Heartbeat (2023) K Drama Episode 4

Episode 4 of Heartbeat picks up at the moment when Woo-hyeol saves In-hae from the falling chandelier. He sees a drop of blood on her lips, his eyes turn red and he kisses her. When he does, he feels Hae-sun’s presence in her blood. A shocked In-hae makes him put her down and slaps him for his behaviour. He wonders how he could feel Hae-sun in her blood while In-hae muses about her first kiss being with a vampire.

Woo-hyeol discussed the kiss with his friends. They have never seen flashes of the past after drinking someone’s blood. Just then, a vampire named Rose turns up at Sang-hae’s house and demands he pay up for her blood pack deliveries. She’s happy to see Woo-hyeol and gives him a pack of Rh- blood. The three friends drink a cup of blood each and discuss Rose’s job of delivering blood during the early mornings.

Sang-hae encourages Woo-hyeol to tell In-hae the truth about the blood on her lips. He quietly sneaks into the house but she catches him. He apologises and tells her he lost control. She ends up calling him a mosquito and they argue, ending with In-hae telling him to work and earn money if he wants to be a human.

Do-sik opens a safe in his house and brings out a book with a list of vampires, that was handed down to him by his father. Could he be from a family of vampire hunters?

After getting tested at a hospital, the doctor tells Do-sik he seems perfectly healthy. But the latter is worried since his father and grandfather both passed away due to sudden heart attacks. Later, his driver tells him a woman named Ms. Na will be coming to South Korea soon. Do-sik says he’ll go to receive her at the airport.

Meanwhile, Woo-hyeol tells Dong-seop about In-hae’s bite mark but it isn’t there on his neck anymore. When Dong-seop gets a delivery order at the school across the road, Woo-hyeol offers to deliver it since he sees In-hae there. He delivers the food to a man who asks him to dump some trash on his way out. Woo-hyeol does so and the cleaning woman tells him to separate the recyclables. He learns that In-hae’s the school nurse from the woman.

After watching In-hae treat a student from a window, a security guard throws Woo-hyeol off the school grounds. An idea strikes Woo-hyeol and he asks the man for a job. The cleaning lady hears him and offers him one. Naturally, all the girls at school fawn over him as he pushes a cleaning cart. The guy on the motorbike turns up, on a skateboard this time, and knocks Woo-hyeol over. They get into a spat again.

Meanwhile, Ko Yang-nam visits Sang-hae’s tarot card shop. Yang-nam claims he has to give a friend a piece of difficult news. Sang-hae tries doing a reading for him but Yang-nam calls him out for using a deck with just one card. Sang-hae then realises that Yang-nam is not a human and hands him a menu with options for buying blood.

Woo-hyeol goes to In-hae’s office to clean the trash and she panics about him working there. She thinks the students will be in danger and when a young boy with a bleeding nose comes in, she hustles Woo-hyeol out of the room. He is incensed at her behaviour and rants about it to Dong-seop.

Do-sik sends In-hae a text asking her to meet him for dinner and is delighted when she says yes. They meet at a remote but fancy restaurant and Do-sik tells her it’s not officially open yet. In fact, it’s a wine bar his company is opening.

A tired Woo-hyeol is heading home when he gets distracted by the smell from a butcher’s shop. It’s run by the woman who met him outside his mansion the other day. Her husband is the descendant of the tailor shop. They discuss his house and Woo-hyeol answers a few questions before leaving and complaining about how nosy they are. Yang-nam is waiting for Woo-hyeol at the house and the latter tells everything about In-hae and Hae-sun.

A flashback shows Hae-sun running to their hideout and looking for Woo-hyeol. She tells him the townsfolk found out about him. She wants to run away with him but they find themselves surrounded. She stands in between Woo-hyeol and the commander, Lord Shin. When he doesn’t back down, they run away.

Yang-nam hears him out and then holds Woo-hyeol’s hand. He senses something and tells Woo-hyeol that he needs In-hae’s blood to complete the 1% transformation into a human. But it needs to be hot blood. Cold blood will be like poison to him. If In-hae falls in love, her blood will be hot enough to turn him human.

After their dinner, Do-sik walks In-hae home. He even gives her a housewarming gift – a self-defence device since the house’s alley is dark and lonely. Woo-hyeol watches them from the roof of the house. When she enters, she tries telling Woo-hyeol to quit his job at the school again but he refuses.

The next day, she sees him helping one of the cleaning ladies with their work load. He convinces her to rest her aching leg at the nurse’s office. The woman does so and while In-hae gives her some medicine, the woman sings praises about Woo-hyeol.

The biker guy comes over again and throws a piece of trash in the wrong pile in front of Woo-hyeol. Woo-hyeol wonders where he and his friends hang out and goes to investigate. He picks up some bottles of alcohol but misses a cigarette which ends up starting a fire.

The fire trucks arrive and chaos ensues. The biker guy and his friends put the blame on Woo-hyeol. The cleaning women try standing up for him but it doesn’t work. It’s In-hae who drags the student in by his ear and exposes him in front of the principal and other teachers.

Meanwhile, the butcher shop owner still suspects Woo-hyeol. She remembers when the area was to be redeveloped but couldn’t because the owner of the mansion refused to sell it. She insists that the mansion needs to go for the area to be redeveloped. And for that, Woo-hyeol needs to leave.

At home, Woo-hyeol thinks about how In-hae stood up for him and how it was quite similar to the way Hae-sun protected him. He muses about other similar incidents and then goes up to meet In-hae. When she comes out of her room, he calls her by the name Hae-sun and asks if it is really her.

At the airport, Do-sik welcomes a woman named Ms Na, who looks just like Hae-sun.

The Episode Review

There are several moving pieces in episode 4 of Heartbeat — Hae-sun’s blood in In-hae, Woo-hyeol getting a job, Do-sik having a list of vampires, Yang-nam’s revelations — and that’s what makes it great. The multiple plot lines keep the story moving and are enough fodder to keep viewers engaged. It also ends on a compelling note, showing Woo-hyeol’s assumption while also revealing the Hae-sun lookalike.

The implication that Do-sik could be from a family of vampire hunters is exciting since it makes the opposing parties of the love triangle even more compelling. With him being more involved in the fantasy side of things, it definitely makes him more interesting, as opposed to being a regular human.