With all our players established, we dive deeper into the mystery element this week. There’s no shortage of secrets and suspicious behavior, making everyone seem guilty of something. But our recent widow and hospital director in particular are involved in some shady business that could have dire consequences for themselves and those around them.
EPISODES 3-4
After the first two weeks (half!) of the drama, it’s clear that this isn’t your typical mystery/thriller. It feels more like a suspenseful character study with a murder mystery as the catalyst, which works for me but could be disappointing for those anticipating something more action-oriented and, well, thrilling. It’s more intellectually than emotionally engaging, so it probably won’t be to everyone’s taste. But if you’re like me and love a good slower-paced, thematic, atmospheric drama, then it’s a good time.
This week, we jump right back into Yoon-beom’s funeral. It may be almost empty, but a lot goes down at this tense affair. Sang-eun shows emotion for the first time to the point of having a full-blown, public meltdown. First off, she has it out with Yoon-beom’s brother who is actually his biological cousin. Yoon-beom was raised by his aunt and uncle who never really accepted him as a son, instead abusing him as a child and using him as an ATM as an adult. His aunt and uncle don’t even show up to his funeral. And while Sang-eun may hate Yoon-beom for the abuse, she also pitied him for his difficult upbringing and awful family.
Not only is Sang-eun processing her complicated feelings over his death, but she learns from Yoon-beom’s brother that he got into massive debt, along with his brother and father, due to a scam investment (hence the blackmail scheme). So when a cop calls her at the funeral saying he can’t get ahold of Yoon-beom who missed his blackmail report hearing, Sang-eun loses it.
Once Jae-ho and Joo-ran arrive at the funeral, Sang-eun pulls him aside for a little blackmail chat. While they’re making veiled threats and assessing what each other knows, Joo-ran is inside being accosted by Sang-eun’s unwell mother who takes a liking to her. She grabs Joo-ran and won’t let go, so Joo-ran pushes her away. Sang-eun returns just in time to see her mother fall to the ground. She roughly grabs Joo-ran, the rich and sheltered wife, with clear disdain. She then almost vindictively tells her that Jae-ho killed Yoon-beom, leaving Joo-ran stunned.
Now Joo-ran has yet another reason to mistrust Jae-ho and recalls his weird phone calls and suspect behavior. She sneaks out that night to check the car’s dashcam footage, but there’s nothing saved. Jae-ho catches her in the car, so Joo-ran lies that she’s looking for her earring. When he later sees that very earring pair in her jewelry box and knows she was lying, he takes one of the earrings without saying anything.
Jae-ho’s true, manipulative colors come to light more this week when he’s backed into a corner. He holds onto that earring until Joo-ran accuses him of lying about where he was the night of Yoon-beom’s death. Then, he whips it out to say he found it, forcing her to confess to her own lie. He uses that to discredit and invalidate her, orchestrating a fight where he reminds her of her past paranoid behavior and guilts her over how hard she makes things on him and Seung-jae. It’s gaslighting at its finest, making her question her own grip on reality and feel awful about herself, giving him control of the situation. It comes across as practiced behavior, making you wonder how often he’s done this to her and why. Does he merely like control, or is there a different goal?
He brings up Seung-jae’s teacher, and we get the full story of “the incident” that led them to move. When Joo-ran found her sister’s body, she fixated on a male neighbor she saw a couple of times that night. He turned out to be a teacher who got assigned to Seung-jae’s homeroom. Joo-ran became terrified he was going to hurt Seung-jae, so she attacked him at a school event.
Jae-ho turns himself into the victim of her paranoia for thinking he might have something to do with Yoon-beom’s death, leaving her shaking and crying by the end of their fight. Later that night, Joo-ran tosses her meds. Not that I’m advocating her stopping her prescribed mental health meds, but I wouldn’t put it past Jae-ho to prescribe her meds (he is a doctor) to keep her sedated or malleable. One of his colleagues told Joo-ran that Jae-ho had been getting sleeping pills – which is news to her – so now I’m side-eyeing the tea he’s given her at night.
Joo-ran, despite doubting her husband, makes the decision to prioritize her family. She goes to Hae-soo and asks her not to show anyone the footage of Jae-ho leaving that night. She also visits Sang-eun, looking for answers. Sang-eun freely admits she sent Jae-ho that text and shows Joo-ran the photos and a video of a terrified man bound and being questioned by another man while the girl (a teenager named Lee Soo-min) watches.
With perfect timing, Jae-ho calls the phone. Sang-eun puts it on speaker, so Joo-ran hears when he asks Sang-eun to meet. Joo-ran says she’ll help Sang-eun find the truth and will give her whatever she wants to keep quiet – no matter what her husband has done, she’s going to protect her family.
Meanwhile, the police continue investigating Yoon-beom’s death with a focus on Jae-ho and Sang-eun. They question Jae-ho about the large sum he wired to Yoon-beom, which Jae-ho says was a loan related to some hospital business. (Yoon-beom worked in pharmaceuticals.) But they confirmed his alibi – Jae-ho claimed he was at his parents’ that night – so he’s not a murder suspect. Sang-eun, however, is of interest to them, especially when they learn that she was being abused.
It also doesn’t help her case that Yoon-beom took out multiple life insurance policies with Sang-eun as the beneficiary. In total, they pay the equivalent of about half a million dollars, but she gets nothing if his death is deemed a suicide. So now Sang-eun is in the precarious position of needing to prove he was murdered without incriminating herself, which could be a problem.
In a flashback to that night, a shaken Sang-eun moves an unresponsive Yoon-beom to the passenger side and then drives away. We also see a flashback to a conversation between her and Yoon-beom where he’d claimed he was blackmailing the rich as punishment for oppressing everyone else. “But why would you punish them?” she asked. “Because they deserve it,” Yoon-beom responded. And with that, he might have unwittingly provided the justification for his own murder.
Elsewhere, another possible murderer is having a rough go of it. Hae-soo is ostracized in her neighborhood by the rumors of what went down six years ago. The story goes that a foul smell was emanating from a house in the neighborhood (sound familiar?) and a man’s body was found inside. Also inside was Hae-soo who claimed to be his wife. The kicker is that no one in the neighborhood had ever seen her.
She does make an unexpected friend, though, in Seung-jae. Recently, Hae-soo helped when Joo-ran fainted, so Seung-jae is friendly with her. When he asks why she returned to the neighborhood, she says she wanted to return to her true home, “the place where the secrets only you know are buried.” She laughs it off as a joke, but given the track record of this neighborhood, it could be literal.
Seung-jae is more relaxed than we’ve ever seen him and asks if he can talk with her about stuff in the future. While it’s hard to say if she’s the best choice of adult, he is in desperate need of a stable adult figure in his life. He’s so miserable and stressed at home, he’s secretly looking into apartments in Seoul. (Can’t blame him.)
Elsewhere, Joo-ran and Sang-eun go on a little adventure to visit Soo-min. Sang-eun pretends to be her homeroom teacher, so Soo-min’s father lets her in. He shares that Soo-min hasn’t been home in three months, and he can’t get in touch with her. Then he remembers that his daughter’s homeroom teacher is a man. When he shows signs of anger, Sang-eun has a PTSD flashback of her abuse and panics.
Joo-ran hears a commotion from inside and comes literally busting in (she breaks a window). Sang-eun is waving a broken bottle at the confused and scared man. Joo-ran takes it from her and leads her out. Afterward, Joo-ran merely asks if she’s okay. Sang-eun finally cares enough to ask Joo-ran her name, and they properly introduce themselves.
Next, Sang-eun meets with Jae-ho as planned. Sang-eun calls Joo-ran to let her listen in, so she hears the way Jae-ho loses his bluster and goes silent when Soo-min is mentioned. “300 million won,” he offers. When Sang-eun counters with 500 million, he makes his own play, asking how she managed to move Yoon-beom’s body. He suggests handing Soo-min’s phone over to the cops, but Sang-eun is determined to discover his “messy story,” as he puts it, involving Soo-min.
We end the week’s episodes on a flashback suggesting that “messy story” may be murder. Jae-ho drags a woman’s body and stashes it in a closet. Later, in the middle of a stormy night, he buries it in the garden.
So maybe Jae-ho isn’t Yoon-beom’s murderer, but he does appear to be a murderer. I didn’t trust him from the start, but he’s looking worse by the episode. He acts the part of the loving husband, and maybe he’s even convinced himself he’s merely doing what’s best for his family, but he’s so coolly manipulative and deceitful. While I hope she doesn’t insist on protecting him in the end, I am glad that Joo-ran is being proactive and going after the truth. Maybe she’ll find she’s more capable than her husband has led her to believe.