The weeklong wait for the release of episode 3 of Twinkling Watermelon (also, Sparkling Watermelon) felt like forever. And finally, our prayers were answered.
Ha Eun Gyeol, a class 11 student, is the only member of a family of four who can hear and speak. As a child, he befriended the owner of his neighbourhood music store, Viva Music, and started learning to play the guitar. There was an accident, and Eun Gyeol feels guilty for being too involved in music to be able to prevent it.
He locked his passion behind doors and put everything into studying. But when the going gets tough, he takes his guitar, dons a black mask, and does some busking in the streets. He gets spotted by the members of a rookie indie band, SPINE9, and starts performing with them. Eun Gyeol’s father spots him, and the two have a falling out. Eun Gyeol comes across a music store, La Vida Music, which transports him to 1995.
Twinkling Watermelon Episode 3 Recap: What Secrets and Surprises Await in 1995?
We begin in the spring of 1995, when Ha Yi Chan was living his era of glory. In order to date the cello goddess of Seowon Arts High School, Choi Se Kyung, he decided to start a musical band as per her conditions. He has to perform Nirvana’s Come as You Are at the school festival.
With his friend, Oh Ma Ju, as the manager, Yi Chan establishes First Love Memory Manipulators, aka The Manipulators. He needs a guitarist and promises the other band members to bring Yoon Dong Jin. With a promise of free food and boarding as bait, they manage to lure Dong Jin and go out to meet him.
And we catch up on the incidents from the previous episode. Eun Gyeol recognises the names Oh Ma Ju and Yoon Dong Jin, as they are famous in his timeline. Eun Gyeol is shocked to meet the young Yi Chan, his father, who is able to hear and speak perfectly.
Due to a misunderstanding, the boys mistake Eun Gyeol for Dong Jin. Eun Gyeol scares them as he repeatedly calls Yi Chan dad and asks where his mother is. The boys make a run for it, but Eun Gyeol follows them and tells them that he is Yoon Dong Jin. He is able to answer their questions promptly since he was exposed to the information through his interviews.
But the ruse fails when the other members reveal that he is, in fact, not Dong Jin. The members leave the band, but not before beating up Yi Chan, Ma Ju, and Eun Gyeol. Yi Chan is angry that he lied about being Yoon Dong Jin, while Eun Gyeol is angry that his father was making a band for a girl who was not Yoon Chung Ah, his mother.
Still from Episode 3 of Twinkling WatermelonYoon Chung Ah, who is unable to hear and speak, is a student with a cold personality in Se Kyung’s school. Her stepmother is the chairwoman of the school. She is a talented but arrogant art student. Because a student copied her artwork, she destroyed both the original and the copy, leading to a fight.
Trying to go back to his own time, Eun Gyeol goes back to the place where he landed in 1995. Instead of La Vida Music, he comes across a secondhand bookstore. He tries to call the phone number mentioned in the transaction slip, but it does not exist.
Eun Gyeol feels hungry but then realises that he cannot even afford cheap street food as the money he has is not valid in 1995.
Yi Chan stomps back home in anger. But he gets scolded by his grandmother, who spent the entire day cooking up a storm for their new guest. He had told her that he offered boarding to a Chungnam National University (CNU) alumnus in exchange for tutoring.
Yi Chan worries for the tired-looking Eun Gyeol, who has no money. He snaps back the next second, still angry over his deception. Eun Gyeol sorts out the 100 Won coins that would be valid in 1995 and finally has a bowl of instant noodles.
Eun Gyeol feels lost and craves his mother’s fermented soybean paste stew when he figures out that he can go searching for his mother. Unfortunately, he realises that he knows next to nothing about her past.
Amidst those realisations, Eun Gyeol also realises that, at some point in time, he stopped being curious about his parents and that his own worries occupied the forefront of his thoughts.
A ringing telephone snaps him out of his thoughts, and he follows the sound. Eun Gyeol finally makes contact with the La Vida Music store owner. However, he does not tell Eun Gyeol why he sent the latter to 1995 or how Eun Gyeol was supposed to return to 2023.
Before he can ask any other questions, he wakes up right where he was sleeping with the homeless people. Since he would have to find the reason for his trip and the way back home, he is likely stuck in 1995 for a while.
Twinkling Watermelon Episode 3 Ending Explained
The real Yoon Dong Jin posts on the server, through which the boys found him, that they have conned him. Yi Chan wants to go over and explain the misunderstanding, but it is too late, as Dong Jin had joined an indie band that recognised him. Not only that, but he also warned the others not to respond to further recruitment advertisements by Yi Chan and Ma Ju.
Yi Chan wonders whether Se Kyung knows about the incident too and runs off to explain it to her. He encounters Eun Gyeol in front of his school, who apologises and begs to join the band.
Se Kyung has tickets to the concert of her fiance’s medical school band. She plans on giving it to her new friend, Chung Ah.
Running away from Eun Gyeol, Yi Chan reaches Se Kyung’s school, but he cannot enter since he is not a student. He successfully manages to sneak in, yet encounters an old enemy.
In order to hide from him, Yi Chan hides in the sports equipment storage room, where he comes face-to-face with none other than Chung Ah, who is hiding from her bullies.
While these two are in the storage room, Eun Gyeol is waiting for Yi Chan at the entrance. He sees Se Kyung and recognises her as the daughter of the owner of Vida Music, who taught him to play the guitar. Eun Gyeol is elated to find a familiar face, but Se Kyung gets offended as he calls her aunt.
Twinkling Watermelon Episode 3 Review
At the very beginning of the episode, there is a scene in the bookstore where Yi Chan covers a girl as books from the shelf fall on her. Later, Chung Ah asks Se Kyung whether she likes Yi Chan. It is quite possible that the girl in the bookstore was Chung Ah.
His father told Eun Gyeol that his mother was his first love. The older Se Kyung mentioned in the previous episode that she went abroad when she was in class 11, which, if I’m guessing right, will happen in 1995.
Speaking of the older Se Kyung, her daughter also learns cello. Eun Ho had mentioned that he was dating an art student who was learning the cello. Coincidence?
Chung Ah’s personality as a student is poles opposite to her personality as the mother of Eun Ho and Eun Gyeol. It makes one wonder what happened between 1995 and 2023. We have 13 more episodes to discover that.
The bookstore book falling scene and the red telephone booth might seem quite familiar to some. Both appeared in the drama When My Love Blooms, directed by Son Jung Hyun, who is also the director of Twinkling Watermelon.
