Delivery Man (2023) Episode 3

Episode 3 of Delivery Man picks up with Young-min enquiring why the ghost woman is wearing his mom’s hairband on her wrist. He voices he gave that he gave that to his mom in elementary school. The ghost woman says she has no idea how it got there, and the conversation is cut short by Byeong-cheol’s wife, So-yeon, who asks for a ride home.

At Byeong-cheol’s home, So-yeon tells Young-min how thankful she is for all of his help and goes inside, and Byeong-cheol follows her.

Suddenly, Byeong-cheol comes rushing out and tells Young-min and the ghost woman that So-yeon needs help. They run to assist, and see that the fraudster birth mom is there, yanking Byeong-cheol’s wife by the hair while her partner is threatening her with a knife and asking her where her bank book is.

Meanwhile, Young-min is pounding on the door. Byeong-cheol is standing by, helpless. He turns to try to open the door lock, trying again and again, but his hand keeps passing through the lock until somehow he is finally able to break it. Young-min bursts in and punches the lady’s partner in the face. The police are called, and the ghost woman says that Young-min should tell So-yeon the whole story of how he came to help her.

He explains to So-yeon that Byeong-cheol asked him to help her and that his ghost is there with them right now. She realizes that Byeong-cheol must have broken the door lock. Young-min translates what Byeong-cheol wants to say to his wife—that they wanted to name their baby Star—and his wife is brought to tears. He apologizes for leaving her alone in this world, and she says that he didn’t; he left her with their child. Byeong-cheol dissipates.

At home, Young-min frantically searches for his mom’s headband. And Grandma brings his mom’s phone, which has a picture of the hairband. It has an image of a taxi on it. The ghost woman flips the hairband over, seeing that it says JS and YM on the back.

Young-min realizes that his mom was wearing the hairband the day she died. The phone’s photos reveal selfies of his mom and the ghost woman together, smiling. They go through his contact list to see if she recognizes any of the names, but she doesn’t.

Meanwhile, a man is jogging. He answers his phone and asks who is handling his daughter’s case. Presumably this is the ghost woman’s dad.

The detectives ask to meet with Young-min. They ask him why he was at the scene of the crime. He has a flashback to that day; he is walking to where his mom is and calls her on the phone; she says she needs to go to the hospital; then she cries out, and he runs towards her.

He tells the detectives that he took another taxi to the hospital. He didn’t take his mom’s taxi so that the crime scene would be preserved. There was a traffic jam, so he got out and ran to the hospital, arriving one hour after the incident. The detectives keep asking questions, and he gets defensive, asks how they could think he could kill his own mother, and leaves.

Grandma calls Young-min and tells him to buy flowers for his mother’s grave. He does so and recalls memories of his mom with the ghost woman. Someone is taking photos of Young-min, but they aren’t aware of it. The ghost woman says she feels something is off.

Grandma wonders if Young-min is lonely since he has been talking to himself a lot. She calls the young nurse at the hospital, So-ri, and she tells her to come over one day. So-ri reminds Grandma to take her medicine and promises to visit when she has a day off.

A young boy who was in an accident is rushed to the hospital and goes into cardiac arrest. The patient flatlines, and Dr. Do angrily shoves an aid who was not doing CPR properly. Dr. Do quickly does CPR, even though the patient has passed. Dr. Do informs the boy’s mother, who rushes into the hospital room, wailing. A closeup is shown of an empty potassium chloride shot in the boy’s hospital room.

Meanwhile, Young-min picks up a drunk client. The client shuts his eyes and becomes possessed. When he opens his eyes, they are clear blue and creepy. The man puts his hand on Young-min’s thigh. With his other hand, he pulls his hand off. He talks to himself, asking himself if he wants to go to the police. He says that he can see the woman in the back of the car. Young-min stops the taxi, and they all get out. The man says he heard about the ghost taxi from something Young-min posted online and reveals that he is a shaman.

The man is annoyed at the ghost woman’s presence. He starts to conduct a ritual and places a yellow piece of paper with writing on the taxi. He tells Young-min that he picked up bad luck. He picks up the paper and threateningly walks towards the ghost woman with it, but Young-min stops him. The shaman gives Young-min his business card, and the ghost woman tells him to leave.

Young-min then takes out some items that customers left behind and asks the ghost woman if she is drawn to any of them. He conducts a test to see if she might be attached to any of the objects rather than the taxi. When he takes one of the objects, a phone, and walks away with it, her body is pulled to the phone, and she collides with Young-min in an accidental kiss.

Young-min is startled and goes back to the taxi without acknowledging the kiss, but he steals some glances at her lips on the drive home. The phone’s battery flashes low, and then the ghost woman disappears, leaving Young-min alone. He goes into a convenience store and asks for a charger, but they don’t have one, and two drunk men ask for a ride.

Meanwhile, the ghost woman is standing in an isolated and dark place on top of a tall and narrow rock formation. Young-min picks up a few more customers before heading home. He recalls how the shaman had warned him that he wouldn’t get customers if the ghost woman is around.

Young-min puts the phone in the glovebox. The next morning, Young-min picks up his food and asks Grandma what kind of phone she uses. Grandma asks why he has been yelling “Get away from me” in his sleep, and he doesn’t answer. He takes Grandma to singing class and takes out the phone from the glovebox, telling Grandma that the phone is trash. Grandma takes the phone as she gets out of the car and throws it away. Young-min realizes this only after she does it.

He picks up another customer, and he keeps imagining that the ghost woman is there with him. He starts to feel lonely.

Meanwhile, one of his taxi driver friends, Eun-soo, asks Young-min and one of their other friends for help. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and has wandered off. They all frantically search for her.

At a police station, a woman is filing a complaint because Eun-soo’s mom was following her daughter, thinking she was Eun-soo.

Eun-soo confides in Young-min that her mother is like a ghost and that only Eun-soo really sees her. Their conversation is interrupted when she gets a call from the police saying that they have her mom.

Back in the ghost world, the ghost woman sees another woman in a rock formation with bloody eyes holding a blanket (with maybe a baby inside?). The woman disappears. The ghost woman feels scared and alone.

Young-Min decides to retrieve the phone from the waste bin and buys a charger for it. The ghost woman suddenly comes back to the real world, in Young-min’s arms.

The Episode Review

In this episode, we see more of the pieces surrounding the ghost woman and Young-min’s mom’s death connecting, as well as seeing some more sparks fly. And in typical k-drama fashion, there is an accidental kiss too!

However, it seems like the casting is not quite right. The ghost woman and Young-min don’t give the impression of having natural chemistry. But we’ll see if that builds up as the series progresses.