Revenge of Others: Episodes 5-6

by missvictrix

Twists, turns, red herrings, red shoelaces, and some fake-outs too — that’s our week in Revenge of Others. While some new players appear in the game and have important clues to share, the mystery just deepens. And then deepens a little more. I still don’t know what’s going on!

 
EPISODES 5-6 WEECAP

I was not expecting the appearance of Jae-bum to be a fake-out, but I’m not complaining since I love him — he was there to check up on Chan-mi so an auditorium incident didn’t occur again, but the two of them lose the real note-sender.

Still, Jae-bum takes on a bigger role this week, though the questions around him (and his missing memories) continue to grow. But so do the questions around basically everyone — except our heroine, who’s really the only voice we can trust right now. The drama used flashbacks a little more frequently this week as a mechanism to confirm people’s stories, and while it’s useful so we know when someone is actually telling the truth, I dislike relying on them too much, since it messes with the flow of the plot.

Jae-bum spends little time with Chan-mi this week, but we follow him a lot with his blossoming friendship with Su-heon, and his still-undefined relationship with Oh-seong. I can’t figure out either Oh-seong or Jae-bum, and both are holding onto a truckload of answers to our questions.

As Jae-bum forms an (adorable) friendship with Su-heon, Oh-seong is always looking on ominously. Is it a jealous look? A knowing look? Not sure. But as for Jae-bum, he seems to genuinely like Su-heon (and Chan-mi), while his relationship with Oh-seong has more mystery to it. Oh-seong definitely knows a lot about both Jae-bum and Won-seok, but we don’t get much insight from him yet. Instead, the camera turns to Jae-bum as weirdness continues to happen. His car keys are moved from where he usually puts them. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy randomly appears on his dresser holding a photo of him and Won-seok riding horses together. Then, he finds himself alone in a dark stable, with no idea how he got there.

What is going on! Jae-bum’s own unsureness makes me trust him, though — I think because we see he’s a nice guy. Regardless of what happened to him or who he was before the amnesia, he seems okay now. But when he was in the stable, he tells Oh-seong he triggered a buried memory.

That “car accident” everyone’s telling him he was in? Yeah, he now realizes that was a lie — and everyone is keeping up appearances by continuing the story. He actually tried to commit suicide in that barn. Terrified of what he’s learning about himself, Jae-bum asks Oh-seong to tell him the truth: did he kill Won-seok? The scene cuts, so who knows the answer. (Also, please be NO!)

While all this is going on with Jae-bum and Oh-seong, Chan-mi has her own crazy stuff to deal with. First, with the release of the murder video she gets an apology from Detective Jin. Then, she gets a call from Won-seok’s adoptive parents who give her the locked suitcase of Won-seok’s belongings that they didn’t already dump. Gosh, these people. Chan-mi had asked Su-heon to go with her, and he laces into them like I wish I could have, so that was satisfying.

Then the two take said locked suitcase and Chan-mi goes through the items — all the sweet things from their childhood. And a bottle of whiskey, which they wind up drinking together, both never having alcohol before. I loved this scene! These two bonding is so sweet, and it only got more lovely when Su-heon goes on the roof to cry out his stress and she follows him up there and comforts him. So precious.

But precious doesn’t last long in the world of this drama, and soon Chan-mi is convinced that Su-heon is the killer of her dear brother. How does she get to that point? The detectives play into it a little, but really it’s the introduction of a new character and ex-classmate of her brother: KWON SE-JIN (Kang Yi-seok).

Chan-mi is tracing all the threads she has on her brother and it leads her to a cafe where she inquires and meets Se-jin. He’s surprisingly quick to open up with her, and totally likable. Like every new bit of information we get, Se-jin turns what we think we know about Won-seok on its head: he said that Won-seok saved his life and that he was a really good person. To confirm that this is true, we see Se-jin some time back getting bullied by Jung-kyung (for having a gay adoptive father) — and saved by Won-seok. Chan-mi’s head is racing, and so is mine.

Another weird thread pulled is the return of Hong Ah-jung to this violent high school. I don’t trust a word she says or a thing she does right now, but we know for sure that she is a friend of So-yeon and Su-heon, that she’s pregnant, that she was an idol trainee, and that she’s hiding a lot of secrets — not only the identity of the baby’s father, but secrets around Won-seok. At first she tells Chan-mi that she and Won-seok never dated and it was all a fake-out, but later we see someone at the school call Ah-jung out as Won-seok’s ex. Also important is that once Ah-jung (and everyone) learns Chan-mi was his sister, she suddenly becomes friendly and forthcoming.

What she says to Chan-mi now is that Won-seok changed suddenly and went from protecting the bullied at school to becoming the bully. We learn that his 180 was all related to Oh-seong as well. They wonder what Oh-seong had on Won-seok that put him in his power. And now I’m even more confused and suspicious of Oh-seong.

Turning back to Se-jin, though — he seeks Chan-mi out and admits that he already knew who she was (okay, that makes his honesty make sense). Then he admits to being the person behind the locker notes. He also admits to playing the video of the murder which he had on his phone all this time and didn’t know. He was at the school at that time, and saw Won-seok in the window, and then saw him on the ground. Se-jin says he was scared and heartbroken so he ran outta there and never looked back. But before he left, he noticed Su-heon (he thinks) on the scene and never forgot the sneakers with the red laces.

Se-jin wants to go study in the U.S. and make a fresh start, but when he found the video and realized for the first time Won-seok didn’t commit suicide, he knew he had to release it. I’m not sure where the show is going with their relationship, but this all was tracking quite well till the video for me — it’s a little too convenient and circumstantial. Still, I like him, and he seems trustworthy (or as trustworthy as one can get in this show).

While Chan-mi deals with the confusing emotions of now “knowing” that Su-heon killed her brother, we have some extremely disturbing developments on Su-heon’s front. So-yeon happens to hear about another evil high schooler that got off easy after a brutal crime and she calls on Su-heon to “teach him a lesson” like they have done before. Okay, I’m really not loving So-yeon anymore; this rush into taking over and violently forcing justice is disturbing and has only created more mayhem. And not only with Jung-kyung, but with our new criminal as well: Su-heon goes into punisher mode, but the kid winds up dying (and Su-heon has no idea at the time!).

So, the detectives continue to dig in, soon putting all the clues together, with Su-heon at the top of the list for all the crimes. He plays innocent surprisingly well, and when So-yeon wants them both to confess (okay, points for that), he says he can’t go to jail right now. We know what’s on the line for him, but no one else really does (except Chanmi). It’s all very stressful.

Chan-mi saves Su-heon’s butt from the detectives, but seems to have her own plan of revenge. She lures Su-heon all the way to Busan, where she is ready with the target pistol she once gave her brother. This is the final scene of the week, and it ends with shots fired.

Now, Su-heon can’t be dead (yet?), so I’m not sure if she’s just using blanks to scare him, but really I just have more questions — even after so much plot development. Every character is nursing well-hidden secrets and motives. I keep churning theories in my head over whether the murderer was Jae-bum, Su-heon, or Oh-seong, but now I don’t even know… what if it’s one of the female students? They don’t seem any more trustworthy than the male students Won-seok was also involved in. We’re only halfway through the drama and probably have a good 43 twists to go, so really, anything’s possible.

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