The Twelfth Lantern – Episode 5: Noodles for Two

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Episode summary

Madam Oh sets two bowls every evening. A runaway noodle trolley gives Haneul a way to ask about the empty place.

Transcript

The Twelfth Lantern - Episode 5: Noodles for Two

Content notice: family estrangement and regret.

Panel 1. Evening in Cheongsan. Haneul enters Madam Oh's noodle shop with the small cream-white fox Bit at her boots. Two empty blue-ring bowls wait on a table. A brown-coated traveller is outside in the street.
Narration: Cheongsan. That evening.

Panel 2. Haneul looks at the two empty bowls. Madam Oh stands beside the table, brisk and guarded.
Haneul: Two bowls?
Madam Oh: One of them isn't yours.

Panel 3. Haneul asks about the spare place. Madam Oh pauses beside her kitchen bench.
Haneul: Who is it for?
Madam Oh: My sister. She used to sit there.

Panel 4. Madam Oh turns the hand crank of a noodle roller mounted on a wooden trolley. Haneul listens beside her. The two bowls remain on the dining table.
Madam Oh: We both wanted the last word.

Panel 5. The trolley rolls away. Noodles spill onto the floor. Haneul reaches for the wooden frame while Madam Oh recoils. Silent action panel.

Panel 6. Haneul stops the trolley by its wooden frame. Madam Oh looks sheepish. Fallen noodles lie beside a wheel.
Haneul: It didn't stick.
Madam Oh: It usually does.

Panel 7. Bit, small beside Haneul's boot and the trolley wheel, has a noodle dangling from his mouth. Haneul calls from off-panel.
Haneul: Bit.
Bit: I am reducing the evidence.

Panel 8. Madam Oh laughs at the mishap, then her expression softens into a memory.
Madam Oh: She always laughed at that wheel.

Panel 9. Haneul draws out a chair at the table. The two empty bowls and the spare place remain. A traveller waits outside the shop window.
Madam Oh: Every night, I make two.

Panel 10. Haneul sits at one place and looks up attentively. The opposite chair is still empty.
Haneul: I'm listening.

Panel 11. The two bowls now hold hot noodle soup. Madam Oh faces the seated Haneul with lowered shoulders and open hands. She says what she has been holding back.
Madam Oh: I miss her. More than I need to be right.

Panel 12. A brown-coated stranger has taken the previously empty seat and the second bowl. A travel bag rests by her chair. Her face is concealed from the reader. Haneul turns towards her; Madam Oh stops in recognition. Silent final panel.

End of Episode 5.