Hang onto your hats, guys, things get a little intense this week! Romance aside, the plot thickens on our murder mystery, and everything we thought we knew about this show blows up in our faces.
EPISODES 11-12
It turns out that last week’s ending was not a misdirection and Ji-woong actually overheard Won’s confession to Mi-jin! But first, he spots cigarette butts beside a van outside her house, and he takes a picture of the number plate to check the registration. In addition to overhearing his rival in love beat him to a confession, Ji-woong gets rained on, and he ends up calling in sick the following day. Hehe. A mad-at-you-but-still-worried-about-you Mi-jin visits Ji-woong’s apartment with a large serving of her mom’s — stolen — dishes, while I’m left with the crumbs of wrist grabs and sleepy “Don’t go-s.” But at this point, I’ll take whatever I get.
Mi-jin’s tender loving care reminds Ji-woong of his mom, and he opens up about her disappearance. Despite people’s varying opinions — some said she died, while others said she ran away — Ji-woong says that his mom promised to come back, and he doesn’t want to believe that her first and last promise to him was a lie. This is why he returned to Seohan. Mi-jin tears up while Ji-woong talks about his mom, and the story reminds her about her missing aunt as well.
When Ji-woong resumes back to work, Myung-duk, the king of misunderstandings, brings up Won’s crush and says the feelings are mutual. Ji-woong now thinks Mi-jin and Won are an item — meanwhile, Myung-duk was referring to Soon because he assumed Ji-woong knows about Won × Soon ship. Tsk. I really want to smack both men for confusing themselves. Have they never heard about being specific and mentioning the actual names of the people being referred to instead of making assumptions and jumping into conclusions? Then Myung-duk goes on to make things worse by declaring his support for Won’s relationship because “love isn’t a crime.” Pfft. I bet Mr. Prosecutor thinks this brand of love is a crime. But what is he going to do about it?
If you guessed Ji-woong will march straight to Mi-jin’s house to declare his love for her, you’re partially correct. He does drop by her house, and Mom ropes him into staying for dinner and staying forever. Mi-jin arrives home to meet a feast, and even Ga-yeong and her dad are present. “What’s going on?” Mi-jin wonders. “I think it’s your engagement dinner,” Ga-yeong replies. Lol. But it’s actually aunt Soon’s birthday and Mom is celebrating in her absence. She must really miss her sister.
After dinner, Mi-jin sees Ji-woong out and they end up talking about why he was at her house. “I was just passing by, and it happened by coincidence,” he says, and here we go again. Just tell her you wanted to know if she’s really dating Won or not! Sigh.
Since the topic came up over dinner, Mi-jin briefly tells Ji-woong about her missing aunt without giving too much away. And in turn, he tells her that her dad has found out that she fell victim to the job scam from week one. It happened that a police summons came in for Mi-jin — she’s been implicated in a fraud case probably because the scammer used her bank book — and a worried Dad informed his prosecutor son-in-law-to-be. Ji-woong, in turn, had no choice but to tell Dad about the scam even though he promised Mi-jin to keep it a secret from her parents.
On his part, Dad blames himself for being an incompetent father and not saying anything when Mi-jin was pressured to get a civil servant job. But I don’t think Mi-jin resents her dad at all. Dad is a man of few words, and even his simplest of gestures — shining her shoes, saving up to buy her a work outfit, and his “You’re doing great!” — are enough to show Mi-jin that he cares.
The search warrant for Hwadong Medical Center is finally approved, and Myung-duk and Soon lead the search and seizure team to the hospital. Soon runs into the suspicious nurse who took her blood sample the other day, and unsuspectingly follows her to get the result of the blood test. Oh no! Back in the office, Ji-woong fails to get an arrest warrant for Cheol-gyu, and to worsen matters, Won informs him that Mi-jin is not answering her phone. The location tracker reveals that Mi-jin is at Hwadong, and that’s enough to alarm Ji-woong because what is she doing in Cheol-gyu’s vicinity of all places?
Ji-woong storms the hospital in search of Mi-jin, around the same time Myung-duk realizes that Soon is missing. Unfortunately, neither of the men see Cheol-gyu — who’s disguised in a surgical mask and scrubs — wheeling out our unconscious heroine. Ji-woong recalls his insistence on not informing the police that Mi-jin is a witness in the raincoat case because he doesn’t trust them — and knowing that his mom disappeared in the process of giving a witness statement makes this trust issue understandable. Unfortunately, since the police are not aware of a witness, they were unable to investigate the case from Mi-jin’s witness angle or at least protect her. Instead, Ji-woong told Mi-jin to trust him to keep her safe, and now that she’s in the wind, he cannot stop blaming himself.
Backing up a bit, we learn that Cheol-gyu was behind the van parked outside Mi-jin’s house. He sent a private investigator to tail Soon, but Soon was always going to a different house (Mi-jin’s house) instead of the one she has on her employee record (Ga-yeong’s house). The PI reports that the house belongs to Soon’s older sister (Mi-jin’s mom) and that whenever he loses sight of Soon, her niece (Mi-jin) appears. Cheol-gyu and the PI then theorize that Soon and Mi-jin are up to some clandestine activities. Thus Soon’s kidnap from Hwadong to find out what “both women” are plotting.
In the present, a restrained Soon wakes up in the basement storage at Hwadong, and this is the point where the drama reveals its biggest misdirection yet. It turns out that Cheol-gyu is not the big bad we assumed he is — he’s just a loving husband, heartbroken over his wife’s death. And no, he didn’t kill her. His wife went missing, and in the process of tracking her whereabouts, he visited the bank to request that they inform him about activities on her bank account. The real Soon, as we know, worked in Seohan bank, and since she was on friendly terms with Cheol-gyu back then, she attended to him when he came around.
Unfortunately, Cheol-gyu’s wife turned up dead — this is the body the police took out of that building in Ji-woong’s flashbacks — and Soon vanished. The PI — who has been in Cheol-gyu’s employ following his wife’s disappearance, and now tailing our heroine in the present — theorizes that Soon killed Mrs. Wife, and disappeared after she figured Cheol-gyu was on to her since he came to the bank. Wow! Did this PI even graduate from private investigator school? He has the worst theories, and Cheol-gyu stupidly swallows them all.
Over the years, a misguided Cheol-gyu searched for Soon in a bid to find out the truth about his wife’s death, and the PI finally picked up her scent after our heroine took over the Soon identity. As a major fentanyl supplier to the distribution ring nightclub, Cheol-gyu made a deal with one of their top goons to fetch Soon, and the goon in question sent Acid Assailant after her. When that failed, Cheol-gyu pulled in a favor with the mayor and came over to the prosecution office as an intern. Whoa! So much info dump, I’m almost dizzy. But at least we finally close the chapter on Acid Assailant’s original target.
In the present, Cheol-gyu rages at our Soon and demands to know what happened to his wife. Soon flat out admits that she is not who he thinks she is, and since it’s almost sunset, she claims she can prove it. But of all the days for her transformation to delay, it had to be today. Thankfully, Ji-woong barges into the basement storage before Cheol-gyu can do more damage. Soon finally transforms back to Mi-jin, but Cheol-gyu and Ji-woong are too engrossed in their fight to witness the transformation. In the end, Cheol-gyu is knocked out and Mi-jin is freed. Phew!
Cheol-gyu is taken into custody, but he invokes his right to silence because he is not about to be charged for kidnapping a Lee Mi-jin when the woman he kidnapped was clearly an Im Soon. Ji-woong and Myung-duk are puzzled as to why he insists he doesn’t know Mi-jin, and they’re frustrated because he won’t speak. Soon finesses her way into the interrogation room by playing the “maybe he will talk to me since we are colleagues” card, and she turns off the mic when she gets into the room.
Our heroine shows Cheol-gyu her Soon to Mi-jin transformation video (that Ga-yeong recorded back in week two), but Cheol-gyu doesn’t believe the “doctored” video. Next, Soon plays the “my aunt took me to get stitches from you when I was little and you told me I look like her” card, but that doesn’t work either. Out of cards, Soon tells Cheol-gyu that the person who killed his wife might have also killed her aunt, and she could be the next target because she’s a witness in AWOL intern’s case. She asks if Cheol-gyu has other suspects in mind for his wife’s murder aside from aunt Soon, but Cheol-gyu would rather hold his peace than speak now. Man probably needs time to process all of this.
But guess who is running out of time? It’s our heroine! Apparently, her delayed transformation at the basement storage was not new to her. The amount of time she spends as Soon after sunset is slowly increasing, which means there’s a high chance she could permanently remain as Soon. Oh dear!
Since we are not in a fairytale, kissing a prince is not an option for breaking the transformation curse. Mi-jin’s prince won’t even kiss her! Or maybe he will, since he has learned that Myung-duk was talking about Soon × Won. Lol. In any case, Ga-yeong reasons that maybe the transformation has nothing to do with the mysterious cat, and everything might end if they catch the culprit. So Mi-jin goes to the police station to give a witness statement.
The detective in charge of AWOL intern’s case calls to inform Ji-woong, and he races like a mad man to drag Mi-jin out of the precinct. She insists that her statement could help the investigation, and Ji-woong reminds her that he said he’ll catch the killer. “But you haven’t caught him yet,” Mi-jin replies, and Ji-woong deflates. Mi-jin admits that she wants to trust him, but she’s too scared. Then Ji-woong hugs her tight and re-promises to catch the killer. He’ll never let someone he cares about disappear again. “I’m sorry I was late,” he says. “I’m late in catching the culprit and in realizing my feelings for you.” Finally, we get the confession, and best of all, it comes with a kiss!
We’re back to square one with the murder mystery, but who cares about mystery when we’ve got romance, right? Our OTP’s ship has sailed, and Show is hinting at a Myung-duk × Ga-yeong pairing. And lest we keep assuming that Myung-duk is a married man, Show reveals that he fell victim to a marriage scam, and he’s legally and emotionally available to pursue a romance. Great!