The Heirs

Chapter 4

Eun-sang walks into the airport just in time to witness Tan and Rachel hugging. Well, Rachel’s the one hugging while Tan stands there, but the effect is the same. She turns around to avert her gaze, which is when Tan sees her and calls out her name to stop right there.

Eun-sang freezes, and Tan hurriedly gives Rachel her send-off before walking up to Eun-sang with that jilted boyfriend tone in his voice, wondering why she didn’t return any of his calls.

He sticks his phone out for her to give him her number, but she looks over at Rachel and says she’s said her thank-yous and goodbyes, so that leaves nothing else left to say. She adds that he shouldn’t leave his fiancée standing there, and walks past him without looking back, leaving him still holding out his phone.

For once Rachel is deservedly pissed, though of course she goes overboard and decides to harass Eun-sang since they’re on the same flight. She gets up from first class to go find Eun-sang in coach, and steals her customs form to get her address.

She says it’s because she has the sinking feeling that this won’t be the last time they see each other, and she gets the sense that Tan will go looking for her the second something bad happens in his life. So… then why are you helping him along? I don’t know. She makes little sense to me, but I like her trench coat. Moving on.

Rachel arrives at the airport to a combative Young-do, who’s come to pick her up after all. He’s holding up a seemingly innocuous “Welcome, my stepsister!” banner but we know better than to trust his smiley faces.

He still blames her for this stupid errand, while she naturally thinks it’s his own fault for losing to his father in the first place, and shoves her cart at him like a luggage boy. Ha. I do enjoy that each of these assy characters knows someone assier than them. It’s a delicate system of checks and balances, if you will.

They have this petty fight in the car over the stereo (I did actually laugh to discover that after all that complaining, he didn’t even drive to the airport to pick her up) and Rachel is the first to mention that he’s probably dying of curiosity to know about Tan.

She says he’s doing well, and that he asked about Young-do. She assures him that she said he was living well without him, and then adds with a bite to her voice: “like a fox playing king while the tiger is away.”

Young-do orders the car to stop and turns to her: “Did you ever stop to ask why the tiger isn’t in his cave? Could it be that he was just playing a tiger? And that he ran away so he wouldn’t be found out?” He gets out and stands in the street with a long sigh.

Eun-sang, meanwhile, makes her own way home only to find it completely emptied out. There’s no sign of Mom or any of their stuff, though thankfully the landlady comes by to tell her that Mom recently moved because she became a live-in housekeeper.

She borrows the ajumma’s phone to call Mom, who tells her to stay at a jjimjilbang for the night because the chairman is sick and the mood in the house is bad. Eun-sang huddles by her suitcase in her old room for the night. And in LA, Tan sits poolside, still mooning over Eun-sang and staring at her photo all day.

Prosecutor’s son Hyo-shin arrives home and overhears his mother giving the tutor a lecture on her overly revealing skirt. It’s knee-length, but given that she asks her not to come here without socks on, I think reason isn’t really her game. The tutor, JEON HYUN-JOO (Im Joo-eun), agrees readily to all her demands.

She’s on good terms with her student Hyo-shin, who asks if she doesn’t dislike all of his mother’s strict rules, adding a little flirtatiously that he likes all the things Mom hates. But Hyun-joo says none of it matters because she pays a lot, and the person who pays is always right.