I always admired her looks.
And then I found out who she ate to get them.
And then I found out who she ate to get them.
Mina is a worker at a nail salon, owned by the wealthy, eternally beautiful, and kind Kora. After she gets demoted into a trainee for not following protocols, she learns a dark secret that conceives the so-called "VIP treatment".
Tropes featured in this episode:
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Kora. She is a motherly figure to the salon's workers, because she wants to gain their trust, enabling her to poison them and harvest their organs.
- Bittersweet Ending: Mina dies attempting to expose Kora's operation, but she successfully sends the evidence to Tran, who then rallies the other workers to topple Kora and transform the beauty parlor into a place where no one will ever get hurt. Except for Kora.
- Death by a Thousand Cuts: What the workers end up doing to Kora in the end, by slicing her piece by piece. Just as she was prolonging her life, they are prolonging her death.
- The Dog Bites Back: At the end, Tran and the other workers depose Kora and take the salon for themselves. However, they keep her alive in the back room, with workers regularly mutilating her piece by piece as payback for what she had done to them.
- Due to the Dead: After Tran takes over as the salon's owner, she hangs Kora's photo in the main room for PR purposes. However, she also hangs Mina's photo in the back room, right in front of the chair where Kora is to be bound until she dies. Her attitude towards the photos are noticeably different: she passes quickly over Kora's, while she stops, ponders, and bows at Mina's.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Mina and Tran have one when they realize what caused the latter, and all other VIP girls, to fall sick.
- High Turnover Rate: Tran mentions that the salon never employs a VIP girl for more than a year. The reason is because they are killed off.
- Honor Before Reason: Mina refuses to accept Kora's offer to save herself and abandon Tran. She is killed for this, but fortunately for her, the salon has a change of ownership shortly after her death, and she ends up becoming vindicated.
- Human Resources: The salon's ordinary workers are infected by a rash which causes them to have an aggressive itch, so they produce dead skin cells which are then mixed with the ingredients for the VIP treatment. The VIP workers, on the other hand, are discreetly killed by poison, so Kora can harvest their organs to extend her life.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Kora has been eating the dead workers' organs to prolong her life.
- Killed Offscreen: We don't see Mina being killed. All we have is Kora telling Tran that she's "gone".
- Older Than They Look: Kora is much older than she looks, since she eats the dead workers' organs to restore her youthfulness. Her real form is an elderly woman.
