Red Moon Blue Sun: Episodes 9-10

by odilettante

This deeply puzzling show may continue to give us more questions than answers each week, but at least our leads are starting to work together as they realize that they have the same perspective on all the deaths. No one else might believe them, but at least little girl in the green dress can’t be leading them astray — or can she?

 
EPISODES 9-10 RECAP

The little girl hiding behind the orphanage owner peeks out so that Ji-heon and Woo-kyung can see her. It’s a little girl in a green dress — but not the little girl in the green dress. Disappointment flickers across Woo-kyung’s face, but she still tenderly greets the little girl, Ha-na.

The orphanage owner tells Woo-kyung that Ha-na doesn’t really talk, which she believes is due to a developmental disorder. All they know about Ha-na is her name, age, and that they found her sleeping outside the orphanage a couple months ago.

Woo-kyung asks about the poster with the poem that was tucked in the corner. The orphanage owner says that it used to hang in their playroom, but due to renovations, they’ve had to relocate a lot of their decor. Woo-kyung shows her a photo of the boy who was killed, but the orphanage owner doesn’t recognize him.

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It’s a girl in a green dress, but

Outside, Ji-heon and Soo-young investigate the area where Ha-na was originally found. All signs point to Ha-na being dropped off by someone who was familiar with the orphanage, since they knew that the resident dog would alert everyone of her presence. The person also seemed to know that the CCTV camera was broken, so their presence wouldn’t be recorded.

Woo-kyung and Ji-heon take Ha-na to the children’s center. Woo-kyung asks if she remembers this place, and Ha-na immediately runs around to the side of the building. Woo-kyung and Ji-heon chase after her as she opens a basement window and crawls inside.

They catch up to her as she hurries upstairs and stands before the hidden storage room, which is now blocked off with crime scene tape.

Later, they watch Ha-na play in the children’s center. Ji-heon knows that Ha-na isn’t the little girl Woo-kyung was expecting to find, but Woo-kyung placidly says that it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t the little girl in the green dress, because she found Ha-na instead.

At the police station, Ji-heon and Soo-young team-up to try and convince Captain Hong that since they’ve found Ha-na, it means Hye-sun’s death wasn’t natural — it now involves child abduction and abandonment. The person who killed Hye-sun made sure to erase any sign that Ha-na lived there, which is suspicious in and of itself.

Captain Hong is more impressed that Ji-heon and Soo-young are actually working together, and Soo-young shoots Ji-heon a look when she discovers that Ji-heon had told the captain that he hated working with her. But Ji-heon stubbornly defends his new partner and their determination to reopen Hye-sun’s closed case.

Woo-kyung is the temporary foster parent for Ha-na, and despite Eun-seo’s initial hesitation, she quickly makes Ha-na feel at ease as they make goofy faces at the dinner table. But Woo-kyung and Eun-seo are mildly shocked by Ha-na’s table manners as she uses her hands to shove as much food as she can in her mouth.

Later that night, as Woo-kyung reads her daughter a bedtime story, Eun-seo asks if it’s true that Ha-na doesn’t have any parents. Woo-kyung evades the question, simply saying that Ha-na’s parents are far away. Eun-seo wonders if they’re as far away as her own father.

In the guest bedroom, Ha-na sleeps on the floor instead of the bed. She puts a finger to her lips and makes a shushing sound as she repeats a phrase she’s likely heard all her life: “Don’t say a word or I’ll wring your neck.”

Hye-sun’s ex-husband is not thrilled to see Ji-heon again, but when Ji-heon holds up a six-pack of beer, the man is eager to have a chat. The ex-husband denies that he knew anything about Ha-na, but Ji-heon persists, asking him what he was doing the night they last saw Hye-sun on the children center’s CCTV, which coincides with the morning Ha-na was found at the orphanage.

Hye-sun’s ex-husband insists he can’t remember what he was doing that long ago. Besides, he had no reason to kill his ex-wife and didn’t even know about the child, so it’s all pointless, anyway. But Ji-heon subtly riles the man until he defiantly goes to dig up an old notebook.

When the man’s back is turned, Ji-heon quickly grabs one of the empty beer cans and seals it in an evidence bag. The man returns with his notebook, pleased that it shows he had gone fishing all that week. It’s not the most airtight alibi, but it’s an alibi.

At the police station, an irate Ji-heon tells Soo-young that if they prove that he’s the father after testing the DNA from the beer can, then they’ll arrest him for child abuse and neglect — as well as obstructing a police investigation.

Soo-young’s still questioning the orphanage workers, but so far there haven’t been any leads. Meanwhile, enthusiastic hoobae Chan-wook reveals that they can look through CCTV footage to find a car that was near the children’s center the night Hye-sun died, and then at the orphanage the morning Ha-na was found. That will help narrow down their suspects.

Woo-kyung drops Eun-seo off at school, and Ha-na watches in silence as Woo-kyung kisses Eun-seo goodbye and sends her happily on her way. As soon as Woo-kyung gets back in the car, Ha-na jumps out and runs around to the side of the building, where she starts digging through the trash.

As the little girl searches for scraps of paper and broken crayons, Woo-kyung realizes that this is not the first time Ha-na has gone through the trash. Woo-kyung takes her to a shop where Ha-na is delighted to pick out brand-new art supplies.

Later, Woo-kyung and Ji-heon watch Ha-na as she plays alone in a park. Ji-heon is desperate to have Ha-na testify about what really happened to her mother, but Woo-kyung is more concerned about the child’s psyche and the fact that Ha-na barely speaks. Ha-na shuts down completely whenever her mother is mentioned, so Woo-kyung wants him to be patient until Ha-na feels more comfortable with them.

Woo-kyung believes that Hye-sun didn’t look after her daughter at all, and one of the reasons Ha-na’s verbal skills are so limited is because Hye-sun never talked to her. She’s also convinced that Hye-sun’s death was a punishment for the terrible way Ha-na was treated. But murder is still immoral, even with good intentions.

Returning to the police station, Ji-heon studies the evidence from the recent deaths, trying to find a connection beyond poetry and neglected children. Even though they’ve still yet to verify Hye-sun’s ex-husband’s alibi (or his DNA), Ji-heon rules him out as the killer — Hye-sun’s ex-husband is the type of neglectful parent who is more likely to end up on their victim list.

Ji-heon refuses to believe that So-ra’s father killed himself — why would a gambling addict die when he had so much cash with him? Soo-young warns Ji-heon that case — along with Ji-hye’s case — is closed, and they should leave it that way so they can avoid Captain Hong’s wrath.

The next morning, Ji-heon and Woo-kyung meet with Ha-na in Woo-kyung’s office, where Ha-na happily — and silently — places stickers in her new sketchbook. The focus is on providing things for a baby, and when Woo-kyung suggests that the mother cooks for the baby, Ha-na grabs the “mom” sticker and puts it to the side.

Ji-heon reaches for the sticker, pointing out that a baby needs its mother, but Ha-na slaps his hand away. Then he pulls out the “dad” sticker, saying the father wants to be around the baby. As Woo-kyung sets the dad sticker next to the baby sticker, Ha-na does her “shushing” motion and repeats the threat that if she says anything, she’ll die.

Woo-kyung and Ji-heon look at each other in concern, but Woo-kyung grows even more worried when she suddenly sees the little girl in the green dress sitting across from her, also making the “shushing” motion.

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Stickers, secrets, and stories

After the session with Ha-na, Ji-heon’s even more determined to use Ha-na’s “don’t tell anyone” phrase as evidence against Hye-sun’s ex-husband. But Ha-na still refuses to talk, so they won’t get any testimony from her, despite Ji-heon believing that she must have seen the person who killed Hye-sun.

Ji-heon doesn’t have any evidence that Hye-sun was murdered — he’s just relying on his intuition. Woo-kyung wryly wonders if his “intuition” can tell her why she sees the little girl in the green dress. Ji-heon muses that the little girl in the green dress doesn’t seem to be connected to the cases they’ve encountered so far, which means that Woo-kyung must be somehow related to the little girl.

Her hallucinations are too detailed for Woo-kyung not to have seen the little girl in the green dress at some point in her life. Woo-kyung insists she doesn’t recognize her, but Ji-heon suggests that it could be the memory of an old childhood friend that’s suddenly made its way to her consciousness.

When she gets home, Woo-kyung pulls out old photo books and flips through the pages, searching for anyone who looks like the little girl in the green dress, but she doesn’t find a match. She does, however, remember when she was younger and the way her father liked to show her all the old photos.

Mom’s been watching the girls for Woo-kyung, grumbling that it’s tiring having to watch another child in addition to Eun-seo. Woo-kyung pushes over an envelope and tells her that she added a little more to this month’s child care fee to compensate. Mom asks if she can afford it, since they no longer have Min-seok’s income, but Woo-kyung assures her that they’re doing fine.

Then she asks if Mom remembers one of Woo-kyung’s childhood friends who looked like the little girl in the green dress. Mom scoffs, reminding Woo-kyung that she married Woo-kyung’s father when Woo-kyung was older than the little girl Woo-kyung is describing. Oooooh, so Mom is actually Woo-kyung’s stepmother.

So-ra’s mother calls Woo-kyung in a panic because she can’t get her husband’s insurance payout. She was counting on the money to start a new life for her and So-ra. Annoyed, Woo-kyung demands to know why So-ra’s mother keeps calling her, and So-ra’s mother says it was Woo-kyung’s idea to get rid of her husband.

Woo-kyung wearily explains that she meant that it would be better for So-ra and her mother to move out and get away from her abusive husband. She tells So-ra’s mother that she doesn’t know anything about insurance, and to never call her again.

Determined, So-ra’s mother marches to the police station and declares that her husband was murdered. Ji-heon isn’t around, so Captain Hong and Soo-young interview her.

Captain Hong points out that it was only a couple of days ago when she was insisting that her husband committed suicide, but So-ra’s mother stubbornly insists that she was mistaken due to the overwhelming grief of losing her husband. Pfft.

Captain Hong isn’t buying her story, and shrewdly asks if she’s only changing her tune because the insurance company won’t pay for suicide. That’s insurance fraud, and he threatens that she could be arrested.

After the interview, Captain Hong warns Soo-young not to say anything about their meeting to Ji-heon. He doesn’t need Ji-heon to have another reason to try and reopen the closed case. But something So-ra’s mother said about the evidence they found in her husband’s car makes Soo-young revisit the evidence photos.

The paper they thought was a suicide note might actually be a parking note left on the dash of his car. That way if he needed to move his car because he was blocking someone else in, they could call him — except the part with the phone number is ripped off.

Meanwhile, Ji-heon and Soo-young busy themselves by tracking down the owner of a car that Chan-wook discovered was both near the center and the orphanage during the night in question. They trace it back to a mechanic, who said he loaned it to a friend. That friend’s name is Lee Eun-ho.

Soo-young and Ji-heon look at each other in surprise. They know that name, because it belongs to none other than our Handsome Truck Driver Ajusshi.

At the same time, Woo-kyung discovers that another of her clients has the image of a stamp on his drawing, just like the drawing from the boy who died. But her client says it isn’t a stamp — it’s something Eun-ho drew for him. Woo-kyung heads upstairs to the maintenance room to talk to Eun-ho, but only the other maintenance man is there.

He invites Woo-kyung to wait, but as soon as the old man disappears to change a light bulb, Woo-kyung glances over and sees the little girl in the green dress peering around the corner.

The little girl in the green dress leads Woo-kyung to Eun-ho’s cluttered room. As she steps closer to investigate the drawings on his desk, Eun-ho appears, surprised to see Woo-kyung there.

Soo-young’s convinced Eun-ho must be a dead-end, since they already interviewed him and found nothing suspicious. Ji-heon warns her not to trust Eun-ho’s sweet and innocent looks, adding that he’s encountered Eun-ho previously on another case. When they discover that Eun-ho grew up in the same orphanage where Ha-na was found, they hurry to the children’s center.

Eun-ho does seem as sweet as he looks, though, since he doesn’t mind that Woo-kyung is in his room and instead asks if everything is okay. Woo-kyung shows him the drawing from the dead boy, and Eun-ho confesses that he drew the stamp on the picture — he likes to draw them for all the kids.

He doesn’t recognize the boy from Woo-kyung’s photo, admitting that he can’t remember all everyone’s he’s drawn stamps for. But his face changes slightly when he sees the handwritten poem on the back.

Ji-heon suddenly pops his head into Eun-ho’s room, cheerfully greeting him. Eun-ho visibly gulps. He can’t avoid Ji-heon now.

They take him down to the police station for questioning, but Eun-ho says he doesn’t know anything about Hye-sun or her daughter. Ji-heon ruthlessly continues to question him, since he knows that Eun-ho hates it when children are abused or ignored.

Eun-ho desperately insists he didn’t know anyone was living in the storage room. When pressed for an alibi, Eun-ho says that he can’t specifically remember what he did the day Hye-sun died — he likely would have worked all day and been asleep after his security rounds.

Ji-heon shows him a CCTV photo of the car, revealing that it taken near the orphanage and that he knows Eun-ho was driving it. Eun-ho doesn’t respond.

The police search through Eun-ho’s belongings as Woo-kyung’s boss frets about the bad publicity they’ll receive if it’s revealed they had a killer working for them. He’s already concerned about the fact a body was found on the premises — any more bad press and they’ll have to close the children’s center.

Woo-kyung’s boss is convinced there must be a misunderstanding — he’s known Eun-ho for years, revealing that Eun-ho grew up in an orphanage that the boss’ family owned until they sold it years ago. The boss assumes that Eun-ho likes playing with the children because they’re more relatable to him than people his own age.

Soo-young reports that they didn’t find anything unusual in Eun-ho’s room, and that the only scrap of evidence they have is circumstantial, so they won’t be able to keep Eun-ho at the station for much longer.

Ji-heon hurries off to see Woo-kyung, determined to make Ha-na testify. But Woo-kyung staunchly refuses, insisting that the little girl isn’t ready. They both shout at each other, with Ji-heon yelling that she’s coddling Ha-na, and Woo-kyung defending the fact that they need to go slowly due to how traumatized Ha-na is.

Sighing, Ji-heon reveals that he encountered Eun-ho a few years ago when a man died in a fire, and the main suspect was the man’s twelve-year-old son. The boy had been so beaten and abused that he had declared to his friends online that he was going to burn down his house with his father in it. They even had CCTV footage of the boy filling up a gas can at a nearby gas station.

But the boy was too much in shock to say anything when they tried to question him, and later Eun-ho arrived to declare that the boy was with him the night of the fire. Ji-heon had accepted that statement, partially because he didn’t want to believe a child could kill his own father.

Woo-kyung assumes that Eun-ho lied about the boy staying with him to provide a fake alibi, but Ji-heon believes it’s true that the boy was at Eun-ho’s place. However, Ji-heon doesn’t believe that Eun-ho was there — he’s convinced that Eun-ho set the fire. But they never had proof.

Which is why Ji-heon’s so determined this time to confirm if Eun-ho was the one who killed Hye-sun. As Ha-na plays at the children’s center, Ji-heon places her mother’s asthma inhaler in front of her. She recognizes it, and starts coughing as a way to describe what it is.

Ji-heon asks if Ha-na knows what happens if her mother didn’t have the inhaler, and Ha-na’s coughs become more violent, just like her mother’s did the night she died. Ji-heon desperately continues his questioning, and Woo-kyung, worried about Ha-na, tells him to leave it alone. But Ha-na surprises both of them when she points at Ji-heon and says she saw him.

Woo-kyung realizes that Ha-na saw a tall man like Ji-heon, and Ha-na acts out what the man, his face shrouded in a hoodie, did that night — he kicked and stomped on Hye-sun’s inhaler, purposely keeping it away from her so she wouldn’t be able to breathe, which ultimately resulted in her death.

Ha-na yawns, and Woo-kyung surmises that the man must have given Ha-na sleeping pills before driving her to the orphanage. Excited, Ji-heon asks if she can describe the man’s face, and Ha-na simply says that he looked like a good person.

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The killer with a good face

At the police station, Eun-ho is escorted to a line-up. Behind the one-way glass, Ji-heon tells Ha-na to let him know if she recognizes any of the men. He calls the men forward, one-by-one, but Ha-na doesn’t know them.

Meanwhile, a man goes to Soo-young, telling her that he knows So-ra’s father didn’t commit suicide — he was murdered.

Back at the line-up, Ji-heon purposefully lingers on Eun-ho, Ji-heon and Woo-kyung study the little girls’ face, waiting to see if she recognizes Eun-ho.

 
COMMENTS

I’ve been suspicious of Eun-ho since the first day we met him, but now I’m suspicious of my suspicion, just because it feels too early for us to identify this supposed serial killer. Yet it all makes sense, since he seems to deeply care about the kids and all signs point to him wanting to make their life a better one by removing the one thing — or the one person — that is causing the children’s lives to be so miserable. His angelic good looks and affable personality certainly make it easy for people to think that he’d be innocent, and he seems to have the kind of jobs where he can kind of enter and disappear at will — who really notices the maintenance man or the truck driver?

But… it’s too easy, isn’t it? In this kind of story, we should still be confused and chasing red herrings right now, not figuring out who the criminal is. Unless the rest of the show will be one long intricate cat-and-mouse game, which can also be fun. I’m imagining Eun-ho constantly slipping through Ji-heon’s fingers and children being saved left-and-right as their parents are killed off for being truly horrible human beings. Not that his motives would redeem him, necessarily, if he is the killer. To quote Brooklyn 99: “Cool motive. Still murder.”

Even if our vigilante “Red Cry” anti-hero is ridding the world of dead-beat, abusive parents one-by-one, it’s still a crime to kill someone. It’s admittedly a crime to abuse a child and pretend they don’t exist, buuuut murder is definitely an extreme response. Unless maybe this is some sort of commentary about the social services system and how it’s broken in its attempt to help save children. These do feel like the kids who fell through the cracks — the orphans, the children who were never added to a family registry, the kids that no one knows exists — “nobody’s children,” if you will.

Does that mean the little girl in the green dress was forgotten, neglected, and/or abused? If we follow the new theory that the little girl is a manifestation of someone from Woo-kyung’s past, then she must have existed at one point. Is the fact she keeps appearing to Woo-kyung somehow related to their past connection? Or is it because Woo-kyung also seems to have had a somewhat tumultuous childhood (that step-mom reveal was pretty shocking, and all I could think of was those fairy tales about evil stepmothers tormenting their stepchildren — is Mom going to turn out to be evil, too?). Woo-kyung may love her mother — or at least the only woman she’s really known as her mother — but there’s no denying that something terrible must have happened in their shared past.

Which makes me wonder about Se-kyung and how she ended up in a coma. If this little girl in the green dress is related to Woo-kyung’s past, then maybe she’s also related to Se-kyung’s past, and therefore the little girl in the green dress might be a way that Se-kyung is trying to communicate with Woo-kyung. I don’t know why Woo-kyung’s comatose sister would be trying to reveal where all the neglected and abused children are, but then again I’m just grasping at anything to try and understand this mysterious phantom girl in the green dress and why she seems to know so much.

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