The First Night with the Duke: Episodes 7-8
by DaebakGrits
The path to becoming the leading lady is not easy. When our transmigrated heroine isn’t falling victim to our villains’ nefarious assasination attempts, she and her leading man have to overcome the obstacles that are her overprotective father and (yet another) scorned prince.
EPISODES 7-8
When we last saw our leading couple, Yi Beon was performing underwater mouth-to-mouth on Seon-chaek — you know, total end-of-chapter cliffhanger fodder — but our story resumes this week with the events leading up to the cliffhanger as seen from Yi Beon’s perspective. He was summoned by the king because he’d heard that the queen mother had fainted and canceled the marriage selection. Although the king is greatly amused by the story and wishes he could have been a fly on the wall to have seen the commotion, he quickly sobers when it dawns on him that he should be more curious about the intel Yi Beon obviously leveraged against the queen mother.
Although it would behoove Yi Beon to tell the overly suspicious king the truth, he deflects and tries to diminish the significance of the incident as a “trivial commotion” in order to uphold his end of his bargain with the queen mother. However, the fact that Yi Beon hesitates to reveal the Do family’s connection to the Westerner would suggest the incident is, in fact, the opposite of trivial. As punishment for his silence, the king decides Yi Beon isn’t ready for marriage yet and tells him to delay his wedding, but Yi Beon insists on handling his marriage himself. For the first time, Yi Beon voices his opinion in front of the king, who then devolves into more peals of hysterical laughter — the kind that screams “I overthrew the former king, so now I’m unhinged and paranoid that someone will do the same to me.” After a word of caution, the king seemingly grants Yi Beon the freedom to do as he pleases marriage-wise, but there’s definitely an undeniable tension in the air foreshadowing the end of this already tenuous master-dog relationship.
Yi Beon walks away from the encounter looking as though he’s fully aware of how he rocked the metaphorical boat, but any concerns he might have had about his relationship with the king are thrown overboard when he hears Seon-chaek’s scream as she falls into the pond. Like the true male lead that he is, he rushes to her rescue, dives into the water, kisses her, and then drags her to the surface. I’d argue that he did the last two things out of order, but Seon-chaek doesn’t have any complaints once she’s out of the pond and nestled in Yi Beon’s arms. In fact, she spends more time assuring the distraught Yi Beon that she’s safe than worrying about the fact that someone tried to kill her because, turns out, her near-death experience made her realize the extent of her feelings for Yi Beon. She confesses her love for him.
It’s a sweet and tender moment that later leads to their “second night” together, but I have mixed feelings about these romance scenes. Taecyeon absolutely nails the emotions required of his character — the panicked eyes and cracked voice belying his concern of almost losing his lady love, his frustrations that he wasn’t there to protect her, his shock and happiness after hearing her confess her love for him, and the slight vulnerability and insecurity he feels after her confession that causes him to need more assurance from her that her love for him is real. As the male lead of a romance novel, it makes sense for Yi Beon to feel this deeply in the moment. It’s part of his trope for him to fall fast, hard, and at first sight. Seon-chaek, however, is a modern woman from our world, and as such, I can’t help but feel like she’s falling a little too fast for a man that is — as far as she knows — fictional and could very well be a part of a coma-induced role-play dream. Then again, winter has already arrived for our characters, and if time moves at the same pace in this fictional universe as it does in the real one, then maybe enough days have really passed for Seon-chaek to have come to accept that this world is her new reality.
After their second night together, Seon-chaek fights her way out of a cuddly Yi Beon’s arms so she can cook them breakfast, and unfortunately for Yi Beon’s tastebuds, her culinary skills are not as great as her bartending. Yi Beon chokes down her cooking with a forced smile on his face, and even though marriage would mean he’d have to suffer through her cooking many times in the future, he still escorts Seon-chaek home and gladly asks her father for his permission to marry her. Once again, his request is denied because her father deems him a “daughter thief” who dared to keep his daughter out all night not once — but twice! The audacity!
Eventually, Seon-chaek stops grumbling that her father is obstructing her marriage plans long enough to remember that someone tried to kill her. And that someone, she quickly deduces, is Hwa-seon because, well, she’s the novel’s villainess. Who else could it be, right? (Not me thinking it was Eun-ae right up until the moment Seon-chaek pulled up Hwa-seon’s sleeve and revealed the scratches she’d made on Hwa-seon’s forearm when she fell in the pond.) Instead of tattling to Yi Beon, who would have surely resorted to violence, Seon-chaek takes matters into her own hands and tries to encourage Hwa-seon to be a better person. After all, if Seon-chaek can become the female lead, and if there’s hope that Eun-ae might end up with the besotted second male lead, then maybe the villainess can turn over a new leaf, too.
Although it’s unclear whether or not Hwa-seon heeded Seon-chaek’s warning that she’ll end up dying alone if she doesn’t learn to be a nicer person, Seon-chaek’s hope that Eun-ae will find happiness with Soo-gyeom appears to be bearing fruit. You see, Soo-gyeom coincidentally runs into Eun-ae at the orphanage she sponsors, and they have a pleasant date together. They bond over their shared love of children and culinary preferences, but their time together is cut abruptly short when Soo-gyeom spots his overbearing father, JUNG MOON-SEOK (Jung Ho-bin), and runs away without so much as a goodbye.
You see, Soo-gyeom’s father is a classest who does not like his son cohorting with lowly commoners. So, suffice it to say, even if Soo-gyeom manages to capture Eun-ae’s heart, his father is going to be a massive obstacle between them, and given that Soo-gyom hasn’t shown that he’s got the gumption to disobey his father, the outlook for this potential couple is fairly bleak. Then again, Eun-ae knows a thing or two about overbearing fathers with high expectations, as her own father seemingly adopted her to use her as a tool to move up in society. So maybe these two will bond further over their daddy issues and find the courage to run away together or something.
While Soo-gyuom is dining and dashing on Eun-ae, Seon-chaek’s date with Yi Beon is interrupted when she runs into one of the real — meaning the fictional — Seon-chaek’s acquaintances: the exiled prince YI GYU (Lee Tae-sun). Interestingly, Seon-chaek has no memory of Yi Gyu being in the novel, so either he was a planned character who hadn’t been introduced to the web novel’s plot yet or he’s another minor character who has now gained importance because Seon-chaek, as the new female lead, needs another angle for her love triangle. Either way, Yi Gyu was childhood friends with Seon-chaek, and she was his first love.
Interestingly, despite not having seen Seon-chaek in years, he’s the first person in this fictional world to be truly suspicious of her odd behavior, which makes me wonder where the real (re: fictional) Seon-chaek is while her body is being possessed. Prior to this, I just assumed Seon-chaek, as an obscure side character, just sort of began existing at the start of the novel, when real-world Seon-chaek took over her life. Yi Gyu’s presence, however, disproves this theory, and despite his murderous aura, I feel for him. The person he was most excited to see again no longer exists, and he doesn’t even know it.
Instead, his first love — or who assumes is his first love — has not only forgotten him but is happily engaged to someone else — but not just any someone. Yi Gyu also has history with Yi Beon that makes Seon-chaek’s choice in a fiancée extra distressing. You see, both Yi Beon and Yi Gyu lost their parents when the king murdered all the members of the royal family who posed a threat to his position on the throne, and while Yi Beon became the king’s loyal servant after his parents were killed, Yi Gyu was exiled. And, despite the affable facade he puts on in front of the king, Yi Gyu clearly still holds a grudge against his parents’ murderer — and, by extension, Yi Beon.
Although Yi Beon is wary of Yi Gyu and stares death glares in his direction, he’s only mildly threatened by him as a competitor for Seon-chaek’s heart. After all, Seon-chaek gave him a matching couple’s bracelet as a token of her affection, and he’s so pleased by the item — even if it’s a bit too unmanly for his tastes — that he leans in for a kiss. It’s too bad her father witnesses the kiss and subsequently confines her to her rooms because that’s clearly the only way he can keep the two of them apart.
What follows is a series of comedic scenes between our love birds. Seon-chaek tries to circumvent her confinement, and Yi Beon does his best to convince her father that he loves and respects Seon-chaek — you know, despite the whole sleeping with her and possibly impregnating her thing. There is a lot of cuteness to these scenes, but as fond as I was seeing Seon-chaek and Yi Beon play telephone with the cups and string, I could have done without the filler. The fact that Seon-chaek’s father is still against the marriage after her second night with Yi Beon is ridiculous. The overprotective father bit had jump the shark by this point in the story, as there was no need for her father to drive a wedge between the couple, especially not when a new, objectively more interesting character has entered the chat and has the potential to stir up more interesting conflicts.
Eventually, Yi Beon wins over Seon-chaek’s father, but before he agrees to marry off his daughter, Yi Beon must first promise that he will not have any more overnight sleepovers with Seon-chaek before their wedding. It seems easy enough, but at that very moment Seon-chaek has snuck out of her house to buy a talisman from a shaman who promises her that it will get rid of everyone interfering with her marriage…if she hides the talisman in Yi Beon’s bedding. When she shows up at her home, itching to hide the talisman in his bedding, Yi Beon blocks her in his bedroom and kicks her out of her home. (Excuse me, shouldn’t you walk her home? She was almost killed recently, and you did promise her father to protect her.) Instead of walking her home, Yi Beon reads a vaguely threatening letter someone (spoiler: Yi Gyu) shot through his window via a messenger arrow and prepares for an unexpected gyeokgu match.
The the opposing gyeokgu team captain is none other than Yi Gyu, and normally Yi Beon, the more skilled player, wouldn’t have an issue defeating Yi Gyu. Unfortunately, Yi Gyu fights dirty, and the heated match comes to an unexpected end when Yi Gyu intentionally throws his gyeokgu stick at Soo-gyeon. Yi Beon throws his own stick to deflect it, and while he successfully protects his friend and teammate, his stick ricochets and nearly hits the king. The king accepts Yi Beon’s apology for the accident, but he and Yi Beon are equally shaken by the events because it shows how tenuous the peace is between them.
To use the king’s analogy, Yi Beon is the king’s dog. The king knows Yi Beon has the power and ability to turn on him and bite him, but Yi Beon is equally afraid because he values his life and those he cares about. It’s only a matter of time before the leash snaps, and Yi Beon finds himself at odds with the king. However, what’s unclear to me is whether or not Yi Beon will join forces with Yi Gyu, who has a clandestine group of supporters plotting with him to take out the king. Both princes have the same reason to hate the king, but Yi-Beon has murdered enough people on behalf of the king that he’s not wholly innocent. So, as much as I’d like to see these two princes develop a bromance and team up to slay the unlikeable king, it seems unlikely given the complex dynamics.
Then again, both men have an affection for Seon-chaek, and nothing brings two love rivals together quite like their shared distress when their leading lady becomes a damsel in distress. And, yes, Seon-chaek has, once again, found herself in trouble. This time, she was lured out of her house with a letter from Yi Beon (spoiler alert: it wasn’t from him) that asked her to meet him by the stream where they first met. By the time Yi Beon learns that someone impersonated him, Seon-chaek has already been kidnapped, and only her couple’s bracelet, which fell off her wrist during her scuffle with her attacker, remains in the spot of their meet cute.
Who is the masked man with a scar on his temple that kidnapped Seon-chaek with a hatchet? Well, that’s still to be determined, but what we do know is that Soo-gyeon saw Eun-ae hand the same man a sachet of money, so it appears my earlier theory was correct: Eun-ae has become a villain. Ironically, now that there seems to be irrefutable evidence that she’s switched to the dark side, I suspect that this might be another red herring. After all, I thought for sure Eun-ae pushed Seon-chaek into the pond.
Then again, maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part because, now that I’ve seen Soo-gyeon and Eun-ae together, I’m rooting for him to get the girl. I mean, there’s still a possibility that Eun-ae’s father had her pay the thug for hire without her knowing that the money was for Seon-chaek’s kidnapping, right? Ehhh, who am I kidding. Eun-ae is a villainess, and Soo-gyeon is going to end up alone in this version of the web novel, too. Poor guy, I was really rooting for him to get out of the second male lead slump.
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