I Hear Your Voice: Episode 13

by girlfriday

Truth and lies take center stage in this episode, to surprisingly cute effect. Not that the show is surprisingly cute, since it’s always been, but when your hero can read minds, the difference between knowing that and not… well let’s just say that Mind-Reading Boyfriend is now at the top of my wish list. I Hear Your Voice: ruining real-life expectations, one episode at a time.

 
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EPISODE 13: “The words in my heart I couldn’t bear to say”

Hye-sung finds out that Min Joon-gook is still alive and that Su-ha kept his promise, and calls him happily with the news. He back-hugs her in tears, wondering how she could be happy about the killer being alive, and she just smiles and pats him on the head.

They ride the bus home together, and she starts rattling off all the things he can do now that he’s free of murder raps, like his high school equivalency exam and anything else he missed during the last year. She notes that she had to finish high school the same way, and says that they have an awful lot in common, actually.

He’s switched to banmal ever since the phone conversation pre-back-hug, but so far she hasn’t noticed, and she asks if he still doesn’t remember anything. He hesitates and then says no. Aw man, you’re back to lying the second you get your memory and powers back?

She tells him that he has to stick to the plan—as soon as he does recover his memory, he’s to never see her again. Ah, so that’s why you lied. He asks why, and she reminds him that it’s what they agreed, and there’s really no reason for him to be around her once he’s back.

She tells him to live his own life and stop mooching, and he frowns… until he catches her thinking: “Was that too harsh? No, it was okay. The messier it gets, the harder it’ll be for me to get over my feelings.”

Omo. He scans her, wondering to himself: “Feelings…? No, it can’t be…” He hears her thinking again that she has to clean up her feelings before he leaves, and not get caught. He prods, and they have this three-way conversation that cracks me up:

Su-ha: Do you still hate me?
Hye-sung: Yes.
Hye-sung’s Brain: No. I like you.
Su-ha: Do you want me to go?
Hye-sung: Yes.
Hye-sung’s Brain: No. I want to ask you to stay with me.

Hahahaha. If only all romances had a bullshit meter like this one. I love it.

Su-ha can hardly believe it even as he reads her mind, and he says in voiceover: “In that moment your lips were telling lies, but your eyes were telling the truth. Your eyes were saying the thing I so badly wanted to hear for eleven years… but to stay by your side, I had to pretend not to hear those words.”

They find the rent-a-cop duo guarding the street outside Hye-sung’s apartment, complete with sincere apologies and promises to put up security cameras to make her feel safer. Or, how about we move? Can we just move? Preferably to a district with better cops?

Su-ha reads Nice Cop’s mind and sees that he actually does feel terrible, and that he fought to get those cameras approved. Hye-sung wants more put up, and he agrees knowing that he’s going to get yelled at by his chief. Su-ha thanks him politely for going to the trouble.

Inside, Hye-sung looks at Su-ha askance and asks if maybe amnesia comes with a personality transplant, because he’s been so nice lately. And it’s only then that she realizes he’s been using banmal with her, and he awkwardly switches back to jondae.

It’s pretty funny how much he struggles to speak to her politely, but thankfully she tells him to do whatever he likes. He wonders to himself what she’d do if she knew that his father was the one who started all of this, convinced she’d hate him and never want to see him again. Aw.

Do-yeon calls to say that she’s put patrolmen and cameras up around her neighborhood, and Hye-sung asks if she called to brag about it. They each mouth nasty barbs at each other silently, but for once they’re not actually at cross purposes—Do-yeon wants to catch Min Joon-gook, and Hye-sung gets more security, even if she is the bait. Su-ha listens to the exchange with a worrisome look on his face.

Do-yeon arrives at home, when suddenly a man creeps up on her from behind. Oh, it’s Hwang Dal-joong, but that’s no less frightening to her, especially when he comes over to scream at her, asking if she’s Judge Seo’s daughter.

He grabs her arms and demands to see her father, and she makes a run for the intercom to call her parents. She turns around… to find Hwang Dal-joong lying in the street, unconscious. She runs over to him and tells Mom to call emergency, but in the midst of her panic, she catches the look on Dad’s face. It’s frozen in shock and fear.

They take him to the hospital and the doctor tells them about the brain tumor, and then the detective arrives to add that Hwang Dal-joong stabbed someone as soon as he was released from prison. It puts everyone on edge, for very different reasons.

In the morning, Su-ha secretly puts the phone-tracking app back on their phones, and makes breakfast. Hye-sung tries to avoid him, but this time he orders her to sit, saying he’ll wait outside.

She’s halfway through a banmal-doesn’t-mean-you’re-the-boss-of-me rant, when suddenly she spots a cockroach and freeeeaks out, jumping onto his back. Haha. It’s even better when he points out that they’re watermelon seeds, and she cringes, mortified.

But it helps to smooth over the avoidance issue, and she tells him to sit down so they can eat together, telling herself that it’ll be okay and there’s no need to push him away so harshly now because he’ll leave eventually.

They eat breakfast laughing and chatting just like the old days, and then he walks her to work, holding her stuff and pulling her close. He steals little glances at her the whole way, and then he does this happy sigh that just does me in.

Hye-sung’s house phone rings once they’re already out, and I don’t know who’s on the other end, but it’s creeping me out.

Su-ha hears Hye-sung thinking to herself that she needs to do something to thank Kwan-woo for taking Su-ha’s case, but feels weird about it. So he chimes in to ask what Kwan-woo might like as a gift, being very deliberate with his words: “He helped ME with MY case, so I should thank him.”

She tells him that he likes to go hiking, so Su-ha heads to the outdoorsy store and asks the clerk for the best thing in there, something that he can make a big deal about giving as a gift. HA. Oh, the petty rivalry. “Include the price tag in the package, please.” Lol.

He plops the hiking shoes down on Kwan-woo’s desk with a half-assed thank you, and offers to repay him for the lawyering. Kwan-woo turns down the offer, and asks instead for Su-ha to cheer him on—he’s reapplying to be a public defender.

Kwan-woo: “It’s time for me to reclaim my place.” The meaning isn’t lost on Su-ha, and Kwan-woo reminds him of his words to him before. He asks for Su-ha to cheer him on, and Su-ha scowls, “Does it look like I’m going to do that?” Kwan-woo laughs, having expected as much.

It looks like Kwan-woo’s words about a suit not making the man did sink in though, because today Su-ha grabs a pamphlet for the police academy. Yay.

Lawyer Shin races to the prison and asks with tears brimming in his eyes how his friend Dal-joong could’ve landed back in jail for attempted murder after having just been released.

Dal-joong says with deadened eyes that he should’ve killed her. “It was her. Twenty-six years they said I killed her. My wife is alive!” He admits now that even he believed that he could’ve gotten drunk and accidentally killed her, but now the reality sinks in: “I didn’t. I didn’t. Twenty-six years. Twenty-six years!”

Lawyer Shin asks why he stabbed her now, and Dal-joong just says he’s already a dead man, and it wasn’t a person he stabbed, but a ghost.

Do-yeon gets assigned to the case, and tells Mom about it, thinking it an interesting one. You don’t even know the half of it. She says that the wife cheated on her husband and was always wanting to leave him because of his debt, which is why he attacked her twenty-six years ago. Meanwhile Judge Seo gets on the phone to arrange to have the case reassigned to a different prosecutor.

Lawyer Shin mulls over how to defend Dal-joong in court, thinking of his tear-filled plea to prove his innocence. Lawyer Shin argues that he can’t be innocent if he stabbed her, but Dal-joong just cries and pleads.

He sits in on Hye-sung’s case: a domestic violence dispute that ended in manslaughter. Do-yeon is pushing for murder, while Hye-sung argues that it was self-defense. I doubt Judge Kim is listening to either of them though, because he’s too busy trying to figure out how to cool down the courtroom in the sweltering heat, in a segment that just ends with him as the stay-puft marshmallow judge.

Do-yeon argues that the defendant should’ve cried for help, and so Hye-sung shows a video of her standing in the defendant’s apartment complex. She plays loud music and within ten seconds the neighbors are shouting at her that they’ll call the cops. But then when she plays a recording of a domestic dispute, there’s no reaction, and no cops called.

Kwan-woo goes to his interview for the public defender position, and they ask how they can trust he won’t quit again. He says that it’s because he’s already done so that he’s the better choice, and adds that he now knows exactly what a public defender ought to be, because of Jang Hye-sung.

Do-yeon catches up to Hye-sung after their case and scoffs that she thought she was up against Cha Kwan-woo in that courtroom earlier. She calls her out for copying his tactics, and Hye-sung points out the difference between imitating and studying—she watched Kwan-woo and learned from him, so what’s the harm in that?

Back to Kwan-woo in his interview, where he says that he and Hye-sung saved someone from wasting his life away in jail. We cut to Su-ha, taking his high school equivalency exam. Kwan-woo: “He is the reason and the motivation for Jang Hye-sung and for me, to be public defenders.”

Do-yeon returns to her office to find that the Hwang Dal-joong case has been reassigned. She gets upset, having already worked on the case, but then when her colleague says it happened after their boss got a call from her father, she starts to get suspicious. Woohoo. I always like it when you get a hunch.

Hye-sung comes home and runs to catch the ringing house phone, but misses it. Su-ha sets the table for dinner while Hye-sung does laundry, and she fishes a piece of paper out of the shirt he was wearing today.

It’s information for how to apply for the police academy, and he runs over to tackle it out of her hands, getting all handsy in the process.

She lights up to realize he’s thinking about his future, but he brushes it off like it’s just something he might maybe try, refusing to take it seriously in case of failure. Over dinner, she tells him that he has the grades to get in, so he should try his best and take it seriously.

I just love the little things, like the fact that he holds down the rest of the sesame leaves so she can get at the top one. He catches her wondering to herself what she’ll do if she gets used to him being around and has a hard time when he’s gone, “Just like a year ago…” Awwww.

He asks what she’s thinking, and she lies that she’s wishing he’d hurry up and leave.

In the morning, she notices the post-it memory fragments on his door and wonders how much longer it’ll take before he recovers his memories. The phone rings again, and this time Hye-sung picks it up but there’s no answer on the other end. I don’t like this ringing phone business…

Su-ha immediately gets suspicious and checks the phone log while Hye-sung is in the bathroom. Every number he calls back is no longer in service, except for one—a random person answers and says it’s a payphone.

Su-ha writes down the phone log and meets the cops at the payphone later that morning, and they discover a convenience store CCTV across the street. They head over and check the footage…

It’s Min Joon-gook. Ack. We knew it’d be him, but still, the confirmation puts me on edge. Su-ha takes one look and knows—he’s been calling to find out if Hye-sung still lives there. Craaaaap. I don’t like that look in your eye. We just got you back. Do we have to worry about you doing something dumb again?

He rushes home and starts packing a bag. Noo! Oh, phew, he’s packing two bags—one for Hye-sung and one for him. I adore that he includes a picture of Hye-sung and Mom, and some law texts.

At work, Hye-sung is stunned silent by different news altogether—Lawyer Shin tucks his tail between his legs and asks for her help on the Hwang Dal-joong case. She hilariously milks it, as is her style, and Lawyer Shin begins to tell her about the case.

Dal-joong was released and staying in the hospital, when he happened to run into his wife, who was working there. She drops the vase in her hand in shock, and tells Dal-joong that she’s sorry, but it was the best she could do back then—she hated him and his debt.

She cries that she didn’t want to raise their daughter in that mountain of debt. But dude, murder? She says that their child grew up wealthy and taken care of, which is more than they ever could have done. He strangles her in rage, and then reaches for a shard of broken glass.

Hye-sung thinks the circumstances of the case make it a long shot, but one that seems worth trying to fight. Lawyer Shin says the first problem is the fact that the wife has a whole new identity, and so that makes it difficult to prove that she faked her own death.

She’s even burned off her fingerprints, which he says is from years of working in restaurant kitchens, but if the woman was willing to cut off her own friggin’ hand, I wouldn’t put it past her to have burned off her prints to disappear. He says the only way to prove it would be to find the daughter and run a DNA test.

She goes for a spin in her revolving door, and Su-ha pulls her out by the hand. He tells her that Min Joon-gook’s been spotted, and that he’s been calling her house to see if she lives there, which means it’s no longer safe.

He takes her to his place, and leads her all the way there by the hand, assuring her that there are lock codes and cameras everywhere, and that for now it’s the safest place to be.

Once inside, she finally wriggles her hand free awkwardly, and then he catches her worrying in her head about him running off to hunt down Min Joon-gook again. Right? That’s what I’m sayin’! He nearly bursts a reply at her in frustration, but stops himself just in time.

To put her fears at ease, he says he’s going to enlist everyone’s help—the cops, Kwan-woo, and anyone else—to keep her safe.

She goes looking for something to eat, and makes her infamous Refrigerator Remnant Rice. He watches with a scowl and asks, “Dog food again?” He gives her the spoon and takes the rice spatula just like the first time, and then she has a delayed reaction at his word choice: “Do you… remember?”

She points out that he called it dog food the first time, and he hems and haws for an excuse, saying he ate something similar for lunch is all.

She accepts it at face value, thinking to herself that there’s no reason for Su-ha to lie to her about that—he’s not that kind of person. Ouch, that’s gonna hurt later.

Min Joon-gook creeps around Hye-sung’s neighborhood that night, being careful to avoid the cameras and ducking out of sight when a patrol car comes around. He looks up at the rooftop and sing-songs (as if he wasn’t already creepy enough, thanks), “Where are you all hiding?”

Do-yeon tells Mom about Dad reassigning the Hwang Dal-joong case, and Mom adds that Dad does get really weird every time she mentions that name. She wonders if maybe it has anything to do with his first case as a judge.

Do-yeon goes to check the case file from twenty-six years ago, and there’s Dad’s name on the record as the presiding judge. Why it took Mom connecting the dots for you to figure this out is beyond me, prosecutor who supposedly put work into the case, but whatever.

Meanwhile Hye-sung and Lawyer Shin go to the adoption agency to find out about the daughter’s adoption (she was named Hwang Ga-yeon at the time), but the agency rep says it’s a closed file and she can’t reveal any information. Hye-sung tries anyway, which is as hilarious as it is futile.

Kwan-woo and Pretty the Paralegal get all amped up before checking the results of the public defender interview, and Kwan-woo opens the email…

Aw, he didn’t make it. Kwan-woo does his best to have a stiff upper lip, and just says he’ll try again next time. He points out that he was in second place, which Pretty argues makes it worse. I agree. Why tell a guy he almost got the job but still didn’t?

Su-ha comes in and hears the news, and Kwan-woo blames him for not cheering him on: “Did you maybe put a curse on me or something?” Ha. Su-ha says he might’ve before but he wouldn’t now, and Kwan-woo is taken aback at the change in attitude. He asks why, and Su-ha says that Min Joon-gook is back.

On their way back from the adoption agency, Hye-sung says she’s going to make a pit stop, and already I’m panicking any time she’s alone. But then Kwan-woo runs up to say that he’ll accompany her, and that he’ll keep doing so from now on as her bodyguard—Su-ha stopped by and told him about Min Joon-gook.

And eek, it’s not a moment too soon… Min Joon-gook is thirty feet away, watching her every move.

Su-ha goes down his checklist of people to alert about Joon-gook, and the last is Do-yeon. He takes a breath and then heads to the prosecutor’s office, and sees Do-yeon heading out. She runs into Dad outside, and she confronts him about getting her off of Hwang Dal-joong’s case.

He lies that he didn’t, Su-ha reads Judge Seo’s mind. Something he hears surprises him, but we don’t get to hear what it is.

He goes to pick up Hye-sung after work, and hears her thinking that it’d be so nice if Su-ha could read minds again so she could find out about the adoption. But she quickly amends that thought: “No, it’s better for him not to have that ability. It was so hard on him.”

And then again at the bus stop, she’s engrossed in thoughts about the case, wondering how she’s going to get the information she needs. He’s itching to help her, but can’t bring himself to admit the truth, and goes back and forth, thinking back to Hye-sung’s blind faith in him during the trial and then again the other day when she told herself Su-ha would never lie to her.

He thinks: “If you knew the truth, would you look at me this way again?” She notices a pen mark on his cheek and points to her own. Without a word he just leans in and kisses her on the cheek. Omo. It’s a nice callback to the time she had the same misunderstanding.

She gets flustered and explains what she was trying to say, and he just pretends he misunderstood her. Cheeky. It only makes him sigh though, more torn about the right thing to do.

The cops swing by Hye-sung’s place that night and wonder if there’s anyone else that Min Joon-gook might have revengey feelings towards, and decide they should stop by Do-yeon’s house too.

Kwan-woo texts Hye-sung to make sure she got home safely, but oh crap—he’s the one who’s in trouble. Min Joon-gook is standing on his street, waiting for him to come home.

Thankfully Kwan-woo spots him first. Run! Run away! He puts down his briefcase and takes off his glasses, and then wraps his tie around his hand. What? You’re gonna fight him? This is a terrible idea.

He sneaks up behind Min Joon-gook, fist at the ready… but before he can strike, his phone rings with a reply from Hye-sung that she’s home safe. Eep. Joon-gook whirls around and gets the jump on Kwan-woo, and they struggle.

Kwan-woo manages to knock Joon-gook off his legs, but he’s armed with a sharp wooden plank and he raises it to Kwan-woo’s throat. Kwan-woo says he won’t tell him anything, but Joon-gook says in a surprisingly calm tone: “I didn’t come to find out anything. I came because I have something to tell you.”

And then at home, Su-ha hedges for a long while and then finally says he has something to tell Hye-sung. “I know who Hwang Dal-joong’s daughter is. It’s Seo Do-yeon.”

It’s not a huge shock since Judge Seo’s pretty much been wearing his neon birth secret hat for a while now, but Hye-sung says that’s ridiculous and doesn’t even consider that it might be true.

But Su-ha explains the circumstances, as we watch it in flashback: After Judge Seo’s first case that put Hwang Dal-joong away for murder and put him on the path to glory and success, the not-so-dead wife came looking for him. He was shocked that she was still alive and that she went so far as to cut off her own hand to get away from her husband, but she claims it was what she had to do to survive.

She knew that Judge Seo wouldn’t risk overturning the verdict that put him on the map, and basically offered a deal: if he raised her daughter, she’d disappear forever.

Back to Su-ha, who says that he accepted the deal, and that Do-yeon is that daughter. Hye-sung can’t believe that two people would orchestrate all that, and ruin a person’s life in the process. “Hwang Dal-joong spent half of his life rotting in jail! Wait… how do you know all this?”

Took you long enough to ask. That’s the reaction he was waiting for, and he explains that he went looking for Do-yeon earlier today and saw her with her father. And then he saw Judge Seo’s eyes…

Hye-sung: “Saw his eyes? Did you…”

He ekes out a tiny “Yes,” and can barely let the rest of the words escape: “That ability… it came back… with my memories…”

 
COMMENTS

Don’t kick him out because he remembers you! Oh wait, they’re living in his house now. But still she’s the boss, so I’m just cringing and holding my breath for her response. She won’t make him go away now, right? Not when Min Joon-gook is after her and they’re both in danger. And in the very least I trust that Su-ha will argue with her now that he knows she has feelings for him. His fear about her impending reaction to the truth about Dad is something that I understand, but I do think that he’s underestimating how much she cares about him. More than anything, if she pushes him away now it’s because she can’t get a grip on her own feelings, which in itself is rather adorable.

What I like about the back and forth with this couple is that their separations and reunions aren’t for the nobly idiotic reasons that are so common in dramaland. I won’t count them out because we have a while to go (and even longer with the extension confirmed), so there’s plenty of time for one or both of them to become idiots, but I like that their motivations so far have been driven by either selfish desire—to be loved, to avoid their worst fears—or just plain noble ones, like running to each other’s rescue. And of course when you add life and death stakes, it only gets better.

Storywise, I’m glad that Min Joon-gook is back. Things just move along at an altogether different speed when he’s around, and I can feel the massive difference in pace when he’s not terrorizing people. I’m fine with spending lots of time on the Hwang Dal-joong case because it’s so central to our characters, but the long stretches in the courtroom with the Case of the Day could really be cut down, especially at this point in the story. I like the beat where both Kwan-woo and Hye-sung are admitting they’ve learned to be better lawyers because of each other—something we’ve been waiting for since the beginning. But Hye-sung’s case that led up to that should’ve been a quick montage. It was the only time in this episode where I actually felt my brain wander off.

At least we’re getting somewhere with Hwang Dal-joong’s case, with its ties to so many of our characters. I don’t really care about Do-yeon’s parentage in and of itself, since we’ve known for a long time that she’s not biologically related to Judge Seo, and he’s been glaringly obvious about dodging any mention of Hwang Dal-joong. I do like her character though, so I’m interested inasmuch as it affects her, especially now that Hye-sung has privileged information and has to choose what to do with it. It’s their friendship that interests me most, and hopefully this case will be a turning point for them.

And of course the romance continues to have me by the heart. Who knew there was this much cuteness to be had in denial? After that stretch in the amnesia arc where Hye-sung lied and lied and broke his little puppy heart, this reversal is so perfect. I love how much there is to glean in a romance when one party can read the other’s mind. It’s a fantastic use of Su-ha’s powers to have her not know for an episode that he’s regained his memories AND his abilities, so that he can actually see for himself how much she’s baldly lying to his face about her feelings.

I’m glad it’s only for an episode though, because I was right there with Su-ha, inwardly cringing when she was thinking that he’d never lie to her. It was starting to feel wrong, and I’m glad he acted on his impulse to do the right thing and admit the truth, despite his worst fears. I love that whether or not his powers are intact, that thread of deciphering truth from lies is ever-present and always shifting based on the dynamic that’s in play, whether it’s amnesia, denial, or just plain fear of a broken heart.

 
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