Woman With a Suitcase: Episode 8

by Paroma

The cat is out of the bag for Suk-woo, and now Geum-joo has to decide on her next move. While raging emotions cause two full grown men to act like children, Geum-joo has other problems to consider—namely, that the sister she put her all into helping may have made a deal with the devil. But there’s still another devil at play, and Bok-geo seems to be getting closer to solving the puzzle that will inevitably lead to him.

 
EPISODE 8: “Good Reason to be Alive”

Suk-woo and Geum-joo arrive at a gay club, and Suk-woo goes up to the patrons asking if they recognize the murdered victim, Park Seo-joong. Turns out he was a regular, which makes Suk-woo look thoughtful, but which comes as no surprise to Geum-joo.

Bok-geo meets a very drunk Hye-joo at a roadside stall. She tells him that she’s become scary, and he observes that that can happen when you want a lot of things. Hye-joo is clearly still reeling from her conversation with CEO Lee and admits that she may have fallen into the swamp Bok-geo had warned her about. Then she proceeds to pass out on the table.

Back at the club, Suk-woo expresses hurt that Geum-joo didn’t tell him about their client being in the closet. A patron of the club offers Suk-woo a drink and comes on to him pretty strongly. To help out her befuddled friend, Geum-joo tells the guy that Suk-woo’s her lover and proves it with a hug. The man doesn’t really believe her, and in desperation Geum-joo kisses a stunned Suk-woo. Of course the kiss only lands to the side of his mouth, but it looks like more to the disappointed pickup artist, who leaves in a huff.

As Geum-joo pulls back, Suk-woo’s expression becomes determined, and he tightens his hold around her waist. She asks what he’s doing, and he admits to keeping one secret of his own. Then Suk-woo leans forward and kisses her properly. Wooh!

Bok-geo puts the inebriated Hye-joo into a cab, and as he draws back, she catches his lapel and pulls him close. She asks if he can’t grab hold of her. Bok-geo gently removes her hand and tells her to come to him sober if she wants help getting out of Oh Sung.

Hye-joo seems awake enough to register the rejection, and as he begins to leave, she suddenly mentions the threat she received when Geum-joo was in jail.

Back at the club, Geum-joo breaks the kiss, and Suk-woo suggests they leave the club. Geum-joo immediately explains away Suk-woo’s kiss as pretense for the benefit of his pushy admirer. But Suk-woo is not in the mood to back down and plainly says it was real.

Geum-joo is saved from further awkwardness by Bok-geo calling to find out where Hye-joo lives. Turns out that Geum-joo doesn’t know, so Bok-geo meets them with Hye-joo at her dorm.

Seeing Geum-joo and Suk-woo walk up together, Bok-geo comments on Suk-woo being unable to work without Geum-joo. Geum-joo says they had to go somewhere for the client, but then shoots Suk-woo’s hurt face a guilty look.

They carry Hye-joo up to her room and put her in the bed. Then the three stand in her tiny space looking at each other. Bok-geo starts the first volley by saying that if had known her bed was so wide he wouldn’t have refused to sleep over before. Geum-joo is mortified and insists that her offer of sleeping over didn’t mean that kind of sleeping over. Bok-geo is super pleased that he got her to admit to making the offer and says that his work here is done. Snort.

He then drags Suk-woo out with an arm around his neck to leave the sisters alone. Outside the building though, he immediately starts interrogating Suk-woo about their evening. Suk-woo says he “came out” to Geum-joo, which prompts Bok-geo to cup his face and sympathize with his suffering in hiding his sexuality.

But Suk-woo cuts the joke short by clearly saying that he confessed to Geum-joo. Assuming that the response was negative, a happy Bok-geo offers to buy Suk-woo soju in order to drown his sorrows, at least until Suk-woo amends that she didn’t have the time to give him either a positive or negative response. There’ll be no soju tonight.

Hye-joo wakes up to find herself in Geum-joo’s dorm. She thanks her sister off-handedly and begins to leave when her eyes fall on a textbook obviously marked in preparation for the exam. Hye-joo asks with a sneer if Geum-joo still hasn’t given up. Geum-joo asks what happened with Bok-geo, and Hye-joo insinuates that they’re in a relationship. Geum-joo isn’t discomposed until Hye-joo points out that Bok-geo called her for a drink first, which Geum-joo remembers seeing.

Geum-joo asks Hye-joo what it is that she can’t tell her. She says that when Hye-joo turned away from her before, she assumed there was a reason. Hye-joo walks out partway through her sentence, leaving Geum-joo frustrated with her stepsister.

Next morning, the K-Fact staff discuss the media coverage of a top star, YOO TAE-HO, and his surprising romance with an average salarywoman when Geum-joo interrupts to borrow Bok-geo. She asks him how Hye-joo got so drunk the night before, but Bok-geo turns that around and asks what secret she and Suk-woo share. Geum-joo immediately thinks back to the kiss and purses her lips. Bok-geo doesn’t answer her question either.

Suk-woo asks to speak with Geum-joo, and they sit in the garden outside. Suk-woo admits to liking Geum-joo, to which she says that she likes him too, but as a lawyer and a colleague. Her answer disappoints him, but he says that he’ll wait for her to feel the way he does. If he waits, he says, won’t she get to where he is eventually?

Bok-geo watches the two from his balcony and looks less than pleased.

Suk-woo sits in Geum-joo’s new car and asks if this is the “ninety million won” gift that Bok-geo had mentioned earlier. Geum-joo easily dismisses Bok-geo’s gesture as a way to get her to work more. Suk-woo looks especially pleased when she mentions that she liked the ruler he gave her too.

Suk-woo asks if they’ll just sit quietly during the trial. Geum-joo says that even though the client refused to talk to them, they have a duty to sit beside him.

The session has been called by the judge to discuss a change in the prosecutor’s charges. Initially, the prosecution had charged Kim Chang-hee with murder and named his wife an accomplice. Now, says Prosecutor Choi, they’ve determined that Chang-hee’s wife is not guilty of aiding the murder and will drop the charges against her. When the judge asks if her lawyer has anything to add, CEO Lee lays out the storyline they came up with and asks for verification from his client.

The wife stays silent, and CEO Lee begins to prod her by reminding her of her young child. Geum-joo texts Suk-woo to object to this line of bullying. But it works on the wife, and she states that her husband killed Park Seo-joong by himself.

This takes the Oh-sung family member neatly out of the case, and the next hearing date is set for Kim Chang-hee’s sole prosecution.

Geum-joo finally gets to meet her client, who tells her not to waste her time. She shows Kim Chang-hee the clip of him and his lover which makes him fall silent. Geum-joo knows that he’s choosing to be labelled as a murderer to avoid the truth from coming out, but says that it won’t stay hidden for long.

She explains that if she were a lawyer representing his wife she would release this clip the moment the current case was done to help the divorce case which will inevitably come next. Kim Chang-hee looks struck by this argument. And then Geum-joo earns my eternal respect by asking if Kim Chang-hee realizes what this will do to the cause of others like him, if it comes out that a confessed murderer is also a sexual minority.

Prosecutor Choi stops Hye-joo on the street to ask where she slept the night before—did she find another man? Before Hye-joo can answer, Bok-geo comes up and puts an arm around her. With a wink at her, he dismisses Choi and walks off with Hye-joo. Her colleagues from Oh Sung see this and assume they are dating.

He gives her a lift and Hye-joo says that she doesn’t remember much from the night before. Bok-geo says she just asked for his help in leaving Oh Sung Law Firm.

Bok-geo calls Geum-joo at night and says he’ll buy her that mojito she wanted. She refuses, and he asks her if she’s mad at him. She vehemently denies being angry since he has done her no wrong. Bok-geo tells her to stop being mad and hangs up.

Hye-joo hears that Bok-geo is at a bar and heads out to meet him. She feigns surprise at finding Bok-geo there and asks if she can sit beside him. Bok-geo is noticeably subdued as he drinks, but asks her if she’s made up her mind about leaving Oh Sung. Hye-joo asks what he can give her if she does, and he asks what he wants. She asks for him as her price. Bok-geo counters with an offer to give her just his left arm, and they both laugh.

On the way to court on the next trial date, Geum-joo learns of the existence of CCTV footage that the prosecution knew about but didn’t submit to the court. Geum-joo goes to check this footage and finds a clip of Kim Chang-hee in his club, speaking to someone on an older-model phone. It’s suspicious enough for Geum-joo to go the club (which Hye-ryung got her a membership to) and barge into the men’s locker room.

Bok-geo happens to be there when he hears the chorus of men protesting at Geum-joo’s invasion of their space, and stops to watch the fun. She locates Kim Chang-hee’s locker and tries to finagle the key from the attendant. When that doesn’t work, she picks up a bin to break the lock, but Bok-geo does it before she can. They retrieve the phone and go to the courthouse together.

Prosecutor Choi leads husband and wife through their established testimonies, after which Attorney Goo gets up to cross-examine Kim Chang-hee. She asks him if he’s admitting to the murder charges to hide a different truth, and he says yes. Attorney Goo displays the picture of him and the victim in the club and the audience exclaims in shock.

The prosecutor protests that Kim Chang-hee’s sexuality has nothing to do with his crime, but Attorney Goo argues back that Kim Chang-hee felt pressured to admit to the murder to avoid being outed as gay. The judge asks for more definitive evidence, and that’s when Suk-woo gets up with the phone Geum-joo fetched from the club.

He says that it belongs to Kim Chang-hee, and is the secret phone he used to text the victim with. He also reveals that the prosecutor knew about its existence but didn’t investigate. The last message on the secret phone was from Park Seo-joong telling Kim Chang-hee that he was about to reveal everything to Kim Chang-hee’s wife.

Suk-woo asks Kim Chang-hee again if he committed the murder, and this time, he says no. When asked who could have killed the victim then, he remains silent, but people in the audience begin to point at his wife. Suk-woo asks that the prosecution reinvestigate the crime so it doesn’t become a case of a murdered victim without a murderer.

Outside the court, Kim Chang-hee thanks Geum-joo for convincing him to tell the truth and promises to pay them back by letting K-Fact take care of something. (Ooh, is it whatever you have that scared CEO Lee?)

Suk-woo stews over the prosecutor’s corruption, and Geum-joo tells him to change his profession so she can meet an honest prosecutor in court. Suk-woo just says he likes working at Golden Tree. Hye-ryung calls Geum-joo and invites her to an upper-class gathering.

Hye-ryung’s sister-in-law is at the party bemoaning the poor quality of the Oh Sung spouses who keep causing embarrassment to the family. Prosecutor Choi’s mother makes barbed comments about the consequences of marrying people from lower families. A few feet away, Hye-ryung sits with Geum-joo and tells her about a rumor doing the rounds—that Hye-joo is interested in Bok-geo.

She also asks if Hye-joo has broken things off with Madam Choi’s son-in-law, and Geum-joo assures her that it was over a long time ago. Hye-ryung doesn’t look convinced.

Bok-geo looks over a list of names (who are all members of CEO Lee’s “Food Talk”) that Kim Chang-hee sent over. He calls and thanks him for the generous payment. Kim Chang-hee says he couldn’t do anything about it while he still had an attachment to the Oh Sung family, but now that he’s leaving, he’ll trust Bok-geo to do what he couldn’t.

Kim Chang-hee also asks why Bok-geo didn’t out his sexuality earlier, since he must have known for a while. Bok-geo says that that’s something he should do himself. Kim Chang-hee wishes him luck.

Bok-geo walks into his office with his driver/right-hand man/NIS agent and finds Min-ah surfing through gossip articles. He notices the worry on her face and asks what’s wrong. She starts talking, startling Bok-geo’s right-hand man.

She explains that Ji-ah had hired her to attend one of the “food talks,” where she met some older men. Afterwards, she had revealed that she was hungry, and Ji-ah had taken her to the Oh Sung vacation house and made her ramyun. Min-ah had gone upstairs to use the bathroom, and on the way, she had glimpsed something in a room that had shocked her.

She says that initially she thought that the undressed celebrity, Yoo Tae-ho, was alone, and that she’d begun to film him on impulse. But then she realized that he was with a woman. Bok-geo shows her the picture of the salarywoman the star is rumored to be dating, but Min-ah says it wasn’t her. Unfortunately, she lost her phone at the shelter where she stayed with other runaways.

Geum-joo goes to Hye-joo’s office and tells her to make time to talk to her unless she wants to be embarrassed. Alone, Geum-joo asks if Hye-joo is all right. Hye-joo points out that what Geum-joo really wants to ask is what’s going on between her and Bok-geo. Geum-joo wonders why she turned so strange after joining Oh Sung, but Hye-joo says she’s no longer a child or a “lawyer with a flaw” who Geum-joo needs to protect.

In the face of her sister’s anger, she adds that Geum-joo shouldn’t question her for stealing her man, since she knows that Hye-joo is a thief. There’s some history here, and it has an effect on Geum-joo. She asks why Hye-joo is bringing it up, and Hye-joo answers it’s so that Geum-joo can feel guilty.

As Hye-joo gets up to leave, Geum-joo says that if that’s what she wants, then from now on she’ll do whatever makes her feel guilty towards Hye-joo.

Walking away, Hye-joo thinks back to her life as a high schooler when she had to steal basic things like sanitary pads because her stepmother wouldn’t give her money to buy them. When she got caught and was taken to the police, Geum-joo finally found out. She had apologized for not catching on sooner, and both sisters had hugged and cried.

Later, Geum-joo thinks to herself that every person lives in a prison of their own making, but the only person who can imprison her was herself. All her traumas and wounds belonged to her alone.

The K-Fact team reviews what Min-ah had revealed. They realize that the people who kidnapped Min-ah had been after the recording on her phone. They wonder if the woman Yoo Tae-ho was sleeping with was someone important, or perhaps someone married.

Hye-ryung meets Hye-joo to find out how Oh Sung is planning to take her out. Hae-joo says she thought Hye-ryung was working with Geum-joo, but Hye-ryung just says that conviction and loyalty are for the strong.

When Hye-joo gets home, Prosecutor Choi is sitting outside her apartment, drunk. He begs her to take him back, promising to leave his wife this time. But Hye-joo says that since she’s used to being abandoned, she quickly latches on to a new plan. Prosecutor Choi looks stunned to realize that she’s genuinely moved on.

The K-Fact staff asks Bok-geo if he’s told Geum-joo about what he’s found out. He says he was wondering how much he should tell her and Editor Go suggests that he should tell her everything and join forces to fight CEO Lee. (Yus! Listen to this man!)

So Bok-geo goes to Geum-joo and says that he wants her to meet his “stalker.” He says that they’re living so close these days that he shares meals with her and lends her his pajamas when needed. Geum-joo gets huffy that he’s meeting Hye-joo when he has someone that close, but Bok-geo just tells her to prepare herself.

Outside, Bok-geo and Suk-woo do a sidestepping dance trying to get past each other, much to Attorney Goo’s amusement.

Suk-woo asks to speak to Attorney Goo, and she assumes that he wants dating advice. But he just wants to talk about encouraging Geum-joo to take the bar exam again. Attorney Goo surprises Suk-woo (and me) by saying that she’s against it. She thinks that Geum-joo’s talent lies in what she does.

When Suk-woo wonders why she won’t support Geum-joo’s pursuit of a lawyer’s badge, she says that while she’s thought about how much she needs Geum-joo the paralegal, she hasn’t given much thought to how much use Geum-joo would be to her as a lawyer. Suk-woo disagrees with her reasoning and leaves.

CEO Lee meets his assassin (previously referred to as Tomy Kim, until Bok-geo realized that it was a Pagebook profile name that Ji-ah used) to discuss how well guarded Min-ah is. The assassin also reports that Bok-geo met Hye-joo and warns CEO Lee that he might try to plant a spy in their law firm.

Geum-joo is working late with Suk-woo when Bok-geo calls and asks her to come up to his penthouse. Geum-joo ignores him, but after the second call and a threat to bring the stalker down to her, Geum-joo agrees to go up. Suk-woo overhears and offers to accompany her, but she says she’ll go alone.

She huffs up to his door, determined to set things straight with this woman. Bok-geo invites her in, having just cooked dinner for the three of them. Geum-joo wonders if he’s lost his mind–she has no intention of having dinner with them. Bok-geo smiles and calls Min-ah out to meet their guest. Min-ah arrives and greets a startled Geum-joo. It takes her a few moments but as recognition dawns, Bok-geo confirms the girl’s identity and tells her about the body swapping.

Bok-geo stretches and claims to have a bad back from all the work he did for their dinner. Geum-joo finally absorbs the news that he had saved the girl she thought was dead, and surprises him by suddenly hugging him. She fervently thanks him through her tears, and Bok-geo just smiles.

 
COMMENTS

Bok-geo’s long game has finally started to pay dividends. The chief players in the larger mystery are coming into focus, and several key pieces of evidence have fallen in Bok-geo’s lap. At this point, if Bok-geo had persisted in keeping Min-ah a secret from Geum-joo, I would have thought very poorly of him. As it is, I never understood how keeping someone in the dark protects them from anything. But that’s a hero’s logic for you.

Up until that very last scene I kept expecting something to come up that would delay the reveal for Geum-joo. It just didn’t seem likely that Bok-geo would get to tell her. That’s not what dramas have taught me! But nothing happened. I feel like the sheer lack of a twist was the ultimate twist at the end. They robbed me of my frustration and I was left feeling slightly dazed. Other than the whole “my stalker” schtick, it played out pretty straight. How… refreshing. (As an aside, I loved the genuine smile that spread on Bok-geo’s face when Geum-joo hugged him.)

Ah, poor Suk-woo. The repeated motif throughout the episode seemed to be that whatever Suk-woo did with Geum-joo, Bok-geo had already done it. Never been invited up to her room? Bok-geo had. Gave her some cheap ruler? Bok-geo gave her a car. Just about to go into her office? Bok-geo’s already been there. Hehe. Of course, Suk-woo’s kissed Geum-joo, which Bok-geo doesn’t know yet. It’ll be fun to watch Bok-geo stew in jealousy some more when he finds out.

Poor Geum-joo though. It’s pretty clear that she doesn’t know how to deal with a persistent, earnest puppy like Suk-woo. I’m pretty sure that if she knew her own heart, she wouldn’t have let Suk-woo keep hoping. As it is, I think she figures it’s an innocent crush that’ll fade away with time.

Which brings me to Suk-woo’s conversation with Attorney Goo. On the one hand, I find it realistic. The attorney’s sudden camaraderie with Geum-joo made me wonder where all the venom went. Much of it washed away when Geum-joo helped her of course, but Attorney Goo couldn’t have just stopped thinking of Geum-joo as competition. She had regarded Geum-joo as an excellent paralegal for years. Selfishly or not, she now can’t see her in any other position. And of course there’s the idea that with Geum-joo as a qualified lawyer, she may find herself sidelined at Golden Tree. On the other hand, I’m disappointed that both of Geum-joo’s female friends turned out to have ulterior motives while acting supportive and friendly. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care about her, but it does mean Geum-joo can’t trust either of them completely.

At least with Hye-ryung, Geum-joo has never taken her at her word and presumed upon the offered friendship. Despite having been handed a key to high society, Geum-joo is careful to use her help sparingly and always treats her with a formality that is absent in her interactions with the people she truly likes and cares about. So maybe Hye-ryung’s flexible definition of loyalty wouldn’t come as a surprise to Geum-joo.

Hye-joo, on the other hand, just keeps slipping further and further into that swamp she’s so scared of. But she’s mostly slipping in because she doesn’t truly want out. She’s happy to be used for information and positioned as a pawn by the more powerful players at the table. I find that sad and disheartening. That flashback into her teen years gave us a glimpse of what must have been thorough, regular abuse by her stepmother. And no matter how much Geum-joo cared for her, Hye-joo never got over her abandonment issues and seems to have transferred the blame over every bad thing that ever happened to her on her sister’s shoulders–perhaps because Geum-joo’s stronger than she could ever be.

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