Two - Worlds

W - T W O W O R L D S 3

After being sucked into the world of her father's manhwa a second time, Yeon-joo runs over to Dad's workshop, only to discover that he's packed up all his things and disappeared again. His assistant Su-bong tells her in this shell-shocked voice that Dad fired them all and left, so the rest of the staff has gone home.

Su-bong says that no matter how he looks at it, there's something odd going on: He told Yeon-joo that Kang Chul was dying, but then Chul was alive, and then her dad fired them all. He points to his computer screen, showing a frame of Yeon-joo in the webtoon, and says that this means she's... her, and she went in the manhwa, saved Kang Chul, and came back out.

Even as he's saying all this, Su-bong doesn't look convinced: "The thing that doesn't make sense is, it doesn't make sense that it appeared in a way that makes sense! But then the thing that doesn't make sense started to make sense..." He looks back and forth between the screen and Yeon-joo, realizing that she's wearing the exact same clothes.

Speaking slowly so as not to shatter his fragile mental state, Yeon-joo points out how much this dress costs, and asks Su-bong whether he thinks she'd spend her own money on clothes like this, and who else would blow that much money without batting an eye.

Su-bong tries his damnedest not to say Kang Chul's name, like saying it out loud would confirm that he's lost his mind. But in the end he whispers it, and Yeon-joo asks, "Now do you believe me?" He's so shocked that his legs give out and he falls to the floor, and when she runs over to help him up, he screams and crawls away from her like he's seen a ghost, ha.

Once he's recovered, Su-bong chatters away like a geeky fanboy, asking how Yeon-joo goes inside the manhwa, and whether he can go too. She doesn't know how she gets transported there, but she has learned a few things, like the fact that the manhwa world revolves around Kang Chul, and anything that doesn't involve him directly gets skipped over.

She tells him that time passes differently too, because that's also Chul-centric. Su-bong doesn't see how that's possible, but Yeon-joo reminds him that the serial manhwa has existed for seven years in their world, but in the story, it's been fifteen years of Chul's life.

Yeon-joo adds that returning to this world is also dependent on Chul, because something narratively significant has to happen to end an episode, which is why she "had to do that..." She trails off, and Su-bong gasps, "The kiss?! You really kissed Kang Chul?!"

She yells defensively that she had to come up with something to surprise him and end the episode, but Su-bong looks skeptical and says that's just an excuse: "Everyone knows you're a Kang Chul fan!" LOL. And then he follows it up with detailed questions about how the kiss felt. Maybe someday you'll get to kiss him too.

Yeon-joo lies that she didn't have time to feel anything, and insists that Kang Chul isn't just a manhwa character—he's a real person. Su-bong: "Is he cool?" She confirms it, of course, and I swear they both swoon simultaneously. He asks about Chul's assistant So-hee too, though he seems most interested in the size of her chest. He wonders why he's talking about these people as if they were real, but Yeon-joo says they ARE real.

Su-bong remembers now that Dad said he'd end the manhwa tonight, and guesses that he's going to try to kill Kang Chul off again. Alarmed, Yeon-joo starts digging around in Dad's office for clues, remembering what he'd said about killing Kang Chul on Hangang Bridge when he had the chance.

Su-bong says that storyline is from 2009, so she digs through Dad's old notebooks and finds a note scrawled in one of them: "Yeon-joo has left. I am now alone..."

She flashes back to the day she moved out of this house to go live with Mom. Inside, Dad looked broken and weary, and spent all of his days drinking alone. He thought, "I am the only one left in this house. I have no family now."