Rang excitedly wonders what will happen if he hurts her.
Yeon attribute Rang's disposition to a lack of affection, accusing him of having a brother complex. That wipes the smile of Rang's face as he spits that it's all Yeon's fault for choosing some girl and abandoning the mountain and— Yeon completes his thought. "You're right. I abandoned you."
Rang looked on the verge of tears.
Yeon smirked.
Isn't that what he wanted to hear? Rang tells him get lost, overturning the table and grabbing Yeon by the lapels. Yeon removes his hand and acts like a big brother, advising Rang not to drink too much. He was not interested in whether Rang knows where Ah-eum is and leaves as Rang smiles sinisterly.
The following day, Ji-ah and Yeon meet coincidentally on the same boat going to the skull island. She asks who he's looking for and offers to help, but he was clearly not in a sharing mood. He was concerned that she would be putting too much stock in the dream planted by the bulgasari. The bulsagari mix truth and lies, so her parents might be unrelated to the skull island. The dream that Ji-ah saw, she thought there might be something related to her parents.
The fact that Yeon happened to run into Ji-ah, a woman sharing Ah-eum's face, while they're both on the way to the same island seems too coincidental to Yeon.
When they reach land, Yeon stumbles off the boat as he heaves. I guess his motion sickness patch wasn't too effective.
Yeon tags along with Ji-ah, pretending to be a staff member at her station, while she meets with the victim's daughter Pyeong-hee. Her father's boat was capsized during a storm, and the police assume he was decapitated by a propeller but wasn't very sure.
The night prior to his death, Pyeong-hee claims that her father dreamed her dead mother, who was holding Pyeong-hee's hands. Yeon insensitively states that her mother was probably coming to "pick her up," but her father went instead. Ji-ah shoots him a look, and he halfheartedly attempts to walk it back.
Whereas, the other fishermen badmouth Pyeong-hee for talking to a TV producer;
"Why is she talking to that tv producer? does she wants to make a joke out her late father?"
"Have you heard anything about the fisherman who has been missing after finding the skull?"
Pyeong-hee lends Ji-ah and Yeon a room, which is too shabby for Yeon's taste. Ji-ah tells him to go to the mountain then if this room to too "shabby" for him ; she says that she saw it in a documentary that his kind specializes in burrowing. He cutely refuses to eschew modern conveniences and insists on staying in the shabby room too.
Afterwards,
Ji-ah goes to talk to the fisherman who downplay how well they know the victim. One of the men lecherously asks Ji-ah to pour a drink for him, if she wants him to talk. She pours until it overflows onto his lap. When the man goes to hit her, Ji-ah politely asks if he can shift over a bit so she can catch it on camera which she placed in a angle where their face were revealed.
Yeon is really impressed by her gutsiness and follows her (but totally isn't following her) as she investigates. The elders weren't willing to speak to her, so now it's her turn to follow Yeon as he investigates. He communes with the forest and declares it "dead." The spirits of the mountain have all left due to being forgotten.
A girl steps out and kneels to Yeon, the former master of the mountain. She was the spirit bound to the shrine tree. As she continues that a "corruptive" force came and changed the island, leaving her alone since the Korean War.
Yeon asks Ji-ah to cut the ropes of the tree, in order to set that spirit free, as he couldn't do it because he was a former mountain spirit. At Yeon's behest, Ji-ah cuts the rope binding the spirit to the tree. The spirit thanked Ji-ah and said that she has a connection with the forest and also says that "Things have changed" . Yeon cocks his head at that. She tells Ji-ah that she'll find her first answer on the north side of the forest and she disappeares.
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Meanwhile, Pyeong-hee and a shaman, petition the sea gods to help locate the rest of her father's body. The shaman stops and says her father's body isn't in the sea. It came to shore before his skull.
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Heading north, Ji-ah and Yeon arrive at a cave which exactly matches the cave in a photo of her parents. She recalls that her mom was pregnant with her at the time. She spent a several hours there thinking about the why her parents came here.
That night, Yeon stays in the "shabby" room but complains about the smelly blanket. Ji-ah suddenly informs him she has fatty liver. You know, in case he gets hungry. She cracks up at his indignant response, and he goes still. He sees Ah-eum in her laugh and tells Ji-ah not to laugh with that face. He said that she looked ugly
(A/N: poor Ji-ah)
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Back in the city, Snail Bride's owner BOK HYE-JA gushes over how romantic Yeon is as he brought a beautiful girl with him the other day , but Shin-joo thinks the price Yeon has paid is not so romantic.
He vows not to risk his life for love and to protect Yeon instead. Hye-ja calls that too is love .
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That night, Yeon watches Ji-ah sleep and tests again if she's Ah-eum. It fails again . He sighs and drapes his blanket over her before he goes outside.
Rang's threats and Taluipa's warnings consume his thoughts.
In morning, Ji-ah wakes to find Yeon tempting the elders with some fresh wild ginseng.
"Elders if you want this ginseng, all you have to do is talk to Ji-ah"
"Ahem .. don't tell anyone that we told this to you okay, this is not the first beheading in this island, many more people had been suddenly disappeared before also"
Ji-ah asked Jae-hwan to find more cases similar about the victim, after Jae-hwan does some digging , he finds four female victims since 1954, all unidentified. That coincides with when the tree spirit said "things changed". Ji-ah hangs up and sees the missing fisherman running through the woods with a hammer. So, naturally, she chases him.
He trips and falls, and when Ji-ah tries to help him up, he hits her shoulder with the hammer. He yells that she's a ghost and attacks again, but Yeon takes the blow. He wrenches the hammer and goes to strike, but Ji-ah stops him from killing the man, so he lets him run off.
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Meanwhile, Rang calls Yoo-ri and says he's at the "ghost house." Suddenly someone screams ; one middle aged man was drown in a toilet bowl while another seems to choke himself.
It was clear that Rang is on the island.