This is a difficult episode. Not because of its content, but because of (imho) some choppy writing paired with sloppy subs, with an emphasis on the latter: There are a few confusing inconsistencies in the subtitles. Also, CJ Entertainment (the official subs-deliverer) has suddenly started to use an "Americanized" style for names, putting the family name last and not first. That confused the heck out of me until I figured it out. So: I hope you are not going DF on us, CJ, thinking we don't understand "hyung" and similar words? [end rant] Apart from that, this is an episode mainly centered on Baek Do-shik. He is somewhat back with the team, but it takes a while until he fully gets there. Overall, this is an episode about love and obsession. It shows that you find love in unexpected forms and also in unusual places. And it also shows how closely related love and hate are and that acts of love may very well be considered acts of hate by others.
Special Affairs Team TEN 2 - Episode 6
모딜리아니의 여인 Modigliani's Lady
A poorly lit back alley - a man in a suit walks through it. He hears something and stops, looking behind him, but walks on when there is nothing to see. The camera zooms into one of the completely dark side streets and comes to rest on a woman and a man standing there: his knife is on her throat, his hand is covering her mouth, and she is wide-eyed and shaking. He moves his hand up her leg and under her skirt ... and we hear her terrified whimpering (but this a PG 15 rated episode, so no need to fear anything all too gruesome or brutal).
Do-shik is seated in a nice restaurant, reading a book ... or rather, he is holding a book up in front of his face, nervously scanning the environment over the rim. When his phone rings, he fumbles around to get it and the book falls to the ground.
It's Min-ho, asking him why he's not picking up and where he is. Do-shik says "you've called the wrong number" and hangs up on Min-ho, who yells to stop joking around, there's a murder case right now and Do-shik is urgently needed.
A woman comes over and picks Do-shik's book off the ground. She is stunningly beautiful, elegant, and, as we learn later, smart, and kind - and Do-shik is completely smitten immediately. Me too.
Detective Baek seems to be on a blind date - if you are familiar with TEN season 1 you might remember that he has been on a quest to find a partner for a while. So this looks like a renewed effort to finally score. His phone starts ringing again and she wants him to pick it up, since it seems to be an emergency, but he denies that it is and throws it onto a near chair, together with the book. He is so adorably nervous and stutters while looking at her as if she were a magical creature. She laughs gently, commenting on how awkward it is when people first meet, especially in a place like this. He is relieved to hear this - until she asks what he does for a living. Isn't he a public servant? He is searching for the right words (I think he wants to be honest with her) when his phone rings again ... and fade to black while it continues ringing.
장미의 전쟁 The Rose War
Yeo Ji-hoon and Boss-Boss are at a crime scene. There are blood stains and scratch marks on a wooden wall and Ji-hoon remarks dryly that the victim seems to have experienced hell even before he was dead. It is a sauna - and the victim (
Sung Jae-min) suffocated to death in it. The marks on the wall are from his efforts to crawl out, while the temperature was rising and rising. Pretty gruesome. Sung Jae-min was an attorney, we learn, doing technology patent litigation against large corporations - so he had plenty of enemies among the powerful. Boss-boss thinks the murderer is likely to be found in that environment and he presses for a fast solution of the case, because both sides are pretty anxious.
Ji-hoon looks out a little window-slit - there is a view of the living room and and arm chair. That arm chair was recently moved and conveniently situated so that it was possible to see through the window into the sauna.
Clearly, the technology litigation cases are not the motive, Ji-hoon declares ... The murdered and the victim, they looked at each other through that little window - and it is likely that the suspect watched the victim die miserably. Too brutal to be a lawyers' battle, hm, Ji-hoon? You could be right.
Baek Do-shik is no longer at the meeting, but walking along the street, annoyed at "his fate" (=being a detective who has to work even on Sundays) when he realizes that he forgot (lost?) his phone ... and he doesn't know where the murder site is that Min-ho referred to. So he just hauls over a police car with his badge and asks where there is a murder case in Gangnam.
Min-ho is not in Seoul, but somewhere outside, inspecting a car (and being on the phone with his hot boss): It is Sung Jae-min's car, which was abandoned at this place. There is a scratch at the side, but it is not from a collision with another car. Apparently, the car arrived at the victim's house on Friday evening and left again on Saturday morning (we know from CCTV footage). So why did the culprit use Sung Jae Min's car? Ji-hoon assumes that the murderer captured Sung Jae-min at a specific place and then went to his house to kill him. And I guess the assumption is he then drove away in the car after the murder, a smart way not to be seen by CCTV cameras. Ji-hoon orders Min-ho to find out about the murderer's profile. And he adds "Where the fuck is Detective Baek?"
(well, he didn't say "the fuck", but I'm pretty sure he would have liked to say it). Still AWOL, Min-ho says, but he will continue to call him.
Next up, Ji-hoon is with the autopsy lady, inspecting the body. She informs him that the burn edema occurred in the chest, which means he died from breathing difficulties. Ji-hoon mumbles (somewhat impressed?) that the murderer indeed seems to have watched him until he died. Also, there are heat ruptures, which occur when the blood tissues burn and the skin ruptures from the heat vapors. The autopsy lady explains: "When you steam dumplings, they burst". Ooooooookay, haha, but seriously! You have a warped sense of humor, writer-nim. Ji-hoon asks whether there were any drugs used. Yes, Tetroxin, a hallucinogen, most likely used to put the victim out. There is an unusual injection point at the ankle.
Ye-ri is at the deceased's office, looking at a snow globe with a dancing couple in it. She puts it down at the edge of the desk. The secretary comes in and puts it back to its "proper" place: to the left of the computer screen. Ye-ri smiles to herself ... She asks the secretary whether anything noteworthy happened on the day her boss was killed. Yes, says the secretary, the wife called the office several times, trying to get a hold of her husband. Ye-ri wants to know what her relationship to Attorney Sung was. The secretary is all flustered, innocently asking "Why?", but Ye-ri will not be fooled: Sung Jae-min gave her the snow globe as a gift, right? Caught! But the secretary says she liked him secretly, because Sung Jae-min told her that he was too afraid of his wife to cheat on her. Yes, their marriage wasn't all that good, the secretary confirms - especially after "that incident".
And Ye-ri calls Min-ho to check on something. About a month ago, at a sauna resort, Sung Jae-min's wife had the exact same incident her husband just got killed in: she almost died in the sauna. And here is a picture of oh-so-cute Min-ho, who is always reading everything Ye-ri says to him ("see you later" in this case) as a sign that she is into him :-)
We see a woman next, who is totally hysterical, crying on the floor. Do-shik walks in and wonders whether that is the wife of the deceased? Another cop greats him once he enters the locale and asks him what he is doing here. Uhm ... don't we have the TEN team here? Do-shik asks and the other cop laughs at him, the TEN team for a robbery case? Certainly not! Our poor Do-shik is at
a crime scene, but definitely not the right one! This is a
jewelry store (located in a shopping mall). Haha,
awesome: So Do-shik is back with the TEN team in mind, but not in body.
However, the robber did kill someone: the owner of the jewelry store. Do-shik asks his colleague to make a call for him ... to his team (which the colleague scoffs at, because he is kind of an ass). At that moment, a police man comes in an reports to the guy in charge that all the goods that were stolen in here have already turned up for sale.
The other investigator leaves to check it out, but Do-shik thinks it's just a liiiittle bit funny that the goods have already turned up. It really doesn't make sense to expose oneself so quickly, especially if the robber has killed a person; the risk is far too high. Always suspicious, he looks at the CCTV footage: He sees a man in a baseball cap, skillfully avoiding the security cameras, killing the owner, then removing all the jewels from the cases quickly, before disappearing from view. But where to? And why is the safe untouched? Do-shik gets more and more suspicious ... he only took the cheap stuff and didn't even try to go for the safe? That is one unusual robber ... And then he gets it: This is NOT theft that accidentally led to murder ... this is in fact robbery committed to disguise a murder. But here is the next puzzling thing: There is no evidence at all of the murderer exiting from the jewelry store, neither through the front not the back entrance. How and where did he get out?
Ye-ri is at Sung's house, doing her usual snoopy-look-around-thing. A portrait of a woman catches her eye, painted in the style of Modigliani, a painter (and sculptor) that lived from 1884 to 1920 (and who had a pretty hard life).
The widow (whose name is
Yang Sun-hwa) offers her some tea, but Ye-ri declines - she is not here as a guest after all. The slightly weird woman says that it has only been since Saturday dawn since her husband died at the house - that means there are 1.5 days left for his spirit to remain at this place, because it takes four days for the soul to be gone forever. So, will Ye-ri help her pretend the tragedy has not happened? Ye-ri (who clearly does not like this woman) notices a family portrait of the mother, the father and a small girl on the wall. She asks the widow where the child is. Hye-jin is with the angels, is the answer: She died three years ago by drowning. Ye-ri would like to see the child's room, but it is locked. The woman seems somewhat surprised by that fact ... and she cannot find the key. It is pretty evident from Ye-ri's face that she thinks it's weird ... and so do I. In other words, I don't get this scene. At all.
The TEN team (minus Do-shik) is at their bunker office. Min-ho is explaining what they know in front of their illuminated white board
(which I officially love and want. My white board is so old-fashioned and boring!). We learn that the suspect took the car's black box with him when he abandoned Sung Jae-min's car.
But Min-ho noticed one thing: the last destination on the navigation system was the city outskirts in Buwon, the night before the murder. Seeing that the victim was unconscious when he was taken back to his house, the suspect must have already known where to drive. Okay, Ji-hoon says: so the next assignment for uri maknae is to find out when and where the suspect got into the car; or rather, finding the starting time of the crime. One more thing: Min-ho found out about the sauna-incident too. Jae-min's wife was trapped in that sauna, as the secretary said, because the lock was broken, according to the locksmith. All in all, Min-ho says, that incident was really no big deal though, just a small accident
(and here, I am officially confused: they said before that the sauna-incident happened at a sauna resort. From this exchange, it sounds as if it happened at the house. Well, it doesn't really matter I guess). Objectively, says Ji-hoon, it may be true that it was just a small incident. But pain is subjective. And that is an entirely different story!
The attorney of the deceased has arrived. He gives Ji-hoon his will: In it, he is donating his entire wealth to charity. Uh-oh ... and he demands that if he dies, an autopsy of his body and investigation of his cause of death are to be undertaken. Not trusting your wife, are you?!
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take a long and good look at this pretty moustache! Cause it will be gone soon ... :(
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Do-shik is still at the other crime scene. "Me and my nosiness", he says, which cracks me up. He notices an automatic light at the emergency exit. And he looks at the CCTV footage again. When the murderer fled, the light did not turn on. Huh. He goes and tries it out; it only turns on when you get fairly close to it. He calls over a police officer and gets him to stand in different spots, trying to find out where the murderer must have waited for the light not to turn on
and the camera not to film him. And indeed, he does find such a spot. Okay! The murderer killed - but then he didn't leave as everyone thinks, but waited. Until 9.30 pm, when the light turns on in the CCTV footage. So he waited for half an hour. Why? And still: where did he get out?
Do-shik goes out at the back door and muses that the murderer had blood on himself, which most likely means he couldn't use the normal exits, nor the elevators, nor the escalators ... but he could have used the stairs! Oh yes ... there is a bloody imprint of a hand to be seen. And up the stairs he goes, enthusiastically.
He tries the first door on the next floor up, but it is locked. And the next. And the next. On the 7th floor, poor Do-shik collapses, totally out of breath.
He gets ready to climb again, when the door, locked from this side, gets opened from the other side - and people come in to go down the stairs. Do-shik jumps up and quickly goes through ... into a very crowded corridor.
There is a movie theater on that floor! And the movie in the first theater ends at 9:30 pm ... perfect for somebody who doesn't want to get noticed. This is where the murderer came and this is how he was able to get out: mixing with the large crowd from the theater. He even prepared for a rainy day, it seems (where people's faces are hidden from the camera because of the umbrellas) ... a mastermind, Do-shik says with a smile. And one he wants to catch.
파란눈의 여인 Blue-Eyed Lady
Ye-ri and Ji-hoon are in his office. Together. Alone. Hmmm ... (haha, sorry, don't mind me and my imagination). She is looking at a case file of a woman; Sung Jae-min's mother - who died. She was murdered on the street, hit by a brick in the head. On January 15, 2005. Jae-min and his wife registered their marriage 5 days later and added the 2-year old daughter to Jae-min's family registry. Ji-hoon comments that it is not very common to register a marriage right after a funeral.
Also, the preschool principal, who denied any responsibility in their daughter's death, wrote a letter of apology and committed suicide in the Han River. The daughter died in August 2010 - and the principal jumped in October. This was also when Sung Jae-min wrote his testament for the first time (with the demand to investigate his death). So this was when Jae-min became scared of his wife, Ji-hoon says; his wife, who carried around the shadow of death.
Ye-ri summarizes: "The mother in law, who opposed the marriage and even assaulted Yang Sun-hwa, gets hits by a brick and dies immediately. The principal, who avoided responsibility for her daughter's drowning, jumps in the water. The husband, who was at the scene of Sun-hwa's sauna accident, is killed in a sauna."
Ji-hoon replies: "An eye for an eye - a tooth for a tooth. Is that what this means?"
It is pretty clear what they need to do next: meet the wife.
Min-ho is at a café. What seems to have brought him there was a credit card transaction from the victim. Interestingly enough, this is the only café without a security camera. He paid 7.50$ (well, not really, but the equivalent in won) for shaved ice, single size. Did he come first and wait for someone? Min-ho wonders. At the security room, Min-ho continues to wonder, first about not seeing the victim on camera anywhere and then about the timing: why was he at the coffee shop for over an hour and a half? When he is about to leave, he has a revelation (while watching the security guard in the control room eat) and storms out.
Do-shik is talking to the jewelry-shop owner's wife, who is very, very drunk (in a restaurant) - and pretty much useless to talk to. So he talks to the restaurant ahjumma who is of the evil-chatty sort. The jewelry store owner recently married her, at the age of 60, and kicked out all the kids from his previous marriage that didn't like her. So he must have been really good to her, precious new bride that she was? Do-shik muses. Well, restaurant ahjumma replies, she really didn't know anything about Mr. Kim, who really was a stingy kind of fellow.
Min-ho calls the autopsy lady to ask what the victim's last meal was before he died. She looks it up for him: A hamburger and a soda. Oh wait ... Not shaved ice ... but hamburger and a soda? Yes, she confirms. Min-ho is super happy to have found something so important! It wasn't the deceased at the coffee shop, it was the murderer!! And Min-ho does this awesome little dance (and omg, the sounds he makes) ... when Do-shik steps out of the door and looks at him, his mouth open.
Haha, both are totally surprised to see each other there.
They go out into the center of the shopping mall to discuss. So there was another murder at this building, on the same day? Very interesting, they both think. The suspect of the sauna-case was at a coffee shop in this building for over an hour. Things start churning in Do-shik's head, and Min-ho whines that it's always Do-shik that gets the credit for solving cases. Do-shik gives him a look, and Min-ho stutters, yeah, well, he is also getting to the core of things here! It isn't fair! "Whatever", says Do-shik (and cracks me up again), "pretend you never saw me here, okay?"
Min-ho wants to know why, and Do-shik says: Cause I will be recognized "as a national" here (i.e. solving a crazy case, I'm guessing?)
He then asks ... or rather tells Min-ho to do him a favor. Do-shik has a suspect (the subs say victim) named
Hyun Ji-hye (and I am guessing that's the jewelry store victim's wife) and he orders Min-ho to find out all her call records and work records. Min-ho goes: "Ah, but I don't do stuff like that anymore". Do-shik gives him a look and says: "Then who is going to do it? --- Do it!"
And Min-ho caves immediately. lol.
Ji-hoon is interrogating the wife, Yang Sun-hwa, at their offices. Ye-ri is watching behind the one-way glass. Ji-hoon doesn't beat around the bush, as usual, and asks her if she hated her husband.
"Is that what the secretary said?", she counters with a sour expression on her face, "well, if I said everything was fine, it would be a lie. Truthfully, after the sauna incident, it was difficult to face my husband. I was trapped inside, but I kept seeing my husband step away. I wanted to resolve the matter soon."
Ji-hoon: "There are various ways to resolve this ... The day your husband died, what were you doing?"
Wife: "I was frustrated, so I went out for some fresh air."
Ji-hoon: "Of course, you went alone?"
Wife: "Am I the murder suspect?"
Ji-hoon: "That answer ... you can hear from your husband."
And he gives her the will. She is genuinely shocked when she reads is - and she demands to know what this means.
Ji-hoon says: "The wife is seeking happiness, but why would he die from fear and suffocation? Are you happy? Everyone you hate dies."
And there is a flashback to her clearly not very happy life, where her husband confronts her with the fact that everybody she hates dies. And he asks her: "Did you also hate our daughter?"
Ugh, what an asshole. How cruel is that??!
She gets up, declaring that there is no more reason for her to stay.
"We decide that", Ji-hoon counters. Yeah, woman. Learn who the master is here!
"I hope the suspect doesn't get caught", she fumes and stands up to leave anyway
(she says more here about bones and kids trampling over them but I didn't get it even after watching it five times so I'll just pretend it didn't happen)
He challenges her by asking whether she is running away? And she still didn't answer his question: "Are you happy right now?"
There is a long pause, and then she says, pained: "If the person you hate dies, do you think you'll be happy?"
One of the many moments in TEN2 when we are immediately reminded of Ji-hoon's own history.
The police-helper woman with the huge glasses (her name is
Eun-jung) is on the phone with Do-shik, who is calling from a noodle shop. He is still without mobile phone. She is giving him information on Hyun Ji-hye (the jewelry-shop guy's wife, as suspected). She took out a loan - quite a large amount! And there is something odd about her call records: There is one number, which appears on the list a few times. The strange thing about it is that it belongs to a grandmother who died 6 months ago. Do-shik calls it a "Soul phone", which is more famous than the "Cannon phone"
(and I have no idea what he is talking about) In any case, it is a number they cannot trace.
The owner of the noodle place, who has been fidgeting for the entire time, gets up and takes the phone out of Do-shik hands. It's time for order calls! he complains, and slams it down. At that very moment, the delivery boy (or rather, delivery man) comes in, his phone in hand.
Do-shik goes: "Give me your phone" and takes it.
He calls the 011 number he got from Eun-jung with it. The person at the other end tells him he has the wrong number. 10 seconds later, the delivery boy's phone rings. The guy at the other end, who thinks it's the delivery boy, asks how his injured arm is. Do-shik checks the arm of the delivery boy - there is a scar. (
Okay, I am confused about this. Is the delivery boy in cahoots with whoever the 011 belongs to? They seem to know him. But there is no follow-up to that scene and I am not sure).
Ye-ri is on the phone with Ji-hoon
(who is looking mighty fine again in this episode. I just needed to get that off my chest). They got the wife's alibi - and it's confirmed. She was far away, at a train station, where she was caught on surveillance tape. No doubt about it: she did not commit the murder herself.
Do-shik goes to find the widow of the Jewelry Victim. She is being injected with something (yikes!). When she hears that a police officer is there, she pretends to be asleep ... by snoring loudly. But Do-shik is persistent ... and wants to talk to Hyun Ji-hye about that extravagant spending of hers.
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this is when he calls her bluff by barking and frightening her
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Next, Do-shik goes to see a "friend" (informant?) who runs a boxing school. This looks semi-legal.
Half-moon is the name of the owner, and Do-shik wants to hear about a certain gang called Hit Lin. The information is not provided in the drama, but it seems pretty clear at this point that Hyun Ji-hye, the jewelry-widow, hired a hitman to get rid of her husband who didn't give her enough money (in the hope of inheriting his fortune, I am guessing). And Do-shik likely got that info from the delivery-boy, even though we do not see that he gets it. Half-moon knows that the Hit Lin are quite something: They came over from China, are professional killers and really dangerous. Half-moon suggests the culprit must have been living nearby, due to the knowledge he possessed about the location and the timing, and he warns Do-shik not to get involved.
The TEN Team minus the Viper is at the bunker-office. Min-ho is very impressed with himself for finding out about who it was at the café. He turns around, happy-puppy and full of glee, but Ji-hoon just stares at him blankly. Poor maknae ... Back to the facts. The suspect used Sung Jae-min's credit card at the coffee shop. Therefore, the crime started somewhere between Sung Jae-min's house and the coffee shop.
At that moment, Ji-hoon notices something in the surveillance footage. Sung Jae-min's car goes into the garage at 7:05 pm. At 7:09 pm, it comes out again. Rather fast: it seems to be when the scratch at the door happened. Min-ho comments that he must have been in a hurry, but Ji-hoon knows better: It wasn't Sung Jae-min driving, but it was most likely the suspect, who was unfamiliar with this car. So it seems he was waiting for the poor Attorney in the garage?! They go out to investigate there.
As soon as they've left, Do-shik comes in (through the exact same door they just exited one second before ... just a little bit unlikely he wouldn't have seen them!) wondering where everybody went. He calls over Eun-Jung (the police woman) to help him look for something.
They are at the garage at Sung's house, with his widow. Ji-hoon asks her if she knew the light was broken in here, but she counters that she doesn't go to the garage often, her husband did most of the driving. Ah, says Ji-hoon: so she isn't very good at driving? Ji-hoon imagines how the murderer, who hid in the dark, injected Sung with the toxin in the foot when he got out of the car, and then put him in the trunk once he was unconscious. But it couldn't have been the wife, Ye-ri whispers, she was somewhere very different. So who?
It must have been someone who knew Jae-min and his movements very well, Ji-hoon says. And he starts focusing on the neighbouring houses. There is something about the house just across the street that catches his eye.
Do-shik is looking through a pile of case files with the police-helper-woman. He knows that it is not very easy to change a style of murder. So he is looking at robbery cases that are unresolved. And he finds two that fit the pattern. He reads the dates of the murders/robberies: January 15, 2005. October 9, 2010. And Eun-jung goes ... "Oh? That is strange" ... and she runs into the conference room with the shiny white board, and points at the evidence there: the other deaths around Yang Sun-hwa also occurred on the exact same dates.
생엎과 작품활동 Occupation and Project Activity
Ji-hoon and his gang (minus Do-shik) check out the apartment across from Sung's house. The windows are shut with curtains, but when you remove them, you see right into Sung's home and garage. There are many pictures in the room, all in Modigliani-style. The guy who lived and painted there went on a business trip to China, the landlady informs them. Ye-ri, while looking at the pictures, realizes that she has seen one just like it in Yang Sun-hwa's house.
At this moment, Do-shik calls ... and tells them to come over right now.
Wow ... the TEN team is finally together again! *happydance* Do-shik explains to them that not one, but two men died on Friday ... One at the villa and one in the jewelry shop. In fact ... for every person that died around the weird wife, an additional person was killed for money (as in: based on a hitman assignment). The case is solved! Or at least almost. The murderer injected poison into Sung Jae-min's ankle, drove his car into the parking garage of the shopping mall, waited at the café for the right time, then committed the murder on Kim Kil-soo (the store owner), waited in the camera's blind spot until the movie ended, went up the stairs and out of the building with the crowd from the movie theater, went to the underground parking, lot rode Jae-min's car back to the villa, and killed Mr. Attorney in the sauna.
The only thing that remains unclear is
why he did not only kill people he was hired to kill but also people somewhat connected to the weird wife.
But they have all the information on the suspect now. He is 31 years old and is called
Do Sung-gyu. He is Korean-Chinese and currently in Korea on a student visa. For both murders in January 2005 and October 2010, there are records at the immigration office that he left for China. But Do-shik knows better: The Hit Lin are a professional and cunning organization; the ones that leave (with the passport) are decoys ... as soon as its confirmed that they are on record leaving the country, the hitman (as a ghost person) goes ahead with the murder.
Ji-hoon is at the house with the creepy woman. He wants to know from her who that man is that kills all the people she detests. But she seems to have no clue whatsoever. Ye-ri comes into the living room and hands Ji-hoon a painting ... it's the family, painted in Modigliani style.
His style. So: who painted it and when?
The widow recalls the day they got it painted, outside, in the Park below Namsan Tower. All we see of the painter are a pair of hateful eyes and the baseball cap ...
Ye-ri is doing research on Modigliani next and reads alound for us: "A painter that traps the soul, Modigliani. Feeling he was cursed, he called himself "Modi". Until he understood the depths of the soul, he couldn't draw the eyes of a person. The one person whose eyes he painted was his wife Jeanne. Although others couldn't understand, the one person who understood him was Jeanne."
And Ye-ri looks at the portrait of the wife, which is hanging there ... and it
has eyes. Oh wait ... So Yang Sun-hwa was Do Sung-gyu's Jeanne?!
Min-ho, who is at the suspect's studio with Do-shik, gets a phone call. It is someone who is asking for Detective Baek. And who might he be, Min-ho demands to know. It is Half-moon! How did he get this number? Do-shik wants to know, never dare to call again! But Half-moon has important news. The Broker related to that "Errand Center" is gone (i.e. the one that coordinated the Hit Lin). In order to erase all the hitmans' tracks, there are ten guys going around the area, tracking them down and killing them.
This is a dangerous situation. So there are ten guys after Do Sung-gyu now, to kill him and to erase his tracks. And isn't it still strange ... Do Sung-gyu is the suspect for a set of double-murders, but the two cases are so very different, Ji-hoon says. One is because of money. What is the other?
He smiles a little as he wonders: "Is it love?"
And he says: "We'll have to make him come to us"
Oh no. That again? That's like the most dangerous form for criminal catching!
Yang Sun-hwa is crying. She doesn't understand, why would someone do that? Why would he single her out? She doesn't know this guy! And she freaks out, shouting at Ji-hoon to find that man. Fast! Yes, this man was around her for too long, Ji-hoon says. And he murdered the people she hated for free. Now, that man has nowhere to go. But he will probably show up again in front of her. And he gives her a note. With a phone number on it (not sure exactly what type of number it is, but it must have something to do with him and I am guessing he suggests her to call him?)
At the office, Do-shik is imploring Ji-hoon that they need to find him before the others do, quickly! But Ji-hoon is confident that he will show up. For Do-shik, this doesn't make sense, this "love". Yes, I agree, it is insane. But Ji-hoon knows it is going to work. They all storm out, and a frustrated Do-shik runs after them.
There are many police stooges in the park at the foot of Namsan Tower. The TEN team (minus Ye-ri) is waiting in a darkened car. Ji-hoon is annoyed: why isn't he showing up yet? Is it possible the culprit isn't coming? Min-ho's phone rings... strange/bad news! Do Sung-gyu was found dead ... he died falling out of a boat pulling into Incheon Port. Yes, he confirms, coming
into, not going out. Uh-oh ... Do-shik believes that now that this guy is officially dead, nothing can stop them from killing the real Do Sung-gyu.
Ye-ri is at the studio, talking to herself ... all these portraits without eyes ... But it's not about where they are looking, says Ye-ri, but he, as the painter, is avoiding their gazes. He can't make eye contact. Is it out of fear? she wonders. There is a cracked mirror there, on a small table. She mumbles "his awful self-complexion" ... looks at PET bottles full of cigarette butts, and says "Insomnia".
The wife is looking at a photo album, full of pictures of herself, her girl, and her husband. She talks to her dead girl and that having to protect her gave her something to live for - now that the child is dead, she has nothing. Suddenly, she remembers something ... she picks up a photo of Do Sung-gyu that the police has left her.
At that moment, Ye-ri fiddles around with the lights in Do Sung-gyu's room. Then, she lies down on his bed. Ha, she still has her shoes on! There is something underneath the pillow ... yikes, it's a long blade, all bloody! And she adds ... "and nervousness". And she jerks up, having heard something!
It is the garage door opening: Yang Sun-hwa is leaving! She calls Ji-hoon immediately - and they all go after the woman.
The car stops in an area full of garbage littered backalleys. The wife disappears to the right, just as Ye-ri gets there. She chooses the left alley. Wroooooong, Ye-ri!
Everybody else also gets there, too. They all run to the left but Do-shik, who also chooses the alley to the right.
We are back in alley-land where this episode started. Yang Sun-hwa is walking passed our culprit, who is sitting there, in the dark. He turns his head, slowly ... then he gets up and walks out into the open. She slowly turns.
Ye-ri, who runs and runs, passes a man ... and stops still. She turns around and sees that he is carrying a long knife, half-hidden behind his arm. And she goes after him.
Yang Sun-hwa breathes heavily, half-crying, when the faux Modigliani turns away from her, towards his attacker, who has appeared in the alley they are standing in. He starts walking towards him. Ye-ri arrives. And she sees how the new-comer stabs Do Sung-gyu, deeply into the abdomen. Do Sung-gyu, who pulled something out of his jacket, doesn't resist one bit - in fact, he even seems to press the knife in deeper. He falls to his knees.
Yang Sun-hwa screams and the attacker runs away, just as the police arrives. Finally! Took you a while, boys, huh? Ye-ri hovers over the fallen man, pressing the fatal wound in his stomach, while the rest pursues the attacker ... who suddenly gets thrown back ... by Do-shik, who steps out of the shadows. They arrest the attacker. Ye-ri calls an ambulance, holding what Do Sung-gyu was holding, but it seems hopeless. Poor Do Sung-gyu, our Korean Modigliani, dies on the street.
We are at the investigation room, with Yang Sun-hwa and Ye-ri. Why did Do Sung-gyu go there, Ye-ri wants to know (As opposed to the other place where everybody was waiting, I guess). And how did
you know to go there? Yang Sun-hwa says that she remembered something when she was looking at her daughter's pictures. There was a day, when Hye-jin was really sick. On that night, she pounded at the doors of the closed pharmacy, barely able fo buy medicine. That was the night when she first met him.
And we are taken back to the exact same scene we saw at the beginning of this episode, where he holds her tight. He says: "Tonight, for the first time, I held a knife against somebody." (and I guess it means it is the first time he killed for the Hit Lin?)
"Now, I don't have anywhere to go", he continues and he puts his hand on her thigh, moving up.
She says: "Please get over with it quickly ... My child is really sick."
He falters and looks down at her hands, in which she clutches the medicine that she got for her daughter. And he lets her go, all strength sapped out of him. His knife falls to the ground.
She walks away, without turning back, and he collapses to the ground. There is a poster of a Modigliani exhibition hanging there. She starts to turn around, but he quickly jumps behind the corner, hiding from her view.
She bows and says: "Thank you."
He sits there, shaken by her words, head against the Modigliani poster ... and then he peaks around the corner, watching her walk away.
Ye-ri explains to her that "Modi" only painted the eyes of one person - of his wife Jeanne, the only person who understood his journey. And this was the painting Do Sung-gyu held onto when he died: It is another portrait of Yang Sun-hwa, with eyes.
"Because of the one phrase that you said in the midst of his cursed life, you became his Jeanne. When you were in pain, he was in pain with you. In order for him to live, he had to make sure that you were happy".
And we get to see what happened between the two before he was knifed. We hear his voice, in his head: "I don't know why she said that. But for me, from my trashed life, those were the first and last words I heard: Thank you. I wanted to protect until the end, your happiness."
She appears in the alley. He comes out, shily, looking at her.
He says: "Im sorry. I might not be able to protect you anymore."
And he puts his hand into his jacket (to pull out the new portrait, I guess to give her).
But she starts screaming at him: "As you tried to protect me, when people left my life one by one, I became more miserable. And now, I don't even have hope to dream for happiness! How can you ... how can you think like that!"
His dream world shatters. He is devestated, completely taken aback. And he turns ... and sees the man they sent to kill him. He turns his head to the right, briefly, contemplaiting escape ... but then walks, almost runs towards his certain death.
Min-ho sighs: He did all that for her, but he was probably the person she hated most. Among all this death, there is no happiness.
And from his office above, Ji-hoon watches.
Husband-killer wife is led away in handcuffs. All right, that was random: but justice is served!
The attacker is also being interrogated. He is sobbing. He has two younger sisters at home, and is in a very desperate situation since their parents left them. He was ordered by the Hit Lin to kill.
Min-ho brings Do-shik a new phone, but he is not at his desk. Min-ho places it there, carefully. thi svery moment, Do-shik is leaving the office and Ji-hoon watches him go. And Ye-ri is watching him.
Do-shik is cowering behind a dog cage in a shop window. There is a super cute fluffy white dog inside. He says "She said she had a rough job". A girl comes to sit next to him, looks at the dog and says: "Isn't she cute?"
And Do-shik says: "Yes, she is" (looking at something completely different ... of course, it's his lady from the blind date, who is busy taking care of animals inside.)
"Don't you want to take her home?"
"I want to take her home right now", is Detective Baek's answer.
"Really?", says the school girl excited and runs into the shop, "Mom! There's a man who said he'd take the dog!"
Do-shik is slightly confused, but not for long ... we next see him inside, where he gets a band-aid from her for a cut on his forehead. He says he really likes dogs, but he does not have the confidence to take care of one. She corrects him, while she puts ointment on his wound: "It's not taking care of one; it's living with one."
"Human beings are really strange", Do-shik says, "they leave simple happiness and look for complicated sadness".
She doesn't get it (and I will have to think about it a bit longer, too), but then he askes: "You have a daughter?"
"Yes", she says simply.
He keeps on smiling smittenly and says "I see".
Final Thoughts
Recapping this episode helped me to make sense of many things that seemed to be unclear after I first watched it. And still, some confusion remains. I guess it has to do with our Korean Modigliani and the difficulty I have with relating to him. Sure, he had a very hard life, I get that, and he was made a killer (relucantly? we are not given any indicators why he became one; though I'm guessing from the "attacker's" confession that this is meant to give us insights into the desperation in these people's lives, leaving them with little choices). Sure, this woman somewhat touched him in his darkest hour ... but still. You have to be batshit crazy to kill people for somebody else just because you think it will make them happy. Or is this the point? He was batshit crazy and mistook love for hate. And I guess, it teaches us that no love can come out of death? Which is pretty common knowledge I'd say.
That said, I mentioned in the beginning that I feel this episode is mainly about Do-shik. I still do, but I remain puzzled by the message in relation to his character. He is the one looking for love (ergo the blind date). He may be somewhat stating his adoration for her when he talks about dogs, but also talks about his insecurity at the same time, because he does not have the confidence to take care of another living being. Her words "it is not taking care of one, it is living with one" could be read as encouragement: this is not a one-sided thing. If two creatures share a living space, it is not one taking care of the other, but it is always both that are implied. In other words: don't worry, this is not all on you. I also think that that sentence of his "Human beings are really strange: they leave simple happiness and look for complicated sadness", seems to be a key. But I do not fully understand it. Does he mean we should not look too far for happiness?
Finally, this is also the episode that brings him back to the TEN team, in circles, but still. It is a different kind of love the team member share, but it fits the overall topic. These people care about each other deeply but also cautiously. They all do not have family, really, but only each other. And I think both Do-shik and Ji-hoon get it now: they are in it together. And there is a kind of happiness to be found in doing what they have been doing, in solving cases together, by helping each other.
