Trap: Episode 2

by Regals

What really happened to our news anchor and his family in the mountains? The detectives try to piece together all the details they can find about the parties with connections to the case as lives hang in the balance. But the clock may be running out…

 
EPISODE 2: “Two Faces”

Following Detective Bae’s fall from the building, doctors are unable to revive him. Suspecting his colleague was murdered, Dong-kook begins investigating what happened to Detective Bae, but finds that the CCTV on the top floors was down at the time due to a power outage.

On the balcony, there’s also no evidence to suggest the detective was murdered, and Detective Jang jumps to the conclusion it was suicide.

But Dong-kook vehemently argues that the circumstances of his death are too strange to make conclusions this early and demands that they perform a thorough investigation. Meanwhile, Secretary Kim watches the crime scene keenly, telling someone over the phone that she took care of everything.

Elsewhere, top criminal profiler YOON SEO-YOUNG (Im Hwa-young) gets summoned to help with Woo-hyun’s case, as the police are still combing the mountains for his family.

Her boss also suspects there’s something fishy about Detective Bae’s death, especially since someone anonymously leaked case files on the police site for a few minutes the previous day, and asks her to look into it.

Meanwhile, the detectives hold a wake for their fallen colleague, and though Detecive Jang finally agrees to let Dong-kook investigate Detective Bae’s death properly, he questions whether Dong-kook is just trying to avoid Woo-hyun’s case because of his past history with the anchor.

Outside, rookie Detective Park explains Detective Jang’s political motivation for trying to avoid making Detective Bae’s case a big deal. Just then, Seo-young arrives and is introduced to the team by Detective Jang, but Dong-kook coldly ignores her and gets back to work.

Dong-kook heads to Detective Bae’s father’s home, and the man explains that his son told him stories about Dong-kook, the only person at the precinct who supported Detective Bae.

The man sincerely thanks Dong-kook for looking after his son, and afterwards Dong-kook can’t help but scold himself for not working even harder to look after Detective Bae, crying over his failure to protect him.

In the morgue, Dong-kook observes Detective Bae’s autopsy after pulling strings to get the best mortician in the country to handle it. She casually explains her findings, and notes that while she can’t officially say it was a professional killer, all the signs suggest it was.

Back at the hospital, Seo-young visits Woo-hyun, but spies Dong-kook arriving just before her. Thinking he is alone with the sleeping patient, Dong-kook expresses resentment for Woo-hyun always causing trouble in his life. Seo-young interrupts to introduce herself again, but Dong-kook denies her once more, telling her to stay out of his way on this case.

Back to a few days ago, Woo-hyun exits the cafe to begin the search for his family, and the owner communicates with the hunters about Woo-hyun’s progress.

But instead of searching, Woo-hyun doubles back to the cafe, and he surprises the owner inside. The two fistfight and eventually Woo-hyun gains the upper hand, subduing the owner and tying him to a chair for questioning.

Even though he is captured, the owner continues to play mind games, so Woo-hyun decides to take a more aggressive approach, so he grabs a large knife and, without warning, chops the owner’s big toe off in one fell swoop.

Woo-hyun explains that his military training was in a special unit which apparently involved torturing people as an interrogation tactic, and threatens to cut off the other big toe as well to effectively remove the man’s ability to ever walk again.

The owner immediately folds, and agrees to give up all of the information he knows in exchange for Woo-hyun putting the dismembered toe on ice to save it. When he evades a question about the hunters, though, Woo-hyun, instead, threatens to throw the toe in a blender.

The owner realizes Woo-hyun isn’t bluffing, and finally gives up all the details about the hunters, who he doesn’t know personally, as he simply provides them with the grounds for them to hunt after luring their prey in for them.

As the interrogation continues, the hunters grow impatient, and radio the owner for a status update. The owner explains that Woo-hyun will be slower than expected because he was injured during the earlier fight, and tells them to be patient.

Woo-hyun signals for the owner to ask about the family, and the hunters confirm they’re still alive. The hunters ask which site the owner thinks Woo-hyun went to first, and Woo-hyun gets the owner to inform them that he went to his wife’s site first.

In the present, Dong-kook goes over the blueprint of the hospital and realizes there’s only one realistic route the culprit could take to kill Detective Bae, and he storms off to check it out.

Upstairs, he finds out that the route goes through the ward for dementia patients. He immediately heads to Woo-hyun’s room to spy on Secretary Kim, and Seo-young interrupts him again to offer her help, arguing her profiling skills may be of use for his case.

Back downstairs, Seo-young explains that her team recently began investigating a series of murders involving hunters killing people with hunting weapons in mountainous areas. She notes that Woo-hyun’s testimony suggests the same serial murderers targeted him.

But Dong-kook dissents, arguing that if they were such prolific killers, there is no way they would let Woo-hyun escape with his life. He jabs at Seo-young’s ego, and chastises her for assuming the killings are connected.

In the mountains, Woo-hyun finds his son tied to a tree. As he runs toward the site, one of the hunters fires a shotgun at him, and Woo-hyun flees. He evades the pursuing hunter, and lures him into the open where Woo-hyun nails the hunter with a crossbow bolt and staggers him long enough to close the gap.

The hunter pulls a knife and wildly swings at Woo-hyun, but the anchor manages to disarm the man. Both combatants dash toward the hunter’s shotgun on the ground, but Woo-hyun gets there first, and shoots the hunter, killing him.

Woo-hyun finally makes his way back to Shi-woo’s tree, where a snake slowly descends on the child’s location. He manages to shoot the snake to scare it off, but it bites him in the process of saving Shi-woo.

In the present, one of the locals leads Detective Jang to the location where Shi-woo was held days prior. The rest of the police force search the area, and they soon find the corpse of the hunter that Woo-hyun killed.

Just after Woo-hyun rescues his son, he brings the boy to a shack by an abandoned bus and tells him to wait there for him while he goes to rescue Yeon-soo, urging the boy to honk the bus horn if anything happens to him.

As soon as Woo-hyun leaves, though, the other hunter creeps up to the shack stealthily. Shi-woo makes a break for the bus while the hunter hardly reacts, clearly toying with his prey. Shi-woo manages to honk the horn, and Woo-hyun immediately dashes back to the site.

Shi-woo is nowhere to be found, though, and the hunter begins to open fire on Woo-hyun, who barricades himself in the shack for cover. The hunter notices that Woo-hyun dropped his crossbow bolts outside the shack, so he lowers his guard knowing Woo-hyun is defenseless.

The hunter casually flicks open the door, but Woo-hyun has one bolt left, which he left with Shi-woo for self-defense earlier, and shoots the hunter center mass, knocking him to the ground motionless.

Woo-hyun steps past the hunter to start looking for Shi-woo again, but the hunter stands up and reveals that his vest blocked the arrow, then charges at Woo-hyun and tackles him. The hunter easily beats the weakened and wounded prey, and stands over Woo-hyun with a knife to his throat.

The hunter asks Woo-hyun why he chose to save his son first, especially since he’s not even the biological father. Woo-hyun is shocked that the hunter knows this fact, and the hunter presses for an answer, offering to spare Shi-woo if the answer is good enough.

Woo-hyun tells the man, though we don’t get to hear the reason, and the hunter decides it’s satisfactory. As a reward, he let’s Woo-hyun live, but cuts out the anchor’s tongue as one last punishment.

In the present, the police work to identify the hunter that was killed, but his colleague tampered with the body, making it difficult to identify him.

Meanwhile, Detective Jang is called back from the scene to meet an associate of Woo-hyun who came to the base camp. The man is CEO HONG WON-TAE (Oh Ryong), and he gets the detective to bring him to Woo-hyun’s hospital room.

Afterwards, Dong-kook finds Detective Jang observing Secretary Kim meeting with CEO Hong, who just persuaded her to cooperate with the police.

Dong-kook, though, doesn’t care about the new man on the scene, and instead chases after Secretary Kim once she leaves the hospital. At the same time, CEO Hong orders his subordinate to look into Secretary Kim’s alibi during Woo-hyun’s vacation.

Dong-kook tails her until she ends up at Woo-hyun’s house. The previous day, when Dong-kook infiltrated the house, he placed hidden cameras inside to capture everything. Now, he watches and waits for Secretary Kim as she searches for something within.

When she tries to leave, Dong-kook cuts her off, and he quickly finds what she came to grab: a burner phone locked in a safe inside the house.

He brings Secretary Kim in for official interrogation, and cuts straight to the point, outlining her role as the brains of Woo-hyun’s company, and speculating that the burner phone was used to facilitate an affair between herself and Woo-hyun.

Finally, Dong-kook reveals Detective Bae’s notebook, and states that the meticulous former detective always kept copious notes. For Woo-hyun’s case, Detective Bae noted particularly his suspicions about Secretary Kim stemming from her word choices.

The way she spoke implied that she already knew the wife and son were dead, which is still unconfirmed, as if she possesses insider information on what happened to them.

Dong-kook also reveals that although there was no CCTV footage on the night Detective Bae died, he found footage from the dementia ward, which uses separate infrared camera to keep track of the patients who might wander off due to their disease.

He speculates that the man caught on camera that night is a professional killer, hired by someone to take out Detective Bae because he was catching on to them.

Secretary Kim calmly dismisses Dong-kook’s theory as conjecture, and as Dong-kook doesn’t have any evidence, she is able to leave freely.

Meanwhile, Seo-young watches the suspect’s reactions intently on the monitor, and she flinches only a few times during Dong-kook’s questioning.

Secretary Kim gets a ride away from the station, and tears fall down her face once she’s out of sight of the police.

Dong-kook brings Seo-young to CEO Hong’s office, and on the way, she mentions that she suspects Dong-kook secretly hates Woo-hyun for some reason, which he doesn’t deny.

When they arrive at the office, Seo-young makes up an excuse to take photographs of the staff. One particular staffer, who appears to be CEO Hong’s aide, catches her eye. His face unmistakably matches the remaining hunter, though for her it’s only a suspicion.

Now alone with CEO Hong, Dong-kook and Seo-young ask about the relationship between Woo-hyun and Secretary Kim, and the CEO reveals that she has a checkered past, but Woo-hyun always looked the other way.

Seo-young distractedly points out that a cell phone is ringing, and urges CEO Hong to answer. The phone is identical to the burner found Secretary Kim grabbed earlier, and CEO Hong claims the caller must have the wrong number.

Seo-young hastily drags Dong-kook out of the room, and as they head to the lobby, she reveals that she smuggled the burner phone out of evidence, and that the call to CEO Hong’s phone was actually from that burner phone, where his number is the only number saved.

She speculates that perhaps the indecent relationship is between CEO Hong and Yeon-soo instead. Meanwhile, though, CEO Hong watches the pair on his CCTV feed, and sees Seo-young pull out the burner, knowing that she obviously was the one who called from the phone.

In the parking lot, Seo-young announces that her team captured footage of the serial killer group from a previous crime scene, though not enough to make out their faces. She mentions that CEO Hong’s aide matches the physical characteristics of one of the killers.

She shoots down the idea that the group coincidentally targeted Woo-hyun’s family, and instead speculates that the group is led by CEO Hong, who went after the family because of his personal ties to them.

Back at the hospital, a sketch artist attempts to create a likeness of the killer from Woo-hyun’s memory, but is unsuccessful. Seo-young sends the picture of CEO Hong’s aide to get Woo-hyun to take a look, and he seems to recognize him instantly.

In the car, Seo-young argues that their goal now should be to figure out why CEO Hong suddenly targeted Woo-hyun.

“When hunters have enough to eat, why do they hunt?” Seo-young ponders openly, “Is it because they can, or do the hunters want to prove their strength and control?” Dong-kook stews silently as she adds, “Nobody knows. Only the hunter will know that.”

At the same time, a police searcher exclaims that Shi-woo has been found. The police at the base camp rush to the site but they find only the boy’s lifeless body there.

At the hospital, news of the boy being found dead reaches Woo-hyun, and he screams in agony, mouth full of blood, hearing his son’s fate.

 
COMMENTS

There’s such an overwhelming aura of mystery to everything going on that even though we’re slowly clearing the fog around what exactly happened in the mountains, it still feels like we’re somehow further from the truth than we were before. I think part of the reason for that is the first two episodes have been mind-bending enough that even as we get clearer evidence than Woo-hyun’s potentially muddy testimony, I’m inclined to distrust that it’s as clear-cut as we’re being led to believe.

I’d say that’s a testament to the quality of the writing and directing more than anything, since that feeling is directly tied to how we’ve been presented with the rest of the evidence thus far. With Woo-hyun’s account clouded by possible amnesia, and with it already being such a bizarre tale, now when we get a more substantial piece of evidence like CEO Hong’s possession of the burner phone, or even the fact that the hunter works for him, I’m not ready to jump to any conclusions. Sure, Seo-young thinks CEO Hong is behind it all, but I feel like there almost has to be a more nuanced explanation.

Now we’re even being baited into jumping to conclusions, too, given what we saw after the hunter finished toying with Woo-hyun. It poses an interesting question: if Woo-hyun knows about Shi-woo’s parentage and still decided to save the boy over his wife, what could possibly be the reason for that?

It’s obviously a crucial secret given they’re hiding it from us at this juncture, but it was clearly enough to get the hunter to show mercy. Is it as simple as an affair with CEO Hong? Again, I’m inclined to think it runs deeper than that.

And while we’re dealing with the mystery on the mountains, we’ve also got a bit to dig into with Dong-kook and Woo-hyun’s history with each other. Admittedly, there’s not much information available at the moment, but something clearly happened and I’m dying to know what it is.

Dong-kook is obviously bitter about what happened between them, but I struggle to come up with any ideas as to what could possibly leave such a deep-seated resentment there. There’s also not really any evidence that Woo-hyun reciprocates the feeling, so that almost has to mean Woo-hyun wronged him in some way, right? Someone tell our profiler to grill Dong-kook on it so we can at least solve one mystery in the short term here!

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