I Remember You: Episode 10

by rejoycie

The most unlikely group of Three Musketeers find themselves being roped into working together on the same case—two heads is better than one, but in this case, three hits the sweet spot. At least their elevated IQs make up for their slightly lacking EQ, making them quite the unexpected Dream Team.

EPISODE 10: “Find Me”

Ji-an is knocked out cold by the two kidnappers while Team Leader Kang suffers a knife stab to his gut. Unconscious, Ji-an is loaded into the car, and Fat Guy Kidnapper mutters their destination to his lady assistant. They quickly drive away, leaving Team Leader Kang bleeding in the garage.

Back at Hyun’s cozy lunch party, Joon-ho comments that Hyun’s cooking is always spot-on for his taste buds. Lawyer Jung observes that the two must often eat together and Joon-ho simply explains that it’s because they’re neighbors.

Lawyer Jung has taken on the case of the body transporter, and Hyun details his original intention to investigate a corpse-less murder. Lawyer Jung pokes holes at Hyun’s description — without a corpse, it would merely be a “suspected murder.” Hyun concurs, and Joon-ho jokes that all this talk about murders make for lovely mealtime conversation.

Myung-woo reads the note that Team Leader Kang left behind, which reveals nothing about the location he and Ji-an went to. Luckily, Team Leader Kang rouses in the garage, and barely ekes out Ji-an’s name in a phone call to Myung-woo. But before he can reveal his location, he fades back to unconsciousness.

The team traces Team Leader Kang’s cellphone location, and finds him motionless in the garage. Thank goodness he’s still breathing, although Ji-an is nowhere to be found. Her phone is also turned off, and Deputy Chief Kang commands them to find Ji-an at all costs. Eun-bok follows Team Leader Kang in the ambulance, while the other two attempt to find some leads regarding Ji-an’s disappearance.

Their first target is Victim 1’s boyfriend, and Myung-woo demands to know where his younger brother (kidnapper Jae-shik) and his car disappeared to. Boyfriend in incredibly unhelpful, snarking back that the police should be looking for the culprit instead of wasting time interrogating him. Seung-joo grabs Myung-woo in a back hug to hold him back from resorting to violence, and Myung-woo recalls that Team Leader Kang followed this lead because of Hyun’s information.

Dinner conversation moves on from corpses to a list of composers labelled “victims of the tenth symphony,” because they all passed away after their ninth. The number nine strikes Hyun as particularly interesting, since there were also nine beads on the body smuggler bracelet (corresponding with nine bodies he transported). So either the tenth one is unfinished, or never existed. In his head, he thinks, “Either this is an act by you two, or a third party. No matter what, there won’t be a tenth murder.”

Joon-ho likens it to the curse of nines (a superstition that ages ending in the number 9 tend to be extra unlucky), and notes that baseball also has a ninth inning. But Lawyer Jung cryptically states that baseball has an extension beyond the ninth. I’m sure there’s ten more layers of subtext going on here.

Hyun receives a call from Myung-woo, and his expression hardens when he hears that Ji-an is in trouble. The two dinner guests look on with unreadable expressions, and they cut short their tea session to assist in the investigation. Cue: Most Silent Car Ride Ever.

Hyun arrives at the kidnapping scene, and Myung-woo immediately pounces on him for leading Team Leader Kang and Ji-an into a trap. Hyun keeps his emotions in check and asks for the kidnapper’s brother, who is then interrogated by a very intimidating and perceptive panel of Hyun, Joon-ho, and Lawyer Jung.

The panel takes turns offering observations and conjecture: Older brother seems to have little to no concern for his sibling, and in fact, constantly looks down on Jae-shik. Suffering from an inferiority complex, Jae-shik took his brother’s girlfriend as his first victim. It’s likely that Jae-shik was lusting over his brother’s girlfriend and was a peeping Tom (taking hidden camera footage). In the end, his complex, coupled with anger at his brother, drove him to become obsessed with his murders and the vicious cycle began.

Hyun notes that the murder seems to be well-planned, since the hostages’ holding place is well-hidden. Lawyer Jung offers to look into the family’s real estate holdings, but Hyun already learned that most of the real estate left to the second son has already been sold off.

Ji-an wakes up in a warehouse, where she’s locked together with the other victim, who was also Myung-woo’s blind date. Victim Hyun-sook is relieved that Ji-an’s with the police, although not that encouraged by the fact that Ji-an’s similarly helpless. Ji-an recalls that there were two culprits who ambushed her, and guesses that since Team Leader Kang isn’t here, he must have been left behind in the garage.

Ji-an asks for more information regarding the kidnappers, and surprised to hear that there’s a lady involved.

Using triangulation, Hyun marks out the area of probable hideouts. Joon-ho shoots down the possibility that Jae-shik would use his brother’s property given the animosity between the two, although Lawyer Jung begs to differ, seeing it as a plausible act of defiance.

Hyun deduces that there’s an accomplice involved, acting as driver in the speedy getaways. If there was a second person, that also explains how the victim’s faces were wiped clean, and Hyun hones in on the kidnapper’s secret girlfriend. She fits the bill.

Jae-shik’s girlfriend approaches Ji-an, who shrinks back when she tries to touch her face. Thinking back to Hyun’s earlier profiling, Ji-an supposes that the woman cleaned the victims’ faces out of guilt, and the girlfriend agrees that she felt pity for the victims.

Encouraged by this sign of humanity, Ji-an tries to appeal to her sympathies by painting herself and the other hostage as people with friends and family. She pleads with the girlfriend to help them out, although all the girlfriend does is creepily walk over to the other hostage to trim her nails — she’d accidentally scratched Jae-shik, so she has to be “cleaned.”

Deputy Chief Kang and Chief Hyun anxiously wait outside the operating room, and the doctor comes bearing good news that Team Leader Kang’s condition is under control. The knife avoided the major organs, so other than a mild concussion and minor fractures, there’s nothing to be worried about.

In a moment of vulnerability, Deputy Chief Kang lets slip a few tears, and repeats his thanks for his son’s safety before slapping his trademark stoic expression back on. Aww.

He perches worriedly over Team Leader Kang when he awakes, and is adorably annoyed that the first thing out of his son’s mouth is Ji-an’s name. Team Leader Kang berates himself for not protecting Ji-an properly, and although he recalls hearing the kidnappers mention a location, he can’t recall the words due to his concussion. He gets so worked up that he begs the doctor to do anything — even cut his head open — since those memories hold the key to Ji-an’s location.

Ji-an gives the other hostage some advice on how to deal with their captors: Don’t defy or cave in to the kidnappers’ requests, pretend to be on their side, and don’t let them see your fear. Acting like everything’s okay will confuse the perpetrators, increasing one’s chances of survival. Behind Ji-an’s bravado, she worries, Hyun, am I doing this right?

When the other woman brings up the possibility that no one will ever find them, Ji-an is absolutely confident that someone will find them no matter what, referring to Hyun. And on the other end, Hyun has full faith that Ji-an will come out alive. Aw, you two.

In the meantime, Eun-bok has found a property owned by the creepy girlfriend that falls within the triangulation zone. It’s a junkyard a little out of the way, and Hyun & Co. immediately make their way there.

Jae-shik approach the two hostages and matter-of-factly states, “When a new one arrives, the old one has to go.” He leans toward the first hostage menacingly, and Ji-an volunteers to be the first target. Jae-shik insists on following the proper order, and doesn’t fall for Ji-an’s distraction tactics. That is, until Ji-an throws out her conclusion that he’s sexually impotent, based on evidence of indirect sexual assault on the victims. From the look on his face, she hits the nail right on the head.

Ji-an continues goading him, mentioning that it’s not the first time she’s seen the likes of such sexually challenged criminals. She insinuates that he compensates for his disability by bulking up on his size. Her tactic works, and Jae-shik moves to target her instead.

Team Leader Kang finally recalls the destination he overhead from the kidnappers, and informs Hyun about it. Turns out that it’s the same place that Hyun suggested and Joon-ho announces that Hyun won (since Joon-ho earlier suggested another location), although Hyun responds that he wasn’t playing a game.

Jae-shik gets violent with Ji-an in the junkyard, and her skills are unfortunately no match for his formidable size. She gets thrown around like a rag doll, but thank goodness Hyun & Co. finally make it to the junkyard. They spot the girlfriend outside, who tearfully explains to Joon-ho that she didn’t know about Jae-shik’s murderous tendencies at first.

Hyun and Lawyer Jung run ahead to find the hostages, and arrive just in time to pull Jae-shik away from strangling Ji-an. Hyun checks on Ji-an, Lawyer Jung jumps in to fight the murderer, and then the two brothers take turns covering for each other. They deliver the final one-two kick together to knock out Jae-shik.

Outside, Joon-ho listens to the girlfriend explain how she was too scared to disobey Jae-shik, but he doesn’t buy her words, claiming to be excellent in reading people. He stares intently at her while taking small steps towards her, and in her fear, she shakily points a gun at him. Nonetheless, Joon-ho is nonplussed, smiling at the gun’s barrel.

But when Myung-woo and Seung-joo arrive on scene to disarm her, Joon-ho pretends to have been scared out of his wits. Hm. The two kidnappers are handcuffed and brought away, while Myung-woo is reunited with his blind date. Lawyer Jung looks on in slight jealousy as Hyun helps Ji-an to walk, and she subsequently faints in his arms.

She lands in the hospital, and wakes up to find literally everyone peering at her. She covers her face in embarrassment, but thanks them for her concern. Upon spotting Team Leader Kang, she asks about his injury, and he smoothly boasts that a stab wound is a badge of honor for a policeman, though he cringes at his own cheesiness.

Not forgetting her saviors, she expresses her thanks to Lawyer Jung and Joon-ho, before sneaking a look across the room at Hyun. He looks away, pretending to be all unconcerned, but a little grin forms on his face. Ugh, are you guys allowed to be this cute?

Hyun follows Lawyer Jung and Joon-ho out of the ward, expressing his gratitude for their help, and Lawyer Jung replies that it was fun. Hyun hopes that they can meet under such circumstances more often in the future, since he wants to know them better.

Myung-woo is stuck in the interrogation room with Jae-shik, who admits to everything but the torture charges. Hyun takes his turn to interrogate the girlfriend, who claims to have been ordered by Jae-shik to torture the hostages. Since she can’t even hurt a fly, the process was traumatic for her.

Hyun diagnoses this as susceptibility disorder, a mental illness commonly found in couple murderers. Following this train of thought, he wonders if Min was kidnapped by Joon-young, and under the influence of a murderer, Min suffered from this same disorder and fell prey to Joon-young’s ways.

Together with Joon-ho in the hospital, Ji-an has reached the same conclusion, thinking the girlfriend was unlucky to meet a guy like Jae-shik when she might have lived a normal life without him.

Not convinced, Joon-ho describes a hypothetical situation: If ten people are placed in identical situations, would all of them make the same choice? His point is that the girlfriend probably already had a predisposition to violence and murder.

He stills when Ji-an looks up to find Lawyer Jung bearing a bouquet of flowers, and Joon-ho briefly states that he’s seeing Lawyer Jung a lot more regularly now. The two exchange subtle looks while Ji-an admires the flowers.

Hyun-woo is so lost in thought that he doesn’t register Myung-woo trying to make a lengthy thank-you speech, and storms off to Deputy Chief Hyun’s office to find some answers. He confronts her about Joon-young, and she recalls the time that Joon-young provoked her about being a female in the conservative police force, understanding that she has to work doubly hard to rise up the ladder.

It was originally Dad’s suggestion to prohibit all communication between Joon-young and the outside world, so all visitations and letters were stopped. But Joon-young made a deal with Chief Hyun to relax that rule, in exchange for information about other criminals, which she used to boost her performance record and get promoted. She had no idea that a couple of letters and visitations would allow Joon-young to coordinate an escape plan with his accomplices, which eventually led to Dad’s death and Min’s disappearance.

Hyun’s voice grows icy cold as it dawns on him that she raised him out of guilt. He asks if she really looked for Min, and realizes from her silence that she never did. He flares up at her, remembering how he’d put all his faith in her to find his brother because he was too young to do anything. She offers a weak apology, but Hyun merely puts the blame on himself, for trusting her and not personally looking for Min. It strikes him then: I didn’t look for him.

Cut to: Lawyer Jung thinking to himself, “Why did he not look for me even once? There are no signs that he even tried to look.”

Chief Hyun opens up her safe and hands over a stack of Fishing magazines, which she received not long after Joon-young’s disappearance.

Hyun pores over the issues, and each one contains a personal ad under the name Lee Joon-young. All they list are addresses, and Hyun hypothesizes that they led to the other criminals. He also chances upon a letter from Joon-young to Chief Hyun, a poem from Kindertotenlieder that speaks of grief over a child’s death.

So, Joon-young sent that note, intending for Chief Hyun to convey the message about Min’s death to young Hyun. Hyun wonders if there’s more parts to Joon-young’s messages, and contacts the magazine to place his own ad: a copy of that same poem. Hyun thinks to himself, “Don’t you think it’s time for us to meet?”

At the same time, a mysterious person enters Hyun’s house and leaves a journal on the table.

Hyun’s friend completes the background checks that Hyun tasked him with, and curiously, he’s found no trace of Lawyer Jang anywhere — no birth record, adoption file, nothing. But he did find out that Eun-bok was from an orphanage.

Ji-an gets ready to be discharged, and she grumbles that Hyun showed his face only once. Team Leader Kang drops in to visit, and she apologizes for leaving the hospital before him. He bucks up the courage to request a visit from her, but belatedly remembers that he will be discharged the following day. Once again, he apologizes for failing to protect her, and watches her head out with a wistful look.

As she’s waiting for Aunt who’s stuck in traffic, who else would show up but our shining knight, Hyun. Ji-an bashfully accepts Hyun’s offer of a ride, and quickly tells Aunt over the phone to turn back.

They head back to his house together, and he lets her enjoy patient privileges for a day. He allows her to choose her desired menu, and she revels in the feeling of power. Lol. Unfortunately, her cheeriness is short-lived as she thinks back to her ordeal, and confides that in that moment, she really thought she was at death’s door. But thanks to Hyun, she lived to tell the tale.

The near-death experience brought to mind memories of her dad, and she wonders if he felt the same fear of death. A lot of her thoughts flashed through her mind in that short moment, and one of them was the scary possibility of never seeing Hyun again.

He takes a step closer, so that she can take a good look that he’s right in front of her. And then out of the blue, she swoops in for a kiss. Omo omo.

COMMENTS:

Dude, do something, REACT.

Before we grumble about Hyun’s reaction (or lack thereof), I think this episode hit it home for me about how in tune and similar Hyun & Co. are. It’s no doubt that they’re all extremely smart and quick on the uptake, but the way they complete each other’s sentences, complement each other’s thoughts, and are completely on the same wavelength drives home the point that there’s something that sets them apart from the others. It’s quite fascinating how well they work together despite the tense undercurrents, and only time will give us the full picture of their complicated past.

The revelation about Chief Hyun totally came out of nowhere, in a good way. She’s one of those characters I assumed to be on the periphery, and it’s astounding that she’s pretty much single-handedly responsible for Joon-young’s escape. In her greed for a quicker promotion, her little disturbance set in motion a huge ripple of events — Dad’s death, Min’s disappearance, Ji-an’s family destruction. Of course she had no intention for any of the above to happen, but it goes to show how a moment of misjudgment can cause a lifetime of regret. The only upside is that she gave Hyun and Ji-an a common enemy, which plays a part in their eventual romance?

With the truth finally surfacing, I find the situation absolutely tragic for both brothers — Hyun for realizing that he personally never lifted a finger in looking for Min, and Lawyer Jung for desperately looking for a shred of evidence that his brother even bothered looking for him. And once again, this fatal misunderstanding circles back to Chief Hyun. As a kid, I don’t blame Hyun for trusting in his guardian, although my heart goes out to Min, whose unwavering faith in Hyun got chipped at day by day, and eventually crumbled to pieces. However, it’s little clues like this that give me hope that wide-eyed, Hyun-loving Min is somewhere still in Lawyer Jung, albeit under layers and layers of jadedness.

This title for today’s episode is pretty poignant, as a desperate request from the lost to be found. It’s a line that both Min and Ji-an implicitly direct to Hyun, and it’s his burden to bear. As psychotic as Lawyer Jung is supposed to be, the new revelations help put things into perspective and allow the viewers to sympathize with his simmering resentment of Ji-an. To him, his brother never once tried finding him, but actually goes all out to look for Ji-an. Min’s own request went unheard, and it’s tough to watch someone else’s request get through to Hyun.

The case of the day is a possible eerie foreshadowing of the future, which I hope never happens, where Lawyer Jung is like Jae-shik: Both feel slighted by their brothers, and seem to be looking for ways to get revenge or seek attention. It was a notable clue when Lawyer Jung saw Jae-shik using his brother’s property as a plausible act of defiance. Instead of avoidance, both Jae-shik and Lawyer Jung yearn for vengeance and embark on the path of offense, and could their target just happen to be… their older brother’s girlfriend?

I’ll give the Show considerable props if this case is an actual foreshadowing of how Lawyer Jung intends to deal with Ji-an. I pray that I’m wrong, but it would be incredibly smart of the writer to actually follow through with it. Of course I still hold out hope for Lawyer Jung’s redemption, especially with how fully onboard he seemed to be with saving Ji-an, even getting beat up in the process. Although I must say, the way he looks on Hyun’s interaction with Ji-an gives me considerable goosebumps.

Which brings me to the final scene; kudos to Ji-an for making the first move. Hyun’s romantic feelings are still somewhat opaque, but Ji-an probably saw Hyun’s harmless flirting as a greenlight and took the gamble. We are all evidently smitten with her, and the way she stood her ground when her life was threatened proves how much of a fighter she is. If only Hyun could see it too, because everyone else already does.

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