Highlights of Eps 500-501
Goo was rummaging through Taejin's belongings, to the young fake shaman's annoyance. The Red Paper was nowhere to be found, however, and Goo quickly concluded from Taejin's words that the young fake shaman knew nothing of it.
Taejin was enraged, but he could barely put up a fight against Goo. After beating Taejin unconscious, Goo took the fake shaman boy out of Cheonliang.
Taejin woke up groggily much later on, and found himself stripped naked, at a red-painted space (this is the precursor of The First Affiliate, in case anyone had forgotten about it), where so many people were made to fight to the death, all stripped naked just like himself.
Eugene told him that they were the worst criminals in the country, and unless Taejin gave up the entirety of his Cheonliang inheritance, said Eugene, he would never leave that place.
Back in Cheonliang, a year later, Mary had lost so much weight that she turned into the girl whom we knew at the start of Lookism. The Cheonliang Fam kids had each turned into ordinary students.
Vin, unfortunately, had regressed into a bully. One of the kids Vin bullied was a boy whose love confession Mary rejected because he used to ignore her before she lost weight.
Despite his outwardly tough act, Vin quickly found that people's glances terrified him, especially their implied insult at his "otherness", and their open accusations of the murders he supposedly had committed and gotten away with. In the same way that Seongji was scared of people's glances at his perceived monstrosity, Vin too was scared of this.
The pressure of societal judgement was proven too much for Vin, that he started hurting others including in judo classes.
Mary was reluctant to put a stop to his act because she saw that Vin had no other outlets for the immense pain that he was still caught in.
Elsewhere, a crew planned to take over Cheonliang in order to pay for protection money after two "monsters" (Goo and Gun) came and destroyed their premises.After the Cheonliang Fam kids fought that crew, other crews kept coming, eyeing the area as a potential source of money and assets.
When one of those crew members called Vin a monster, Vin was so triggered that he almost dropped a motorbike on the man. On the inside, he was thinking that he wanted to follow Seongji (in death).
In an act of solidarity, Jewoo, Taebong and Hyungjae calmed Vin down, saying that he wasn't a monster, that they were there for him in Seongji's place.
Some time afterwards, the Cheonliang boys were deciding on the future leader of Cheonliang through extreme ssireum, and they were interrupted by Taejin.
Apparently, Taejin had also boasted the name of Cheonliang while surviving Eugene's Inferno. And now he had returned to challenge the other boys for his claim on Cheonliang. Jewoo answered the challenge first, yet was quickly slammed to the ground, then it was Vin's turn.
But Vin was still stronger than Taejin, and this was something Taejin bitterly admitted as Vin repeatedly threw him down that he lost consciousness. In cold fury, before Taebong could stop him, Vin lifted and threw Taejin into the sea.
But before he could relish on the harsh victory, Vin was quickly knocked out, and the other three boys were too. Goo had come to save Taejin, after all, since the former young shaman had become one of the Kumdo heir's "secret friends".
Another time skip. Out of nowhere, Vin told Mary that he wanted to go to Seoul and became a rapper. She wondered why, and initially Vin told her that since no crew was targeting Cheonliang anymore and people still wanted to find Shinmyeong, his presence there was futile. But eventually he broke down and admitted that he wanted to runaway.
Mary immediately agreed to go with him, and when Vin in exchange asked her why, she just told him that she did it as his friend.
Then in Seoul, Vin gradually became the Vin we saw all those years ago, the one who listened to Duke Pyeon's music but bullied him. And now we know: he envied Duke's inner strength, since he himself was still entangled with his fears, guilt, and shame.
In the present timeline, Vin paid his tribute to Seongji at the now abandoned hut, and managed to avoid the other Cheonliang boys. Yet he found Daniel there, to his annoyance and amazement, and Daniel completely ignored him while talking to Eugene on the phone.
It turns out that Daniel too, was there for the infamous Red Paper, like so many before him. The Paper that was allegedly crucial in bringing down Charles and sparking the hunt for Gun.
Far away in a junkyard at dusk, a pensive Gun was resting alone among his ittobori carvings.
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