Hide: Episodes 3-4

by quirkycase

Our heroine continues to fearlessly dive into the mess her husband left behind, which is growing more dangerous by the day. Questions beget more questions, and the conflicting stories she’s told leave her unsure of who to trust. Lucky for her, she’s quite capable of figuring things out on her own.

 
EPISODES 3-4

Since we left off on that cliffhanger, let’s dive right back in. Moon-young saves Jin-woo’s life by yelling that she called the police and scaring Sung-jae away. As soon as Sung-jae scampers off, Moon-young rushes over to a hurt Jin-woo who tells her the shooter was her dead husband. For now, the two of them keep that little tidbit quiet.

Moon-young is really having a rough go of it. In a short span of time, she’s gone from mourning her nice husband to wondering if he’s in fact alive and hunting people down with shotguns. Then, someone breaks into her house in the middle of the night, leaving the seemingly only police officer in the city BAEK MIN-YEOB (Kim Sang-ho) to investigate. So far, he’s handled the office ransacking, the debt collectors, Sung-jae’s death, Jin-woo’s accident, and now this. He and Moon-young have crossed paths professionally before, and they are not on good terms.

Besides her friend Shin-hwa, Moon-young doesn’t have many people on her side. She is friendly with her mild-mannered neighbor HA YEON-JOO (Lee Chung-ah) who teaches a baking class Bom attends. Yeon-joo offers to help out when she can and is almost too nice… it seems suspicious, but then again, it’s hard to trust anyone besides Moon-young in this drama.

As if things weren’t bad enough of late, Moon-young arrives home one day to find Chief Ma chilling in her kitchen. He declares that Moon-young is on the hook for the 7 billion won her husband stole. He takes the 5 million in cash Sung-jae left her and gives her a week to come up with the rest. To ensure her cooperation, he had his men pick Bom up from school, showing how easily he can get to her.

He underestimates Moon-young and is stunned when she later pays him back in kind. She busts into a meeting at his office, thanking him for his generous 7 billion won contract with Chawoong Foundation on a welfare housing redevelopment project. Ever the prosecutor, Moon-young has done her due diligence and knows the money Sung-jae took was from a shell company and not legally Chief Ma’s – Geumshin faked an unhoused person’s account and disguised the money as construction fees.

Now that Moon-young has Bom safely with Shin-hwa, her prosecutor friend, Chief Ma’s threats do no good. She reads him well and gets under his skin by asking if there’s someone above him she should thank. She’s not off the mark; we’ve seen glimpses of a mysterious high-heeled woman who is calling the shots.

Speaking of the housing development project, we get a new player named HWANG TAE-SOO who is a supposed recipient of funds for this project. The night before the trial where everything went wrong, Sung-jae had taken a blackout-drunk Tae-soo home. He hasn’t been seen since, but Jin-woo did see a belonging of his in Chief Ma’s warehouse.

Jin-woo shares his startling conclusion with Moon-young: Sung-jae assumed Tae-soo’s identity. Sung-jae must’ve tried to kill Jin-woo because he figured it out and wanted to cover his tracks. It’s quite the story, and Moon-young doesn’t fully buy it yet. Still, she’s suspicious enough to personally send Sung-jae’s DNA sample to double check that the body they cremated is his. And, as she half hoped and half feared, it’s not a match.

Her mother-in-law is the one who sent the first DNA sample, which did match the body – it just wasn’t Sung-jae’s. For her to have Tae-soo’s DNA, she must be working with Sung-jae. Desperate for Moon-young not to tell Sung-jae’s father about any of this, she gives Moon-young Sung-jae’s current address. It’s time for a fraught reunion.

After some yelling and crying, Moon-young and Sung-jae have a chat. His version of the story is that Chawoong Foundation (aka, his father), which funded the law firm, was doing some shady money stuff that had a hand in the firm’s almost bankruptcy. Sung-jae went to Chief Ma for money, but he couldn’t get out once he’d started. When Tae-soo coincidentally died of alcohol poisoning that night in his car, he took advantage of the situation to switch their identities and fake his death.

He’s got explanations for everything that mostly paint him as the victim fighting to survive. Those insurance policies were taken out by Chief Ma, which is why Sung-jae left a suicide note to ensure Chief Ma wouldn’t get the payout. Sung-jae even claims that Jin-woo is a villain – he’s been blackmailing him for money. The shooting? That was all a misunderstanding. Presenting quite a different version than what we saw in that scene, Sung-jae insists the gun accidentally went off when they were tussling. Plus, that was Jin-woo’s gun, not his. While his story is possible, his whole elaborate lie about his own death and the long-term corruption makes it hard to take him at his word.

Sung-jae is determined to keep up his being-dead ruse to protect Moon-young and Bom (lot of good that’s done so far…), but he does give Moon-young a USB with information she can use against Chief Ma. Naturally, Moon-young has no idea what or who to believe at this point, but she’s not one to sit on her hands. First off, she announces to her father-in-law that as CEO of the law firm, she’s separating it from Chawoong Foundation. She knows he’s seeking a mayoral nomination and using his business interests to do it, and she wants no part in the corruption.

Moon-young then makes her move against Chief Ma, suing him for trespassing, stalking, and the like. She knows she can’t make a criminal case, but she has all the threatening texts and photos he’s sent, so she can make him look like an obsessed stalker. He’s even caught on CCTV taking what looks like a pair of her shoes – the cash was hidden in her shoebox – out of the house. In a cheeky move, she asks for exactly 7 billion won in damages.

Thanks to that USB, Moon-young has some surprises up her sleeve during the trial. She slips in dashcam footage of Chief Ma beating the man Yoon-seo supposedly killed and then running him over deliberately. The angle doesn’t show his face in the car, but analysis indicates the driver was a male of his height. For some extra umph, Moon-young announces that her husband was supposed to be the lawyer for the falsely accused but killed himself out of guilt. Finishing on a dramatic flourish, Shin-hwa and her band of prosecutors bust in with an arrest warrant and drag Chief Ma away. It’s quite satisfying.

Having handled Chief Ma, Moon-young tells Sung-jae to come back and turn himself in. Jin-woo already told the cops that “Tae-soo” was the one who shot him, so he doesn’t have much of an out at this point. Moon-young says she and Bom will wait for him.

Thinking it’s all over, Moon-young breathes a sigh of relief and resumes life as normal. But if it were that easy, we wouldn’t have eight more episodes. Unbeknownst to her, Jin-woo locates Sung-jae and confronts him. He demands to know what Sung-jae did to Tae-soo. As they fight in the street, a man comes up and hits Jin-woo over the head with a bat.

Meanwhile, remember that suspiciously sweet neighbor? She has a tea party with all the fancy ladies of the neighborhood. Before Moon-young leaves, she gifts her a goody bag… filled with cash. Then, she tells her to pick up Shin-hwa’s call – she’ll have good news. As Moon-young learns that Chief Ma is dead, Yeon-joo smiles beatifically and hands her a picture of Sung-jae. “Did your meeting with your husband go well? Or should I call him Tae-soo?” I think we’ve just met Chief Ma’s boss.

Well, if she isn’t just terrifying as a Stepford Wife meets gangster. What a way to end week two! I have a feeling she’s going to be a formidable and interesting opponent. Chief Ma was all threats and bullying, but this woman is clearly the brains (and style). I can’t wait to see her and Moon-young go head-to-head. Despite how much has already happened, it looks like we’re just getting warmed up.

 
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