Black: Episode 9

by odilettante

The truth about Tiffany’s assault is discovered, which instigates a battle between life and death. Black still refuses to intervene when other human’s lives are on the line, but all bets are off when it comes to protecting Ha-ram. Black may insist it’s just because he needs Ha-ram’s eyes, but methinks the Reaper doth protest too much.

 
EPISODE 9 RECAP

After Man-soo decides that he must have been the one to assault Tiffany, even though he doesn’t have any memory of it, Ha-ram suggests that Man-soo find Tiffany and beg forgiveness. They figure out where Tiffany must be based on the vision Ha-ram had of Tiffany’s death.

He and Ha-ram hurry there, and find Tiffany, with Hyo-jin on her back, nearing the edge of the cliff. Man-soo runs over to them, gets on his knees, and desperately begs Tiffany to forgive him as he takes the blame for attacking her. As soon as he apologizes, the Shadows behind Tiffany and Hyo-jin vanish.

Tiffany now realizes Man-soo couldn’t have been her assaulter, since she wounded her attacker on the right side of his neck. The mark on Man-soo’s neck (from the falling rubble where he protected Ha-ram) is on the left side. Man-soo is furious that Byung-ho lied to him, and suddenly Shadows appear behind him, as well as reappear behind Tiffany and Hyo-jin.

Leo’s manager worries about Leo being seen with Man-soo, who’s still publicly accused of sexual assault. Leo’s manager is secretly convinced that Leo had something to do with Tiffany’s case, since when Leo staggered out of Man-soo’s bedroom the night of the party, a piece of blood-covered black cloth was stuck to his shoe.

Man-soo hurries into his office to re-read his friend’s Byung-ho’s witness statement, realizing Byung-ho lied. Before he can contact Byung-ho, Black bursts into the office and grabs Man-soo by the neck, pushing him against the wall.

Black orders Man-soo to confess everything so that Tiffany and Hyo-jin’s death won’t have been in vain, and then Black notices the Reapers watching them. Black realizes that Man-soo will die, too.

At the police station, Black sees that Tiffany and Hyo-jin are still alive — although for who knows how long, since their Reapers wait patiently next to them. Black demands to know if Ha-ram saved Tiffany and Hyo-jin’s lives, but Ha-ram just asks him to help her lock them up in order to protect them. Ha, I guess if it worked before, it’ll work again.

Ha-ram’s also worried about Man-soo, since she knows someone is going to kill him and make it look suicide. In her vision she sees Sip-gyeon attacking Man-soo’s murderer, and at first she assumes that Sip-gyeon bites off the man’s finger, but the lack of blood makes her realize the man must have a prosthetic finger. Hmmm, I wonder who that could be.

Ha-ram also has a vision of Tiffany committing suicide — this time by slitting her wrists. Black finds it strange that, with her name going to be cleared thanks to Man-soo, Tiffany would try to kill herself again.

Man-soo’s at his place, waiting for Byung-ho to meet with him and explain why he lied about what happened at the party. When he calls Byung-ho to find out where he is, Byung-ho apologizes, saying he was just following orders, and then hangs up. A masked man grabs Man-soo from behind and starts to strangle him.

Meanwhile, Ha-ram goes to Tiffany’s apartment to get Hyo-jin’s medication, since she doesn’t want Tiffany to go home and kill herself. The lights aren’t working, so Ha-ram uses her phone’s flashlight to look for the medication. As she does, a masked man attacks her and strangles her until she passes out.

The man thinks she’s Tiffany, and he reports to his boss that he’ll take care of the “bar girl.” He drags Ha-ram to the bathroom and dumps her, unconscious, into the bathtub. The masked man finds a knife, and is about to slit Ha-ram’s wrists when she regains consciousness and fights him off. The man then tries to drown her.

Black watches as Man-soo is strung up, his Reaper instinct not allowing himself to intervene. As soon as Man-soo hangs limply from the rope, Black tells himself that it’s all over and it’s okay to enter.

The masked man who tried to kill Man-soo finishes setting the scene to make it look like suicide, only to be surprised by Black grabbing him. Black realizes that this is not Missing-finger, and that what Ha-ram thought was a finger in her vision was actually just a piece of sausage.

As Black fights with the masked man, he’s backed into Man-soo’s dangling legs — and Man-soo, gasping for air, wraps his legs around Black for leverage. Yay, he’s not dead! Although Man-soo’s Reapers are still there, laughing in amusement as Black flails around.

Before Black left to see who was going to attack Man-soo, he was persuaded by Tiffany to let her and Hyo-jin out of the holding cell so she could get the medication — which means Tiffany arrives home just in time to knock out Ha-ram’s attacker with a frying pan.

Tiffany hauls the nearly-drowned Ha-ram out of the bathtub, where she sputters back to life. Ha-ram’s just relieved to see that there’s no longer a Shadow behind Tiffany.

Man-soo also gasps back to life, and Black argues with himself that he technically didn’t save Man-soo’s life — it was the rope that broke. Black had nothing to do with it. Uh-huh, sure.

As for Missing-finger, he enters the shack where Soo-wan has been tied up. She’s waiting for him with a cleaver, which she slams into his arm. As he drops to the ground in bloody agony, she runs into the nearby woods. Furious and in pain, Missing-finger tries to find her, but Soo-wan succeeds in hiding from him.

Kwang-kyun studies the unknown skeleton, realizing now that it’s Clara. He remembers when he was a patrol officer in Mujin, rushing to Clara’s defense and fighting off a patron who hit her. Clara told him he shouldn’t try so hard to protect her, since enduring abuse is a daily part of her life. But his concern touched her so much that she showed her gratitude with a kiss.

They eventually had a relationship, and she tried to convince him to ask the commissioner, who was cracking down on Mujin’s prostitution, to go lightly on all the girls who have nothing to sell but their bodies. Kwang-kyun earnestly offered to give Clara enough money so that she could pay off all her debt and start a new life elsewhere, promising that he could make her happy.

In the present day, Kwang-kyun cries over Clara’s skeleton, wondering if Clara would still be alive and happy if she’d just accepted his offer.

Ha-ram decides that Black’s house will be the safest for Tiffany and Hyo-jin until their attacker is found, and asks him for the password, which is 4444 (pfft of course it is). As Ha-ram asks Tiffany more about what she remembers the night of the party, she realizes that what Tiffany smelled that night was the drugs that Man-soo’s nephew was smoking.

Leo’s manager forces him to go the hospital as a way to hide out and detox from the drugs in his system, still convinced that Leo, drugged out, had something to do with Tiffany’s assault. The creepy Royal Group doctor attends to Leo, studying him very carefully.

Ha-ram bursts into the hospital room where Man-soo’s nephew, Sang-min, is getting the same treatment as Leo. She sees the mark on his neck — right where Tiffany said she scraped her attacker. Ha-ram’s ready to drag Sang-min down to the police station right then and there, but he pleads with her to let him off just this once.

Black arrives home to find Hyo-jin there, and when he sees her clinging to the stuffed animal where he hid the capsule with his reaping assignment, he grabs it from her (making her cry, of course). However, the capsule is no longer in the toy.

Ha-ram calls Black to let him know she caught the guy who assaulted Tiffany, but Black hears her scream as the phone drops. Black teleports to the hospital, where he finds Sang-min’s room empty.

Sang-min has kidnapped Ha-ram, and drives to a deserted area before calling his father. Man-ho is furious that his for hire masked would-be attacker failed so miserably to kill Tiffany, and now orders his son to hide Ha-ram in the trunk of the car and wait until another henchman arrives.

Man-ho tries to get the security team at Royal Hospital to delete any CCTV footage of Sang-min escape, but it’s too late, because Black has already seen the footage and knows the car Sang-min used to kidnap Ha-ram. Black tries to teleport to the car, but is frustrated when his teleportation skills are suddenly not working.

As he ties Ha-ram up in the trunk, Sang-min wonders how she knew he was Tiffany’s attacker. A flashback shows him, drugged out of his mind and passed out in his uncle’s room.

He woke up and put on Man-soo’s Shrek makeup for fun, but then saw Tiffany enter to get the game for her daughter. With a gleam in his eye, Sang-min turned out the lights and then assaulted Tiffany.

Black tracks down where Sang-min went via public CCTV of the roads, then “borrows” another detective’s car to chase after Sang-min. Black angrily speeds along, frustrated that if Ha-ram dies now, there won’t be a Reaper to escort her to the afterlife.

Sang-min panics when he sees Black pull up. A high-speed chase ensues, and Black bumps into Sang-min’s car a few times, causing the trunk lid to pop open. Ha-ram screams for help. Realizing that Ha-ram is in the trunk, Black yells for the boy to pull over.

Sang-min refuses, and Black finally pushes the car into a road construction barrier. Man-soo slams on the brakes as he hits a rock, causing the car to roll. Ha-ram goes flying from the open trunk and lands on the road. Black rushes over to her, begging her to wake up.

Black remembers Ha-ram’s promise to stay alive, no matter what, and sighs in relief when she slowly opens her eyes. Black gently asks if she’s okay, and then Sang-min hits him in the back of the head with a shovel. As he falls to the ground, Black’s lips touch Ha-ram’s in an accidental kiss.

Ha-ram freaks out that he’s going to die. Black’s just happy she’s alive, although he’s inwardly annoyed by how noisy she is. Sang-min tries to stab Ha-ram with a sharp piece of metal, but Black grabs it instead.

As he stares into Ha-ram’s worried eyes, Black remembers Joseon’s warning that if a Reaper locks eyes with someone who’s been in love, something tragic will happen to him. Ha-ram pleads with him to stay alive, but Black loses consciousness as the sounds of police sirens grow nearer.

In the woods, Soo-wan finds a temporarily deserted campsite. She stuffs her face with food, but when she hears on the radio about Sang-min attacking “Moo-gang,” she uses one of the camper’s left-behind phones to call Moo-gang. She’s relieved to know he’s still alive, but when she doesn’t get an answer, she calls the police station, asking to speak to Moo-gang.

Except the detective who answers is Missing-finger’s informant, who immediately calls Missing-finger to let him know where Soo-wan is hiding, waiting to be picked up by the police. Soo-wan sees the campers returning, but before she can call out to them, Missing-finger grabs her and drags her away.

At the police station, Royal Group’s lawyer sits with Sang-min as he gives his statement. The detective taking the statement is a total pushover, willing to go as easy as possible, declaring that Sang-min has mental health issues and was acting out of self-defense.

Kwang-kyun bursts into the interrogation room and scoffs that the other detective must be getting a nice bonus from Royal Group. Then he grabs Sang-min’s hair for a DNA sample, since Kwang-kyun doesn’t trust the sample that was already taken — it could be easily replaced by a crooked cop.

Kwang-kyun then takes over the case, interrogating Sang-min. Kwang-kyun warns the boy that his nickname is “Crazy Dog” because of his anger issues, although he tells Sang-min’s lawyer that he just grabbed the boy’s cheeks because Sang-min is “so cute.” Pffft.

Black wakes up in the hospital, a bandage around his head. Those Reaper healing skills are coming in handy, since that would have been a fatal blow to a normal human, but Black’s already getting dressed. He pauses for a moment as he remembers Ha-ram’s concern for him — and the feeling of her lips against his.

Ha-ram leaves her own hospital room to check on him, grateful that he’s saved her life once again. She also happily informs him that Tiffany’s Shadow has disappeared. Ha-ram says that it’s all thanks to him that Tiffany, Hyo-jin, and Man-soo are still alive.

Black, frustrated, insists that he didn’t save anyone, but Ha-ram beams at him, assuming he’s just being modest. Black suddenly grabs her and looks deep in her eyes, reminding her of her promise to stick close to him like chewing gum, and that she should stay by his side from now on. Ha-ram’s flustered by his proximity, and stammers that she should return to her room.

Black suddenly remembers that he was looking for the capsule. He teleports back to Moo-gang’s house, slightly annoyed that he’s able to teleport now, but not when he needed to save Ha-ram.

Black ransacks the house, but the capsule is nowhere to be found. However, we can see that it’s locked in a drawer somewhere.

Ha-ram’s sound asleep, snoring, when Man-soo visits her. He watches her for a moment and then gently brushes the hair out of her face. He quietly apologizes for being selfish and not giving her the insurance file a long time ago, then leaves the file on her bedside table.

Man-ho visits Sang-min at the police station, reassuring his son that he’ll be released soon since Sang-min is a minor and this is his first offense.

When Man-ho returns home, Man-soo accuses his brother for framing him for Tiffany’s assault, even though Man-soo knew Sang-min did it. Man-soo also demands to know if Man-ho tried to have Man-soo killed since Man-soo found out the truth. Man-ho reaches out an arm to slap Man-soo, but Man-soo stops him, no longer willing to be beaten up by his brother. Yay, some backbone!.

Weary and depressed, Black sprawls on the sofa, having been unable to find the capsule. Joseon reassures him that it must be around somewhere. If it was stolen by a human, it would look just like an ordinary empty toy capsule, and humans can’t open it, anyway.

But if another Reaper took it, then it could mean bad news — if a Reaper opens the capsule, it will start the countdown to Ha-ram’s death. Black insists that Ha-ram can’t die without his permission. When Joseon asks him why, Black awkwardly explains it’s because he needs her eyes to find Loser.

Joseon seems to know there’s more to it than that, because there’s an amused gleam in his eye as he tells Black that, since they have no idea when or how Ha-ram will die, Black will have to stay by her side at all times. At allllllllllllll times.

At the hospital, Black watches Ha-ram sleep, wondering what happened to the capsule. Outside her room, the creepy doctor watches them for a moment before going back to his office. Creepy Doctor opens his desk and pulls out — the capsule!

He was at Black’s house with Moo-gang’s mother a couple days ago when she was worried that Moo-gang wasn’t answering her calls. He reassured Moo-gang’s that everything would be fine okay, then offered to help her clean the house while she waited to hear from “Moo-gang.” As he dusted under the stuffed animal, Creepy Doctor saw the back ripped open and discovered the capsule with Black’s number in it.

Creepy Doctor knows that Black is in Moo-gang’s body. Amused, Creepy Doctor also wonders if Black has fallen for Ha-ram.

If there’s any doubt that Creepy Doctor is also a Reaper in disguise, as he sets out to leave the hospital (on a motorcycle!), a nurse calls out to him, desperate for his help with an emergency patient just arriving. But Creepy Doctor sees the two Reapers following the gurney, and, knowing the patient will die anyway, drives off.

In the morning, Ha-ram wakes up to see Black passed out on a bed next to her. She’s relieved that he’s no longer wearing his bandage, which means his injury couldn’t have been that serious. Yeah, if you’re a Reaper.

She notices the file Man-soo left by her bed, and opens it to see the insurance company’s investigation report into the case her father was working on at the time of his death — which includes a photo of the man with the spider tattoo, standing next to a woman.

Black’s annoyed when he wakes up and sees Ha-ram’s gone, but he finds her in the hospital garden. She’s staring at the photo, trying to remember why the woman looks familiar. When she hands the photo over to Black, showing him the man who killed her father, Black recognizes the man from Moo-gang’s dream, where the younger boy had attacked the man in the abandoned warehouse.

Black and Ha-ram try to track down the spider-tattoo man. Their search leads them to Congressman Kim, who once worked on an investigative TV show that looked into the same arson case that Ha-ram’s father worked on. The congressman remembers the case, but he stopped investigating when Mujin mall collapsed, since that was the biggest tragedy the country had yet seen.

Congressman Kim tells them the spider-tattoo man is actually Chinese-Korean and left for China soon after his wife died, but the victim did have a younger sister who should still be in Korea. Black finds out that even though there’s record of the spider-tattoo man leaving Korea in 1997, there’s no record of him arriving in China.

Moo-gang’s mother is annoyed to see that Black isn’t in his hospital room, especially when he should still be recovering from his injuries. Meanwhile, a woman stops by the police station, and seeing that no one is at Moo-gang’s desk, calls his phone number from it’s listed as a “recent number” on her phone log.

Moo-gang’s mother picks up the phone, but freezes when she sees the caller ID: “Mujin Mother.” Ooooooooh. Moo-gang’s mother hesitates a moment before she deletes the number from Moo-gang’s phone.

In the morning, Black teleports to Ha-ram’s apartment, where she’s packed up and ready to head to China to track down the man with the spider tattoo. Ha-ram’s like, “How big can China be, really?”

Thankfully, she gets a call from Congressman Kim, who tells her where the victim’s sister lives. They meet with the sister, who says that her sister’s husband was killed in China five years ago, and the sister had him cremated after she identified the body.

As Ha-ram realizes that her father’s killer is now dead, she apologizes to her father, still sad that she wasn’t able to save his life. She blames the vision she had that day, when as a little girl she saw a Shadow on the woman. Young Ha-ram told her father that the fire would kill the woman, but found it strange the woman didn’t seem to be trying to escape the flames.

Now Ha-ram realizes that the woman was killed by her husband, who then killed Ha-ram’s father once her father started to investigate the case. Ha-ram starts to cry, blaming herself not trying hard enough to save him.

As she and Black walk along Mujin’s coastline, she asks if he remembers why he became a detective. It was right after Joon met Ha-ram’s father, who caught him shoplifting. Ha-ram’s father dragged Joon away — but not to the police station. Instead, he took him to a restaurant so Joon could eat his fill. After that, Ha-ram’s father became like a father to Joon.

It was a few months later that Joon moved to Seoul to be near his real father, and then a year after that, Ha-ram’s father died. Ha-ram quietly confesses that she hasn’t been happy ever since then. Even though Ha-ram could no longer see her father, she could at least imagine Joon living on — it was the only thing that kept her going.

When Black returns home, he collapses on his bed, staring at the red string bracelet. He buries his face in a pillow as he thinks about how Ha-ram will react once she discovers Joon/Moo-gang is actually dead.

Missing-finger is taking no chances now, and has Soo-wan completely tied to a table. He raises his cleaver as he tells her this is her last chance to tell him where the tape is. She frantically tells him she doesn’t know, and as he brings down the cleaver, she screams.

Flashback to when Clara slapped teenage Soo-wan/Seon-young, demanding to know where the tape was. But Joon intervened, trying to pull Clara away, begging her not to hurt Soo-wan/Seon-young. But the younger boy that was with him was the one who really stopped Clara — by hitting her over the head with a shovel.

Black gasps as he wakes up from his dream. He realizes he’s seen the boy from his dream in a photograph before, and finds the photo wedged in the stairs by the basement secret room. He studies the photo, realizing that the name tag on the younger boy says “Han Moo-gang.”

In his memory, Joon calls the younger boy “Moo-gang,” and the little boy calls Joon, “Moo-chan.” Black, staring at the photo, is shocked to discover that Joon and Moo-gang aren’t the same person after all.

COMMENTS

What a satisfying episode! Not just because we finally got some answers and confirmation that things are not what they seem, but also because it was tightly edited, with some really rewarding emotional moments. For the first time, I found I was enjoying the episode as a story in-and-of itself, and not just for the puzzles and mysteries that have kept me interested so far. I now feel like I’m on the journey with the characters, instead of just gathering clues around them. That said, it does seem like it’s time to start reaping (heh) those clues, thanks to some proof that some of our theories are correct.

First, congrats to everyone who guessed that the little boy was actually Moo-gang. Now we’ll have to wait and see if Black is actually Joon, just unaware that he was once a human (there’s still a lot of Reaper origins that need explaining, but I’m willing to wait for those bombs to drop later).

Second, Creepy Doctor is a Reaper! He has to be Loser, or else there’s another Reaper on the loose — a Reaper that drives a motorcycle and fits Loser’s mother’s description of her son’s “friend.” But why is Loser in the doctor’s body? Why the hospital, and how does Loser avoid being called to do surgery — we saw Creepy Doctor take over the stabbed rapist when Soo-wan blanked out, but was that Creepy Doctor or Loser in his body? How did Creepy Doctor die? Do people actually have to die before Reapers take over their bodies? Black’s been convinced that Loser would want to stick close to his family or Leo, so why would Loser decide to instead be close to Moo-gang’s mother, especially when he presumably didn’t know (at least not at first) that Black would be in Moo-gang’s body. Then again, if Loser was supposed to reap Moo-gang’s soul, it could make sense for him to want to keep an eye on him, just like Black would want to keep an eye on Ha-ram. But that’s still not making complete sense to me. There has to be more to it than that.

Third, Sang-min is definitely a psychopath chaebol in training, and depending on whether he follows in his father’s or uncle’s footsteps, I could totally see him becoming the main villain in another OCN drama. I mean, what kind of teenager decides that the only way to save himself is to kidnap a woman, then try to kill her, then try to kill the person who attempted to save her? If Black was human, he’d be dead right now. I’ve seen enough crime shows to know that blunt force trauma to the head is fatal — and if I need further proof, I can just look at Clara.

We know from the first episode when they found her skeleton that Clara died from a blow to the head. Which means I’m convinced that Moo-gang killed Clara, and then he and Joon must have buried the body to prevent anyone from finding out. Or maybe they had help burying the body, since it’s not like there’s a lack of people in Mujin who wanted to Clara out of the way (ahem, Man-ho’s father). Except for Kwang-kyun, who got me all choked up by how deeply affected he was by her death. He truly loved her, and I hope him going “Crazy Dog” on her case will help him find the closure he needs. Although, if he finds out that Moo-gang killed her, even as a boy, I doubt Kwang-kyun will let that go — which adds an welcome layer of interpersonal conflict that makes the story more compelling than just figuring out whodunnit.

I’m also curious to know what’s happened with the spider-tattoo man. Even though Ha-ram thinks he died years ago in China, we all know he’s alive and well (and remember Ha-ram’s even talked to him, back when she was trying find Leo and instead found the script-writer attempting to kill herself). Which means that the victim’s sister was obviously lying, but who forced her to lie? Was it the congressman? (I’m suspicious any time a politician suddenly appears in the picture.) Does Man-ho’s reach go that far? I could see Man-ho being involved in helping a PD become a politician, provided it’s all a part of Man-ho’s attempt to buy off anyone who might be able to associate Royal Group with Byung-sik and the mall collapse.

But how does an arson case relate to Royal Group? Where does Ha-ram’s father fit in with it all? Why would the spider-tattoo man want to kill him? Is it just because Ha-ram’s father figured out the man purposefully killed his wife in the fire and the man wanted to stop the investigation, or is there something more sinister and otherworldly going on?

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