Oh My Venus (Korean Drama)

Episode 9

Young-ho sits uncomfortably in his father's office, where Dad says that he heard that he's made a full recovery from his cancer. Dad congratulates him that Young-ho will soon have his job — the position that his mother used to hold. Dad says that Young-ho can't afford to have any faults if he takes on this job, as many people will be watching him closely, and Young-ho sighs that he knows.

Dad signs the official paperwork, adding that now he can face Young-ho's mother in the afterlife. This makes Young-ho look at his father for the first time, seeming on the verge of tears.

Manager Min drives Young-ho home, noticing that he doesn't look well, but Young-ho waves off his worry. He goes inside to an empty house, gasping for air, and suddenly his bum knee goes out from under him. He manages to limp to his treatment room, sweating and barely able to stay upright.

When Joo-eun arrives home and decides to share the year's first snowfall with Young-ho, she finds his bedroom empty. She calls him and follows the sound of his ringing phone to the hidden treatment room, shocked to see Young-ho sitting on the floor barely conscious, with his pants leg cut open to expose his knee.

He gasps for her not to come any closer, but she instinctively crouches down beside him anyway. She pulls out her phone to call for help and he stops her. Joo-eun starts to cry, unsure how to help him. Young-ho just tells her to go — this isn't something anyone can help him with.

Joo-eun refuses to leave, begging Young-ho to go to the hospital, but he's so weak he can barely move. He can only breathe out a simple, "Please," and he tries unsuccessfully to move, which almost seems to hurt Joo-eun as much as it hurts him.

She finally leaves the room, remembering how he told her that he was very sick when he was young. Inside his treatment room, Young-ho still sprawls on the floor, but he manages to take some medicine and give himself an injection. Joo-eun cries on the other side of the doorway, just listening to Young-ho struggle alone and crying out in pain.

Joon-sung watches his birth mother again that night (and yes, she is also Hyun-woo's mother-in-law), and when he sees her struggling to carry a heavy package, he offers to carry it for her. He pretends not to see the bruises on her face, though his smile fades when she's not looking at him.

Eventually Young-ho emerges from the treatment room to see Joo-eun still waiting outside the door. She asks if he's okay, and he sighs that it's unsexy to have been caught out like this, which just starts Joo-eun sobbing again. Young-ho folds her into a hug, asking why he's the one hurting but she's the one crying. Joo-eun wails that he scared her, weakly hitting him but not breaking the hug.

Grandma sits Stepmom down, and tells her unceremoniously that it's time for her and Young-ho's father to leave her house. Now that Young-ho is to be the director of Gahong, it's time for them to sever their relationship. Shocked, Stepmom stammers that she doesn't want anything from Grandma, but Grandma is determined not to have Young-ho living as an outsider from his own family anymore.

Young-ho sits in bed and lets Joo-eun see his scarred knee, which is still twitching from the pain and trauma. She deduces that he didn't go to see Anna Sue recently like he said, but instead went to the doctor in Daegu. She thinks it was probably a lonely and painful time, since that's what he's used to.

Joo-eun asks him for more details, fussing when he balks that they can kiss but not be honest with each other. Young-ho tells her that it was cancer, caught when he was a child, and that the scars are from the many surgeries it required. But he says that he's made a complete recovery, so Joo-eun wonders why he's still in so much pain.

Young-ho tells her that it's psychological, that his body remembers all the years of pain. Knowing that he's been suffering like this even since meeting her, Joo-eun cries again that she never noticed, and even talked bad about him behind his back. Young-ho gently chides her for judging people just based on looks.