One Day Off (2023) Episode 6

Jun 2, 2023

Episode 6 of One Day Off begins with Ha-kyung waking up to bad weather. When she grabs an umbrella and starts walking outside, the head teacher of the school continuously calls her about a controversial gaming event that has been going on. She keeps looking at her phone and ignores the calls. Her screensaver is a portrait of a duck, the same portrait hanging on a wall in her living room.

Ha-kyung looks down to see a worm on her boot and screams, shaking it off into a puddle.

She arrives at a traditional-style Korean house and looks at her texts; everyone is asking how the game can be allowed in school. The PTA president calls her and tells her to take care of the issue before rudely hanging up.

A student named Ye-jun calls and says that he won’t call the games off. Ha-kyung is in a tight spot.

Ha-kyung loses her credit card and has no way of paying for the trip home. She starts walking home but stops at the nearby Meteorological Museum of Korea, hoping the rain will stop. Hungry, she imagines that one of the exhibits is food.

She sits and watches a weather film and notices that some of her students and a fellow teacher are there. She tries to hide, but the art teacher finds her. He sits with her and the two talk, eventually walking together until they end up sitting outside where the rain is now gone. They talk about the school situation, and she tells him about her one-day trips and that she can’t stand not going anywhere. She then tells him that she wants to go everywhere and do nothing. He talks about how the worms need to come out when it rains so that they don’t drown.

Later, the art teacher invites her to eat with him and the students, but she declines and instead asks to borrow some cash for a bus home. He doesn’t have any cash but asks the students to pitch in, and they do.

At a bus stop, Ye-jun calls her again, and she watches a worm crawl on the road as he asks her to help the students have one last match. Her phone dies, and a car nearly runs over the worm. She picks it up with a stick and moves it to safety.

It rains again, and having forgotten her umbrella, she runs home. Once there, she whips up a kimchi pancake before sitting on the couch to watch the rain. An imaginary or ghost woman joins her and takes some of the pancake.

A scene displays a little girl skipping and images of bread and pastries.

The Episode Review

This episode embodies exactly what rainy days feel like sometimes. Though, for the most part, Ha-kyung doesn’t enjoy the rain, it is a very satisfactory and soothing episode for people who like to watch and listen to the rain.

It is a little surprising that it doesn’t show what Ha-kyung’s choice is regarding the school’s game. But just as she came to have compassion for the worm, and as the students had compassion for her, it is likely that she will choose to side with the students.