No Tail to Tell: Episodes 3-4
by Unit
Our gumiho tale continues with fate swaps and a grand theft that introduces us to a new, shamanic villain. As our ex-soccer star grapples with his new reality, he crosses paths with the shaman, and the culmination of this meeting results in our gumiho facing a brand new reality of her own.
EPISODES 3-4
We pick up from where Shi-yeol asked if Woo-seok had a wish. Woo-seok is not in the mood for wistful wishes, so it’s a “no, thank you. I’ll handle my life by myself” from his end. Shi-yeol argues that Woo-seok is a great friend and he can’t just ignore him. (Woo-seok took care of Shi-yeol’s grandma while Shi-yeol was playing abroad, and he even visits her gravesite on her death anniversary.) But Woo-seok insists on not accepting favors from Shi-yeol because he doesn’t want money to come between their friendship.
Shi-yeol’s agent, HONG YEON-SU (Hong Soo-hyun), soon informs him that his club violated a financial regulation and has been relegated to second division in the league as a result. Shi-yeol is too big a player for D2, but he cannot get out of his contract — and his club has also refused to transfer him to other willing D1 clubs. If there’s any time for Shi-yeol to use the gumiho wish card, it’s now. Eun-ho is a little smug when Shi-yeol finally summons her to make his wish. And hundreds of millions of won in payment fees later, Shi-yeol’s wish is granted: his company agrees to transfer him to any club he wants.
Woo-seok witnesses the wish-granting event, and he goes from skeptic to believer — especially when he learns that Eun-ho was behind his hit-and-run driver going to prison. Woo-seok now has a wish: he wants to play soccer professionally, and play for the national team too. “I really want to live my life differently, just once,” he says. But Eun-ho turns him down because everything is business to her, and Woo-seok clearly cannot afford her services. She also refuses Shi-yeol’s offer to pay for Woo-seok’s wish because the wish-wanter has to pay the price for their own wish. Besides, Shi-yeol’s generous offer is a good deed, and our gumiho doesn’t do good deeds.
But arrogant Shi-yeol doesn’t relent. He baits, taunts and provokes Eun-ho into accepting his offer. Eun-ho warns Shi-yeol that it’s up to her how she grants the wish, and he consents to it. With a snap of Eun-ho’s fingers, Woo-seok’s wish is granted, and the world as the friends know it, is reset. Woo-seok goes from an ex-D3 soccer player in Korea to a famous player being scouted by all the top clubs in the Premier League, and Shi-yeol is now the D3 player in Korea. This sucks. But now that I know how arrogant Shi-yeol was to Eun-ho and how dismissive he was to her warning, it’s hard to feel sorry for him.
We get more insights to Eun-ho’s lore when a wooden-handed dagger — a.k.a the Sajin Ritual Blade — disappears from a museum. The dagger is a sacred object that can sever and defy fates, and it’s one of the very few things that can kill Eun-ho. Eun-ho had it forged hundreds of years ago for her gumiho-turned-human friend, GEUM-HO (Lee Shi-woo), after Geum-ho’s husband was accused of being a traitor. Geum-ho had the chance to return to being a gumiho and not live a miserable life on the run if she stabbed her husband with the dagger. But she refused to kill her husband, and cut ties with Eun-ho instead. Geum-ho lost her whole family and lived the rest of her life in misery, and Eun-ho swore she’d never be like her friend.
Back to the present, the dagger thief is revealed to be a shaman, JANG DO-CHEOL (Kim Tae-woo), who has been hunting Eun-ho down for years, in order to obtain her fox bead. A flashback reveals that Do-cheol crossed paths with the hit-and-run troublemaker, LEE YOON (Choi Seung-yoon) in prison. Yoon got into trouble with his cellmates because Eun-ho’s truth-telling spell made him snitch on them, and Do-cheol gave him a spell-neutralizing talisman in exchange for his help once they got out of prison. In the present, Yoon has just been released from prison, and it’s time for him to repay Do-cheol’s help.
The security system at the museum was disabled during the dagger theft, but Eun-ho gets a sketch of Do-cheol using her gumiho powers. She goes to the police station to hypnotize a cop into finding Do-cheol, and then runs into Shi-yeol — who’s still stuck in denial-land. He attempted to return to his upscale apartment, but got arrested for trespassing because that’s obviously not his house in this new reality. Eun-ho wastes no time snapping Shi-yeol out of his denial. No, this is not a hidden camera prank. Shi-yeol wished for his friend to rise to the top, but for every rise, there must be a fall to maintain balance. Oops! And as to why she granted his wish in this manner, Eun-ho replies that she can’t stand humans who get cocky with her.
Shi-yeol asks Eun-ho to reverse the wish, but she refuses because he’s currently too broke to pay for it. Loool. But it’ll be a different story if the now-rich Woo-seok were to make a wish to switch their fates back. Speaking of Woo-seok, he cannot believe his sudden change of status. He calls Shi-yeol with the good news, and Shi-yeol replies with the bad news that Woo-seok would have to swap them back to their original places. Woo-seok hesitates because his blissfully unaware dad is happy to be living the good life, and he tells Shi-yeol to give him one month before they switch places. Shi-yeol is at his wits end, and his arrogance is knocked down by several pegs. Eun-ho eventually relents and says everything will be back to normal by the next day.
On Shi-yeol’s way home, Do-cheol disguises as a taxi driver and kidnaps him. *Facepalm* From his meh reaction to Eun-ho’s gumiho form last week, to willingly walking into the disguised taxi even after his brief glimpse of its true nature, Shi-yeol’s habit of taking supernatural sights for granted has finally come to bite him in the behind. At Do-cheol’s shrine, Shi-yeol learns that the shaman plans to summon Eun-ho through him and then kill her. Shi-yeol is not particularly fond of Eun-ho at the moment, but he refuses to be a party to her murder. Yoon fatally knocks Shi-yeol out, and Eun-ho’s karmic scale starts to tip as it usually does when someone gets into trouble because of her.
Eun-ho appears in Do-cheol’s shrine, and he attempts to stab her with the Sajin dagger. But she already knew his play book beforehand, and she easily tosses him and Yoon aside. Eun-ho goes against her policy and revives Shi-yeol because she’ll face divine consequences if he dies while his fate is switched. She also reluctantly apologizes for dragging him into the mess with Do-cheol and offers to drive him home. Then she’s hit with a sudden force that forces her fox bead out of her. The bead shatters on the ground and she collapses. When Eun-ho wakes up the next morning, her powers are gone. Our gumiho has done the ultimate good deed by saving a life, and she has become human! Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. Lol.
A distraught Eun-ho blames Shi-yeol for her misfortune, and he’s all… What a pity, but that’s not my problem. Anyway, it’s morning, so when am I returning to my old life? *facepalm again* This dude is always missing the point that is right in front of his nose! Eun-ho is no longer a gumiho, so Shi-yeol is stuck in his new life. Welp! Eun-ho storms a temple to look for LORD PAGUN (Joo Jin-mo) — the deity guy who warned her about her tipping karmic scale last week. But the head monk informs her that Lord Pagun returned to the heavens the previous night. Oops! And it looks like Pagun knew Eun-ho would become human, because he already prepared a resident registration card for her new life in the human world. Loool.
Eun-ho attempts to burn the temple in a fit of rage, and she’s forced to spend the night in jail. Heh. She sends Shi-yeol to fetch the Sajin dagger from Do-cheol’s shrine, but the whole place has been swept clean — save for an old newspaper clipping about a gumiho that saved a couple from a hiking accident in the mountains. Eun-ho finds this very suspicious because: 1) Do-cheol is on the run from her, so there’s no way he returned to clear out his shrine; 2) as far as she knows, she’s the only gumiho in the world, so the random gumiho article in the cleared-out shrine is too convenient to be a coincidence. Still, Eun-ho is curious about this “divine manipulation,” so she heads to the mountain with Shi-yeol.
Eun-ho and Shi-yeol plan to get lost while hiking so that they can attract the mysterious gumiho. But instead, they attract the attention of concerned hikers who assume they’re about to commit suicide, and they end up getting bundled off by mountain rangers. Looool. Climbing up and down the mountain — without proper gear, mind you — takes a toll on human Eun-ho, and Shi-yeol ends up feeding her dinner because she can barely lift her spoon. Eun-ho falls asleep from exhaustion afterwards, and has a dream where Shi-yeol stabs her with the Sajin dagger. This is where the week ends.
I’ve never understood the concept of mythical and supernatural beings just chilling — all the while knowing that there’s something out there that can kill them. If I were Eun-ho, I would have either destroyed the Sajin dagger or kept it in a location that only I can access. Who leaves stuff like that in a museum? Oh well, maybe the rules are different if she gets stabbed as a human. There’s a number of things to look forward to as the show goes on: Eun-ho navigating life as a human, Shi-yeol coming to terms with his fortune reversal, the fate of Shi-yeol and Woo-seok’s friendship, and what’ll become of Do-cheol’s gumiho hunt now that Eun-ho is human.
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