A Good Day to Be a Dog (2023) Episode 9

It’s a good day to usher in our OTP’s dating era! Whoop! We get secret dating, adorable moments, skinship and a whole lot of squee. A side couple is also seriously brewing in the background. And then there’s our resident mountain spirit. *Rolls eyes*

 
EPISODE 9

We open with a double celebration at Hae-na’s house where Yoo-ra and Woo-taek congratulate her on breaking her curse and starting a happy relationship with Seo-won. Like we expected, our Seo-hae couple is all shades of cute as they hide under the covers to make phone calls, come up with nicknames for each other, and aggressively blush while kicking their feet like the high-schoolers they teach.

Speaking of teaching and school, the vice principal distributes talisman bracelets to some of the teachers including a specially made one for Hae-na. The bracelet is supposed to have the perfect harmony of yin-yang energy that will keep her from breaking up with her boyfriend. But in reality, the bracelet is from Bo-gyeom because, surprise: the vice principal is also a mountain spirit! How interesting.

Unlike Bo-gyeom who has stuck around for hundreds of years — because he has to take revenge on Hae-na and Seo-won for a certain loss they made him suffer in their Joseon past lives — the vice principal is tired of the human realm and wants to return to the mountains. Unfortunately, he’s stuck on earth delivering suspicious bracelets on behalf of his mountain spirit boss.

The vice principal also bans PDA among the staff, and our OTP activates the secret dating trope. Love it! Seo-won and Hae-na sneak around like the main characters in a thriller romance, and while Seo-won is a smooth operator, Hae-na struggles with brain-freezes and glitches because secret dating is so not her strong suit. But can you blame her? She’s dating Cha Eun-woo the hottest guy in school! I also wouldn’t know how to act normally around him.

Seo-won invites Hae-na over to his place, and she’s excited to finally be here as a human, not as a dog. But things get kinda awkward because they’re a new couple… and they’re all alone… and Hae-na has got a dirty mind. The kind that makes her imagination run wild. Whoa! I did not know I needed those visuals of Cha Eun-woo’s fatal seduction with a strawberry. Okay, maybe I’m the one with a dirty mind.

The Seo-hae couple is about to kiss when Bo-gyeom visits to “look for something,” and Hae-na has to hide in Yul’s room. Could things get any worse for our OTP? Yes! Yul also comes home. Oh boy! To keep the party crashers within the confines of the living room, Seo-won forces himself to sit through a movie with them while poor Hae-na is stuck in Yul’s closet. Still, our OTP manages to sneak a kiss when Seo-won comes to fetch Hae-na later on… and what a kiss! There’s something about the enclosed space and the presence of people outside the room that made this kiss even steamier than it already was! *Fans self*

Speaking of kisses, things between Yoo-na and Woo-taek get a bit sensitive after she imagines his lips as chicken gizzard and tries to kiss him. The Han sisters and their imaginations! Now Yoo-na is more aware of Woo-taek as a man rather than as just a friend, and she’s determined to find out what the feeling is. How? The way everything started, of course. With a kiss!

“It’s okay for friends to kiss once, right?” Yoo-ra asks. No, it is not okay. You’ll turn into a dog! But Yoo-ra already broke her curse with Woo-taek when they were kids. Determination or not, Yoo-ra can’t go through with the planned kiss — but her attempt is all it takes to mess with Woo-taek’s mind. Now he also beginning to think of her as more than a friend. The friends-almost-turned-lovers soon snap out of their thoughts, though, because the girls’ dog-uncle is sick, and the family has to prepare for the worst.

Seo-won asks Hae-na how the family’s curse started because if they knew its origin, it could help in figuring out how to end it. Hae-na says no one knows how it started, and she up until now, she has never even thought about the possibility that the curse could come to an end. I guess the spectators do see the game differently from the players. Regardless of whether the curse can end or not, Seo-won promises to always be by Hae-na’s side. How reassuring.

Circling back to the originator of the curse, shaman Ji-ah trails after a vision/illusion and ends up at Bo-gyeom’s secret lair in the school. She has memory flashes of what looks like a past life when she sees the scarf in the wooden box, and she eventually passes out when she sees a portrait of herself — or rather, of Cho-young. Bo-gyeom carries an unconscious Ji-ah out of his lair, and she wakes up in the school’s clinic.

Ji-ah wonders why the scarf looked familiar and why her face was on Bo-gyeom’s wall. Meanwhile Yul performs a layman’s exorcism on her because he thinks she has been possessed. This scene was so hilarious! Yul is the best boy, and I luff him so much. Possession aside, he was genuinely worried about Ji-ah’s health, and this interaction just highlights how much of a good person he is.

Of course, he won’t be Yul if he doesn’t — very solemnly — give his uncle dating tips about Hae-na. “Don’t ask Ms. Han to do what puppies do. Don’t order coffee for her, get her a cup of cocoa.” And vice versa. “When my uncle makes fried eggs, he always draws faces on them. You must eat those faces last otherwise he’ll get upset. He likes solving math problems. Buy him a lot of newly released math books.” Loool. At least he looks like he is taking their dating news in stride.

Ji-ah seeks answers from Bo-gyeom about why she fainted after seeing the portrait, and his usual evasive tactics don’t work on her. She offers to do a card reading for him, and she sees that Bo-gyeom keeps lingering around the underworld because he misses a dead person. “You abandoned a field full of grass because of a dead woman, just to live an aimless life here.”

Oooo. Ji-ah’s reading is scarily accurate, and while Bo-gyeom acts unfazed in front of her, he is uneasy. Ji-ah totally got under his skin — especially when she mentioned that the dead woman doesn’t want him to linger aimlessly in the human world because of her. Via a flashback, we confirm that Bo-gyeom and Cho-young were in love. And even though Bo-gyeom doesn’t act like it, he does see the resemblance between Ji-ah and Cho-young, right?

As we wrap up for the week, Bo-gyeom invites Seo-won to his camper van and Seo-won is surprised to see the dog keychain that Hae-na gave him in week two, in Bo-gyeom’s possession. To ramp up the surprise, Bo-gyeom appears with a freaking sword to Seo-won’s neck, and I have to check that we’re still in 2023 because what the heck!? But in yet another flashback, we see Joseon Seo-won — with an arrow (?) in his chest — hold out the bloody sword to Cho-young’s neck at a Cliff of Doom, and Joseon Hae-na is also at the cliff. Oh dear!

If there’s anything K-dramas have taught me regarding past lives, it’s that nothing is what it seems. I’m just going to hold off on building theories and passing judgement until the past arc is fully fleshed out. The drama is taking its sweet time with the full reveal of the past life, but I’ll admit that the more we learn about their past lives, the more I’m reluctant to learn about it. Damn this curse that hovers in the background and keeps us from fully enjoying the cute moments.