Something about Chi-ang and Shi-woo’s confrontation causes a wave of energy to flood the forest, opening a path that leads them straight to Moorim School. They’re greeted by the entire faculty and student body, all of whom are curious as to why these two made the whole school rumble as if from an earthquake.
Soon-deok breaks the tension by running in and yelling, “SAFE!” — she nearly missed the magical pathway herself, ha. But she notices right away that “the seal” has come undone, and Dean Hwang arrives to see for himself. Soon-deok tells him that she brought two new students, and Dean Hwang eyes them with intensity.
Another teacher, Professor Kim, asks if there wasn’t only one new student expected, so Shi-woo speaks up to say that he wanted to meet Dean Hwang. The mystery girl who saved him at the concert ducks behind a large vase, but she smiles to see him.
Dean Hwang leads Shi-woo and Chi-ang to his office, telling them about Moorim School on the way. It was built to protect and uphold world peace, he says, and is the only school built by the UN Peacekeeping Organization. Its students have placed first at the World Martial Arts Competition for the last ten years, and has been top-ranked marital arts academy in the world for twelve years. Also, it’s not in any public records.
The students recognize both of them, as an idol and an international chaebol, and wonder what they’re doing here. The instructors are more concerned with how the seal got broken, and Professor Kim admits that he sensed a new kind of power when it happened. One teacher wonders if it was the new students, but that idea is rejected out of hand.
The mystery girl asks Soon-deok how she came to the school with the newcomers — her name is HWANG SUN-AH, and she just so happens to be Dean Hwang’s daughter. She wonders if Shi-woo is the one who opened the seal, remembering how he stopped the stage lights from falling momentarily.
Dean Hwang questions the boys, asking why they came to Moorim School. Chi-ang goes for the easy answer, to learn martial arts, though he admits that he just came because his father sent him here. Shi-woo refuses to answer in front of Chi-ang, asking to talk to Dean Hwang in private.
Dean Hwang sends Chi-ang to the dorms with TEACHER SAMUEL, who informs Chi-ang that he’s expected to do everything for himself, including cleaning and cooking. Chi-ang just loftily says that he’ll have his father sponsor the school and get a cleaning service and chefs, only to be informed that the school isn’t broke. HA.
It takes Shi-woo a while to get to the point of why he’s here, only to discover that Dean Hwang already knows about his hearing loss. He wants it fixed, but the dean asks if he doesn’t need to change his situation first. Shi-woo thinks his ear is the problem, but Dean Hwang says that the problem is inside himself.
He offers Shi-woo a place as a student, which Shi-woo rejects immediately. He calls his manager to tell him that he’s found the girl who beat up those thugs back in Seoul, insisting again on an interview. But his manager says that won’t solve the problem, and the company is about to go bankrupt because of him. He unkindly tells Shi-woo to know when he’s finished, and that official papers have been sent to him, presumably breaking their contract.
A small army of curious students delivers Chi-ang’s class schedule to him and introduce themselves. There are several Korean kids, one Korean-American girl named Shannon, and a boy from Thailand named Nadet. They ask how Chi-ang released the seal, but he doesn’t even know what that is. The kids are friendly, but Chi-ang rejects them all as being beneath his “level.” Wow, what an ass.
Meanwhile Shi-woo grabs Soon-deok as she’s walking past him, ready to drag her back to Seoul with him. She repeats that she was only helping him and not part of any plot, but he says he didn’t need her help. He wasn’t running away, he was running after the paparazzi — those pictures could cause a huge scandal (though it’s interesting that he seems more worried about Da-rim’s reputation than his own).
Soon-deok is chastened that she misunderstood the situation, and agrees to go with him, but between her classes and her jobs she can’t think of a time when she’s free. Shi-woo insists on going right this instant, but Soon-deok says that her life is important, too.
Shi-woo accuses her again of taking money from CEO Choi to cause trouble for him, and Soon-deok gapes at him. She says he’s a horrible person, and that if he’s asking for a favor, he should thank her for helping him, then ask for her help in Seoul.
But Shi-woo just counters that he’s not at all thankful, and that helping him should be an obligation, since she caused so much trouble in the first place. Soon-deok angrily says that her obligation right now is to go to work, and leaves him standing there.
Shi-woo spends his evening reading netizen posts about how he’s done for in the music business, and remembers back to being discovered by CEO Choi. He’d uploaded a song he wrote online, under the nickname “Mobius,” and Choi had sought him out and signed him. He and the group Mobius had quickly risen to fame, so fast it seemed unreal, and CEO Choi had treated him like a son. Now Shi-woo knows it was all an act, just for money.
His ear starts to ring and hurt, and it looks like a bad episode this time. Shi-woo feels a hand on his head — it’s Dean Hwang, and he massages pressure points while explaining that Shi-woo’s personal energy is blocked, causing his hearing loss. He says he can help Shi-woo, and suddenly the pain is gone.
Once Shi-woo relaxes, Dean Hwang offers to walk him out if he’s planning to leave. But Shi-woo decides that he can’t leave now, but not because he has nowhere to go. He starts to blame Soon-deok for his situation, but Hwang puts a stop to that — first he blames his ear, now a student.
Hwang wants to know whether Shi-woo’s heart is telling him to stay. He says there’s no guarantee that staying will heal his ear, but training can only help. It’s all up to him.
The next day, the other teachers speculate on why Shi-woo has been admitted as a new student. In fact, they’re worried about both of the new boys, who seem to have no real reason to be here, and they doubt they’ll succeed. (As an aside, Professor Kim and Professor Oh seem to be in a longterm on-again, off-again relationship, which is currently off again.)
The elder Professor Beop confronts Dean Hwang about his decision to let Shi-woo enroll, and Hwang says it would be wrong to kick someone out who needs help. He gets a faraway look in his eye as he says that “Somehow, it’s not that child who came to find our school. This place might have called that child here.”
As for Shi-woo, he tells himself that he’ll stay, for now. Just until his problem is taken care of… though whether he means his hearing or his scandal is unclear.
Shi-woo and Chi-ang again find themselves face-to-face and shirtless, this time in the same dorm room. HAHA, they’re roommates. They end up in front of Teacher Samuel, demanding separate rooms, and Sam laughs when Chi-ang requests a VIP room. He informs them that there will be no special treatment for anyone for any reason, and tells them to get back in their room and behave. I like this guy a lot.
Chi-ang tries to assert dominance by demanding the bed that Shi-woo is lying on, and Shi-woo laughs that they do have one thing in common — they both like the view from this bed. Chi-ang claims to have farted on the bed (OMG HAHAHA), but Shi-woo just says he already changed the sheets. These two are really a lot alike, if they’d just stop trying to be the top dog.
While the rest of the school sleeps, Sun-ah plays the piano softly, which wakes Chi-ang (despite Shi-woo’s claim of being a delicate sleeper, he sleeps through it). Chi-ang stays up thinking of his mother, and asks her picture to just wait a little longer for him.
Teacher Samuel wakes the boys in the morning for exercise, and ha, Chi-ang literally falls right out of bed. “Exercise” appears to be basic martial arts training with Professor Daniel, and Chi-ang gives Soon-deok a dorky wave while she pretends not to see him. Sun-ah is startled to see her Shi-woo Oppa here, a little starstruck, and she tries to run off when he finds her after class.
He recognizes her from the concert, and asks angrily why she saved him and told him about Moorim School. She babbles about the Dean being so good at what he does, and the fresh air, and the cafeteria food, and tries to shake his hand in welcome. He totally leaves her hanging, and she runs off embarrassed.
Professor Kim pulls Shi-woo aside to ask if he likes the school, but Shi-woo isn’t making any judgments yet. Professor Kim says that he did come here for a reason, even if he doesn’t know what that reason is, yet. But his voice hardens as he says that Shi-woo has something up his sleeve, and he asks him harshly why he’s here. Shi-woo isn’t intimidated, and simply says, “I can’t tell you. And I don’t want to.”
Chi-ang’s father goes back to Shanghai, China, where his assistant informs him that “the man at the hospital” is still unconscious, and expected to remain so. He orders him watched, due to his incredibly strong life energy. We cut to the man in the hospital, lying senseless in a lavish private room. Elsewhere, Dean Hwang walks through what looks like an abandoned prison. Well, that was mysterious.
Chi-ang goes looking for Soon-deok, and finds her in the school kitchen fileting some fish. He makes the lamest joke ever about hurting her friends (because she’s a mermaid, hyuk hyuk) and she sighs that he should at least say the word right if he’s going to call her “mermaid.”
She gives up when he can’t say it right, so he just calls her Ariel instead. Ha, he’s got exactly zero game. Soon-deok snarls at him to just call her by name, but he only says all starry-eyed that she’s even prettier when she’s mad.
She’s too busy to deal with him, but he gallantly (he thinks) takes her fishy hands and says that she won’t have to do this hard work anymore, because he’s going to have his father provide the school with cooks and custodians. Soon-deok is less than impressed and tells him again to get lost, making Chi-ang admit that he likes her because she’s the first person to treat him this way.
Chi-ang doesn’t register that he’s picked up the smell of fish from Soon-deok until he’s back in his room, and Shi-woo now realizes that he and Soon-deok came here together the day before. He calls her “the chicken-headed girl,” which infuriates Chi-ang, and he warns Shi-woo away from her. Shi-woo couldn’t possibly care less, having no personal interest in her other than how she can help him.
The other students discuss the newcomers, reluctantly impressed that they’ve lasted a whole day already. The Thai student, Nadet, asks if they think the boys will make it to the entrance ceremony, which happens once you’ve lasted a week at the school.
YEOB JEONG, the apparent leader of the group, says that of course they won’t make it the full week. He thinks the opening of the seal on their arrival was just a coincidence, especially since neither boy even knew what the seal was. He sneers and declares that he’ll have them running home crying.
Shi-woo and Chi-ang take a cooking class to prepare for kitchen duty. They’re paired up and given the job of making fried vegetables, and Professor Kim tells them a trick of putting ice into the batter to make them crispier. He warns them though, never to let the ice get into the hot oil.
Jeong gets a nasty idea to scare the boys, and shares his batter with Chi-ang after liberally adding ice cubes to it. Lazy as always, Shi-woo dumps the entire bowl in the frier at once, which makes the fire flare right in Shi-woo’s face. Shi-woo’s reaction is violent, and he falls to the floor in shock.
His bad ear rings as he seems to remember a fire from when he was younger, just as the bowl of oil and vegetables explodes, spraying hot food everywhere. The experienced students use their martial arts skills to kick and slap the burning vegetables out of the air, while Chi-ang just hides his face and Shi-woo cringes on the floor. Sun-ah quickly swipes a curtain from the window and shields Shi-woo, and Professor Kim tosses a pot over Chi-ang’s head and slings him to safety.
Once the danger passes, Shi-woo’s anger flares up next, and he grabs Chi-ang and accuses him of doing that on purpose. The two nearly come to blows before Professor Kim hollers at them to stop, and Jeong smiles to himself at his success.
The teachers hold a meeting, where Professor Kim argues that neither Chi-ang nor Shi-woo dserves to be here. Professor Daniel wants to give them time, and Professor Oh backs him up even though she previously thought they wouldn’t last a day.
Later Sun-ah begs her father to let Shi-woo stay and get help for his ear, and he adorably teases her, saying that Shi-woo should just clean his ear out. He says that he still hasn’t decided how to punish her for sneaking out to the concert and inviting the kid here in the first place, and now she wants him to heal Shi-woo?
Sun-ah argues that he’s special — he stopped the lights from falling on himself during the concert, which is news to Hwang. Suddenly he seems a lot more interested.
Chi-ang finds Soon-deok at her next class, meditation, and actually shoves Sun-ah off her mat so he can sit next to her. Shi-woo arrives and orders Soon-deok to meet him after class, then takes the mat behind Chi-ang. He quietly thanks Sun-ah for protecting him in the kitchen, which gives her a teeny-tiny freakout.
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