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Joon-jae hears Chung think to herself that she'll die on land without him, that her heart will stop beating and harden without his love, and he asks, terrified, "Why would you die?!" She's more concerned with how he heard her thoughts, and demands to know how long he's been able to hear her true voice.
He finally admits that he recovered his memories: "The crazy guy who shielded you with an umbrella in the rain, the player who held your hand when you were alone, the wacko who made you ramyun—they're all me. And the mermaid who saved me in the ocean and erased my memories is you."
They're both shell-shocked for different reasons, and he asks again if it's true that her heart will stop and she'll die without him. She confirms it: "This isn't my world. The moment I gave up water and came to land, I had a heart that can't beat without you."
She tells him to stop asking her to make promises about living happily after he's gone, because that's not a promise she can keep: "If you disappear, I disappear too."
The truth finally sinks in and Joon-jae recalls his shrink Professor Jin calling theirs a bad fate, where loving each other would lead to their deaths. He mutters, "Ma Dae-young wasn't the problem... I could be the one to kill you." She tries to argue and reaches out to touch him, but he backs away from her. Aw, no! Don't do that! She looks heartbroken as she lowers her hand.
Chung sobs up in her room, the floor littered with pearls around her. The wailing is so loud that Nam-doo comes out to the terrace to ask Joon-jae if they fought very badly, and he suggests that if Joon-jae can't take responsibility for her till the end, he might as well cut her loose now.
Joon-jae snaps at that and says he hasn't even done anything for her yet, and everyone wants him to end things, thinking of Professor Jin's advice to let her go. Joon-jae says that it may have been Chung's greed that brought her all the way here in search of him, but it's now his own greed that's keeping him from sending her away.
He knows he's being greedy, he says, but he keeps not wanting to hear the reasons why he should send her away, and admits to wanting excuses to keep her around. Nam-doo has no idea what he's blabbering on about, but says he has a niggling feeling that Chung owes him a debt for some reason, though he can't remember what it is. Joon-jae thwacks him on the back of the head again just in case, to prevent any sudden memory recovery.
After a good cry, Chung thinks back to the moment Joon-jae began hearing her thoughts, now understanding all the reactions he seemed to be having to her interior monologues.
Then it occurs to her that he knew she was a mermaid when he ran around saving her from water at the jjimjilbang, and that he could hear all her thoughts when he kissed her and quieted her nerves. She wonders now what it could mean, and opens her door to find Joon-jae standing down below just staring up at her closed door.
She comes down and tells him about being found out by Nam-doo earlier today, and the way he became a different person and wanted to sell her out the instant he knew that she was a mermaid. Joon-jae looks like he wants to go punch Nam-doo's lights out, but Chung asks what he thought when he found out—was he afraid, or does he dislike her?
