Of Swords and Parasols

Here we get the backstory of Hwaran, the rival shaman who claims that Sunbi’s grandmother’s artifacts belong to her. Honestly…I don’t care for Hwaran or find her interesting at all. On the one hand, she seems to have the same sense of isolation and introversion that Sunbi has, not to mention the lack of social skills, but with Sunbi, it comes across as frankness and the inability to dissemble. With Hwaran, it seems to be more of a superiority complex. If she sticks around(which seems to be unlikely) the contrast could be interesting-Sunbi was raised traditionally and now has to adjust to the modern world, Hwaran seems to have been raised to be modern and normal, but was called down a traditional path-but I’m not sure.

Mostly, Hwaran serves as a final straw to finally cause Sunbi to leave her family (and let her kick a little spiritual ass) and strike out on her own…which means we now get street gangs.Most of the volume focuses on Sunbi and Jonghan, a former runaway who takes in runaways and helps them find jobs. He seems to be a do-gooder, but has his own secrets, including the ghost of his sister, who he left with their abusive father, even after his sister asked him to take her with him. His story was good, but I mostly wished the regular supporting cast hadn’t been reduced to a few pages each. I am, though, extremely fond of the scene where Jonghan’s girlfriend tells Sunbi that she’ll kill her if Sunbi goes after Jonghon, and Sinbi straightup asks her how she’ll do it without batting an eye. Not that the girlfriend ever had a chance of taking Sunbi.

Meanwhile, Sunbi forgot to take Gwangsoo’s ring with her when she ran away, resulting in much over the top fretting in our resident dokebi. It wasn’t really helped any by a handsome young man-who likes to randomly work out shirtless in the living room, for some reason-moving in with Sunbi’s family and introducing himself to Gwangsoo as Sunbi’s fiance.