Miss Night and Day: Episodes 5-6

by Unit

While Miss Night continues to hit it off with our prosecutor, Miss Day has an inevitable clash with him this week. On the mystery and thriller side of things, the dismemberment case might have taken a backseat for now, but with the stakes raised on the acid attack case and continued investigation into the drug ring, our leads still have their hands full.

 
EPISODES 5-6

Misdirection strikes again when we resume for the week, as it turns out that it was actually a waiter who burst into the VIP room to warn that there’s a prosecutor in the building. Tsk. Everyone scampers, including Mi-jin, and Ji-woong eventually runs into her in a face-off with one of the drug-dealing thugs she ran into while fleeing. Ji-woong ends up driving Mi-jin home — after getting a “I wasn’t feeling well, so I went home” text from Soon — and she thanks him for helping her fend off the club thug despite his “I don’t care about others” mantra. But technically, Mi-jin is not just anyone. “You’re a witness, and I’m your proxy,” Ji-woong says, and yes, sir, I believe you. Heh.

As our witness and proxy argue over how he saved her name in his phone, Ji-woong swerves into a muddy field to avoid hitting a deer. Mi-jin’s parents are only too happy to fetch them because it means Ji-woong has to stop by their house first to wash up, and I cackled at the sight of Ji-woong in Mi-jin’s mom’s flowery top and pants.

It was heartwarming to see Mi-jin’s mom’s side dishes take up space in Ji-woong’s empty fridge at home, and it made me love Mom even more. Mi-jin’s parents are the sweetest, and their shenanigans are so fun to watch: whether it’s Mom roping Dad into her matchmaking schemes, or Dad bragging about their daughter’s prosecutor boyfriend, or them jointly strutting the summer street — decked in the winter outfits Mi-jin bought for them with her first paycheck. They make such a delightful pair!

While looking into Acid Assailant, Ji-woong notes that he had the opportunity to attack Won in the quiet parking lot, but he chose to do it at the crowded area in front of the lobby. The only other explanation for a drug addict to risk getting caught and going to prison — where he can’t get his drug fix — is that his target wasn’t Won; someone must have instigated him to attack a yet-to-be-known/named person in the crowd in exchange for a lifetime supply of drugs. Seeing that Ji-woong is onto him, Acid Assailant makes a threatening call to his instigator, but next thing you know, he ends up dead no thanks to a prison guard on the instigator’s payroll.

Curiously enough, we see the shrouded figure of the instigator texting the guard on the prosecution office staircase where we earlier saw the former hospital director turned senior citizen intern. To make matters worse, we can almost suspect that something bad happened to the other AWOL intern based on the questions Hospital Director asked Soon. No way he got rid of that poor man in order to take over the internship slot! Our newest intern is looking more like a red flag than a red herring, and I won’t be surprised if he’s indeed Acid Assailant’s instigator — and the raincoat killer. It’s bad enough that Mi-jin is on Raincoat Killer’s radar, but now we see Soon’s picture plastered on his Wall of Doom? Oh dear!

In the meantime, Soon and Ji-woong’s already shaky professional relationship hits the rocks when she breaks the news about Acid Assailant’s death to Won. She merely intended to make Won feel at ease, but it didn’t occur to her that victims could get a mental shock when they hear about their attacker’s death. Unfortunately, Won blames himself for Acid Assailant’s death, and Ji-woong is furious with Soon because Won’s feeling of guilt will only increase if the autopsy rules the death as suicide.

“This is why I don’t like working with people who are old, inexperienced and chatty,” Ji-woong lashes out, and his words hit a genuinely sorry Soon like a truck. All her excitement about getting a job and finding her passion fizzles out as she realizes that she was never a part of Ji-woong’s team, and that the multiple tasks she was assigned were to make her quit — a fact she already knew in hindsight, but pretended not to know because she wanted to hang onto the job. Soon’s breakdown on the Hill of Anguish is quite sad to watch, and as she bemoans the fate that turned her into an ahjumma, the mysterious cat appears to watch her from a distance. Hmmm.

Soon ends the day with a round of drinks, and at nightfall, a drunk Mi-jin marches over to Ga-yeong’s place — or rather, to Ji-woong’s apartment since she’s on the wrong floor. Oops! After interrupting our prosecutor’s shower scene (rude!), Mi-jin barges into his house — but not before attacking his door locks with her taser. Girl, this is NOT why he bought you those self defense weapons. LMAO! Ji-woong finds Mi-jin’s drunk antics cute — and who wouldn’t when she compliments his visuals? But then she headbutts him (ouch!), and it’s goodnight from her end. Hehe.

Morning breaks and a sober — and panicked — Mi-jin realizes that she’s trapped in Ji-woong’s house because someone destroyed the locks last night. But what does she say to the god of transformation? Not today! Mi-jin practically climbs out of the apartment through the window — kicking Ji-woong’s face (again, ouch!) in the process — and she makes it safely up to Ga-yeong’s room before the sunrise transforms her into Soon. Phew! But instead of worrying about how she’ll explain her night out to her parents, or how she’ll get fresh ahjumma clothes for work since she can’t go home now, my good sis is worried that Ji-woong will think she’s weird because she climbed out of his window. Oh well, we all have different priorities.

It turns out Ji-woong is also worried about Mi-jin, so he drops by Ga-yeong’s place to drop off stomach medicine for her. But it’s Soon who answers the door, and Ga-yeong has to claim that she’s Soon’s niece as well as Mi-jin’s friend. So what if the ladies jointly throw Mi-jin under the bus by explaining her absence with the taking of a giant constipated dump? The most important thing is that Ga-yeong senses some reciprocated energy from Ji-woong, and she steps into matchmaking duties — although our self-deprecating heroine doesn’t think she’s worthy of our prosecutor.

Ji-woong eventually apologizes for scolding Soon over the Won/Acid Assailant issue, and he asks to start over their professional relationship on the right foot this time. As for their personal relationship, Ga-yeong sets Ji-woong up to bring Mi-jin home after a girls’ hangout, and on the leisure walk home, Ji-woong brings up a 30-minute drunk-dial conversation Mi-jin had with him before she showed up at his house the other night. Mi-jin doesn’t remember any of it, but when Ji-woong hums a tune it jogs her memory, and she remembers singing over the phone, before going on a ranting spree about his treatment of Soon.

“If you don’t want to work with [the ahjumma in your office] just tell her to leave. Why didn’t you fire her?” Mi-jin had asked. “Because she was like me. She looked like she had nowhere else to go,” Ji-woong admitted to a sleeping Mi-jin. Following the unarchiving of the memory, Mi-jin and Ji-woong wordlessly gaze at each other in the present, and I quite liked this moment because I often find silence to be a compelling form of communication.

We hold off on romantic longing for a bit and head back to the prosecutor’s office where Soon is finally needed on the team. You see, thanks to her knowledge of video game lingo, she helped Ji-woong and Byung-duk decipher the identity of a fentanyl supplier to gaming delinquents, and now they — very respectfully, with their hands clasped in front of them — need her help to catch the supplier. Yaay! Our Soon is finally “in charge of an investigation.” Lool. Her excitement is contagious.

Since the supplier has gone under the radar, the plan is for Soon to arrange a physical meetup with his girlfriend — through the game — in order to lure him out since he’s the jealous type. Of course, it’s Ji-woong who shows up to meet the — very handsy — girlfriend, but Soon is not about to be left out of the investigation, so she also goes to the restaurant to peep through the window. She really loves her windows. Lol.

Thanks to her peeping, she spots the girlfriend spiking Ji-woong’s beer just as she transforms into Mi-jin. Unfortunately, Ji-woong does not understand the many “Don’t drink that beer” signals she gives him when she rushes into the restaurant. Mi-jin then decides to do the next best thing: hurl a chicken thigh in his direction… and this is where the episode comes to an end. Huh? What a randomly weird way to leave off for the week.

In other news, Won and Soon’s friendship continues to deepen, and now they’re close enough to have semi-deep conversations, and for him to notice a scar on her leg. Won also decides to forgo the chance to work his way back to Seoul in favor of remaining in Seohan for the rest of his public service. And he wears a silly grin on his face while staring at her — despite his manager’s warning for him to stay away from women. Hmmmm. Soon might be 28 years old on the inside, but she’s still an ahjumma on the outside. Oh well, maybe Won simply has mommy issues just like Ji-woong does.

From flashbacks, we saw that Ji-woong’s mom resented his dad, and that kinda dampened her relationship with him. The poor boy wasn’t even allowed to call her mom. The good thing is, Mi-jin’s mom has enough love to go round, and if the smile on Ji-woong’s face while he ate from Mom’s side dishes is anything to go by, I suppose he won’t mind getting adopted into Mi-jin’s family as a son-in-law.

 
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