Flower of Evil 악의 꽃 - Episode 7 (Recap)
kakashi: I wouldn't want Ji-won as my enemy. She's damn scary.
JoAnne: She IS, isn't she. I still think there's something about her we don't know.
Episode 7
Summer of 2005, Hyun-su wakes up in a bed he doesn't know. He's bandaged and everything hurts, his leg seems broken or thereabouts. He makes it out of the bedroom and gets to a living area that is familiar to us - he's at the Baek residence, the large family photo on the wall shows the real Baek Hee-sung. Once in ae dressing room, he hastily grabs valuables... and that's when mother and father Baek find him. Dr. Baek Man-Woo is carrying a tray full of bloody gauze. ... and we still don't know what happened to Baek Hee-sung who his lying behind that door.
Oh wait I think I missed that part - you mean that the two things happened pretty much same time? Like the reason son brought home the fake son (to be) and then shortly after, something happened and he ended up like that? YES! Hmmm.
In the present, Ji-won looks at her sleeping husband. The night before, they made love and Ji-won shed a lonely tear. Gazing at him she thinks that she wants only one thing from him: a reason to forgive him. After he wakes up, Ji-won hands him a new watch, all smiles.
This woman 100% knows that he is Do Hyun Su, but she isn't sure whether he killed people or not. So she's going to live next to him, trying to figure that out. Balls of STEEL. It would be one thing to think 'okay, he's this other guy and he's been hiding that from me, but based on what I know about him he can't possibly be a murderer, I'm going to prove him innocent with my super detecting skills.' NO. This is 'Okay, he's this other guy and I know he's been wonderful to me and our daughter but I wonder if he's also murderer, better go investigate.' That's just...mind-boggling.
Hyun-Su isn't the only faker in that house, I'm just saying. Ji Won's gotta have a back story.
I was thinking she just ran away, but now....
Moo Jin, every time I want to think you've gotten better you just fuck it all up.
Once back at the office, Ji-won gets the duffle bag from her locker and listens to the tape. We don't get to hear what's on it (of course, show, always keeping secrets). She confirms with Nam-gil's widow and the restaurant owner that Hyun-su was super obsessed with the recorder even as an adult, and would get violent when someone touched it.
Hyun-su is still puzzling over that background noise when Ji-won comes into his workshop... with his old duffle bag. Man, Ji-won is really going for it, isn't she? She informs him she is going to catch Do Hyun-su - poor Hyun-su manages to keep his straight, smiling face, but we see that he is extremely nervous. Ji-won wants her husband's "help" - there's a sketchbook with metal work in the bag.
That evening, Ji-won forces her husband to watch part of Moo-jin's exclusive. When asked whether he wants to hear the accomplice's voice, Hyun-su declines, saying it would only make him squeamish. As soon as she's gone to bed, he listens to it a thousand times though and then calls Moo-jin - who is in an upscale karaoke place with live musicians - to tell him that something in that recording caught his attention (a background noise). But Moo-jin is an extra huge ass to him, no longer ready to help him with the search.
Jerk. Can't you see Do Hyun Su is an actual sweetheart? Why won't you HELP him?
At the police station, the question is which team will get to investigate the old serial killer case. "Our" team 3 is currently working a ... lettuce thief case. Pffft. But Ji-won is investigating something on her own... her husband's past! She goes to the place where he got counseling as a kid and watches a tape on which he admits to the killing of a dog. The case file said "depressed and aggressive". On a second tape, she sees how 13 year old Hyun-su beat someone up because he touched his cassette player.
I'll admit, that doesn't look good. But I have faith.
Now I'm very curious. Is it proof about something?
She's scarier than he could ever think about being.
On the stairs, he notices the pungent blood smell and it clearly makes him sick. Once they're down below, she starts playing his tape (it's a woman's voice humming a song!), watching him very closely. She must be expecting a violent reaction, thinking: "Do Hyun-su, show your real self." Instead, he is hugely uncomfortable when she continues talking about what his father did down here. When she then says that the restaurant owner is about to meet them here (we later find out she told him to go to a different place), the panic attack begins.
We are fooled to believe he might become violent against his wife (not really fooled), but he's simply panicking. He falls to his knees, unable to breathe and finally showing a bit of compassion, she helps him outside. Gosh, he's in bad shape... and she rightfully asks herself whether she might have pushed him too far. Yes, I'd say! That was extremely cruel, but I guess she still thinks he is a murderer... That night in bed, Hyun-su thinks back to what Dr. Baek said this morning: he wants Hyun-su to promise that he will disappear without a trace if his identity is close to being exposed.
Would he be able to find out who Hyun-su might be due to these sketches? No way, Hyun-su says. He'd need to be able to see his actual work. What a smooth liar. There's even a piece right behind Ji-won that is sketched in the notebook!!!
My heart cannot take this.
It's probably right where Ji-won wanted him - because next, she asks him to accompany him to Do Min-suk's workshop, where she thinks they'll find Hyun-su's original artwork. Right now. And because she asked him to spend time with her this afternoon earlier, he cannot even claim to be busy. Once she has left to get the car, Hyun-su has something that could be a panic attack or signs of a heart condition.
The thing that scares him most is her finding out who he is. I do not think it's because 'she keeps his father away' - I think he loves his life and has no desire to jeopardize it. It's not like he's out there killing people and using his family as a cover. He's genuinely in that life.
Hae-su appears in Moo-jin's office. Oh dear, he still harbors feelings for her, doesn't he? They go to a café and it's super awkward. Besides, there's a reporter who keeps stalking Hae-su, so she suggests a more private location. They go to Kim Moo-jin's place and the awkwardness continues... he is trying very hard to be nice (cause he's guilty of what he told her when they broke up). But when he calls her a victim and says mean things about Hyun-su, she reveals the truth: SHE is the one who murdered that foreman. And Hyun-su took the fall for it to protect her.
OOPS. How do you like THOSE apples, Moo Jin?
Ji-won and Hyun-su arrive at his former house. It's all super creepy and sad and my heart breaks for the boy Hyun-su once was and the man he became. Ji-won breaks into the workshop and they look at an old piece that Hyun-su likely made. Hyun-su calls it an amateur's doing - impossible to say what kind of work Hyun-su would do today. He might think he's getting off the hook with this but Ji-won insists on going to have a look at the crime scene in the basement.
Well that won't be pleasant at all, will it.
I don't think it would really still smell of blood a decade later - that must have been in his head. A woman? Was that his mother or his sister? Were they the crazy ones?
I cannot even imagine the stress this poor man is feeling, and the pain, too. 
When Hyun-su thinks Ji-won is asleep, he leaves to visit Kim Moo-jin (who told him not to call - hence the personal visit, hahaha). "Help me find my sister, I need to meet her," Hyun-su says. As token of his goodwill, he returns the tape with the incriminating material to Moo-jin. And... we realize that there is a tracker in the watch that Ji-won gave her husband this morning.
I think we should have suspected that from the start, Kakashi. But I'll admit I did not.
Other important bits: 
Out of the blue, Ji-won's mother drops off little Eun-ha with her scary grandma at the pharmacy (her name is Gong Mi-Ja, by the way). She won't take no for an answer and just walks out. Granny Mi-Ja has a super scary fit when she sees the advanced math book that Eun-ha is working with. She even rips pages out! Eun-ha's tears seem to touch her though and she takes the girl to eat an egg tart. We realize she isn't evil at all. It's quite the opposite. Clearly someone who cares deeply.
This woman does confuse me. She's wound SUPER tight but it seems it's fear and anxiety. Does she even want to be in this charade?
Comments
What an interesting episode. We learnt quite a bit more about our protagonists. First of all, Ji-won: she is still hoping she doesn't have to hate her husband (for being a lying murderer) but she pushes him so very hard this episode! Taking him to his father's basement and playing the cassette is the ultimate trigger. We feel sorry for Hyun-su only because we know he is deeply traumatized and hasn't killed anyone but from Ji-won's perspective, she only knows he is violent, lying, probably a murderer and serial killer accomplice. I hated her for hurting him like this, but I liked the twist with the watch. Of course she'd think of that.
I think her suspicions are reasonable but I also think it's kind of weird. Wouldn't it be normal to look at your years with someone and rush to defend them, insist that there's no way? But she isn't doing that. It's clear that it causes her pain, but she's willing to entertain the idea that he's really a murderer, right from the start. That's not because she's a detective, either. That's something about her, personally. Is she just super objective? I really don't think that explains it. I am very curious about you, Ji Won.
I'm worried about Hyun-su and his sudden panic attacks (I'm calling them that even though it could really be a heart condition). Clearly, and as we said before, losing his life with his wife and his daughter is the ultimate threat to him - and everything is pointing in the direction of this going to happen very soon.
All I can say is it better be panic attacks because giving this guy a heart condition on top of everything else would just be one thing too many and I'd have to call out the writer for going too far.
Kim Moo-jin: I waver between despising him and then liking him again. His new fame gives him the guts to tell Hyun-su to go f himself; but his sister brings him right back into the story and this family's horrible past. It's interesting that Hae-su apologizes to him, by the way - she thinks that they did him wrong. He used to be their friend after all and he must have been horribly shocked by all this.
Oooh, he was friends with BOTH of them...interesting. Imagine being close to a family - friends with the son, in love with the daughter, and then finding out something so horrible. Would you be afraid you were in danger all that time? Angry that they 'lied'? Embarrassed that you hadn't noticed anything, or that they had made a fool of you? Worried that other people would think YOU were suspicious, too?
The biggest surprise in this episode was the bit with Hyun-su's "mother" though. She is capable of deep feelings and quite clearly likes little Eun-ha dearly. She has a trauma involving her real son's math genius, the way she reacted to Eun-ha's math talent... hm, I wonder what happened here. Apart from not knowing who the accomplice was, we still have no clue why the real Beak Hee-sung ended up in a coma (though we were given the impression it's his mother's fault).
I really need the coma story soon. It's killing me. I need to know it and put it away so I can focus on the big story.
What if... it IS the big story?