Sometime during August, 1598, newly appointed governor Dam Ryung (Lee Min-Ho) stays for a night at an inn run by Mr. Yang (Sung Dong-Il). During that evening, Mr. Yang shows Dam Ryung a captured mermaid named Sim Chung (Gianna Jun). Later that night...
I'm so fascinated by the doppelganger mythology in Legend of the Blue Sea, and the more we learn about the connection between our two heroes, the more questions I have about the magic that binds them. What I wouldn't give to spend an hour on Dam-ryung's story, just to grill him for what he knows! Up until recently, I had assumed that time flowed from past to present linearly, but it's starting to look more and more like that's just half the story.
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When Chung says she'll leave and go back to where she came from, Joon-jae says he's made a plan to like her. "So don't go," he says. She asks searchingly, "Don't go?" He says it again so that she believes him, and a tear trickles down her face.
He reaches for her hand to take her home, when suddenly he doubles over in pain, his wounds from the fight with Dae-young finally catching up to him. He collapses right there in her arms, leaving Chung crying out his name in a panic.
As he lies there on the pavement, Joon-jae has a dream or some sort of vision: He walks into a dark room filled with mirrors, and endless reflections of himself stretch out in a row before him.
Then from the other side, his Joseon doppelganger Dam-ryung walks up, their reflections facing each other in parallel lines. Dam-ryung meets his eyes, and Joon-jae looks shocked as he stares back.
Dam-ryung is the first to speak: "Who are you?" Omo, are they... meeting each other in a dream? This is trippy. Joon-jae just asks him the same thing, and Dam-ryung answers, "I am Dam-ryung. If you are me in the next world, remember this after you wake from this dream: Everything is repeating. The connections made here continue there, as do the ill-fated connections. Protect her from the dangerous ones."
Dam-ryung doesn't get a chance to explain further before Joon-jae wakes up, surrounded by paramedics and a frightened Chung. He gets up and says that he's okay now, and the relief washes over her visibly. She grabs him fiercely in a hug and it stuns him at first, but he hugs her back and says reassuringly that he's okay.
They leave the river (phew, nothing good happens there!) and he asks if she's still in pain from whatever was bothering her earlier. Once he hears that she's fine now, he gets mad at her for threatening to leave at the drop of hat.
He tries to act cool as he asks where she would've gone: "To that civil servant?" he wonders, thinking of her merman friend. Chung says that he's gone far away, and Joon-jae asks huffily, "Were you going to go far away with him? Did he ask you to eat ramyun far away?"
Chung clarifies that the merman wasn't the one who cooked her ramyun, and Joon-jae only gets madder at that, thinking that there's yet another man he has to contend with. He demands to know who Ramyun is, but she can't very well tell him that Ramyun is pre-amnesia Joon-jae, so she clams up.
Joon-jae decides he's going to do something about this and leads Chung to a nearby claw machine and instructs her to pick out a stuffed toy she likes. She picks the pink octopus, so he tells her that because she chose it, she can only go after that one.
