Given how the show ended its first half, I expected more progress in the romance department this week. Alas, Show seems to have other plans for our prosecutor and his love interest. And it kicks off its second half with both versions of our heroine at the center of different misunderstandings.
EPISODES 9-10
The drama continues its tradition of misdirection, as it turns out that Mi-jin and Ji-woong didn’t actually kiss last week! Our heroine learns the hard way that the downside to drunkenly headbutting her crush on her first day in his house is that his instincts will kick in the next time she brings her face close to his. Unfortunately, what Ji-woong blocks this time is a kiss, not a headbutt. Lol.
Ji-woong instantly regrets it when he realizes what happened, but it’s too late. An embarrassed Mi-jin makes her way back to Ga-yeong’s apartment — where she finds no solace because of all the times and places for her bestie to fangirl over kiss scenes, it had to be right in front of our kiss-denied heroine. Hehe. Mi-jin ends up interpreting Ji-woong’s blocking of the kiss as rejection, and Ji-woong’s power of articulation goes out of the window. Now she thinks he doesn’t like her that way, and he thinks… I don’t even know what he’s thinking at this point. But whatever it is, he needs to voice it out.
With the air of misunderstanding blowing around this drama’s universe, it’s no surprise that Myung-duk gets caught up in it as well. After spotting Won — on more than one occasion — acting overly friendly with Soon, Myung-duk becomes convinced that Won has a crush on Soon. And while he’s absolutely right, what makes this misunderstanding hilarious is that to the rest of the world, Soon is an ahjumma.
Myung-duk cannot get past the age difference, and watching him have a meltdown on witnessing the Soon × Won interactions reminds me of fangirls’ reactions to their idol’s dating “scandals.” Won might be the idol here, but Myung-duk is a Soon fan. And it’s sweet, albeit funny, that he’s worried that Won has mischievous intentions towards his hardworking colleague who “types really fast and likes pink.” Lol.
Myung-duk and Ji-woong run into Mi-jin and Ga-yeong at a restaurant, and over small talk, Myung-duk learns that Ga-yeong is a Won fan. To test Ga-yeong’s “all women like Won” claim, Myung-duk asks Mi-jin what she would do if Won asked her out, and Ji-woong is very offended by the hypothetical question. Pfft. All that jealousy and for what? He still doesn’t make a move even when Mi-jin implies that she won’t date Won because she’s got her eyes on someone else. *Cough* the man she attempted to kiss the other day *cough*
Moving on to our resident villain, Ji-woong learns from autopsy reports that fentanyl was found in Cheol-gyu’s wife’s blood. Same fentanyl found in the 20-year-old dismemberment case, and the current raincoat killer case. Speaking of the current case, a body surfaces in the local reservoir, and it turns out to be the AWOL intern — who’s missing a limb. The very same limb found at the crime scene of the raincoat murder.
Waitaminute, we saw the raincoat killer chase a woman that night. We saw him attack her with his axe. Then we saw a severed limb. Naturally, I assumed the limb belonged to the woman. But now you’re telling me it was AWOL intern’s all along? Whoa! This show really loves its misdirections.
Don’t even get me started on the show leading us to believe — via Ji-woong’s flashbacks — that the body the police took out of that apartment was his mom’s. Only for us to learn this week that his mom has been missing — probably since the time she was carted away while waiting for the detective to come get her witness statement.
Speaking of witnesses, although Ji-woong bought our heroine all those self-defense weapons to protect herself as a witness in the raincoat killer case, I’m not sure she realized how much danger she’s in until she discovers that Cheol-gyu and the raincoat killer drive the same car. And the knowledge that she has been in proximity with the suspected killer all this while is enough to terrify her and send her spiraling.
Ji-woong’s application for a search and seizure warrant for Hwadong Medical Center gets rejected, but he’s not one to let a little thing like paperwork get in the way of his investigation. Soon fakes a stomach cramp, and like the good colleagues they are, Ji-woong and Myung-duk bring her to Hwadong for treatment. The trio go their separate investigative ways once in the hospital, but Soon is flagged by one of the doctors and the information reaches Cheol-gyu.
Cheol-gyu instructs the doctor to hold Soon until his arrival, but Soon escapes the ward to complete her investigation, and she ends up in Cheol-gyu’s office. Now I’m slightly confused because I was operating under the assumption that Cheol-gyu had already retired from his director position. He did speak about his directorship in past tense. But apparently, he’s still the medical director — who takes time off hospital duties to mop floors as a senior citizen intern in the prosecution office. His dedication to monitoring our heroine up close needs to be studied.
For now, it would seem that Cheol-gyu is more interested in Soon than in Mi-jin. And his interest in Soon seems to be based on whatever history he had with the real Im Soon. He confirms from our Soon’s blood test that she’s O+, but in comparison with the results of an old test from 1998, the real Soon is A+. The discrepancy in blood type is one thing, but with Soon snooping around to find dirt on him, Cheol-gyu takes a few days off work at the prosecution office. “Has the time come for us now to put this to an end?” he asks himself while watching CCTV footage of Soon sneaking into his office, and I don’t even want to know what he wants to put to an end.
While Soon might not have found any useful evidence in Cheol-gyu’s office, at least she overhears the blood test conversation and now she’s aware that he might have some connection with her missing aunt. On the other hand, Ji-woong found some suspicious looking vials in the basement storage at Hwadong, and he sneaked one out. When the team eventually finds the location where the fentanyl distribution club stashed their drugs, they have the drugs tested and compared to the content of the vial, and it’s the same thing. Great! Now they can get a warrant for the medical center.
Back to our romance crumbs, the drama heightens Ji-woong’s jealousy to the point where he’s tempted to use the location tracker for personal reasons. He stops himself before he crosses the line and decides to call Mi-jin instead. But it’s Won who picks up the phone — because he’s out with Mi-jin looking for the mysterious cat — and petty Won is so happy to rub his friendship with Mi-jin in Ji-woong’s face. Tsk. One guy installs a secret tracker on her phone and the other picks up her calls — and doesn’t tell her about it until the following day. The things these men do behind Mi-jin’s back!
Won might be crossing our heroine’s boundaries a little more excessively than Ji-woong — especially since he knows about her secret. But his knowledge comes in handy when he shreds an anonymous letter that comes in for the deputy chief stating that there’s a senior intern who lied about their identity. When a second letter comes in, Won heads over to Mi-jin’s house. But rather than tell her about the letters, he asks her to quit. Out of the blue. “If you need it, I’ll pay your salary,” he says, and that’s just a terrible choice of words to say to a person who landed a job after several years. Or to anyone else, for that matter.
At this point, Mi-jin has had it with the men in her life. One is giving mixed signals and the other is bragging about his money. “Am I a charity case? Why are you doing this?” Mi-jin asks Won, and he replies that he doesn’t know. It’s his first time liking someone and he’s worried that something might happen to this someone. “I’ve never felt this way before,” Won says. “About who?” Mi-jin asks. “You,” Won replies. And there we have it, folks, a confession! To further thicken the plot, Ji-woong watches everything go down from a few paces away. But I won’t be surprised if this ends up being a misdirection and Ji-woong didn’t actually hear the confession.
It’s been a really long week with our OTP misinterpreting each other’s intentions and swimming in misunderstanding and miscommunication. So many miss-es, it’s almost like we’re in a beauty pageant. Mi-jin and Ji-woong are really in a slow burn. They’re slow, and we are the ones who’ll burn with impatience as we wait for them to get together. At this point, they both need to throw their phones into the reservoir and talk to each other face to face — no cutting into each other’s sentences and no jumping into conclusions when nothing has been concluded — and maybe Show can also throw the raincoat killer plot into the reservoir while at it.