'No Tail To Tell' Episodes 9-10 Recap: What Happens To Geum-Ho In The End?

Netflix’s No Tail To Tell will be reaching its conclusion next week, so all the pieces are coming together now. After several attempts at making romantic advances that felt halfhearted, the show finally sees the two main leads getting together, but is it any good? Well, that kiss was certainly one of the worst we’ve seen in a while. It’s reminding me of the infamous “Itaewon Class” kiss, and I know Lomon’s young and all that, but like, Kim Hye-Yoon, I expected more from you. Anyway, what do you think the ending of this show is going to look like? Will Eun-Ho go back to being a Gumiho? Will she become human and get her happy ending? Well, we’ll have to wait to find out, but for now, let’s recap episodes 9 and 10. 

Spoiler Alert

How Has Tampering With Fate Affected Woo-Seok?

In the last episode, Woo-Seok finally recovered some of the memories he’d had wiped, meaning he now remembers the whole deal with Eun-Ho and the fate he swapped with Si-Yeol. The trouble is, Lee Yoon and his shaman friend, Do-Cheol, know that Eun-Ho is now a human. Initially, this causes Do-Cheol to lose interest, and he explains his reasoning through the lens of the orbs all cultivated beasts apparently have. Nine-tailed foxes in particular have fox beads that empower them to do magic, and he was only collaborating with Yoon because he wanted to get access to one. Now that Eun-Ho’s a human, though, she’s useless to him. But then he realizes that someone must have wiped Woo-Seok’s memories out, meaning there’s another nine-tailed fox around.

Woo-Seok contemplates warning Si-Yeol that Yoon and the shaman are going to be targeting them, but he figures that Si-Yeol himself isn’t in any danger, so he refrains from reaching out. He has his first game representing South Korea soon too; well, technically not his first, but his first since he changed his fate. Before the game, his teammates rib him for acting all nervous, but he just says his heart’s beating weird. He ends up collapsing right there on the pitch before the game starts, and he’s rushed to the hospital. Luckily, he pulls through and survives, and though Si-Yeol and Eun-Ho rush to the hospital, they can’t get in to see him. Eun-Ho bumps into Lord Pagun at the hospital, and he tells her this is her fault.

Apparently, of Si-Yeol and Woo-Seok, one was supposed to lead a long, difficult, and unimpressive life, and the other was supposed to find success and die young. Following the wish she’d granted Woo-Seok, their fates have been interchanged, and now Woo-Seok won’t get to live to see next winter, despite so briefly having tasted the success he’d longed for for so long. But Pagun offers Eun-Ho a choice. He gives her a dagger and says that if she kills Si-Yeol now, she’ll save Woo-Seok but also lose her cultivated merits, meaning she would lose her human status and go back to being a nine-tailed fox like she’s always wanted. However, if she spares Si-Yeol and lets Woo-Seok die, she’ll be stuck as a human, forced to live out a short, brutish life.

But Eun-Ho catches Pagun out in a logical hole when he says messing with fate is never the right option. After all, isn’t messing with fate what the gods are known for? And isn’t that what they’re asking her to do by telling her to murder Si-Yeol? She says she rejects their methods, and that she’ll figure out a way to become a nine-tailed fox again and protect Si-Yeol all his life. Later, Woo-Seok learns from the doctor that it wasn’t just an ordinary heart attack he’d suffered; he’s also been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of heart cancer for which there’s no treatment. At best, he has six months left to live. He ends up panicking and calling Si-Yeol to visit him, and he’s surprised when he shows up with Eun-Ho. She sends Si-Yeol out to buy a fruit basket and, when she gets the privacy, tells Woo-Seok that she can’t switch their lives again and that he shouldn’t tell Si-Yeol he’s going to die, because it would hurt him a lot. She’s going to try to figure something out, though.

How Does Eun-Ho Try To Earn A Bit Of Money?

The one big problem in Eun-Ho and Si-Yeol’s life right now is that they’re flat broke. Even football isn’t going to bring Si-Yeol any money now that he’s playing for a 4th division team. Eun-Ho and Si-Yeol get a bit of practice done (well, it’s mostly Si-Yeol finding out how dramatically unathletic Eun-Ho is), and then she promises him that she’ll get out there and earn a bit of cash so they don’t have to worry about anything. She calls up a bunch of numbers advertising jobs, but for some reason, none of them seem willing to hire someone who says she graduated from university in the Joseon era.

Finally, she does get a job in a grocery store, but it’s unglamorous. She starts out as an unwieldy mascot handing out flyers, but then she gets knocked down and ends up being swarmed by a bunch of kids. Then she’s moved to a position where she’s handing out samples, but she fries every piece to the point that it’s burnt, causing people to complain. Finally, she ends up at the checkout counter, where she finds herself in her element. But even here, she gets annoyed dealing with anything that requires extra effort, particularly processing checks. Unfortunately, this leads her to return a check for 100k won to the customer by mistake, meaning not only does Eun-Ho not get paid for her day’s work, but she actually ends up owing money to the grocery store.

She responds by doing the sensible thing, of course. If you were going to say that would mean selling Si-Yeol’s AC unit, you guessed right. Si-Yeol somehow isn’t stunned when she reveals to him what she’s done (in front of all his friends from the football club too), but she ends up sobbing anyway when she finds out she probably got scammed, getting only 200k won for the AC and the outside unit, about half what she should have expected. She complains to Si-Yeol that human life is complicated, and she’s not wrong. Around this time, Geum-Ho shows up, and it turns out she’s been stalking Beom, Si-Yeol’s teammate, and Eun-Ho gets mad at her sister for falling for a man. Obviously, she calls out her sister’s hypocrisy, but all she can say is that it’s different with her and Si-Yeol. Ultimately, the financial problem is solved simply when she “borrows” Woo-Seok’s flashy black no-limit credit card.

Does Daehung Citizens FC’s Financial Crisis Get Resolved?

Si-Yeol shows up for practice one day, but gets confused when he finds out it’s been called off, even though they have an away game that very weekend. He walks into the coach’s office to confront him, only to discover that he’s been drinking for some reason. Turns out, the team’s main sponsor, the family who owns the nursing home Si-Yeol’s grandmother is in, has pulled out, meaning that unless they can find another sponsor, Daehung Citizens FC will go bankrupt and the club will be forced to dissolve. We later find out this was a result of the meddling of Yoon, who put pressure on the family running the nursing home to get them to pull out.

Later, Si-Yeol ends up going to a grocery store to return the fruit basket he’d bought for Woo-Seok, and when Eun-Ho sees it’s the same one she found herself in debt to after working there, he promises to sort things out. However, the manager ends up being Yeon-Su, the woman who managed Si-Yeol in his alternate life. In that life, she was a Forbes 30 under 30 face, a real high achiever, so he’s shocked now to see what she’s been reduced to. In this life, she got married and had two kids, and the gap on her resume forced her to end up working at a grocery store. There are some philosophical implications to the impact of Eun-Ho’s decision to switch Si-Yeol and Woo-Seok’s lives here; not only did she ensure Si-Yeol’s grandma lived a longer life, but there are people alive now who would not have even existed unless she’d changed things. The original Yeon-Su was way too busy to ever get married and have kids.

Regardless, she does get jealous when she sees how much Si-Yeol knows about this woman and how he seems to almost pamper her. Ultimately, he ends up inviting Yeon-Su to work with Daehung Citizens FC to help them find a sponsor, and she’s excited by the prospect. Also, Hye-Rim, the girl with Yeon-Su, ends up being the daughter of the driver who worked for Yoon, who ended up dying. The girl’s been struggling ever since, working 4 jobs at once to take care of her mother and try to put herself through college. Eun-Ho takes pity on her and starts a scholarship using Woo-Seok’s card, giving her the life she deserves (and earning good karma in the process). When Yeon-Su ends up finding a sponsor, it’s Geumsu Group, owned and operated by Yoon. Ominous. But in the meantime, Eun-Ho ends up bankrolling a bus and accommodation for the team’s away game, even paying back Gyeong-Hun for the towing fees on his car from way back when.

What Does The Shaman Do To Geum-Ho?

In No Tail To Tell episode 10’s ending, Do-Cheol ends up spending two billion won of Yoon’s money on a cursed artifact. Initially, the shopkeeper is resistant to the idea, saying it affects spirits but also takes away human lives. But then he gets a good look at Do-Cheol and chuckles, saying he’s got no life left anyway, so he can have it. Somehow, he can see that Do-Cheol is not only dying but also haunted by the spirits of those he sacrificed in his lust for power. This artifact ends up being a vajra bell, the name perhaps having roots in Hindu and Buddhist mythology and meaning something close to thunder. With this bell, he hides in Geum-Ho’s cave, ambushing her when she comes back home. When he rings the bell, not only does Geum-Ho collapse, but so too do all the spirits haunting Do-Cheol. He can’t possibly have good intentions towards the eight-tailed fox, and in the previews for next week’s episode, we see that she’s seemingly been brainwashed by him to do his bidding, going after her own sister in search of her fox bead. Will Eun-Ho and Si-Yeol manage to rescue Geum-Ho and snap her out of it? We’ll have to wait till next week to find out.

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