Soon-deok happens to drive by on her scooter right at that moment and sees what’s happening, and wisely advises herself to stay out of it. But when the men start to physically threaten Shi-woo, one of them gets a chicken helmet upside the head. Tiny little Soon-deok stands there smiling like an angel, and sweetly asks the men not to fight.

She says she’s already called the police, and right about then Shi-woo sees someone in a nearby car taking pictures. He whirls to Da-rim and tells her to leave, and that he’ll take care of whoever was snapping photos. He follows them in his car, while his manager texts CEO Choi that “it has begun.”

The paparazzi arrive before Soon-deok can respond to Da-rim’s question of whether she’s also working for CEO Choi, and Da-rim bursts into crocodile tears for the press’s benefit. She tells a story for the news which makes Shi-woo look as though he abandoned her to the thugs, and paints Soon-deok as her bewildered savior.

Shi-woo defends himself to CEO Choi, saying that the thugs were after him and Da-rim was never in danger, so he went after the person snapping pictures. But of course by then the truth is no longer relevant, so Shi-woo wants to find “that chicken girl” and do a press conference with her to tell the real story. He’s suspicious that Da-rim set this whole thing up, what with thugs and reporters just happening to be right there. But Shi-woo’s bad reputation among reporters (he gives cranky interviews) don’t make them inclined to report in his favor.

Shi-woo’s manager makes a slip that the reporters hate him so much, one from a scandal rag was there without even having to be asked… oops. That doesn’t get past Shi-woo, and he wants to know what it means, though we don’t hear the answer.

Later Chi-ang finally catches up with Shi-woo and demands his belongings back. But Shi-woo’s had about enough of people demanding things from him today, and just gets in his car and drives away, which does little for Chi-ang’s regard of him. But Chi-ang barely has time to complain before two men grab him from behind and wrestle him into a car.

We see that Shi-woo had figured out that CEO Choi was behind Da-rim’s approach and the thugs’ attack, and asked if it was because he’d asked for a break. CEO Choi had non-answered that Shi-woo should just take some time until his ear heals, and he’ll contact him.

Soon-deok ignores a lecture from her father about fighting with street gangs (and aww, he’s blind, and yells in the wrong direction), since he seems all bluster and no bite. Her aunt (I think?) has the exact opposite philosophy, that his daughter should fight when she witnesses injustice. Aunt starts to mention Moorim School and gets her mouth plugged with a rice cake by Soon-deok. She runs off to go fishing for dinner before Dad can ask any more questions.

Chi-ang isn’t about to go quietly, and continues kicking and biting his captors even after they’ve got him in the car and on the road. To get him to calm down, they call his mother, and he calmly tells her he’s been kidnapped. Again. Mom tells him that it’s Dad who’s kidnapped him this time, in order to send him to Moorim. Apparently he refused when they asked him the first time.

Chi-ang doesn’t want to go to college at all, thinking he can just inherit the company without needing education, and anyway there’s no school in the world who will take him anymore. At that, Dad grabs the phone and informs Chi-ang that being the heir isn’t a given, and orders him to go to Moorim for one year and behave himself.

Dad hangs up and tells Mom that this is necessary, because Chi-ang “needs to be reprogrammed.” Mom objects, but Dad promises that if Chi-ang graduates without being expelled, she can take him to China with her. She’s a little dim, but she does figure out that Dad has some sort of ulterior motive, wondering if it’s that hard to graduate from Moorim.

Chi-ang pretends that talking to his parents took all the fight out of him, and asks to go to the bathroom. He’s let out by the side of the road, though the men stay within a few feet, but he calls them perverts and makes them turn around. He makes a break for it, yelling that he won’t go to Moorim School, but he ends up cornered on a cliff over the ocean.

Chi-ang threatens to jump if the men come any closer, saying that he can’t swim, and that his parents will have their hides if he dies (even though he was born out of wedlock, he says, which is an interesting tidbit of information). Then he manages to overbalance himself, and falls into the ocean anyway. I kind of love how he gets karma-slapped every time he tries to pull rank on someone.

But Chi-ang wasn’t lying about not being able to swim, and he quickly starts to lose consciousness. Someone — a girl — dives into the water to save him, and he opens his eyes to see Soon-deok, and thinks to himself, “she’s pretty.”

Soon-deok pulls Chi-ang to safety (huffing and grunting and not at all elegantly, ha), and she whines when she realizes that she’s going to have to give him mouth-to-mouth. She psychs herself up and leans in, but just before their lips touch, Chi-ang opens his eyes and asks, “Are you a mermaid?” Then he passes out.

Shi-woo arrives home to find that his fans are now all anti-fans, screaming for him to leave Mobius. They rush his car, pelting it with eggs, and Shi-woo just sits there taking it, until they all leave.

He remembers meeting Mystery Girl onstage at his concert, and how she’d known about his hearing loss. She’d said that someone named Dean Hwang from Moorim School could help him. A quick internet search turns up nothing, and he chastises himself for even considering it.

Chi-ang’s phone (which is still in Shi-woo’s backseat) rings with another text from his mother, asking him to call her when he gets to Moorim School. Shi-woo perks up to see the name of the school, and now he knows that Chi-ang is expected there.

Chi-ang wakes to a stomach massage, which makes him smile until he realizes that it’s not his mermaid, but her blind father. Alarmed, he runs outside in only a pair of ajumma pants, but outside has even scarier things like weird aunts butchering fish with gigantic knives. Aunt admires his bare torso (she’s not alone) and Chi-ang takes in the strange surroundings… and passes out again. He’s really kind of a wuss, isn’t he?

He wakes with an appetite and eats like a horse, and tells Soon-deok’s father and aunt who he is and how he ended up in the ocean. He makes grand promises of a reward for saving him, but they both just think he’s gone nuts.

Chi-ang asks about the girl who saved him, so they send him outside to find her. When he sees Soon-deok hanging laundry, everything goes all slow-motion and Chi-ang gets starry-eyed at the pretty. Soon-deok is not so affected, and actually wrinkles her nose when her aunt informs her that he claims to be a chaebol.

Chi-ang eagerly and magnanimously offers to grant Soon-deok a wish for saving his life, which really only serves to make him look more insane. She’s just all, It’s fine, just go home, I have to go to school now, hee. Aunt tells him that Soon-deok could kick his butt because she’s a student at Moorim School, and suddenly Chi-ang perks up.

Soon-deok covers his mouth, since her father would kill her if he heard she goes there, which is right when his parents show up. Mom is ready to scrap this whole thing and take her baby to China, but Chi-ang’s changed his mind. He wants to go to Moorim. His father is skeptical of Chi-ang’s motives, but Chi-ang swears that he’ll do things right at this school. In return, when it’s time to go back to China with his mother, he wants to bring one other person along.

Shi-woo follows the map that Chi-ang’s mother helpfully texted to him, showing that Moorim is actually a mountain. He finds himself on a remote forest road on Mt. Moorim, and gets out to walk.

Chi-ang and Soon-deok are also walking in the forest, with Chi-ang whining, “Are we there yet?” every few feet and driving Soon-deok crazy. She tells him that not everyone can find this school when he asks if it’s always this hard to get there, and she wonders why doesn’t he know anything about it already.

She stops to pick herbs on the way, and Chi-ang gets distracted by a butterfly (I’m dying at how he gets less tough and more childlike, the more we know about him) and he tells Soon-deok that in China, that breed of butterfly is said to bring good luck. He runs off to catch it for her, and gets himself good and lost.

Soon-deok wonders if Chi-ang ran away on purpose and goes looking for him, but she runs into Shi-woo instead. She’s as surprised to see an idol in the forest as he is to recognize the girl who beat up those thugs the other night. Shi-woo assumes that Soon-deok was part of the setup then, and that she’s been sent here by CEO Choi for some nefarious purpose.

He loudly demands to know how much she’s being paid to ruin his life, but she swears that she was just helping. He grabs her arm and asks who she’s working for, which is when Chi-ang finds them and yells for Shi-woo to take his hands off her.

Chi-ang tackles Shi-woo and they both go rolling down the hill, which seems to trigger some reaction in the mountain itself. The wind picks up, thunder rolls, and all the trees start to grow a layer of vines around their trunks. A path seems to open between the trees, and the boys watch, wary but unafraid.

The disturbance can be felt at Moorim School as well, and the whole place shakes. A man looks up, sensing something important, and we see that it’s the same man who saved the little girl in the woods eighteen years ago, DEAN HWANG. All of the students and instructors are affected by the school's rumbling, and wonder what's happening.

When the wind dies down, Chi-ang and Shi-woo can see the path clearly, which leads right to an old building… Moorim School. They forget their fight and walk the path together, as the forest closes itself up behind them.

The students and teachers come out to see what caused their school to shake as if an earthquake hit, and they seem to come from many different cultures and countries. They watch Chi-ang and Shi-woo approach, and when Dean Hwang comes out to welcome the newcomers, the students all bow to him respectfully.

Dean Hwang looks over the two new students, and thinks to himself, “The seal has been unlocked.”