importance of finding the right lifelong partner. He
says that after sending his mother (so birth mother must’ve died fairly
young), he wouldn’t have survived without his stepmother.
We backtrack to Miri’s meeting with Myung-hoon, where she flippantly
makes the remark that it would hardly matter if she had graduated from
Tokyo University—he’s clearly not just going to hire some stranger off
the street.

But it’s enough to give him pause, and he stops her. To her utter
shock, he tells her that those aren’t qualifications that he could turn
down, and neither could anyone else. The fear sets in on her face. These
aren’t words she can take back now, when he’s about to solve all her
problems in one fell swoop…
She sits outside his office nervously while he discusses the matter
with Director Kang, who is vehemently opposed to hiring some random
person, no matter what her qualifications are. Myung-hoon starts to make
his case for hiring outside the box, when they get paged: Nakamura has
arrived two days earlier than anticipated, and he’s entering the hotel
Right. Now.
That seals it. No time to waste over debating the merits of street
casting. Myung-hoon puts Miri to work straightaway, with a mile-a-minute
rundown of hotel procedure and Nakamura’s insanely particular habits.
My god, he’s not the sultan of Brunei. These people sure take their
VVVVVWXYZIPs seriously.

Miri gets a crash course in what is essentially an extension of
concierge services, and then takes a deep breath on the elevator ride
up. Myung-hoon introduces her to Nakamura, who is instantly pleased to
hear his own dialect. Phew. Crisis averted.
Yoo-hyun arrives at Hotel A to check out the competition for himself.
Myung-hoon gets word that Mondo Hotel’s second generation has shown up,
unannounced. He considers it curiously and just tells them to keep him
informed. You should probably read up on him, because he’s definitely
doing his homework on you.

Yoo-hyun surveys the hotel, and runs into Hee-joo, who works there as
a maid. She accidentally spills something on his shirt in the hallway,
looking up at him, horrified. He very sweetly just puts his jacket on to
cover it up, and smiles that it’s no biggie. She watches him walk away
in awe.
Director Kang tells Miri to bring her resume and diplomas to human
resources, to file for official employment, after which they’ll apply
for her work visa. Oh crap. The reality of the situation finally starts
to sink in, as she panics—how is she supposed to prove this outrageous
lie?
She scours the internet for ways to forge the documents, and starts
going to printing presses to ask if they can replicate the diplomas.
They turn her down one by one, and one man simply tells her to forge
them herself, with the throwaway line, “Everyone does it these days.”
Oh, if you only knew the real world drama this kind of thing has caused,
sir.

Meanwhile, Myung-hoon skips his wife’s concert and his absence is
noted pointedly by all. He gets a call from his sister that his mother
has collapsed after hearing that he and Gwi-yeon are on the brink of
divorce. He rushes to his very humble country home, just in time to hop
in the ambulance that’s about to take Mom to the hospital.
Miri comes back to the hotel late that night, having decided that
forging the papers herself is the only way to go about this. She turns
on the computer in the dark, her hands shaking, and starts to rewrite
her resume.
A security guard enters the room, nearly making her jump out of her
skin. She’s a nervous wreck from the guilt and fear of almost getting
caught, not realizing that he’s just the security guard and doesn’t know
or care what she’s doing.

She jumps again when the phone rings. It’s an emergency call from the
front desk, where Gwi-yeon has arrived with her man-toy and created a
scene in the lobby. Miri comes out to find the woman insisting that she
get a room for the night.
What? She be crazy, yo. Who goes to her father’s/husband’s hotel with her lover to get a room for the night?
Miri tries to intervene, but just gets belittled and pushed aside by
Gwi-yeon, who mocks her for being new and clearly not knowing who she
is. Do YOU know who you are? Because that would predicate your not
behaving in this manner, if yunno, SANITY were to dictate your actions.
Just sayin’.

Director Kang shows up in time to try and talk some sense into
Gwi-yeon, but she’s already off the rails tonight, and she starts
screaming for the room and pitching a total fit. So Miri runs back out
to try and pacify the situation, only she gets knocked to the ground for
her troubles. And into a glass vase, no less.
The sight of blood is enough to stop everyone in their tracks, which
is right when Myung-hoon enters, having returned from the hospital.
Dude, I’m sorry your life sucks right now. Yeesh. Can I get you a drink?
He tells Miri to go to the emergency room, but she says that she’s
fine. Now that her husband is here, Gwi-yeon turns it up a notch, for
his benefit. She bitterly remarks that he’s fine skipping her concert,
but wants to maintain appearances at his hotel (clearly she cares way
more than she’d like to admit).

She starts demanding a room again, so he finally drags her home.
Myung-hoon: “What are you doing?” Gwi-yeon: “Are you really asking
because you don’t know? I’m doing this to annoy you. You’re dumber than I
thought, if you’re asking me what I’m doing.” Well, at least she’s not
hiding her motivations. Not that she’s not utterly transparent to
everyone but him.
Problem is, he reacts exactly the wrong way. Clearly she wants him to
get as upset as she is, so that even if they’re fighting, they’re doing
so passionately. But he’s calm and detached, which is exactly the
problem.
There’s another message from his sister: Mom needs surgery and it’s
critical. Gwi-yeon bitterly remarks that it must be time for her to die.
He asks what she really wants. She announces that she’s long become
sick of him. She’s in love with what’s-his-name (honestly, I bet SHE
doesn’t even know) and she wants to cook for him and have his children.
She declares that she won’t leave Myung-hoon with anything—no car, no
house, no hotel, no inheritance, nothing.

And then, to her utter shock, he gives in, “Okay, do it that way.
I’ll do what you want. Let’s stop this. This… isn’t it.” Her eyes betray
the bluff—this was her attempt to get him to cling to her, but instead
he’s giving up and packing his bags.
He takes off and stops by the river for a bout of angst. He flashes
back to when he first met Gwi-yeon in the hospital. He was a doctor
then, and she’d been rushed into the emergency room after an accident.
She was smitten with him from day one (who could blame her), and by
the time she had recovered, she was asking him for kisses. Rawr. Ack,
Kim Seung-woo, why you so hot?

Miri heads out for the night and sees Myung-hoon back in the hotel
parking lot, lost in his thoughts. She heads over to say goodnight, and
he apologizes for involving her in personal matters earlier.
She smiles and says that it’s fine, and then asks if he’s okay. He
looks surprised at being asked, and just replies that he is. She starts
to turn back to say something else, but then stops mid-sentence, and
drops it.
Myung-hoon returns to work at the hotel the next morning as if
nothing happened, though he’s on edge from the rumor mill and well, he’s
probably just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He runs into Miri at the service entrance, where her key card has
been denied access. He lets her through and notices her bandaged hand,
and asks if she’s okay. She says it’s all healed and nervously tells him
that everything is fine.
Human resources tells her that without her official documentation,
they can’t stop the immigration office from putting a block on her
employment. (It’s certainly a stretch that the immigration office is
this micro-managed, but the point is, she’s on her last leg, visa-wise.)
Myung-hoon gets updated on Miri’s situation, and is told that if he
files a personal request, she can get an extension for up to a week,
which he does.
She buys time with the fact that the papers have to be sent from
Japan, but he asks that she find a way to fax them within the day. She
gets a text from one of the people she had contacted about forging
paperwork, and heads out to meet him…

But when she reaches the lobby, she hears a familiar voice that stops
her in her tracks. It’s Hirayama, who has come all the way from Japan
in an effort to find her. He flashes a picture of her at the front desk,
but gets no help. Miri freezes in panic, and then hides just in time to
see him walk out.
Over at Mondo, Yoo-hyun arrives for his first day of work, and is
greeted by a line of staffers. He takes the elevator up, and Hee-joo
runs in, blabbering to no one in particular that she’s pitching an
architectural design today.
He recognizes her and smiles to himself, and she finally turns and
notices him. She asks if he doesn’t remember her, from the spill in
Hotel A, and he greets her with a smile. She asks if he managed to get
the stain out, and he insists that it’s no big deal. But she offers to
buy him dinner instead, which is great because if she had any idea who
he was, she’d never have made a peep.

He tells her that it’s fine, and notices that she’s already passed
her stop on the elevator. She gets off on the wrong floor anyway,
embarrassed, and awkwardly just says that she meant to get some
exercise. He laughs to himself, and then picks up a cell phone charm
that she’s dropped on her way out.
He attends his first board meeting by his stepmother’s side, and
gives a speech to the room (in English, for the life of me I don’t know
why). Mother looks on proudly and Yoo-hyun makes a good impression on
his first day.
Miri goes to meet the man who offered to forge her diploma, and he
leads her down a shady alley into a basement where another man is
already working on it.

Myung-hoon and Gwi-yeon show up to file for their divorce, which is
handled speedily, with no children and no battle over assets to speak
of. Gwi-yeon asks the lawyers to clear the room, and asks Myung-hoon to
say something, expecting him to plead for the hotel or ask for money.
But he does neither, and instead apologizes: “I’m sorry. More than I
can say. I’m sorry… that I couldn’t make you happy. No matter what, I
should’ve made you happy. But I think I made you lonely.”
He tells her that in an effort to counter the fact that he was an
unworthy suitor marrying into a big house, he focused on the wrong
thing. “I’m sorry. I thought that was love.” (As in: I thought that was
the best way to love you.)
Both of them start welling up with tears, though hers are angry and
his are contrite. He adds, “Be happy. I mean it.” Aw, sad. It’s strange
how sad it is, despite the fact that she’s a lunatic. It’s probably the
burst of sincerity from the gruff man. Gah. I’m such a sucker. To top it
off, Myung-hoon sits outside and watches a happy family and broods over
the life he’s never going to have.

Miri gets word that she’s got a week extension due to the paperwork
that Myung-hoon signed, and she seeks him out to thank him. He wonders
if it’s that big a deal, but she explains that something that small to
him means a great deal to her.
He figures that getting documents from Japan might take longer than
usual, and she just looks away guiltily. He brings up something she had
mentioned when he hired her—that she ended up in Japan because of her
adoption. He wistfully says that he had considered adopting once.
Miri says that he’d make a great father, but he confirms that his
wife had opposed it. “Not that it would’ve made a difference in the
end…” He tells her that they’ve split up, something that everyone will
find out eventually, so he’s telling her himself.
She tells him that he’d be a really good dad, because he’s a good
person, and it makes him smile. He wonders aloud how long it’s been
since anyone’s praised him. She asks if he’s sad, and he sighs that he’s
not happy, not today. But he thanks her for cheering him up anyway.

Yoo-hyun comes home with snacks in hand and offers them to the
manager of the gosiwon as a housewarming gift of sorts. He asks very
sweetly about the girl who lives across the hall, and finds out her
name. “Jang Miri? I don’t know anything about her, but she has really
pretty eyes.” That’s so cute.
He stands outside her door with an ice cream cone, debating whether or not to knock, but finally decides against it.
Miri runs into another roadblock with her diploma—the forger isn’t
exactly first-rate, and tells her that he can’t manage to create an
exact copy from scratch. He tells her that if she could get a real
version, he’d be able to make a replica. Hm… wonder who might have one
of those?

Myung-hoon gets called up with an emergency in Nakamura’s room, where
a maid used his restroom in the middle of cleaning it, because uh,
nature called. Nakamura threw a fit and trashed the bathroom, and Miri
is nowhere to speak of.
Myung-hoon goes in to try and appease him, but he’s all worked up and
demanding to be moved to another hotel. Myung-hoon rushes into the
bathroom himself and starts cleaning up, on his hands and knees.
Nakamura sees this and is satisfied with this level of RVIP
treatment, and tells him to shape up before he brings Japanese
representatives with him next time. They manage to scrape by, but at the
mention of his future visit, they start to plan for an entire Japanese
staff. Director Kang asks what to do about Jang Miri.

Miri returns to find a notice posted—she’s on probation, not to
mention that she’s nearing the end of her visa deadline on top of it
all. She doesn’t understand why she should be held responsible and
exchanges tense words with Director Kang, but thinks better of causing a
ruckus and apologizes.
On her way out, Hee-joo knocks into her in a rush to get on the
elevator, and Miri recognizes her in a flash. And then it dawns on her
that she DOES know someone who went to Tokyo University…

She takes the stairwell to try and catch up to Hee-joo, as she
flashes back to Japan, when she had visited the university with
Hirayama. Hee-joo recognized her and Miri had lied that she attended the
same school.

She sneaks a peek and watches as Hee-joo meets with Director Kang,
who’s on familiar terms with her. Hee-joo turns down the job offer
(probably for Miri’s job) because she’s busy trying to land the
architectural design competition over at Mondo.
Miri follows her all the way out, debating what to do. She follows
her onto the bus, and then sees her opportunity to run into her
‘coincidentally.’ She bumps into the man next to her, and then Hee-joo
calls out, “Jang Miri? Miri-ya!”