Cooperation and collaboration are the name of the game, drawing our protagonists closer as their paths of pursuit converge. A new variable enters the fray, shedding light on a wrongful death and casting even more doubt on our scheming villains.
EPISODES 7-8
It seems Jae-kyung can rest easy, because it turns out Chang-soo is indeed covering for him after all. Having found Jae-kyung right after he’d swallowed the pill from his junior officer’s drawer, Chang-soo erased his tracks to help him avoid suspicion. The reason Chang-soo hasn’t reported Jae-kyung is his intuition that none of this is Jae-kyung’s fault, and that he’s still firmly on the path of justice. Hm, unwavering loyalty, or blind faith?
In any case, there’s no time to look a gift horse in the mouth, and it’s back to business for our leads. Having obtained a name card from the medical malpractice plaintiff that lists Joon-seo as a sales team manager at Keumhyung Pharmaceutical, Yoon-jin follows up on the lead by heading straight to Woonjong Medical Center to ask about Joon-seo being their sales contact.
There’s clearly something afoot, since Joon-seo worked in real estate, not medicine. Even if he was helping Jong-soo out, why would he have a name card under a company he’s barely even affiliated with? Still, that’s the excuse Chi-hyun gives when he drags Yoon-jin away in broad daylight, ripping pages out of her notebook and smashing her laptop. Um, way to overreact.
Thankfully, Yoon-jin’s abduction is witnessed by Hyun-woo, who’d been keeping an eye on Chi-hyun after receiving a suspiciously silent call from the number Joon-seo used to contact him through. It turns out Joon-seo once asked Hyun-woo to make a medicine delivery in his stead, on the day his daughter’s condition had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Unfortunately, a rainy day accident mixes up the pill box Joon-seo specifically set aside with the rest of the regular ones. The drugs that were supposed to go to Chi-hyun — and thus the drug-addicted Jong-soo — ended up being mistakenly prescribed to a patient, thereby leading to the medical malpractice suit.
By the time Joo-song receives Hyun-woo’s call and rushes over, Yoon-jin walks out safe and sound — truncating Joo-song’s heroics, aww — having been released by Chi-hyun after both a bribe and a(n ineffective) threat. After a pity party of beef and beer with Joo-song and Jae-kyung, the three wind up sitting on the curb, where Yoon-jin opens up about Joon-seo’s visit on the night of his death. He’d sat in silence with her, as if ruminating upon the words he couldn’t quite get out.
After hearing the full story from Hyun-woo, Jae-kyung and Yoon-jin visit the freezer storage facility that Joon-seo had kept his medicine — and presumably drugs — in. Since they don’t have a warrant, the security officer only allows them a brief look inside, but Jae-kyung soon realizes its location is a huge clue in itself. The mystery of the disappearing taxi on the day of the store owner’s murder would be explained by the taxi driving against the one-way road right outside the storage facility, and with that, Jae-kyung finally locates the taxi in CCTV footage.
Talking about taxi driver Yoon-ho, he’s kept himself busy snooping around. First, he tracks down Hyun-woo and sneaks into his house while he’s at school. Then he spots Tae-jin leaving Ji-yeon’s apartment building late at night, and his derisive smirk suggests he knows exactly what that implies.
When Jae-kyung tracks down the black SUV captured on the CCTV near Joon-seo’s death site, its dashcam footage reveals another person there that night. It’s yet another high school mate, JUNG SANG-EUI (Park Geun-rok), who claims Joon-seo called the Tae-jin trio to the construction site and asked that he be there too. Joon-seo had referred to the plan as their “last chance,” though he hadn’t specified what he meant.
That night, Sang-eui had been ten minutes early, but he’d found Tae-jin already there. After Tae-jin asked Sang-eui to turn on the light switch (so suspicious!), Chi-hyun and Jong-soo arrived next, and then the ninth floor suddenly lit up. Assuming Joon-seo was already there, the quartet took the elevator up, only for something to fall past them on the way. Then they found Joon-seo’s dead body down below.
None of them had witnessed the actual moment of Joon-seo’s plunge, but Sang-eui reveals one crucial detail. Joon-seo had been wearing his shoes when he fell, but those very same shoes were discovered on the ninth floor the following morning.
The unexpected reunion with Sang-eui spurs a flashback to their high school days. Kyung-tae had been suspended for violence and extortion, though we aren’t privy to why. After class, Joon-seo turned down Jong-soo’s offer to study together, in favor of studying with the Audiophile members. Needless to say, the rejection got on Jong-soo’s nerves. When Jong-soo later learns that Joon-seo has been hanging out with the Audiophile club while ignoring his calls, the mounting irritation has him coercing a bruised Sang-eui into agreeing that Kyung-tae beat him up.
Our insufferable villain Jong-soo is currently in dire straits — Keumhyung Pharmaceutical’s recurring financial losses only serve to detract potential investors, and Jong-soo’s father is about to cut him loose if he doesn’t get his act together and revive the company. Jong-soo doesn’t take defeat well, to say the least, and I have a sinking feeling he’s going to resort to something drastic soon.
On the point of our detective’s addiction, the suppressant drugs Jae-kyung’s taking as a substitute don’t seem like they’ll sustain him for long. Now that we’ve learnt Chang-soo has ties to CEO Yoon — he’d apprehended her rival gang in exchange for her agreeing not to create drug issues in the city of Anhyun — perhaps he might play a more active role in Jae-kyung’s addiction, for better or for worse.
Although the intrigue has been ramping up week after week, I’m glad for the brief moments of levity sprinkled throughout. Joo-song’s slack-jawed shock while Jae-kyung and Yoon-jin decried Tae-jin and Ji-yeon’s affair over his head had me absolutely cracking up, and I loved how Yoon-jin assertively handed Chi-hyun’s envelope of money back to him, but not without first taking some out to replace the items he damaged, heh. Not only do these scenes keep the show from becoming overly weighed down by all its details, but they also give our characters more dimension. I was already invested in their trajectories, but I’m growing to like them as people, too.