At long last, the full extent of the tragedies that struck our leads is brought to light. Forced to confront the devastating truth, they join hands in understanding, empathy, and a shared resolve to punish the true perpetrator behind these awful crimes.
EPISODES 11-12
In the wake of his mother’s passing, Seon-yul is met with an unexpected discovery. It turns out his mother had been in the habit of recording her phone conversations, including the one she’d had with her husband on the night Soo-hyun approached him. Now, Seon-yul must confront the truth of his father’s callous cruelty, and the overwhelming grief Soo-hyun had been in that night — the same grief that envelops him now.
Reeling from the revelation, Seon-yul locks himself in his room for days, barely moving from his bed, until Soo-hyun pays him a visit. She knows all too well what he’s going through, and so she gently coaxes him into eating at least a little of the porridge she’s brought.
It takes a while for Seon-yul to pull himself together, but when he eventually does, he reaches out to Soo-hyun through a phone call. When she answers, she’s met with the phone call recording, in an indirect admission of the truth Seon-yul now knows and an unspoken apology for the vitriol he’s directed towards her. Quiet and contrite, Seon-yul admits that he’d blinded himself to her suffering; hating her was the only way he could hold on to a reason to live.
While Seon-yul recalibrates, Soo-hyun continues her investigation into his mother’s accident. She’s amassed a fair bit of incriminating evidence — the onsite skid marks demonstrate that the collision was very much intentional, and CCTV recordings show the driver lying in wait for Seon-yul’s mother to cross the road. When Soo-hyun tracks the perpetrator down, she learns from his destitute widow that he’d been lured in by Joon’s foundation, with the tempting but ultimately unfulfilled promise that his daughter’s hospital bills would be paid for.
Then, it’s revealed that Seon-yul had also done his fair share of detective work, having traced the evidence to the widow too. He’s known about Joon’s involvement all along; he’s simply been biding his time, because Joon had been watching him closely while his mother was still alive. To prove his point, Seon-yul notices that someone has snuck in and searched through his house, just a few days after he’d told Joon that he wanted to look into his mother’s accident.
Before Hye-geum moves away for good, she confesses to Soo-hyun that she’d seen Geon-woo leave the house with a tablet in hand on the day of his accident. At the same time, Soo-jin relays his mother’s last words to Seon-yul — she’d mentioned a tablet with her dying breath. Realizing that his mother’s treasured necklace may harbor a secret within, since she’d given it to him a few days before her accident, he removes her photo from its locket to find a SD card beneath. In it is a photo of a pawn shop, and a transaction receipt detailing the pawning of Geon-woo’s tablet.
Soo-hyun retrieves the tablet, retreating to the comfort of her son’s room as she watches the video Geon-woo had filmed for her birthday surprise. It had inadvertently recorded the accident; Joon’s scornful voice plays over the speakers, admitting to his drunk driving and sneering that he can’t let such small fry taint his political success, all while Geon-woo whimpers weakly. With an ingratiating deference, Seon-yul’s father had offered to take the blame as long as Joon protected his son. Then he’d gotten behind the wheel, revved the engine, and hit Geon-woo again — to kill the only witness off for good.
What an utterly devastating scene — both for Soo-hyun, weeping alone in a room her son can never return to, and for Seon-yul, listening from the doorway as his father’s sin irrevocably taints his memory. It’s one thing to suspect Joon’s involvement, with the knowledge that he had both the judge and the prosecution in his pocket, and another thing entirely to hear every excruciating detail of the murder he orchestrated.
Joon is a terrifying opponent to go up against with his unscrupulous greed and the immense resources at his disposal, and it’s so admirable that Seon-yul’s mother did her all to keep the evidence safe, even though she knew it would paint a target on her back. Now that the full truth has been revealed, I can’t wait to watch our leads join hands against Joon; Soo-hyun’s tenacious resilience and Seon-yul’s shrewd strategies are sure to make them a formidable duo.
After all the time we’ve spent with Seon-yul scheming from the shadows, it was satisfying to see him finally step into the light and boldly take action this week. Leveraging upon all the blackmail material Joon had him gather, he rounds up these political enemies and extends an offer — since Joon is still holding their scandals over their heads, why not join hands and topple him from his throne?
As for Soo-ho, he’s decided to throw caution to the wind and be proactive, too. When Soo-hyun discovers the evidence he’s compiled against Joon and rails at him for aborting his investigation partway, Soo-ho quashes his guilt-ridden helplessness by walking straight into the lion’s den — he approaches Joon to accept his offer and join his team. Both are keenly aware that they’re not allies in the least; they’re simply choosing to keep their enemies closer.
Our central characters are finally making some headway towards exposing Joon for the heartless scum that he is, but there’s still some angst looming on the horizon. Mere days after Soo-hyun finally opens up to Mom, admitting her struggles and seeking comfort through a sweet mother-daughter date, Mom begins exhibiting signs of dementia in front of Yoo-ri. I don’t particularly like how sudden this is — it feels like a paper-thin attempt to pile on the despair in the final stretch — so hopefully the show subverts that trope, because our heroine deserves to have at least some sincerity remain in her life after all the betrayal she’s endured.