Our Sticky Love Episode 3 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Jung Hae-in as Jang Tae-ha
Ha Young as Go Eun-sae
Jeon Bae-soo as Hong Do-yeop
Kim Young-ok as Go Yeon-hong
Jang Hye-jin as Pang Hui-ja
Cha Cheong-hwa as Cho Maeng-suk

A detective agency calls its client, Mayor Ju's aide Gwak Chi-hyeon, with a lead on Go Ji-won, the vanished Seoul prosecutor who has lost her memory and now lives in Gujin Taffy Village as Go Eun-sae. A patient by that name, in her early thirties, was admitted two weeks ago to a university hospital in Gyeongbuk, a province in the southeast. The client wants to know if they are sure, and where the hospital is.

A kiss, a dinner and a warning to herself

Right where the last kiss left them, Jang Tae-ha points out that Eun-sae has stopped crying. She admits it worked and calls them even, since she kissed him first the day before, but tells him never to do it again. When he asks why not, he stumbles, then recites a speech about couples who live together for two years bumping lips all the time. Eun-sae calls him insane, decides all men are the same and tells him not to get his hopes up.

At home, Tae-ha sets dinner in front of her because he heard she barely ate, and pushes rice on her while she frets about carbs. He claims he already had Chinese food and just watches her eat. When he smiles, she says, "I didn't know you could smile." Alone, she replays his confession and blames the suit for rattling her; if that look was an act, he deserves an acting award. She remembers a toad that did not scare her, which he blamed on her head injury, and wonders whether she has simply changed. Then she catches herself: "Don't let those butterflies fool you."

Tae-ha's plan for the aide

Tae-ha thinks over the client's call. The man asked about a patient and a hospital, so he is checking hospitals for Eun-sae. He believes she is alive and has no idea Baek Sang-gil had her dealt with. Tae-ha also remembers hearing that the man is Mayor Ju's aide, planted inside the prosecution as a spy. The aide is acting alone, and somehow he found his way here. Kaito calls with a departure date for the stowaway boat, and Tae-ha tells him to keep it quiet.

At Hong's Boxing Gym, Hong Do-yeop admits he took the aide for a mole, not Eun-sae's real boyfriend. Tae-ha cares more that the man knows about Taffy Village, the taffy-making town they thought nobody could trace. Do-yeop recognizes the aide's photo: the man dropped by yesterday asking whether he had visited a hospital. At home, Eun-sae oversleeps and scolds herself for relaxing.

Do-yeop wants to tell her everything, warn her about Sang-gil and send her out of Korea. Tae-ha refuses. Without her memory, she would set out to check every claim and walk into worse danger. Someone who cannot remember being burned, he says, will not fear fire. The boat leaves in a month, so she needs her memory back before then. As for the aide, Tae-ha would rather let Sang-gil handle him, since Sang-gil wants nobody hunting for the prosecutor either. Soon after, someone calls the detective agency and offers an easier job at triple the agreed fee.

Peace with the shaman, and an old classmate

Eun-sae finds a chart of apples to color in for each meal, and scoffs that she is not a child. Cho Maeng-suk, the village shaman she fought with, turns up early to return the reading fee and admit she was wrong. Their apology comes with jabs, about Eun-sae's stiff bow and Maeng-suk's language, and both concede it is half apology, half fight. As Maeng-suk goes, Eun-sae calls her back and hands something over in the same grudging spirit.

Maeng-suk later grumbles to Tae-ha that she is still fuming. Earlier, it turns out, Tae-ha paid her for the broken Bodhisattva statue and asked her to apologize first. He called the hair-grabbing assault and reminded her that she disapproved when he became a thug. Eun-sae is a good person still shaken by the accident, he insisted. He remembered the rice cakes she gave him after school and the boiled eggs she stuffed in his pockets, because athletes should not go hungry. She softened and packed him red bean rice cakes.

Eun-sae colors in her apples after all. She tells Tae-ha the shaman apologized, and decides nobody stays mad at her for long. He takes her back to the clinic to start treatment, which puzzles her: a liar should want her memory to stay gone.

At An Mental Health Clinic, nurse Min Su-ji confronts the director, Dr. An Gi-jun, about a blind date his parents arranged. He says he owes them for funding the clinic. She points out that he hides her from staff and parents alike because she is not good enough for a clinic director. When he suggests she only stays for the clinic, she breaks up with him.

Then Eun-sae walks in with Tae-ha to vouch for her, and Gi-jun greets him by name; they were high school classmates. A flashback to a street fair in Gujin, their hometown, shows teenage Su-ji as the town's it girl, with Gi-jun bringing her tea. Her attention goes to young Tae-ha, who cannot get her name right.

In his office, Gi-jun mentions that Tae-ha went into something else after boxing, and Tae-ha says he left that job recently. When Gi-jun raises the rule about unverified patients, Tae-ha points out Gi-jun would not have called him otherwise and offers to pay whatever it costs. Eun-sae is booked twice a week, starting with an EEG. Gi-jun, wishing he had worn an extra insole, reminds himself that Tae-ha is a former thug and he is a doctor. Tae-ha botches Su-ji's name again and mentions his girlfriend. Next week brings a drug test, then cognitive rehabilitation. As the visitors leave, Su-ji seems glad to have seen her first love.

A shopping trip and a scooter ride

On the way home, Eun-sae allows that the classmate is a bit pretty, then insists she would be a knockout herself in the right clothes. So Tae-ha takes her to a mall in town. He calls every outfit pretty, and she lectures him that coral pink and bright pink are not the same. Her last purchase is a phone in his name, which she grudgingly accepts.

He has also slipped extra cushion foundations into the bag. They are for his grandmother, Go Yeon-hong, and her friends. Eun-sae shows them how it works, tapping makeup onto the grandmother until she marvels at her rosy face. Tae-ha thanks Eun-sae later; he never knew his grandmother was so pretty.

A boy named Pil-seung greets Tae-ha as Coach. He is the son of Pang Hui-ja, leader of the village women known as the S.E.S of Taffy Village, after the 1990s girl group, and he trains at the gym in secret. Eun-sae has no friends here to tell, and wonders why no friend from Seoul is looking for her.

Elsewhere, the aide asks one of her friends about her. The friend has heard nothing since a shopping trip and planned to report her missing; the aide tells her she applied for long-term leave. Then the detective agency summons him to a restaurant and asks for a bigger down payment, and he goes along with it.

Back home, Tae-ha checks the apple chart and finds every dose taken. The aide's search apparently catches up with him. Someone asks why he went looking for a woman whose vanishing was a favor, then explains how to grow an apple tree: cut troublesome buds early, because hesitation can ruin the harvest. Begging for his life, the aide offers a bargaining chip. Prosecutor Go, he says, had readied something else besides the watch, and he was hunting for it.

The next morning, Eun-sae has put on makeup and warns Tae-ha not to fall for her; he says he cannot help it. She wants to visit Seoul to jog her memory. He refuses, saying she is not well enough and they have few good memories there. Instead he offers a scooter ride, since she used to ride when stressed. Once she is on it, it all feels familiar, and she tears through the village with Tae-ha hanging on behind. Village women watching from the side call it the honeymoon phase.

He tells her she once did courier work. She remembers nothing, but her body does, so she asks what else she liked: taking pictures. She directs a full photo shoot, insisting her feet sit one centimeter above the bottom of the frame, and wonders how she knows that. Onlookers call him a hopeless romantic who does anything his wife asks. She has searched for Go Eun-sae on social media and found nothing, and he does not know her usual username. That, she says, is exactly why she does not trust him.

She tells him to stop trailing her and go earn money, because she wants beef. At the gym, Do-yeop teases him that the whole village heard about the date, including him lying on the ground for photos. Tae-ha insists it was only a ride and some photos, then gushes that she looked pretty in every shot, even the deleted ones. Do-yeop apologizes for everything, recognizing himself in every word.

The woman in the photo

Hui-ja tells Na Geum-hyang she backs her son's gaming habit, since gamers can earn millions. But when she sends pocket money to Pil-seung through a boy named Jun-sik, he says Pil-seung has not been at the PC café for days.

At home, Eun-sae watches news of the Irang-dong development ceremony, with Gangju City and Mirae Eden Company both represented, and decides both look shady. A segment on Seoul omakase restaurants sends her looking up one called The Cheongdam Class. There she finds someone's post about a feast with a best friend, and the friend in the photo is her. The caption tags her as Go Ji-won, and she wonders if that is her name. She searches the house for the clothes, bag and ring from the photos, and none of them are here. Tae-ha told her she hated superficial things; she decides none of it was true.

At Hong's Boxing Gym, Hui-ja storms in and lays into Tae-ha and Do-yeop for letting a kid lie to his mother. They tell her Pil-seung loves boxing and is good at it. She says he will end up like Tae-ha, who made the national team and still became a gangster. Eun-sae, who has come to the gym, hears it: "Jang Tae-ha was a gangster?"

Up next: Our Sticky Love Episode 4 Recap. See every episode in the Our Sticky Love episode guide.