At Princess Central, Kang-ja watches the scene unfolding on the Chairman Hong Cam, where the education minister she’d believed would address her complaints turns out to be just as crooked as the rest. She fumes while Gong-joo worries that the involvement of a man this powerful spells danger for Kang-ja, since he could silence her easily. Kang-ja didn’t give her name, but she did outline all the details of Yi-kyung and Jung-woo.
And then, Jung-woo appears on the camera to meet with the chairman, confirming their suspicions of everyone being in on this together.
Jung-woo has been summoned for his turn on the scold-o’-go-round, angry that the education minister was brought into this. Jung-woo reads Kang-ja’s anonymous letter and promises to take care of it, and the chairman threatens that he’d better. To himself, Chairman Hong mutters that he can’t be rid of Jung-woo yet… but wants to clear him out as soon as the “laundry machine” is done with its cleaning.
Ae-yeon worries about just that happening, but Jung-woo isn’t nearly as worried. He knows he’s got dirt on his father (or rather, that he is the dirt on his father) and suggests that Ae-yeon trust him on this. He figures his leverage gives him a fifty-fifty shot at winning this battle, and those are pretty good gambling odds.
Knowing that Ae-yeon is in with the education foundation, Kang-ja wants to talk to her for information, while Gong-joo argues vehemently against it. Even if she was once their friend, someone who backstabbed once will backstab again. It won’t take long for the baddies to pinpoint Kang-ja as the letter-writer, so the priority is to get Kang-ja out of school and Ah-ran into a new one.
But Kang-ja argues the reverse, that it’s better not to run. Leaving would make Ah-ran look like the culprit and throw her into more danger.
At home, Mom-in-law grumbles over the dishes and is fed up with keeping Kang-ja’s secret, especially when Kang-ja has forgotten to schedule that facelift she promised. She’s ready to spill the beans to Jin-sang and calls him out, ignoring Kang-ja’s silent pleas to keep quiet. But Mom-in-law manages to blurt, “Your wife is going to school!” and the jig is up… or is it? Kang-ja admits that it’s true, but then spins a lie about realizing she wanted to be a better wife, mother, and daughter-in-law, and that she’s enrolled in “mom school.” Pwahaha.
Mom-in-law rolls her eyes, but when Kang-ja adds that one of her investments is about to mature and promises it all to her, she thinks twice. Jin-sang is just amazed that one class could bridge this in-law conflict so effectively and gives his approval: Keep going to school!
Noah reels from the revelation that his beloved father isn’t as incorruptible as he’d always believed. When Dad comes home that evening, he faces him with disillusioned eyes and asks, “Why did you do it?” Without explaining, Dad immediately knows what he means, but his attempt to explain out goes rebuffed.
Noah rips his school appointment certificate off his wall and throws it to the ground, sobbing silently.
At school, Ah-ran assures her mother that she’ll be fine if she just studies and doesn’t cause any trouble, urging Mom to do the same.
Speaking of trouble, Bok-dong motions her aside, and then holds up his shoe and orders her to tie his shoelace. Ha, are you testing your feelings using shoelace-tying as your barometer? Silly boy.
Kang-ja’s annoyed at his order but sighs and ties it anyway, and takes the moment to urge him to correct his attitude. She tells him that he doesn’t have to put on a tough act around her, and prods him to explain what happened the night Yi-kyung died, offering to clear his name.
Bok-dong asks if she likes him, because who is she to clear his name for him? He orders her to butt out, just as they hear voices around the corner and duck behind some construction materials. Kang-ja recognizes her husband with Dong-chil and listens (Dong-chil just orders hubby to just do as ordered instead of raising questions), while Bok-dong notices how close they are and leans in closer to smell her hair. Aie, he is too cute, the way he closes his eyes and just smiles.
He’s so caught up in the leaning-and-smelling that he doesn’t notice her getting up until she asks what he’s doing. Flustered and embarrassed, he tries to play it off (completely ineptly, I might add) and ends up barking, “Who said I’d like someone like you?!” Smoooooth. He hurries off before he can muck this up any further.
Then Kang-ja turns and comes face to face with her husband, whose eyes widen in recognition. She doubles over, throws her hair in her face, and starts hacking to disguise her voice but Jin-sang grabs her and forces her face into view, wondering what the hell she’s doing dressed like a student.
Kang-ja hisses at him to be quiet… and just around the way, Bok-dong turns back to see the middle-aged man trying to drag her home with him.
Bok-dong misinterprets mention of the word “husband” and asks if Kang-ja’s got a sugar daddy, and Jin-sang gets called away before he can say anything.
Incredulous, Bok-dong bursts out, “If you needed money, you should’ve told me—I can give you as much of that as you need!” He puts his wallet in her hand and says, “Don’t go around meeting guys like that. Don’t live your life so recklessly!” Oh, you adorable little boy.
Their conversation makes them late for class, and Noah starts to scold their tardiness. But the vice principal’s comments about him being no less corrupted make him stop the lecture, and he stands there thumping his chest in agitation.
Kang-ja assumes that he’s suffering from indigestion and drags him to the infirmary, insisting on the old home remedy of pricking a finger to clear it up (the thought process is that indigestion impedes with proper circulation, so you have to let the bad blood out). As she fusses over him, Noah thinks of his father treating him the same way, and the memory unleashes more tears.
Kang-ja doesn’t pry when he just says he cried because the needle hurt, and wonders what he’s got bottled up inside. She advises that leaving indigestion untreated (or, in the metaphor version, leaving a problem to fester) only turns it into a bigger problem down the line—so although it hurts now, it’s better to let the bad blood out so things can run their course.
Noah only refers to his father obliquely, saying that he probably did what he did “because I looked too weak.” He must have been uneasy about sending him into the cruel world alone.
“I don’t think being weak is a bad thing,” Noah says. “And I don’t think losing is a loss. But for someone to face evil for me because I’m weak—I realized that’s a bad thing. If I can’t protect somebody because I’m weak, that’s a mistake—I’ve realized that now too.” Noah leaves the infirmary ready to submit his resignation letter.
Jung-hee tries to join Sang-tae’s study group again, but they’re none too friendly this time around. Sang-tae sneers that she’s not on their level, and their classmates snicker to see her cast out.
Gong-joo presents Kang-ja with a mountain of research she’s done into the education minister’s background, but he’s made sure to tie up any loose ends perfectly. They can’t pinpoint his connection to Jung-woo, but Kang-ja suspects that it has something to do with the construction project going on at the school.
Just then, Kang-ja receives a call from Ae-yeon. Gong-joo warns of rumors that peg Ae-yeon as the chairman’s mistress, which makes her extra dangerous to confide in.
Kang-ja asks Ae-yeon point-blank what her relationship is to the chairman, and also whether they’re still friends. Ae-yeon doesn’t know the answer to the latter, but answers the first by unbuttoning her shirt to reveal the bruises covering her back. She calls the chairman “my enemy.”
Kang-ja’s horrified at the signs of abuse and fired up to do something about it, but Ae-yeon says that this is what money does—it turns you into a liar and makes you greedy for more. But she’s vowed to protect herself, just as Kang-ja vowed to protect her daughter, and that’s not something she can have without money or power.
Kang-ja proposes that they go after all the bad guys and put them away, including the education minister, but Ae-yeon urges her to leave school before she’s hurt. She may not be able to protect Kang-ja, but this is the last advice she can offer. When Kang-ja asks only that Ae-yeon not tell what she knows, Ae-yeon agrees and apologizes for not being able to help.
To the contrary, Kang-ja thanks her for all her help thus far, and calls her “friend.”
Dong-chil reads the complaint filed against Jung-woo and recognizes the name of the complaint filer, even if we don’t: Go Jong-man, somebody who “still hasn’t come to his senses.” And even more curious than this mysterious man is the remark Jung-woo makes to a “last time” that can’t be discovered, because it would be bad for Dong-chil.
Perhaps he means Yi-kyung’s death, although the flashback we get to that night on the rooftop points the trouble more at Jung-woo than Dong-chil. We see now that it was the full trio out there on the roof (including Bok-dong), and Jung-woo had been in the lead as he approached Yi-kyung. She’d been filming them on her phone while begging for mercy, and when he lurched at her, the scuffle with him was the last thing captured on her camera.
That’s the phone Jung-woo had run over… which Dong-chil then picked up. Hm, so did he take it for safekeeping, or to use against him?
In the morning, Kang-ja’s husband vociferously protests her going to school, arguing that she misunderstood everything about Jung-woo. Mom-in-law chimes in with threats of her own, saying that if Kang-ja goes to school, then both mother and daughter can pack their bags and move out. After all, Kang-ja should have been that they took her in with someone else’s baby.
Kang-ja replies that the home is half hers, so Mom-in-law can leave if she wants. And when Jin-sang tries to prevent her departure by taking her shoes, she just goes on in her stocking feet.
Of course, she can’t go to school with her feet wrapped in plastic bags, and tells Ah-ran to go first while she buys new sneakers. With a sigh, Ah-ran kneels down and tells Mom to get on her back—and in a compromise, Kang-ja ends up wearing Ah-ran’s shoes and piggybacking her instead.
In gym class, the kids are told to partner up, and Sang-tae heads over to Ah-ran, only to have Kang-ja jump in quickly with a sharp look his way. Hee. I notice Bok-dong looks equally bummed, and both boys end up with partners they don’t want. Jung-hee also ends up with an unwanted partner since her two sidekicks ditch her, and spends most of her time complaining about Mackerel (the boy whose mother sells fish, who also tried to buy the test answers) getting fish smell on her.
Meanwhile, Kang-ja pushes Ah-ran to do better at sit-ups, only to struggle to even pull off a single one when it’s her turn. Heh, the ole body’s not quite the same in your thirties, is it?
A minor commotion arises when Grandma shows up at the school office demanding to see Kang-ja, which is a name nobody recognizes. They think she’s batty, and Noah recalls Kang-ja warning him about the senile grandma who wanders the neighborhood searching for her lost child.
So while they don’t believe her story about a wayward daughter-in-law acting as a student, they let her rifle through the student profiles looking for Kang-ja, while outside the room Kang-ja hurriedly calls her husband to take care of the situation.
Grandma’s just about to see the Bang-wool’s profile picture when Ah-ran, thinking fast, bursts in and pours on the concern for her ill grandmother, begging her to acknowledge that “Kang-ja” is not of this world. Then Jin-sang arrives and corroborates the story that his mother’s a bit senile, apologizing to the faculty.
His mother is affronted until he whispers that he could get fired—and then suddenly Grandma slaps on a loony smile and starts acting legitimately senile. I’m dying laughing here.
News spreads around school, and Bok-dong checks in with Jung-hee’s (ex-)sidekicks to get the true (false) story, about that grandma being Bang-wool’s adoptive mother, and that there’s another woman who must be the bio-mom. Bok-dong exerts his brainpower (so cutely limited) to put together the pieces, and concludes that Bang-wool’s sugar daddy is the son of her adoptive mother. He sighs at the magnitude of her idiocy.
Jung-hee takes a nap in the athletic storeroom after gym class and realizes she’s been locked in. She bangs on the door for help, but the people who hear her aren’t inclined to help: two guys pass by indifferently, and the snotty girls who locked her in (from Sang-tae’s study group) just figure her sidekicks will let her out.
But they’re still miffed at her for ditching them and ignore her calls and texts, and then her phone dies. Jung-hee spends hours shouting for help, to no avail, and by the time school is out she’s reduced to panic and tears.
Noah notices that she’s not in her seat when he adjourns class that evening, but figures she played hooky. Mackerel has an inkling, though, and sends a text to Kang-ja to let her know.
Kang-ja misses the message because she left her phone behind, but Gong-joo’s minion finds it, and soon thereafter Gong-joo makes her way to the storeroom to let Jung-hee out. She cradles Jung-hee consolingly and takes her back to Princess Central, and lets her know that Mackerel was the one to send the tip to help her.
When Gong-joo asks if nobody else came to help, Jung-hee blusters that she has loads of friends. Gong-joo just smiles knowingly and shares some wisdom about the fate of the “jjang”—a jjang is empowered from within, strong against the strong, weak against the weak, and moved to fight injustice. That way, even if nobody’s at your side, you can call yourself the jjang. And Jung-hee takes this in with awe, completely enraptured.
Kang-ja bursts in calling out for Gong-joo, and to cover up they hastily pretend that Minion 1 is Gong-joo. And since gong-joo means princess, Minion affects a princessy falsetto to play along, and now the cover story is totally weirder than the real one.
As they leave, Jung-hee admits to being too embarrassed to call Kang-ja after turning on her before, and apologizes for it. When Kang-ja tells her not to do that in the future, Jung-hee swears to it, especially now that she’s been inspired to become just like Gong-joo when she grows up. She skips off wishing she could be adopted, and Kang-ja wonders what in the world her friend said to cause that reaction.
…And then, and then Dong-chil arrives at the nighclub. Ooh, the Go Jong-man who filed the complaint is actually Princess Minion 1. The plot thickens!
Dong-chil knocks the minion around in the alley, who feigns ignorance of anybody named Ah-ran. He says that his name must have been stolen to file that complaint, and Dong-chil accepts that answer for now, but warns that he’ll be back, and Minion had better find out who stole his identity.
Kang-ja’s husband presents her with two forms and an ultimatum: Drop out of school, or divorce. She rips up the divorce form, asking if he’d really divorce over this, and he argues that their income stream depends on it. This is a really important project for him, ordered by the education ministry itself, planned by Jung-woo.
That’s enough of a connection to get wheels turning in Kang-ja’s brain, and she tells Gong-joo that she’ll be going after proof of it tomorrow night. She asks her friend to pick up Ah-ran from school in her stead, but that plan is complicated when Gong-joo gets a flat tire and Ah-ran is left waiting while everyone heads home.
Dong-chil sees her waiting all alone… but so does Bok-dong.
Kang-ja slips into school after hours and picks the lock to Jung-woo’s office, where she rifles through files about various education projects until she finds a list with her own name on it. It’s definitely suspicious, but she has to duck out of sight upon Jung-woo’s approach.
He thankfully doesn’t see her there, and just tells Dong-chil over the phone to “shut her up” through any means necessary. He means Ah-ran, who is sitting with Dong-chil in a cafe—oh, right, she would know him as her father’s boss. Gack!
Ah-ran is shrewd enough to be uneasy about all this, and when Dong-chil asks to see her phone, she makes a break for it. He grabs her easily, and when she screams for help from strangers, he acts the part of concerned uncle who’s taking her home to her mother.
Dong-chil sends Kang-ja gets a message from Ah-ran’s phone begging for help, and Kang-ja goes off running. Noah sees her darting off campus and taking a taxi, as does Bok-dong, both feeling the same sense of unease and worry.
While waiting for Kang-ja in a shady warehouse, Ah-ran begs Dong-chil to spare her mother. He’s unmoved, of course, and when Kang-ja arrives on the scene, he gets up to greet meddling mom.
Except he knows Kang-ja’s face, and his eyes widen as he tries to reconcile her face with what he was expecting. Kang-ja ignores him to beeline for Ah-ran and assures her that all will be okay now, and then turns to face the kidnapper: “It’s been a long time, Ahn Dong-chil.”
