We cut back to Daehyun hearing about Saetbyul and her friends raiding the store. He tells Yeonjoo he has to get going because of “the part-timer girl”. She pouts saying they barely got started exercising and he mutters that he’s sweated enough for today. As he leaves, Yeonjoo’s face falls. She mutters that of course the part-timer has to be a girl.
Daehyun runs back to the store to see Saetbyul and her friends having a really good time.
He confronts her, and she tries to play cute asking why he’s here so early. He says he here to fire her and she conveniently passe out drunk at that point and thus begins episode 2!
Daehyun points at her friends and says it’s been three years, right? They giggle that he still remembers them and order him to sit down and yell at him for accusing Saetbyul for stealing. He yells back that he made up for it by cleaning the entire store and the circumstances were suspicious. They make him drink by insulting his alcohol tolerance and the next thing we know, he’s getting super drunk.
Watching him from afar is Yeonjoo, who incredulously scoffs that he left her to drink with younger women. (I’d be pretty upset too. I wish Daehyun was more assertive. I can definitely see why his previous girlfriends would’ve been very hurt by his behaviour.”
During the drinking session, Geumbi and Eunjo appear to have told Daehyun something about Saetbyul three years ago. We don’t get to hear what it is but Daehyun sighs at ‘poor Saetbyul’s life’ and then passes out having drunk too much lol. Saetbyul’s friends look at them passed out side-by-side and comment that they’re meant to be together, as an annoying couple.
Saetbyul wakes up as Daehyun passes out and her friends inform her that they just told Daehyun everything about what happened to her and why she’s working at the store. Saetbyul asks for his response and they said he just passed out. Lol. Her friends say it’s a no from them. He passes out easily and he’s stinky too. Saetbyul yells at them for daring to call him stinky. Yeonjoo watches everything and drives away hurt.
Meanwhile, Saetbyul drags Daehyun into the convenience store employee room and says that she started working her to see his face everyday. Her goal is to work hard and become a good employee (then please stop raiding the store with your friends!! Anyone else would have been fired on the spot!). She vows that he won’t regret hiring her. As she leaves, he grabs her hand asking her not to go. She’s flattered thinking he was pretending to be sleeping so he could get close to her. Only Daehyun says ‘Yeonjoo’, mistaking Saetbyul for her. Saetbyul gets so pissed that she whacks him repeatedly until he falls off the chair.
Yeonjoo sits at home wondering how to best confront Daehyun. While and typing and deleting texts, she accidentally sends one that says ‘You sure look like you were having a blast’ LOL. She deletes it but it shows up anyway to Daehyun who sees that she removed a message.
The next day, we see a schoolmaster yelling at students who’re late everyday and punish them. However, when Geumbi, who has a rich father, pulls up super late and stinking of alcohol, he lets her pass by and even gives her a hangover drink and changes the cafeteria lunch menu to hangover soup just for her. He clearly hates doing it but she’s rich and he has no choice (this kind of makes me dislike Saetbyul for hanging out with someone like Geumbi, who seems like a terrible person. Also aren’t they 22? Why is Geumbi still in high school?)
At the same time, Daehyun wakes up after a terrible dream where Dalshik takes Yeonjoo from him. He looks beaten up.
He’s surprised to find Saetbyul still working at the shop. She’s worked 2 hours overtime because he didn’t wake up. He promises to pay her overtime wages. She asks if he doesn’t remember asking her to stay and he asks why the hell he would ask her to stay, and shoves her out. As she’s leaving, she passes a university student wearing his school jersey. The student asks for 2 packs for cigarettes. Daehyun sighs, and asks the student to quit smoking, but hands him the cigarettes. The student looks delighted (uh oh) and runs off.
Daehyun opens some water to drink and suddenly remembers all the drinking that happened last night. Horrified, he checks the cash register and sees and none of the drinks that Saetbyul and her friends drank were paid for. The total? Around $182. YIKES.
Daehyun also notices Yeonjoo’s deleted message and freaks out, praying that he didn’t see her. He texts her asking what she sent him last night and asks her to give him a call. She looks frustrated but responds calmly, saying she finishes early and is free to have dinner.
Saetbyul cuddles up to the gigantic sloth plushie from 3 years ago (she must have saved it from the garbage!) and beats the crap out of it thinking about Daehyun holding her hand thinking she was Yeonjoo. Daehyun isn’t having a good time either. Yeonjoo’s taken him to a super fancy Italian restaurant where they’re eating cream-based food. Spicy food’s best after a hangover and Daehyun’s craving some but when he mentions wanting spicy food, Yeonjoo calls him out on wanting it because he’s hungover. Daehyun denies it (always a bad move). 
She says there’s nothing they can do now and he should’ve said something earlier. Daehyun sighs that he made another mistake. Yeonjoo seizes on that and asks if he did something he regrets last night. Daehyun lies AGAIN, saying he did nothing. (Oh boy this is frustrating. Being a relationship is all about being honest with your partner not hiding things from them to make yourself look good and to cover up your mistakes. That’s not attractive.)
He tries to turn it on her by asking why she deleted her text and saying that she makes mistakes too (okay, this is getting a little sad, please don’t resort to this Daehyun). She calls him out and says that he’s just acting like he made a mistake, logically speaking. They eat in silence, awkwardly. She has a car so they drive home, but he walks back saying he’s going to fire Saetbyul. Yeonjoo asks what happened and he tells her and she and her friends had a party at his store and didn’t pay for anything. Yeonjoo said that her friends must all be younger women, so Daehyun must’ve had a drink or two with them. Daehyun adamantly denies it (ughhhh, stop lyinnnnggg) and says he was a real proper adult and put them right in their places. He says they ran out crying at how scary he was.
At this point, Yeonjoo’s had enough of him. Daehyun brings up that he should meet her parents, but Yeonjoo isn’t keen on that (girl same). Daehyun says they’ve been discussing this for a while, but Yeonjoo shrugs it off.
So he heads off and Yeonjoo heads in. (Wow, her house is fancy. She’s clearly filthy rich and even has maids!).
Meanwhile, Daehyun’s parents are not having a good time. His mother (GONG BOONHEE) comes come to find Yongpil (Daehyun’s dad) sitting on a massage chair that he just bought using Boonhee’s credit card. Boonhee furiously hits him saying she slaves day in and day out to earn money, while he wastes it on 24-month installments for expensive massage chairs. Turns out, he’s put the family in extreme debt and they’re all struggling to pay it off because of him (ooffff, that’s terrible).
Daehyun returns to the convenience store to find it bustling with customers. He notes that Saetbyul does have her perks and flashes back to Geumbi and Eunjo telling him that Saetbyul used her first kiss on him. After that, she’s never kissed anyone. Daehyun says there’s no way she likes him. Both her friends chorus in unison that she definitely likes him. After that, Daehyun doesn’t know how to approach her. A lady (cameo by LEE YOO BI) brings a cute dog that Saetbyul fawns over and kisses. Daehyun petulantly notes that he’s no longer Saetbyul’s last kiss
Daehyun pets that same dog who gives him a kiss and he freaks out thinking that he just indirectly kissed Saetbyul. He yells at the dog and the customer’s offended enough to vow that she’ll never return. Saetbyul yells at Daehyun for chasing away customers. He yells at her for letting her friends help themselves. Saetbyul points out that they paid up and says the money’s in his back pocket. Daehyun checks and is horrified to find $200. The reason for the extra $18? Because he did the hula dance for her friends.
He’s super embarrassed but super pleased about the money. Instead of firing her, he warns her that drinking during work hours isn’t okay. After leaving, he collapses in sheer embarrassment while she mutters that he really waves his butt for everyone.
He doesn’t get to cringe for long because an officer’s arrived to the store, the same one that arrested Daehyun in episode 1. Turns out the student he sold cigarettes to in the morning is a minor. The officer tsks at him, while Daehyun insists that the student told him he was in mechanical engineering. However, selling cigarettes to minors results in stores being suspended from selling cigarettes for 2 months. Daehyun things back to the video series he was watching (the one that convinced him that Saetbyul was a thief) where the the narrator yells that they don’t sell cigarettes to minors on purpose. Sometimes they look so old that they’re fooled into doing it. However, there’s a Protection Law for Good Business Owners to protect shop owners who fell for fake ids and the like. As long the footage of the owner checking his ID can be found, the business won’t be suspended.
Daehyun scours through the files but can’t seem to find the footage of him checking the id. Saetbyul looks at him worriedly. After hours and hours, Daehyun’s half dead. He recruits Dalshik to take over, only Dalshik falls asleep and wakes up to Geumbi and Eunjo wondering what species he belongs to. (what the hell? Having dreadlocks doesn’t make you subhuman or covered in bugs. I’m so done with how this shoe uses black culture for jokes. It’s not funny) He yells back at them that they sure look old for 22 year olds and thus begins an all-out brawl that yells with Dalshik’s face covered in blood. Saetbyul and Daehyun try to break it up and only end up getting dragged in. Saetbyul yells at her friends to do go through the CCTV all night if they have to.
(Exaactly. Saetbyul gets it.)
Only Yeonjoo calls demanding that Daehyun show up because it’s urgent. Daehyun immediately runs off. Saetbyul tries to stop him saying there’s nothing more urgent that keeping his store open (I’m inclined to agree). But he runs over anyway. Saetbyul’s so pissed that she tells her friends to go home and not bother going through the CCTV. Her friends wonder why she’s like this. Daehyun arrives to find that Yeonjoo’s car has broken down. She wants him to wait for the insurance company and sort things out with them, while she takes the cab he took to get her and runs off to work (umm…I hope she doesn’t ask these favours tooo often. She seems to treat him like her errand boy so she’s not that great either).
Back at the convenience store, Boonhee’s come to take over from Saetbyul and happily restocks cigarettes saying they make up 50% of convenience store sales, and customers who come for them end up buying other things which makes them a profit. She knows she should tell them not to smoke, but the profits are so good, she can’t bring herself to do that (fair enough! It’s their decision!) Saetbyul looks worried.
Daehyun’s riding with the tow truck driver who came to get Yeonjoo’s car when he sees the high school student who started all this trouble. He runs off after him and sees the student entering another convenience store to buy cigarettes. Daehyun manages to stop the store owner in time. He yells at the student, demanding to know the first date he entered the store but the student just laughs. Sadly enough, there are no consequences for the student defrauding store owners and getting their businesses suspended. Only the business owners suffer. Daehyun’s debating on beating up the student when Saetbyul calls, screaming that there’s an emergency. He runs out and the student demands his cigarettes. The store owner has no choice give how real his fake id looks, and sells them to him. Yikes.
Only, we see that Saetbyul has a plan. Her friends have been following this guy from the start and inform Saetbyul of his whereabouts. They sigh that they’re stuck doing all kinds of strange things because Saetbyul’s madly in love
Saetbyul corners the student and asks if he knows who she is. He says of course he does.
She says then she knows she’s different from Daehyun, whose livelihood depends on his store. Unlike Daehyun, she has no family and got expelled from school (wait what?) so she has nothing to lose. She kicks the lollipop out of his mouth and forces him to repeat after her: “Cigarettes are 50% of convenience store sales”. She forces him to reveal the date he first came to the store. January 8th at 6pm! She happily races over to tell a very relieved Daehyun. He notices a scratch on her arm and bandages it for her. She’s clearly moved by the gesture while he’s moved, noticing that she’s out of breath having run all the way to tell him.
He says that even if they can’t sell cigarettes that’s less work for her and she’d still be paid at the same rate. The store’s issues wouldn’t affect her, so why go so far? Saetbyul says that it might seem weird that she cares more about this store than him who places his girlfriend before his family livelihood (ooohhh Daehyun deserves that one) but that she did it to get hired as an official part-timer as opposed to a temporary part-timer. Daehyun asks when he agreed to this. Saetbyul insists he did last night when he was half-asleep. Daehyun has no memory of this and refuses to believe it so she makes to snatch the CCTV usb from him when they end up getting really close.
He shoves her away with one finger, but then asks if there’s something he can check. He’s about to ask her about her first kiss three years ago and she guesses that successfully by him repeatedly stuttering ‘first’ and ‘three’ but he ends up yelling about something else. Saetbyul smiles as she leaves, certain that he wanted to ask about three years ago. As Daehyun watches her work, he wonders if he treated her exactly as he was treated years ago.
Flashback to Daehyun working an office job and being treated like garbage by his manager for writing a bad report. The manager yells that this is why specs matter and that he shouldn’t have hired someone from a community college, when another worker pipes up that he was the one who wrote it. The manager doesn’t even apologize to Daehyun.
In the present, Daehyun wonders if he was too biased to see her character for what it was. He calls Yeonjoo to see how she’s doing. He says he’ll drive her car to her office tomorrow and tells her that he won’t be firing the part-timer. Yeonjoo’s surprised, but he tells her that he misunderstood Saetbyul. Yeonjoo says he’s been too hasty and that he promised to discuss it with her before making a decision, but Daehyun interrupt her to say he’s made his decision.
But this is regarding his store and he’s made the decision as its manager so he’d like it if she could respect his decision. She tells him to to whatever he wants and to hangs up. Daehyun sighs that she’s angry (he’s right on that one). Yeonjoo works away at night when JO SEUNGJOON (our second male lead, and seems to be a boss of hers) comes by. Noting that they’re both working late, he asks if she’d like to join him for dinner. He agrees.
There’s a strange atmosphere between the two as they eat. Like they know each other very well and are pretending to be formal for the same of work. He asks her how Daehyun’s convenience store is going, as it’s one of their company’s franchises. She tells him to stop talking about someone who isn’t here. Seungjoon says they can just talk about ‘us’ instead. She switches to ‘our work’ but they seem to know each other so well. Hmm…..
Meanwhile at the store, Geumbi and Eunjo found a gem during CCTV footage review of Daehyun dancing by himself. They sent to Saetbyul who’s delighted and coos over how there’s nothing her Daehyun can’t do it.
She dances about in store, and Daehyun (who’s checking on the store CCTV to see if she’s thrown another party with her friends) wonders wtf she’s doing. But he’s surprised at how similar their dancing style is. He smiles and starts to dance about himself watching her on the screen, as she does the same watching him on her screen.
Thoughts: Okay they’re getting so cute together. Saetbyul’s really warming up to me now and I like that we’re seeing the flaws in the people around her. Daehyun does whatever Yeonjoo wants him to but can’t be honest with her. Yeonjoo uses Daehyun and also can’t start an honest dialogue, resorting to being snarky instead of actually saying how she feels. She also seems to have hiding something, either regarding her rich family or Seungjoon. Either way, he lifestyle really contrasts with Daehyun’s and her not wanting him to meet her parents doesn’t bode well for the relationship.
Saetbyul and Daehyun are too cute for words though! She knows what she wants and I’m glad to see that she didn’t throw the party on purpose to ruin Daehyun’s date, it’s just something she did for fun. Still not right, but much more emblematic of how innocent she is in many ways. I hope Daehyun realizes that dating his ex-boss who doesn’t seem to thinking much of him isn’t the best idea and warms up more to Saetbyul!
The Quill and Screen 