Dire circumstances force our protagonists’ hands, stripping the veil from their concealed technology far earlier than they’d intended. To their credit, the risk pays off — but their bold move also exposes them to the hyenas waiting in the wings, ready to snap up the groundbreaking research for their own gain.
EPISODES 5-6
With the help of San’s swift response, mobilizing drones and contacting the authorities, Ja-yoo and her entourage are rescued without any further mishaps. For Chae-woon, though, help may have arrived a tad too late. Bleeding profusely where the bullet had pierced through his chest, he’s barely hanging on by a thread.
Instead of a hospital, Ja-yoo orders Chae-woon to be taken to the HQ basement, where an AI-assisted medical scan confirms that his heart is still beating, albeit weakly. Sae-ip protests that they aren’t ready for such a procedure yet, but determination is written across Ja-yoo’s face. It’s Chae-woon’s only shot at survival, and an opportunity BF simply can’t pass up.
In the operating pod, mechanical appendages repair Chae-woon’s shredded muscle with cultured tissue, sealing the gaping exit wound. After an initial immune rejection — the likes of which had killed Shin-gu’s wife — Chae-woon’s body eventually accepts the synthetic tissue, and his vitals stabilize. Woo Chae-woon has just become BF’s first successful clinical trial.
By the time Chae-woon regains consciousness, Ja-yoo, Hui, and Sae-ip have left, while San has fallen asleep at his desk. Disoriented and dazed, Chae-woon takes in his surroundings — the bandages, the bloodied surgical tools — and when he wanders further into the basement, he stumbles upon a room full of blood bags.
Venturing forth, Chae-woon stumbles upon a shocking discovery. Rows upon rows of human organs hang suspended in culture fluid, eerily lifelike. Aghast, Chae-woon calls Ja-yoo, confronting her about the truth of BF’s culture technology with a tired resignation. Against San’s advice, Chae-woon leaves, bloody clothes and all.
It turns out there are drawbacks to a premature self-discharge, because Chae-woon begins experiencing a heightened sensitivity to sound in his left ear, enough to send shockwaves of pain through his skull. When he returns to work with an earplug to dampen the noise, San confesses to his actions. During the surgery, the team had noted Chae-woon’s partial hearing loss from the bombing, and San couldn’t resist patching it up. He’d gone above and beyond, though — he’d added an electronic chip made of synthetic skin to Chae-woon’s ear, allowing him to hear frequencies inaudible to humans.
Needless to say, this revelation thoroughly infuriates Chae-woon. Not only did the BF team bypass his consent and trample all over his autonomy, but they also experimented on him like a lab rat without any heed of the consequences he’d have to deal with. “How much more money must you earn before you are satisfied?” Chae-woon accuses, before storming out.
Now that the dust of the terrorist attack has settled, one central question remains: who planned it? Geun assumes Jae was behind the attack in order to test Ja-yoo, but Jae indignantly asserts he would never compromise the security and stability of his country in such a manner. Is he being truthful, or doth the man protest too much? Ja-yoo’s arrived at the latter conclusion, since the foreign cartel’s timing had been far too precise. They must have had an insider feeding them information about domestic affairs, in order to fan the flames of the conspiracy theories against Ja-yoo. She insinuates as much to Jae, who deflects with a coy smile.
That night, Ja-yoo gets spooked by footsteps that turn out to be Chae-woon’s. As she slumps to the floor, fear-fuelled adrenaline draining out of her as quickly as it’d spiked, Chae-woon settles down on the other side of the bedroom door. After telling her a story of a war veteran to validate her struggles with trauma, Chae-woon admits he’s heard BF’s origin story from San.
A flashback shows Ja-yoo retching after witnessing the abhorrent cruelty of pig farmers, as San explains two common misconceptions to Chae-woon. BF isn’t merely a money-making venture, nor is Ja-yoo championing the noble causes of animal rights and environmental protection. Rather, she’s liberating humans from their dependency on other living beings for survival — only then can humans truly become a dominant species.
Beyond that, though, BF’s secret research has its origins in a personal tragedy, which Ja-yoo finally opens up to Chae-woon about. The girl convulsing on a hospital bed hadn’t been Ja-yoo, but her identical twin; Ja-yoo had lost her sister to a variant of mad cow disease. Wracked with guilt over her inability to save her sibling, Ja-yoo’s deepest regret is her sister’s cremation — she doesn’t even have a body she can revive with the organs she’s successfully cultivated.
All too familiar with the slow suffering of disease, Ja-yoo isn’t aiming to craft immortality; she simply wants to devise a way to minimize pain till one’s deathbed. In the face of her idealism, Chae-woon points out that technological advancements have always culminated in the manufacturing of weapons. “I suppose I’ve always believed that humans sustained themselves not only on meat, but also on war,” Chae-woon admits. Quietly, he thanks Ja-yoo for saving his life, and she returns the gratitude, thanking him for protecting her.
Suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Shin-gu’s death, Ja-yoo asks Sae-ip whether she’d noticed anything amiss about her late colleague. Some time after his wife’s passing, Shin-gu had begun leaving work at six o’clock sharp every Wednesday, claiming it was a support group meeting for bereaved families of cancer patients. Then one day, he abruptly stopped going, denouncing the group as “cowards.”
Under Ja-yoo’s instruction, Chae-woon and Ho-seung pay a visit to the support center, where Ho-seung dials up the waterworks in the role of Shin-gu’s son, ha. His hysterics — and a hilarious quarrel with his “maternal uncle” Chae-woon — net them information about one particular participant Shin-gu had been close to.
Who else would it be but the scarred man PARK SANG-MIN, bespectacled and looking far more respectable than our first introduction to him. Our bickering bodyguards follow Sang-min’s supposed home address to a post office, where none of the staff know anyone by his name. Outside, Sang-min catches sight of them, and by the time they exit, he’s gone — but Chae-woon recognises Sang-min’s car as the one parked outside his home, and they promptly give chase.
Sang-min’s quick on the uptake, leading our duo on a pursuit through traffic and then on foot. Ho-seung catches up first, and Hui’s patented blade-proof suit proves useful when Sang-min brandishes a knife. So does Chae-woon’s enhanced hearing, when pulling out his ear plug allows him to hear the sounds of the fight — but he arrives far too late, because Ho-seung has already been stabbed through the vent of his blazer. As the light in Ho-seung’s eyes fades out, Chae-woon sees a fallen soldier in his mind’s eye, dragging his past trauma to the fore once again.
Oh no, and just when our bodyguards were finally beginning to bond, too! I doubt the miracle of Chae-woon’s recovery will be easily replicated — both in terms of practical feasibility and the liability it could pose to BF — so it seems like this might be farewell for our earnestly enthusiastic recruit. Now that Chae-woon’s abnormally swift recovery has proven the effectiveness of BF’s hidden technology, the immortality-craving Geun is growing impatient, while Jae seems ready to play his next chess piece.
Given Moon-kyu’s amputated legs, though, one would expect him to be equally invested in BF’s cultured human parts — so why is he so set on vilifying Ja-yoo? Either his knowledge doesn’t extend that far, or he has vested interests elsewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s being manipulated by Jae (or vice versa), though Chae-woon has alerted him to Jae’s puppeteering, having realized he’s a mere pawn in a larger game.
The mention of Gilgamesh — a Sumerian king in Mesopotamian mythology who sought a herb of immortality after his close friend’s death, only to have it stolen by a serpent — feels like an ominous bit of foreshadowing, given its parallels to our characters. Will Ja-yoo accept the futility of her endeavor, just as Gilgamesh had? Or will she wrest control back from her foes, echoing Chae-woon’s brazen declaration that Gilgamesh should’ve simply eaten the snake in turn?
Ja-yoo’s heart-rending backstory contextualizes her commitment to BF’s cause — just as cultured meat eventually entered the mass market when production expanded, reducing its exorbitant prices to affordable levels, Ja-yoo believes synthetic organs will eventually become accessible to all who need it. Certainly an idealistic notion, but I can see why someone who feels and hurts as deeply as Ja-yoo does would cling to such hope. I do wonder why Ja-yoo is leaving Hae-deun out of the loop, though perhaps it may indeed be wise to keep her inner circle small, especially now that she has yet another antagonistic variable to contend with.
Driving a blade into someone in broad daylight feels uncharacteristically rash and impulsive for Sang-min, whom we’ve seen biding his time and plotting from the shadows thus far. The desperation of a cornered hound striking back, perhaps, or the determination of a man who must see his plan through at any cost? In any case, I’m excited to finally see more of Choi Young-joon, because I am so curious about his role in the overarching plot. What fuels Sang-min’s vendetta? Is he in cahoots with someone else? Surely there’ll be a twist that leaves me equal parts winded and thrilled? I need answers!