The fight between Jungkook and Dong-hyun outside The Oak turns a chance encounter into a violent reversal of their long-standing relationship: Jungkook, drunk and enraged, briefly makes his abusive father experience the helplessness he once imposed on his son. The reversal is neither clean nor lasting. A bystander summons the police, Jungkook is detained, and Dong-hyun initially seeks to have him prosecuted. The immediate crisis ends only after Shelby challenges Dong-hyun at the hospital and he declines to proceed with the complaint.

Causes and Background

At 9:22 p.m. in Ellensburg, Jungkook is at The Oak, where he has already finished six glasses of whiskey and rapidly drinks a seventh. The bartender watches him with concern, recognizing in the student’s expression the possibility that his grief and anger may turn into a fight. He advises Jungkook that alcohol will not solve his problems and urges him to go home and rest. Jungkook accepts the advice, pays his bill, puts on his jacket, and leaves.

Outside, he sees a car he knows and immediately regrets having come out: Dong-hyun is there. The town’s small size makes their encounters difficult to avoid, but the meeting is more than a passing inconvenience for Jungkook. His father’s presence brings anger and adrenaline to the surface. Dong-hyun enters the bar, deliberately brushes Jungkook with his shoulder, and mocks him for smelling of alcohol, comparing him unfavorably with his father. The taunt turns an encounter into a confrontation.

The scene draws force from the family history behind it. In a childhood memory, eight-year-old Jungkook tries to intervene when his parents are fighting and tells his father to leave his mother alone. Dong-hyun responds by throwing a glass; a shard cuts Jungkook’s face, and he grabs the boy by his shirt and slaps him repeatedly. Later, Sunmi recalls that Jungkook once came to her home with a battered face, claimed he had fought at school, and eventually fled his father’s home at sixteen to take refuge with her. The violence outside The Oak thus repeats an old family pattern even as Jungkook attempts to reverse who holds power.

The Fight Outside The Oak

When Dong-hyun’s mocking continues, Jungkook grabs his expensive jacket. Dong-hyun shoves him to the ground and laughs. The laugh recalls the sound that frightened Jungkook when he was younger, but this time Jungkook is no longer only a child trying to withstand it. Dong-hyun approaches, seizes him by the collar, and punches him repeatedly in the face. Jungkook struggles to stop him, but his intoxication leaves him physically impaired; Dong-hyun continues until blood appears.

Jungkook’s response is a sudden reversal. He pushes Dong-hyun down, straddles him, and grips his throat. The act gives Jungkook the chance to make his father feel vulnerable and afraid, a feeling he has long wanted to force upon him. He pins Dong-hyun against his luxury car and hits him, taking pleasure in the power the confrontation seems to give him. The narration connects this rush to the adrenaline Jungkook pursues and to the inner demons that appear as witnesses to his revenge. Yet the violence does not stay within the limits of retaliation: despite Dong-hyun’s screams and demands to be released, Jungkook keeps striking him and tightening his hold.

The bartender, who had earlier advised Jungkook to leave, sees the fight through a window. He rushes outside and tries to pull Jungkook away, but cannot stop him and ends up on the ground, winded. He calls 911. The intervention shifts the struggle from a private family confrontation into a police matter, and Jungkook later tells Namjoon by phone that he is being held in custody and that his father is in Ellensburg.

Detention and the Hospital

Jungkook’s friends are not told how much bail will cost when Shelby asks, and the group is instructed to sit beside him. After minutes stretch into hours, a police officer says they must go to the hospital to find out whether Dong-hyun will file a complaint against his assailant. Jungkook objects to hearing his father described that way, but Namjoon tells him to stay quiet rather than worsen his situation.

At Blossom Hospital at 11:30 p.m., Dong-hyun, wearing a neck brace and displaying a badly bruised face, says he will press charges. Jungkook remains handcuffed and reacts with disbelief and anger; Namjoon restrains him before he can reach his father. Dong-hyun claims that Jungkook has disfigured him. Jungkook answers by invoking the harm Dong-hyun inflicted on his mother and on him. The police pin Jungkook against a wall as the argument threatens to escalate again.

Shelby, who has been silent and whose silence has worried both students during the journey, interrupts calmly. She challenges Dong-hyun’s demand for justice by naming the violence he inflicted on his wife and son, and tells him that wealth does not make him a man of value. She advises him not to file against Jungkook. Dong-hyun calls her words a threat, but she presents them as advice and warns that she is not the person who will come back to finish what she started. Her confident manner conceals fear about what Dong-hyun may do next. Jungkook, however, is absorbed by her intervention.

Dong-hyun eventually tells them to leave. When a police officer asks again about the complaint, he answers by shaking his head. The three students leave the hospital for the station, relieved that he will not pursue it. In the ride back, Shelby turns toward the passing landscape and remains quiet. Jungkook cannot read her expression and wonders why she defended him despite avoiding contact with him; Namjoon offers him reassurance.

Consequences and Significance

The outcome is an uneasy reprieve, not a resolution of the father-son conflict. Jungkook has made Dong-hyun afraid, but only through the same physical coercion that shaped Jungkook’s childhood. His intoxication helps leave him unable to defend himself at first, then lowers the restraint that might have prevented the attack from becoming so severe. The scene therefore makes revenge feel powerful to Jungkook while showing its cost: the bartender is knocked down, police become involved, and Jungkook ends the night in custody rather than having escaped the family violence that provoked him.

The hospital confrontation shifts the event’s final emphasis from Jungkook’s blows to Shelby’s challenge. She does not erase the assault or its consequences; she exposes the imbalance in Dong-hyun’s appeal to justice by setting his complaint against his earlier abuse of his wife and son. His silent decision not to proceed releases the immediate pressure on Jungkook, while Shelby’s intervention makes visible a change in their relationship: despite her distance from him, she chooses to speak in his defense. The episode leaves the larger conflict unresolved, but changes who is able to speak and whose account of the family’s violence is heard.