Summary
“Merry-go-round” finds Ah-yi in hot water after a risky decision backfires, while more explicit links between the magician and the missing girl throw doubt over the man’s intentions.
You’ll recall that the second episode ended with Il-deung making Ah-yi a morally questionable proposition about throwing a maths test. And you’ll recall that, in the first episode, Ah-yi only took one 50,000 won note when she could have taken two. Those two things, taken together, give us a good idea of why this is a difficult predicament for her.
Because we know both of these things, and because we know how important Yoo-yi is to her, we can understand why Ah-yi agrees. She’s being offered a hefty sum. And while the handshake deal might give a spying Ha-na the wrong impression, Ah-yi’s as good as her word. Which isn’t easy for her to justify.
One thing leads to another. After a brief, fantastical musical interlude with Ri-eul on the titular merry-go-round, Ah-yi strikes up a more long-term financial arrangement with Il-deung. In for a penny…
It almost seems like a love triangle is brewing between Ah-yi, Ri-eul, and Il-deung. The latter is jealous of Ah-yi learning the basics of misdirection, especially when he later learns that she knows virtually nothing about Ri-eul. He cautions her about the potential danger, but after being invited, shows up to the after-hours lessons with her, albeit a little unenthusiastically.
But there’s bad news all around in “Merry-go-round”. Firstly, Ri-eul is more explicitly tied to Ha-yoon’s disappearance, with camera footage of a man in magician gear destroying banners with scissors suggesting he’s trying to cover his tracks. It seems a little too obvious to be true, but with glimpses of another young woman around the fairground, there’s a pretty obvious implication that Ri-eul is at least knowledgeable of – but probably involved in – Ha-yoon’s disappearance.
Plus, Ah-yi and Il-deung’s arrangement is exposed after Il-deung’s mother notices the large sums of money disappearing from her son’s bank account. With Ah-yi already in financial dire straits and moral crises, this is the last thing she needs. Within this, though, we’re starting to get a better sense of Il-deung himself, which is nice but might turn out to be a little more burdensome than the show’s script can handle. We’ll see.
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