My Man Is Cupid (내 남자는 큐피드)

Premise and plot

The story begins 500 years ago, when Cheon Sang-hyuk, a love fairy whose job is to help humans form romantic connections, falls in love with a human woman. Love between fairies and humans is forbidden, and Samsin (Kim Pub-lae), the god of fate, has tied his red thread of fate between the woman and another man, Prince Lee Seon. Sang-hyuk burns his own wings to be with her, but he is killed saving her life, and she takes her own life so that she can be reborn and meet him again.⁶

As punishment, Sang-hyuk must live in the human world for 500 years, atoning by using his abilities to bring together the people Samsin has connected with the red thread. To restore his wings he undergoes a cycle of metamorphoses, 27 of them before the story's present; on his 28th life he becomes involved with Oh Baek-ryeon.^{1 • 6}

The heroine's curse. Oh Baek-ryeon is a veterinarian at the Gugi-dong Animal Hospital, so beautiful that men call her a goddess. Every man who enters a romantic relationship with her suffers a near-death experience and then runs away, so she has sworn off dating while still hoping to meet a man of fate. She chooses veterinary work because animals are not hurt when she loves them. A tarot reader, in fact a supernatural being in disguise, tells her she is being punished for a grave sin in a past life and instructs her to climb Mt. Inwang a thousand times and pray for forgiveness.^{1 • 6}

Three lives. Baek-ryeon's soul has lived three lives shown in the drama. In her first, during the Joseon dynasty, she was the court lady Lee So-hee, who fell in love with Sang-hyuk despite her red thread being tied to Prince Lee Seon. In her second, she was Yoo Jeong-ah, a high school student and Sang-hyuk's neighbor, who was kidnapped and murdered after Samsin warned Sang-hyuk that loving her would end tragically. In her third, she is the veterinarian Baek-ryeon of the present day.⁶

Mystery subplot. In the present timeline, Baek-ryeon becomes a witness in a kidnapping and homicide case that closely resembles a 1993 kidnapping and homicide, the "Missing Polka Dot High School Girls Case" involving Jeong-ah. The homicide detective on the case is Seo Jae-hee, who in a previous life was Prince Lee Seon, Baek-ryeon's fated lover. The killer comes after Baek-ryeon, and the culprit in both sets of cases is revealed to be Song Yeong-cheol, the husband of the first kidnapping victim in Baek-ryeon's current life.⁶

Cast and characters

Sang-hyuk shares an apartment with three fellow love fairies, Cheon Dong-pal (Eom Se-ung), Cheon Dong-koo (Park Myung-hoon), and Cheon Dong-chil (Moon Ji-hoo), all trapped in the human world for trying to help him 500 years earlier. Dong-chil, punished for missing Sang-hyuk with the lead arrow that would have ended his love, oscillates between human and dog form. Dong-pal is the only one who knows the secret of breaking metamorphosis, the rejuvenation cycle that restores the fairies' baby faces; for Sang-hyuk to live permanently as a human, someone must shoot an arrow through his chrysalis and pierce the vital spot without missing. Dong-koo joins a dating class to understand women and falls for Baek-ryeon's roommate An Do-ra (Gong Min-jeung), who narrates the series through her vlog.⁶