The next morning at Incheon International Airport, South Korea's primary airport serving the Seoul Capital area. A very fashionable and noticeable woman with dark sunglasses cat walks out of the arriving flight area. Locals talked among themselves about who this woman could be. Many paparazzi were already there waiting to take a picture of her. Flashes from cameras instantly became like twinkling stars in a crowd of people.
"Lee Ji-Yeon!"
"Ms. Lee Ji-Yeon, what is the reason you came back to Korea?"
They all surround her along with her fans asking her for autographs. Her security team tries to separate her from the crowd. "I'm visiting my son." She said in the midst of traveling to the baggage claim area.
The crowd continues to follow her when she meets up with Ivan's assistant who was waiting for her outside of the airport.
He opens the door for her to enter. More questions arose from the crowd when they recognized Ivan's assistant.
"Why isn't Ivan Kim here to pick you up?"
"Where is Ivan Kim?"
Ji-Yeon paused while she gets herself seated in the car. Every time she hears Ivan's name, the more resented anger builds up inside her. "Ivan is doing a cast reading for his next project. Now, would you excuse me, I need to get Ms. Lee Ji-Yeon to visit her son." Said the assistant. He makes his way to the driver seat, passed the paparazzi who are still taking pictures and asking questions.
While leaving the airport, Ji-Yeon takes off her sunglasses. "So he really didn't come...." The assistant looks at Ji-Yeon in the rear view mirror. "I'm sure if he wasn't busy, he'd pick you up himself."
"You don't have to humor me." She takes out her compact makeup kit and a mirror to check her face. "Tell me... What has he been doing with my son?"
"He's been trying to discipline him." She looks at the assistant at the rear view mirror.
"Discipline him?" she questions.
"Correcting his spoiled American behavior as he so put it."
She turns her attention back to her own mirror. "And how is he doing that?"
"He is going to specialized English-Korean primary school and Mr. Kim had hired a nanny."
Ji-Yeon paused. She looks up at the rear view mirror again.
"A nanny?"
"Yes. To my understanding, she is also American."
Ji-Yeon slams her compact makeup kit on her hand.
"And he said I spoiled him..."
Meanwhile at Ivan's residence. Mona is in Jae's room, trying to get lazy Jae out of bed. He wraps himself with the blankets while she tries to pull it off of him.
"Come on, Jae! You're going to be late!"
Muffled by the blankets he said, "I don't care! I don't' want to go to school!"
"What's with your attitude this morning?"
"I don't' want to get up, I don't want to get up!"
Mona lets go of the blankets with a frustrated sigh. "Jeez is it this hard to get this kid out of bed? This is the first time I'm actually doing this by myself. With Ivan at work and the assistant picking up his mother... I'm basically doing all the work myself!"
"I hate to do this but I'm going to count to three."
"Oh, wow. You can count to three, I'm scared." He said sarcastically.
She quickly grabs the blanket again and starts to count, "One..."
He does not make any movement.
"Two..."
She paused, giving him a chance to redeem himself.
"Jae, don't make me get to three..."
"Or what? You can't hurt me. Dad is going to fire you if you do."
She lets go of the blanket again and tries to calm herself down.
"...Is there a reason why you don't want to go to school today?" She asked.
He takes a long moment before answering, "...No..." he said softly.
She smiles, "Did you forget to do your homework?"
Again, he takes a long moment before answering,
"...No..."
"Did you really mean 'Yes'?"
"...Maybe."
She pulls the blanket off of him. Jae covers his eyes with his hands.
"You have to finish your homework, no matter how hard it is."
He takes his hands away from his face and glares at her.
"That's the whole point of going to school, to learn."
"Alright. Since you're so smart..." He gets out of his bed. She watches him curiously going to his backpack on the table. He pulls out his workbook and flips to a page with no work done. "Why don't you help me on this then, Nanny."
Mona picks up the workbook to see everything written in Korean. She almost develops dyslexia from just looking at the strange characters that seemed to jump off the page.
"Uh..." She said awkwardly.
Jae hands her a pencil. "Yeah, I'm supposed to do 5 pages of these work problems a night. Aren't you also my tutor?"
"Um...well, you see..." She shakes her head after closing the workbook. "Why didn't you ask your dad for help?"
He slowly sits down on a chair. "I didn't want him to be mad at me..."
She places the book back on the table as she leans in closer to listen to him.
"Ever since I came here, dad is so mean to me. Yesterday when we went to the amusement park, he seemed happy. For once he didn't try to yell at me."
Mona remembers the smiles and the joyful laughter they all shared that day.
"I didn't want him to yell at me for not understanding how to do my homework."
She looks at the cover of the book on the table before speaking, "But you have an excuse. You haven't learned Korean characters."
"I was going to ask him last night until he got mad about my mom coming to visit."
Mona is surprised that Jae heard the conversation in the car.
"You were awake?" She asked.
"Of course I was. You guys were talking so loud."
She takes a step back and wonders what to do in this situation.
"Hm. Well. I'm sorry that you had to hear that but...Yes, your mother is visiting today. Your father told me not to tell you until he was done with his cast reading so that we could all be there."
Jae sadly takes the book off the table and places it in his bag.
"Jae is really going through a lot. He is only 7 and he had to travel from the only place he called home, to a place he doesn't even know the language of and expected to achieve so much in so little time. Just because his parents had a falling out. It's no wonder this kid has so much resentment."
Mona kneels down to Jae's eye level.
"I'll tell you what. I'll take the heat for tonight's missed homework but you have to promise me that from now on when you have troubles with your homework, don't wait until the last minute." Jae nods.
"I also need to take my own advice. In order to help Jae get through this, I have to do my homework to learn Korean as well."
At Hee Joon's house, Hee Joon is sitting at his desk in his office. He looks through internet sites on his computer when he comes across an article about Ivan Kim accepting a role for a highly anticipating drama series. A video teaser was attached to show fans their cast reading meeting. He clicks on it and observes a few seconds of Ivan's on screen persona. Every word he spoke made Hee Joon remembered how humiliating and angry he was on the night Mona chose to stay with Ivan instead of him.
Within a short moment, Hye-Min walks into his office. He looks up at her, giving her only a fraction of a second before resuming back to the video.
"I told you to leave the house. Why are you still here?" She walks closer to the desk, ignoring his demand.
"Haven't you figured it out yet that it's gonna be very hard to get rid of me?" She notices how intrigued he was with the video. She leans closer to read the title of the article.
"Ivan Kim cast as 'Park Jin-Woo' in 'The Return of The Lost Prince.'" She smirks.
Hee Joon exits the article site and looks at her, "What do you want?" He asked in an annoyed tone.
"I just want to know. How badly do you want your father's company to last? One more year? Two more years? If you want it to survive longer, I suggest you not talk that way with me."
Hee Joon stands up and faces Hye-Min closer, "Once I take over this company, I wouldn't need your family's help to keep it alive."
His fearless eyes was a match to Hye-Min's fierce eyes staring back at him.
"You won't even be able to inherit the company successfully without my help."
He takes a step back to analyze Hye-Min's stance.
"Until you are President remember this..." She reaches for his neck tie and pulls him towards closer to her face. "Your father came to my father for help. One word from me and you can kiss everything, 'Goodbye'." Hee Joon opens his eyes widely to Hye-Min's threatening comment. She playfully blows a kiss in the distance between them while slowly letting go of her grip on his neck tie.