My Happy Ending (2023) K Drama Episode 7

Episode 7 of My Happy Ending starts with a flashback from some time ago showing how happy Soon-young, Jae-won and Ah-rin were as a family. One day as Soon-young drops Ah-rin to school, a neighbour points out Ah-rin’s distinctive facial features that do not match her parents. Soon-young brushes off the comment at first but after getting an anonymous email, Soon-young starts getting suspicious of Ah-rin’s paternity.

He grows concerned and starts doubting Jae-won. The anonymous emailer sends Soon-young a photo of Jae-won being taken inside a hotel room while in a drunken state. He grows concerned and decides to take a paternity test only to find out that he is not Ah-rin’s father. Soon-young is shattered and decides to make Jae-won feel the pain of not being able to trust the people around her.

Soon-young plans out his affair with Yoon-jin and frames Chang-seok for taking the insurance money left behind after Jae-won’s mother’s death. Soon-young does all this to make Jae-won pay for making his life a living hell. The episode then moves back to where we left off as Jae-won drives to Dorim Bio to test if Soon-young is Ah-rin’s daughter. She tries to recall what happened the night Ah-rin was conceived and locks herself in her office.

Secretary Kim shows up with the test results and finds Jae-won in a bad state. She calls Tae-oh who leaves his meeting in a rush. In the meantime, Jae-won walks out of the office without informing anyone. She goes to her condo and thinks about what Soon-young must have felt to learn that Ah-rin was not his child. She tries to recall the events from the night six years ago but is not able to remember anything.

Su-kyeong, her psychiatrist shows up at the condo and tries to calm Jae-won down. At the same time, Tae-oh finds Reporter Choi snooping around outside Jae-won’s house. He snatches Choi’s camera and looks through the photos. He takes the SD Card in the camera and asks the reporter to leave. Choi questions Tae-oh’s relationship with Jae-won which prompts him to beat the reporter up.

Choi runs away before Tae-oh could further harm him. At the same time, Tae-joo shows up at Mr Kwon’s office and asks him to be careful about Tae-oh as the latter was snooping around in his business. That night, Jae-won comes home and finds Soon-young in the living room. She talks to him about the company launch night, the night that Ah-rin was conceived.

A flashback takes the episode to the night when Mr Kwon forces Jae-won to have some drinks which react with her medicine, leaving her in a state of trance. She recalls stumbling to the hotel room and waking up the next morning to calls from Secretary Kim. Upon waking up, Jae-won gets a call from Soon-young and talks to her husband.

Present-day Jae-won apologises to Soon-young for not being able to remember what happened that night. Soon-young gets furious and shatters the glass in his hand, blaming Jae-won for ruining his life. He asks Jae-won to give up on Ah-rin and let him have her after their divorce. Soon-young leaves the room and thinks back at how he raised Ah-rin on his own as Jae-won drowned herself in work.

The stalker named Ami sends a text to both Soon-young and Jae-won at the same time. We also see Yoon-jin busy painting with 2 phones lying on her desk. Meanwhile, Jae-won wakes up from a nightmare of her trying to drown Ah-rin in the ocean just like her mother tried to drown her when she was younger. She rushes to check up on Ah-rin who seems to be playful with Soon-young around.

At the same time, Tae-oh sends the video of Tae-joo assaulting Detective Lee which he found in the SD Card of Reporter Choi’s camera. Tae-oh meets Tae-joo and asks him to get Detective Lee to hand over the CCTV footage from Seung-kyu’s accident. Tae-joo lies stating he already deleted the footage but Tae-oh is persistent.

Detective Lee claims that Mr Kwon had the footage deleted because Yoon-jin had shown up on the rooftop on the night of Seung-kyu’s accident. At the same time, Yoon-jin visits Seung-kyu at the hospital and asks the nurse if he is going to be okay. The nurse tells Yoon-jin that there is no certainty about  Seung-kyu waking up.

A flashback from the night of Seung-kyu’s accident shows the two arguing. Seung-kyu grabs Yoon-jin by her neck and attempts to choke her. Yoon-jin tries to free herself and accidentally pushes him off the roof, leading to his accident. Yoon-jin panics and immediately calls her father. Present-day Yoon-jin wonders if she should hope for Seung-kyu to wake up.

At the same time, Soon-young tries to guess who Ami is. He doubts everyone working at Dereve, including Yoon-jin. He then picks out the spare phone he found in Yoon-jin’s car and calls the operator to retrieve the text messages sent from the phone number. The operator reveals that the phone number was registered under the identity of Mr Heo Chi-young leaving him alarmed. At the same time, Yoon-jin shows up at the university to meet Soon-young.

Yoon-jin notices the concern on Soon-young’s face and offers to tell him everything about Seung-kyu. She reveals that Seung-kyu helped her out in trying to find information about Jae-won’s family. Yoon-jin adds that Seung-kyu got greedy and started asking for more money from her. Soon-young stops Yoon-jin from explaining further and asks her why she had a phone in her car that was registered to the name of his deceased brother.

Yoon-jin is caught off guard. This prompts Soon-young to end things with Yoon-jin leaving her angry and upset. Meanwhile, Ah-rin makes Jae-won promise never to make Soon-young cry again. That night, Mr Kwon’s secretary – Sang-beom meets Yoon-jin. Sang-beom, who is also Yoon-jin’s friend asks her to stop behaving like her father. He recalls how she always treated Jae-won badly and asked her to stop.

That night, Tae-joo gets a text from Yoon-jin. He texts her back, telling her that Tae-oh knew everything about Seung-kyu’s accident. That night, Jae-won hands over the divorce papers to Soon-young. Soon-young tells her that all he wanted was Ah-rin and adds that the paternity report did not matter to him. Jae-won goes to Chang-seok’s house and has a meal with her stepfather.

After the meal, the two chat about how Chang-seok raised Jae-won right from when she was a child. A flashback shows how Jae-won’s mother had made her stay back at a gambling place and it was Chang-seok who paid back the money Jae-won’s mother owed them to bring Jae-won back home.

Jae-won goes back home, sobbing as she thinks about her childhood and how Chang-seok helped her. She thinks about Ah-rin getting all the love she needs from Soon-young and goes back home. She gets on her knees and apologises to Soon-young, worried about what Ah-rin would think of her if she let the little girl go. Jae-won sobs and asks Soon-young to take good care of Ah-rin, hinting at the fact that she would give him custody of their daughter.

One morning, Jae-won wakes up to another nightmare where she stuffs the medicine bottles in her safe. Jae-won makes it to work and goes about her day and attends several meetings only to realise she has no memory of the last two days. That night, Jae-won gets back home and is playful with Ah-rin.

However, Soon-young is upset with Jae-won for not making it back home. Jae-won apologises to Soon-young and tells him that she stayed at the condo because of work. At dinner, Soon-young wonders why Jae-won is behaving differently as she grabs his hands during dinner. The episode ends with Jae-won getting dressed for work, looking in the mirror and appreciating her appearance.

The Episode Review

There is so much that happened in this episode that has left me confused. From how this episode ends, it is clear that something tremendous has happened over two days which has changed Jae-won. While this is not a fantasy drama, one could assume that Yoon-jin has somehow embodied Jae-won and is now living her life.

No matter how good of a father Soon-young is to Ah-rin, causing so much anguish in Jae-won’s life on purpose is evil on his part. While the DNA reports are a good enough reason for him to trust the fact that Jae-won cheated on him, it would be noble of him to tell Jae-won about it and confront her instead of going behind her back. I wish Jae-won had gone to a different lab to get the DNA results as opposed to the one that the stalker had directed her to.

It is romantic to see Tae-oh be there for Jae-won but with Tae-joo being involved with Yoon-jin and Mr Kwon, I am finding it very hard to believe characters on this show. While Tae-joo is working with Jae-won, we see that he is also involved with Mr Kwon and Yoon-jin. Jae-won has not one but Tae-oh on her team. I am hoping that Tae-oh does not turn out to be a bad person in Jae-won’s life because she has already been through a lot.