My Royal Nemesis: Episodes 9-10
by Unit
This week takes us on a rollercoaster of emotions as the past blurs into the present and threatens the foundation of our OTP’s relationship. But just as things begin to settle, our resident villain launches a shocking strike that might send us back to square one.
EPISODES 9-10
We resume with Se-gye asking who Dan-shim really is. But she’s merely startled at his mention of her real name, and she doesn’t recognize him as the grand prince. Back in Joseon, the grand prince’s final order to Dan-shim was to focus on her own survival and never come to his private quarters again. Is that why she erased him from her mind? I’m a little confused about what parts of Dan-shim’s past she can and cannot remember. She knows (I think) that she betrayed a grand prince, but it seems she can’t recall who exactly said prince is. In any case, Dan-shim sticks to her “I’m Shin Seo-ri” story, and Se-gye is forced to brush off his dream as just a nonsensical dream.
Dan-shim and Se-gye settle into their usual banter at the Dynaestie event, and she even permits him to do some charity work by taking Tae-hee to mingle with the guests. Lol. I’d have given up at this point if I were Tae-hee, but apparently, her desperation to be Mrs. Cha Se-gye cancels out the insult of being likened to a charity case. Tae-hee’s only leg up is that she’s Grandpa Cha’s choice. But if it were up to Se-gye, he’d tell his grandfather and the public about his and Dan-shim’s relationship immediately. In a later scene where Dan-shim teases Se-gye about walking on eggshells around Grandpa Cha because of her, he explains that he’s being careful because he wants Grandpa to like her. “I want my grandfather to have a good impression of you,” Se-gye says, and this is the sweetest, most romantic and honest statement he has made so far.
Se-gye flips out when he learns Dan-shim will be filming a bed scene in her drama, and he drops a ton of sponsorship money to have the scene removed. Cue: Dan-shim’s poem ad-lib for a Biojei PPL in the replacement scene. LMAO! Kopiko could never! Good thing they didn’t sponsor the scene where Dan-shim fed Se-gye candy and he licked her fingers. Lol. He’s so unhinged! Dan-shim scolds Se-gye for crunching the candy, and he corrects her notion that he doesn’t know how to savor things by saying that he savors her and won’t gobble her up all at once. *wipes drool* Cha Se-gye, what the freak was that? Mind you, this guy has sensitive teeth! Se-gye eventually ends up at the dentist and has to be put under general anesthesia for the wisdom tooth extraction. And while under, he has another dream of the grand prince penning a yearning poem beside his portrait of Dan-shim.
Dan-shim brings up Se-gye’s dreams when she nurses him after the surgery, and she asks who he was in the dream. Se-gye replies that he was addressed as the grand prince, and Dan-shim silently pieces the puzzle. Se-gye continues by saying the grand prince was in love with — no, yearned after — a court lady named Dan-shim, but Dan-shim can’t bring herself to believe he loved her despite her betrayal of him on the crown prince’s orders. Not until she comes across a partially preserved historical piece (the grand prince’s portrait of Dan-shim) in the museum. After hundreds of years, the grand prince’s unexpressed love and longing for Dan-shim has finally reached her.
Via a flashback to Joseon, we see that the crown prince stopped Dan-shim from going after the grand prince’s exile procession. He also returned a knife the grand prince gifted Dan-shim (which was seized before the grand prince’s arrest) to her with the message that he’s the one giving it to her, so she should forget her past with the grand prince and live in the present. Thus, Dan-shim was forced to bury her feelings for the grand prince. In the present, Dan-shim recalls various instances of Se-gye being all loud about his love for her — like he’s unconsciously making up for not being able to express his love for her in the past. She scolds herself for loving in silence, and vows she’ll no longer hold back on her love. Oh yeah! Dan-shim can’t wait to see Se-gye and confess to him. But he has some Mun-do business to take care of first.
About Mun-do… Grandpa Cha has been urging him to create a position for Se-gye at Chail, and Mun-do suggests sending Se-gye to the U.S office. Not him tryna exile Se-gye even in the 21st century! But Grandpa blindsides Mun-do by transferring him abroad instead. Muwahaha! Mun-do’s sick son is in the States, so it’s a good opportunity to reunite with the kid, no? No! Mun-do is pissed about his transfer, and he’s not apologetic when Se-gye confronts him for bugging Jung-hyun’s office and bribing the nurse to switch his meds. Instead, he shows Se-gye pictures of his meetings with Dan-shim and insinuates they had a deal of sorts. Se-gye refuses to be rattled until Mun-do brings up Grandpa Cha’s disapproval of Se-gye’s actress mom and suggests that Dan-shim would face a similar disapproval. And now it makes sense why Grandpa’s impression of Dan-shim is important to Se-gye.
Dan-shim arrives at her rooftop to see Se-gye, and she’s excited about her grand love confession. But he charges at her with accusations of not trusting him enough to tell him about her meetings with Mun-do, and playing with his feelings. He tells her to just use him if she doesn’t love him, and she responds with a slap because how dare he suggest that? But Se-gye is unsure about her feelings for him because she has never fully expressed them, and Dan-shim is hurt when he follows up with more harsh words that questions those feelings. She fights back, and the fight goes out of him because her tears are his kryptonite. He stops her from leaving and gently buries his head in her shoulder. Oh dear! “Because of you, I’m losing my mind,” he says, and I… The vulnerability, the surrender… Gah! I’m losing my mind.
The thing is, Se-gye would have folded even if Dan-shim didn’t fight back. That’s how much he loves her. Earlier on, she asked what he’d do if she were the Dan-shim from his dreams, and he didn’t have an answer. But now he does. “Whoever you are, wherever you come from, I believe you. Whatever you say, I believe you. So just look at me.” Woosh! I say this man is downbad as a joke every time, but there really is no saving him. Even if Dan-shim was indeed working for Mun-do, he’d still love her. “Forget all the assholes out there and just focus on me! Please.” Double whoosh! I pretty much died here, then came back to life and died again when all that tension between them exploded in a kiss. The miscommunication trope is afraid of our OTP because one thing they’ll do is talk — or kiss — things out.
Post-kiss, Dan-shim admits that she’s the court lady from Se-gye’s dreams and he’s the exiled grand prince. Se-gye believes her transmigration and his reincarnation stories, but suggests seeing a doctor just in case they’ve both lost their minds. Pfft. I mean, Jung-hyun did suggest couples therapy last week, but Se-gye was too busy blushing about the “couple” part of the statement. Heh. Our OTP finally graduates from situationship to a proper relationship. And the relationship era means no more secrets, uninhibited skinship (I love that Dan-shim takes the initiative to stop being a conservative Joseon woman), and going on dates. Se-gye invites Dan-shim to his place for a proper view of the Namsam tower — which supposedly looks better at night (of course it does!) — and she scolds him for always trying to get her inside of a house. Lol. But then he says he’s lonely, and she promises to not let him be lonely from now on. Aww.
If being on his own for the longest time has taught Se-gye anything, it’s how to handle business himself. So when Mun-do rallies some board members to oppose Se-gye’s return to Chail, he cuts them all to size, and tells Mun-do to come at him directly. I chortled when Se-gye addressed Mun-do’s transferred ass as “former president,” then gave him the nastiest look down before leaving. But the cowardly and sadistic Mun-do would rather mess with Se-gye’s people than come at him directly, so he manipulates Seo-ri’s grandmother (during one of her dementia bouts) into selling her restaurant for the Chail resort project. Oh, no, he did not!
The blissfully unaware Se-gye visits Halmoni in the hospital in a supportive boyfriend capacity, and she makes him promise to always be there for her granddaughter. But then he sees the restaurant sale document in the room, and goes straight to Mun-do. Meanwhile, Dan-shim is already there confronting that evil ass manipulator. The crown prince did something similar in Joseon when he deceived her with words about wanting to be a sage king, but he ended up using her. Mun-do taunts Dan-shim that she cannot do anything since the sale document has been signed. But Se-gye strides in to punch him (delicious!) and rip the document in shreds, with a warning for Mun-do to go to hell and just stay there.
Outside the office, Se-gye lashes out at Dan-shim for coming to see Mun-do without telling him first. “I don’t want you anywhere around him. I can’t stand it!” Whoa! It’s almost like Se-gye’s anger at the situation and his desire to protect Dan-shim by all means stems from residual feelings of the helplessness he felt that he couldn’t protect her from the crown prince in his past life. But this inevitably hurts Dan-shim because it comes off as him treating her like some damsel in distress who can’t protect herself. Se-gye spends the entire night feeling contrite, and he scolds himself for having an outburst instead of comforting Dan-shim. Now the air he breathes has banned him from seeing her. How is he supposed to live now? Meanwhile, Dan-shim also misses Se-gye and wishes he’d break her no contact rule. Girl, please! You two are so made for each other.
Mun-do tattles to Grandpa Cha about Dan-shim’s relationship with Se-gye. So the next time Grandpa and Dan-shim meet at the gukbap restaurant, it’s for a “it’s not you, it’s me conversation.” According to grandpa math, lonely + lonely = acute loneliness. Since Se-gye grew up without his mom, grandpa wants him to marry into a big family and receive lots of love. But it’s not about what you want, Grandpa, because Dan-shim and Halmoni can love Se-gye better than Tae-hee and her entire family. And as it turns out, it’s also not about what the audience wants, because next thing we know, dramaland’s fav white truck appears from nowhere and crashes into Dan-shim and Grandpa! OMG! What in the Vincenzo just happened here?
Dan-shim bleeds out on the floor, unable to reach her phone as Se-gye’s calls and messages pour in. He apologizes for getting mad at her, begs her to pick his calls, and says he’ll wait for her until she gets home. But bro’s gonna turn into stone waiting on that rooftop, because Dan-shim is probably on her way back to Joseon. I’m just kidding, Show. DO NOT send her back! I should have known something crazy was going to happen when the episode opened with that commentary about a disappearing comet. It’s always those damned astrological signs of doom! Sigh.
So far, My Royal Nemesis has been doing a good job of subverting tropes, so I want to believe the truck incident will somehow not end up in death, or amnesia, or a reverse time slip. On the bright side, Dan-shim has main character plot armor and she’s not likely to die unlike Grandpa Cha — who, when you think about it, is not a villain, but is not exactly a good person either. From his mistreatment of Se-gye’s mom (and Se-gye himself as a child), to disregarding Se-gye’s feelings about the engagement with Tae-hee — despite a cancellation of said engagement being the one condition Se-gye had for returning to Chail. Let’s not even talk about his disapproval of Dan-shim on the basis of her family background being a hindrance to his grandson’s happiness. As if his grandson could find happiness elsewhere! Tsk.
Grandpa Cha also bled Mun-do dry. He accepted that man’s liver donation, and worked him to the bone for Chail Group despite having zero intention of leaving the company or any other inheritance to him. I will never side with Mun-do, but I can see where his entitlement is coming from. He has no plans of quietly leaving for the States and has shipped his son back to Korea. And it’s so weird seeing him play the doting father while being such a horrible human being. The truck incident is clearly the start of his all out war for Chail group, and everyone in the Nemesis universe had better sleep with one eye open because there’s more Mun-do madness to come.
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