Liar Game

Sunhwa pulls the last card toward her, the one that will decide her fate… and it’s the misprint. Mihye wins the bet, and Sunhwa loses one hundred fifty thousand dollars. While Daniel distracts the mall guards with his intentionally bad driving, Joon takes the opportunity to sneak inside and cut the power. PD Dasom keeps calm in the midst of the blackout, completely unaware that Joon has disguised himself as a Liar Game crew member. Carrying a camera so the light will obscure his face from anyone looking directly at him, Joon is able to convince Sunhwa’s cameraman that he needs to take his equipment to base camp to be checked. Sunhwa is too despondent to notice the switch, and thinks she’s just being interviewed when Joon asks her if she’s given up. “What more can I do at this point?” she sighs. Joon: “Make them pay for what they put you through.” That’s when Sunhwa looks up, and her suspicions are confirmed when power is restored. Joon tells her to keep her wits about her and walk calmly to a place with no cameras, while he pretends to follow her as a VJ. Once they’re alone, Sunhwa tells Joon that he was right—she got betrayed for hoping people would be trustworthy, just like he said she’d be. She can’t figure out why the network picked her. “Is it fun for them to see me suffer?” “Yes,” Joon answers matter-of-factly. Sunhwa, now annoyed, tells him he can just go home since the game’s already over. Joon: “I’ll decide when it’s over.”♥♥♥ After sunhwa tells him how she lost the bet with Mi-hye, he tells her that she never had a chance in the first place—she only thought the chances were even, but because she’d have to reshuffle the cards every time she pulled hers out face-up while Mihye never had to, she would never have been able to win. “I’m really an idiot, amen’t I?” Sunhwa says, once the realization that she was scammed—again—sets in. But for once, Joon isn’t so hard on her as he tells her that she can’t just trust other people blindly: “You have to explicitly teach them what the cost of betrayal is.” So Sunhwa approaches Mihye for another round, this time for only half Mihye’s stars if she wins… but if she loses, all of her remaining money would go to Mihye. Even Mihye seems a bit surprised that Sunhwa would be so foolish, but believes in her stupidity when Sunhwa continues to act hopeful that the chances are fifty-fifty. Mihye thinks Sunhwa is falling for the same trick again. The same goes for PD Dasom, who tsks that Sunhwa must not have learned her lesson. Seunghyun is sharper than that though, and suspects something might’ve happened while the lights were out. Either way, he’s excited. Using Joon’s advice, Sunhwa gets Mihye’s guard down by allowing her to win the first nine rounds. During that time, she makes a tiny fingernail indentation on the edge of Mihye’s card so that she can feel it when picking cards from the bag. And Joon knew that by the time Mihye suspected anything, it would be too late—Sunhwa starts winning and traps Mihye into continuing to play the game by acting like her usual innocent self… …So that when she wins, there’s nothing Mihye can do about it. Daniel has finally had it with his abusive boss, and stands up for himself in a hilarious bout of banmal-ery. They literally exchange rounds of I’M an asshole? YOU’RE the asshole! until they’re blue in the face, and in the end, Daniel quits. When the seventh round results are revealed, everyone’s surprised to see that half of Mi-hye’s stars have been given to Sunhwa, making them even in the final race. One of the contestants had no idea stars could change hands, at least until Seunghyun reminds him that the rules stated anything could be bought or sold. Mihye acts like she doesn’t care, and makes sure to tell Sunhwa that she still has no chance of winning. Joon paces nervously in the basement while waiting for the results, since Sunhwa has to lose her cameraman to sneak down there. Still, the relief that comes over him is obvious when he sees Sunhwa’s bright expression, because it means she won. She still has a ways to go, since having twelve stars isn’t enough to win—but now, according to Joon, she can win if she follows his instructions carefully.

Notes

Enjoy;-)