Post by humblestudent2 on Oct 4, 2007 1:25:38 GMT -5
Episode 17 recap
Begins about midnight (Thursday morning), May 3, Day 25
“You look insane”
Soon-ki has just died in the warehouse; Seung-ha has just used Soon-ki’s phone to send Oh-soo a picture of Soon-ki’s dead, bloody face. He leaves the phone by the body and walks off; the phone, still turned on, rings futilely as Oh-soo tries to return the call.
Oh-soo, who was outside Seok-jin’s apartment building and thinks that Soon-ki and Seok-jin are both inside, dashes upstairs and finds Yeong-cheol, still knocking on the door and bemoaning the fact that nobody is there, and still being surveilled by Jae-min and Min-jae who are hiding around a corner. Oh-soo frantically accosts Yeong-cheol, demanding what he has done with Soon-ki, as his astonished team comes out of hiding. He punches the passcode into the telephone-type number pad and gets into the apartment – it’s completely empty.
He comes out and manhandles Yeong-cheol and shoves him up against the wall, demanding to know where his friends are. Yeong-cheol says he doesn’t know what he’s talking about – “you look insane to me.” Oh-soo tells his team (well, they aren’t his team at the moment, since he’s been suspended from the force – but I forget that and everyone else mostly forgets that too) to trace the location of Soon-ki’s cell phone. As the elevator doors close on them, Yeong-cheol suddenly flashes Oh-soo a broad, triumphant grin.
Seung-ha, who is long gone from the crime scene by now, eats his customary piece of peppermint candy. It seems to be getting a bit stale; he doesn’t seem as happy this time.
In the police car, with the team trying to find the location of Soon-ki’s phone, Oh-soo tries to call Seok-jin but his phone is turned off. (He is out by the river, holding hands one last time with Na-heui.)
Well, in short order they find the warehouse and burst in and find Soon-ki’s body in the middle of a vast expanse of floor. Oh-soo bends over him and yells at Soon-ki to “Wake up, you'll be fine,” tries CPR on him, but his habitual optimism in these matters is even more misplaced than the other times – Soon-ki’s awful bloody face is just plain dead, and the other two cops know it. Jae-min tries to talk sense to Oh-soo and haul him off the body but Oh-soo fights him violently and is just about berserk.
The police evidence team arrives and picks up the handkerchief which Heui-soo deposited by the body. Oh-soo, dazed, remembers Soon-ki’s last solicitous words to him. In a fog, he stumbles out of the warehouse, then runs out to the cop car, throws off Min-jae again, steals the car (he’s not on the force, he should NOT be driving it) and speeds off to Oh Seung-ha’s apartment.
“The man in the tunnel”
Seung-ha is engaged in his usual hobby of surveying the city from his window when his bell starts ringing wildly and then there is pounding on the door. Wearily, he goes to the door and opens it, whereupon Oh-soo immediately slugs him and shoves him across the room and up against the wall, screaming at him and asking how far he will go and asking where Seok-jin is (part of Oh-soo’s craziness, bear in mind, is that he thinks Seok-jin is likely to be dead as well) and demanding that he confess
"I am Jeong Tae-seong and I arranged everything," Seung-ha says matter-of-factly – then (still in Oh-soo’s clutches) smirks and says, “That’s what you'd like me to say?”
“Yes, say that!” babbles Oh-soo, but Seung-ha is not to be buffaloed. “I'm not the murderer,” he says. “You are the murderer,” and then he lectures Oh-soo on how devastating it is to lose one’s entire family as Tae-seong did. They go on for a while, Oh-soo talking about how sorry he is about Tae-hoon, and that he had no intention of killing him, and begging Seung-ha not to hurt Seok-jin, and Seung-ha coldly rejecting everything Oh-soo says, telling him that “You did nothing to tell the truth” and “The guilty don't have the right to ask for forgiveness” (a harsh doctrine; who does, in that case?). Oh-soo leaves, promising to “get you with my own hands”, and then goes off to the pedestrian lane of the highway tunnel (same place Seung-ha went after Joon-p’yo’s sago) and cries and yells and bangs his head rhythmically on the tiled wall as if he has completely lost his mind.
.
Around 2 AM, Hae-in gets a phone call from Min-Jae, who is trying to find out what happened to Oh-soo (and the police car, I guess!!). Hae-in hasn’t heard from him. Min-jae says that his friend died, and Kang-seonbae is taking it very badly. Queried by Hae-in, she informs her that he seems to have been beaten to death in a warehouse (of course Hae-in foresaw the beating in her dream the previous night).
Also, around this time, Seok-jin gets home, puts car his in the garage; and heads upstairs. (The guy from before comes out and fiddles with the car, presumably removing whatever he installed earlier in the evening. But this time someone takes his photo…..) When Seok-jin gets upstairs, he finds Jae-min standing in front of the door of his apartment, facing the other way, and inattentive enough that if Seok-jin were a murderer himself he could easily kill the guy. Jae-min tells him his friend has been killed.
As the long night draws to an end, about 6 AM, Heui-soo shows up at the airport, all dressed for golf, ready to take a plane back to Jeju and show up at the course and pretend to have been on Jeju this whole time. He presents a forged ID to the check-in clerk, with his picture and someone else’s name. (He also gets his picture taken by someone unseen.)
Min-jae eventually finds Oh-soo in the interrogation room at police headquarters – it’s not clear that he got any sleep. ("What happened to your forehead?" she asks.) He doesn’t respond to Hae-in’s concerned voicemail.
“The First 24 (I)”
The investigation into Soon-ki’s death proceeds through the day, with Oh-soo pretty much functioning as part of the team the whole time. It comes out early on that the beating didn’t cause Soon-ki’s death. The doctors say that his heart and lungs show signs of poison. Anyway, cyanide is found in the cigarette butt.
The examiner puts the time of death at somewhere between 10:30 PM and midnight. The team can narrow it down further; it had to be before 11:40, because that was when the image was sent to Oh-soo’s cell phone. At this point Oh-soo recalls talking with Seok-jin and being assured by him that he and Soon-ki were both at home; that call was at 11:03.
Seok-jin now is questioned by Ban and Min-jae. He says he last saw Soon-ki the previous morning, and only assumed he was at home asleep when he talked with Oh-soo. He says he was indeed at home when he talked with Oh-soo, but went out for a drive after that. Was he with anyone? No, he says nervously, he was alone the whole time. Ban shows him the handkerchief with his initials; he says Soon-ki must have taken it, that he was always using his stuff. Afterward, Ban and Min-jae agree that he looks like he’s hiding something, and she will check his phone records and traffic control cameras in the area.
Oh-soo talks with Seok-jin and warns him that the “mastermind” is setting him up – the handkerchief was planted, Yeong-cheol went to the house, and probably even more evidence will turn up. Seok-jin needs an alibi! Also, he wants to know what he and Soon-ki have been hiding from him this whole time. However, Seok-jin stands pat. He went for a drive by himself – that’s his story.
(Meanwhile, Hwang Dae-bil is hanging around outside the station; he thinks of making a phone call; but then he just takes off.)
Just to spice matters up, another t’aekbae now arrives at the police station for Oh-soo. This time the red envelope contains two photos of Oh-soo, one as a police cadet, and the other outside the police station in 2004, on the day of his transfer there. Oh-soo brings out the earlier two photos that he got in Episode 2 or so and makes a little series out of them.1
Oh-soo calls up Kwang-doo, hopeful that more evidence about Tae-seong’s identity might have turned up, but that old man is still pretty sick. Oh-soo is getting desperate and is talking about communicating with him using eye blinks and stuff. “I can’t prove who he is even though he’s right in front of me,” he tells Kwang-doo.
Oh-soo then heads over to Hwang Dae-bil’s place and finds him there and begs him to talk, describing what agonies he has gone through over the years because of not telling the truth 12 years ago. But it’s no good: “I have nothing to say,” says Dae-bil.
“The Lawyer and his Clients”
Meanwhile Seung-ha is having a busy day. He started it off by appearing in defense of Jeong-yeon in the case of Dae-shik’s death. Seated in the court were a few of Dae-shik’s relatives and associates. He makes the case that when Jeong-yeon went over to his office she had no intention of killing him, but only wanted to recover her daughter whom she thought he had kidnapped. (In the course of this argument for mercy, he finds himself unexpectedly troubled by memories of Oh-soo’s pleas for mercy and claims to have not intended to kill Tae-hoon. He loses his train of thought for a moment, and wakes up only on being verbally prodded by the judge.)
Later he goes over to talk to the Kangs about their job offer. Heui-soo has now come back from Jeju (you know what they say about coming back from vacation more tired than when you left) and is being grilled by the Congressman who was also out of town that day and is thoroughly unhappy with events. Heui-soo assures his dad that Soon-ki’s death has “nothing to do with us.” The Congressman is worried that someone is trying to set them up, and orders Heui-soo to see if Secretary Na “made mistakes”.
Now Seung-ha arrives. He is of a mind to join the hotel’s legal staff, but has two conditions. The first is that he can keep his own practice going; Heui-soo rejects this but the Congressman immediately overrules him. The second is that if a case is referred to him, he has to be given all the information about it; there will be no holding back. The Congressman agrees but reminds him that he has to remember who his client is.
After Seung-ha leaves, Heui-soo gets an account of events from Seok-jin. Seok-jin assures him that he didn’t leave the incriminating handkerchief there himself – someone is trying to frame him, and Oh-soo thinks it’s the same person who sent the tarot cards. (Heui-soo notes this point with interest – and, we suppose, concern.) Seok-jin admits that he doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder. Heui-soo assures him that even if the police find out about the beating, “I’ll do everything to help you.”
After this conversation, Seok-jin calls Boss Kyeon and assures him that someone killed Soon-ki after both of them left, but that he should hide out somewhere. Kyeon, after the call is over, murmurs the name “Oh Seung-ha.”
“The First 24 (II)”
Oh-soo goes back to the station, where he finds that there have been new and disturbing developments. Seok-jin’s cell phone records show that he talked with Boss Kyeon three times before the murder, and the last call was made from near the warehouse, and Kyeon was also near the warehouse. Oh-soo takes off again to talk with Seok-jin. (On his way out, he brushes by Ban’s own boss. The chief asks Ban, “Don’t you know he’s on suspension?” Ban humbly replies, “But that doesn’t mean he can’t come in the station,” and reassures him that the rumors that he’s still working the case are all wrong!)
(Outside the station, Oh-soo runs into Hae-in, whose calls he has been avoiding all day and who has now come down to the station to make sure he’s okay. “You have to be strong and be a good detective,” she says. “I’m not a good detective,” he answers grimly.)
Seok-jin is at home, reliving the nightmare of the beating and Soon-ki’s cries for mercy, when Oh-soo bursts in on him and angrily demands that he tell him the truth. Why was he at the warehouse? Why did he talk with Kyeon? Seok-jin, frightened, tells him that he and Kyeon just wanted to meet Soon-ki to “persuade him”, but just talked with him at the warehouse because “Soon-ki wanted to meet me there”. Oh-soo has no time to explore the holes in this shabby story, because Min-jae calls him – according to d-addicts, the cell phone ID shows Min-jae as “wife”, which is a humorous bit if they have it right – and tells him that a team is coming out with a search warrant to check Seok-jin’s tires for traces of mud and such, and Chief Ban wants him out of there.
“Am I not human?”
Ill at ease, thinking both about his past and about Oh-soo’s piteous arguments, Seung-ha does something uncharacteristic: he invites his office manager out for a drink, and, once in the bar, actually drinks something. Kwang-doo remarks on how unusual this is. “I’ve never seen you drink,” he says. “Even when you go out for drinks, you never drink.” “I don’t like being drunk,” Seung-ha says. “You’re so perfect,” Kwang-doo teases. “Drinking makes you feel more human.” “You’re saying I’m not human?” asks Seung-ha. “You’re very good at managing yourself,” replies Kwang-doo.
The conversation turns to Oh-soo, for whom Kwang-doo expresses some sympathy. “Nobody can understand Jeong Tae-seong without experiencing what he experienced,” objects Seung-ha. “If I were Jeong Tae-seong, I couldn’t forgive Kang Oh-soo.”
Kwang-doo, with some insight, points out that the whole trouble is that both Oh-soo and Tae-seong were adolescents – 17 and 16 – at the time of the original incident. Oh-soo was unable to act properly, and Tae-seong was unable to process things properly, “more hurt and unable to forgive.” If Tae-seong had been an adult, he wouldn’t have gone so far as to murder people. Both of them are stuck at the age of 16 and 17.
It’s not clear how drunk Seung-ha actually gets after this, but he does go by Hae-in’s place and hang out wordlessly in the street. Hae-in notices his presence and calls out to him; initially he turns to go, but when she follows him, he goes up to her and abruptly hugs her! Hae-in is startled by this, but then hugs him back. At least she starts to. But he pulls away, and stalks off, not having said a word throughout the whole encounter! (What a weird date! Between this and the vomiting business, it seems like it ought to be enough to scare the heck out of her, even if you leave aside all the mastermind business. But some women enjoy rescuing guys with issues. Look at Faust and Gretchen, for example.)
“The First 24 (III)
In the morning, the police get a new break. A traffic control camera near the warehouse caught Seok-jin’s car speeding. Jae-min and Min-jae go to the hotel and serve an arrest warrant on Seok-jin; they cuff him as Heui-soo looks on balefully and bring him in. Kyeon has evaded the net. They are still analyzing the mud from Seok-jin’s tires.
Seok-jin tells Oh-soo, “I didn’t do it – trust me!” Oh-soo does, and tells Ban that Seok-jin is being framed. Ban says he needs to come up with some evidence. The questioning doesn’t get very far; Seok-jin says he wants to talk with his attorney. Of course, when the attorney arrives it is that well-known defense counsel Oh Seung-ha. Oh-soo can’t believe this; this is the last straw; he has a fit – “I won’t let you do this! Who hired you?” Seung-ha tells him it was Kang Heui-soo.
Meanwhile, while Hae-in was looking at the music box that Seung-ha gave her mother as a present, she had a vision of the old man. Again she saw his lips move wordlessly – but this time the sounds eventually arrive – “My name is Seung-ha. That’s what he said.”
During the night she has thought about the implications of all this a lot. In the morning, she impulsively decides to blow off work and instead goes out to visit Soo-gon. As she gets out to his property – I suppose she took a bus? – he rides up on his bicycle. She asks when he met Seung-ha. It was 12 years ago, when he was 16. Does he have any pictures of him from that time? By coincidence he does; he has one that he found recently (in Episode 11) which he has just had framed and has just now picked up from the framer. He pulls the wrapping off the picture and shows it to Hae-in. The boy on the right – the future lawyer Seung-ha – is immediately recognizable as the boy she met in her old neighborhood; the boy she saw in her vision while reading the “Swords” cards; the boy whom Oh-soo has said may be Jeong Tae-seong.
End of episode – Friday morning, May 4, Day 26.
(1) There is some more fooling around with these pictures, and talk of a finger pointing at Oh-soo, but you know what? I'm not convinced that these pictures are important. If I find out I'm wrong, I'll let you know.
Begins about midnight (Thursday morning), May 3, Day 25
“You look insane”
Soon-ki has just died in the warehouse; Seung-ha has just used Soon-ki’s phone to send Oh-soo a picture of Soon-ki’s dead, bloody face. He leaves the phone by the body and walks off; the phone, still turned on, rings futilely as Oh-soo tries to return the call.
Oh-soo, who was outside Seok-jin’s apartment building and thinks that Soon-ki and Seok-jin are both inside, dashes upstairs and finds Yeong-cheol, still knocking on the door and bemoaning the fact that nobody is there, and still being surveilled by Jae-min and Min-jae who are hiding around a corner. Oh-soo frantically accosts Yeong-cheol, demanding what he has done with Soon-ki, as his astonished team comes out of hiding. He punches the passcode into the telephone-type number pad and gets into the apartment – it’s completely empty.
He comes out and manhandles Yeong-cheol and shoves him up against the wall, demanding to know where his friends are. Yeong-cheol says he doesn’t know what he’s talking about – “you look insane to me.” Oh-soo tells his team (well, they aren’t his team at the moment, since he’s been suspended from the force – but I forget that and everyone else mostly forgets that too) to trace the location of Soon-ki’s cell phone. As the elevator doors close on them, Yeong-cheol suddenly flashes Oh-soo a broad, triumphant grin.
Seung-ha, who is long gone from the crime scene by now, eats his customary piece of peppermint candy. It seems to be getting a bit stale; he doesn’t seem as happy this time.
In the police car, with the team trying to find the location of Soon-ki’s phone, Oh-soo tries to call Seok-jin but his phone is turned off. (He is out by the river, holding hands one last time with Na-heui.)
Well, in short order they find the warehouse and burst in and find Soon-ki’s body in the middle of a vast expanse of floor. Oh-soo bends over him and yells at Soon-ki to “Wake up, you'll be fine,” tries CPR on him, but his habitual optimism in these matters is even more misplaced than the other times – Soon-ki’s awful bloody face is just plain dead, and the other two cops know it. Jae-min tries to talk sense to Oh-soo and haul him off the body but Oh-soo fights him violently and is just about berserk.
The police evidence team arrives and picks up the handkerchief which Heui-soo deposited by the body. Oh-soo, dazed, remembers Soon-ki’s last solicitous words to him. In a fog, he stumbles out of the warehouse, then runs out to the cop car, throws off Min-jae again, steals the car (he’s not on the force, he should NOT be driving it) and speeds off to Oh Seung-ha’s apartment.
“The man in the tunnel”
Seung-ha is engaged in his usual hobby of surveying the city from his window when his bell starts ringing wildly and then there is pounding on the door. Wearily, he goes to the door and opens it, whereupon Oh-soo immediately slugs him and shoves him across the room and up against the wall, screaming at him and asking how far he will go and asking where Seok-jin is (part of Oh-soo’s craziness, bear in mind, is that he thinks Seok-jin is likely to be dead as well) and demanding that he confess
"I am Jeong Tae-seong and I arranged everything," Seung-ha says matter-of-factly – then (still in Oh-soo’s clutches) smirks and says, “That’s what you'd like me to say?”
“Yes, say that!” babbles Oh-soo, but Seung-ha is not to be buffaloed. “I'm not the murderer,” he says. “You are the murderer,” and then he lectures Oh-soo on how devastating it is to lose one’s entire family as Tae-seong did. They go on for a while, Oh-soo talking about how sorry he is about Tae-hoon, and that he had no intention of killing him, and begging Seung-ha not to hurt Seok-jin, and Seung-ha coldly rejecting everything Oh-soo says, telling him that “You did nothing to tell the truth” and “The guilty don't have the right to ask for forgiveness” (a harsh doctrine; who does, in that case?). Oh-soo leaves, promising to “get you with my own hands”, and then goes off to the pedestrian lane of the highway tunnel (same place Seung-ha went after Joon-p’yo’s sago) and cries and yells and bangs his head rhythmically on the tiled wall as if he has completely lost his mind.
.
Around 2 AM, Hae-in gets a phone call from Min-Jae, who is trying to find out what happened to Oh-soo (and the police car, I guess!!). Hae-in hasn’t heard from him. Min-jae says that his friend died, and Kang-seonbae is taking it very badly. Queried by Hae-in, she informs her that he seems to have been beaten to death in a warehouse (of course Hae-in foresaw the beating in her dream the previous night).
Also, around this time, Seok-jin gets home, puts car his in the garage; and heads upstairs. (The guy from before comes out and fiddles with the car, presumably removing whatever he installed earlier in the evening. But this time someone takes his photo…..) When Seok-jin gets upstairs, he finds Jae-min standing in front of the door of his apartment, facing the other way, and inattentive enough that if Seok-jin were a murderer himself he could easily kill the guy. Jae-min tells him his friend has been killed.
As the long night draws to an end, about 6 AM, Heui-soo shows up at the airport, all dressed for golf, ready to take a plane back to Jeju and show up at the course and pretend to have been on Jeju this whole time. He presents a forged ID to the check-in clerk, with his picture and someone else’s name. (He also gets his picture taken by someone unseen.)
Min-jae eventually finds Oh-soo in the interrogation room at police headquarters – it’s not clear that he got any sleep. ("What happened to your forehead?" she asks.) He doesn’t respond to Hae-in’s concerned voicemail.
“The First 24 (I)”
The investigation into Soon-ki’s death proceeds through the day, with Oh-soo pretty much functioning as part of the team the whole time. It comes out early on that the beating didn’t cause Soon-ki’s death. The doctors say that his heart and lungs show signs of poison. Anyway, cyanide is found in the cigarette butt.
The examiner puts the time of death at somewhere between 10:30 PM and midnight. The team can narrow it down further; it had to be before 11:40, because that was when the image was sent to Oh-soo’s cell phone. At this point Oh-soo recalls talking with Seok-jin and being assured by him that he and Soon-ki were both at home; that call was at 11:03.
Seok-jin now is questioned by Ban and Min-jae. He says he last saw Soon-ki the previous morning, and only assumed he was at home asleep when he talked with Oh-soo. He says he was indeed at home when he talked with Oh-soo, but went out for a drive after that. Was he with anyone? No, he says nervously, he was alone the whole time. Ban shows him the handkerchief with his initials; he says Soon-ki must have taken it, that he was always using his stuff. Afterward, Ban and Min-jae agree that he looks like he’s hiding something, and she will check his phone records and traffic control cameras in the area.
Oh-soo talks with Seok-jin and warns him that the “mastermind” is setting him up – the handkerchief was planted, Yeong-cheol went to the house, and probably even more evidence will turn up. Seok-jin needs an alibi! Also, he wants to know what he and Soon-ki have been hiding from him this whole time. However, Seok-jin stands pat. He went for a drive by himself – that’s his story.
(Meanwhile, Hwang Dae-bil is hanging around outside the station; he thinks of making a phone call; but then he just takes off.)
Just to spice matters up, another t’aekbae now arrives at the police station for Oh-soo. This time the red envelope contains two photos of Oh-soo, one as a police cadet, and the other outside the police station in 2004, on the day of his transfer there. Oh-soo brings out the earlier two photos that he got in Episode 2 or so and makes a little series out of them.1
Oh-soo calls up Kwang-doo, hopeful that more evidence about Tae-seong’s identity might have turned up, but that old man is still pretty sick. Oh-soo is getting desperate and is talking about communicating with him using eye blinks and stuff. “I can’t prove who he is even though he’s right in front of me,” he tells Kwang-doo.
Oh-soo then heads over to Hwang Dae-bil’s place and finds him there and begs him to talk, describing what agonies he has gone through over the years because of not telling the truth 12 years ago. But it’s no good: “I have nothing to say,” says Dae-bil.
“The Lawyer and his Clients”
Meanwhile Seung-ha is having a busy day. He started it off by appearing in defense of Jeong-yeon in the case of Dae-shik’s death. Seated in the court were a few of Dae-shik’s relatives and associates. He makes the case that when Jeong-yeon went over to his office she had no intention of killing him, but only wanted to recover her daughter whom she thought he had kidnapped. (In the course of this argument for mercy, he finds himself unexpectedly troubled by memories of Oh-soo’s pleas for mercy and claims to have not intended to kill Tae-hoon. He loses his train of thought for a moment, and wakes up only on being verbally prodded by the judge.)
Later he goes over to talk to the Kangs about their job offer. Heui-soo has now come back from Jeju (you know what they say about coming back from vacation more tired than when you left) and is being grilled by the Congressman who was also out of town that day and is thoroughly unhappy with events. Heui-soo assures his dad that Soon-ki’s death has “nothing to do with us.” The Congressman is worried that someone is trying to set them up, and orders Heui-soo to see if Secretary Na “made mistakes”.
Now Seung-ha arrives. He is of a mind to join the hotel’s legal staff, but has two conditions. The first is that he can keep his own practice going; Heui-soo rejects this but the Congressman immediately overrules him. The second is that if a case is referred to him, he has to be given all the information about it; there will be no holding back. The Congressman agrees but reminds him that he has to remember who his client is.
After Seung-ha leaves, Heui-soo gets an account of events from Seok-jin. Seok-jin assures him that he didn’t leave the incriminating handkerchief there himself – someone is trying to frame him, and Oh-soo thinks it’s the same person who sent the tarot cards. (Heui-soo notes this point with interest – and, we suppose, concern.) Seok-jin admits that he doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder. Heui-soo assures him that even if the police find out about the beating, “I’ll do everything to help you.”
After this conversation, Seok-jin calls Boss Kyeon and assures him that someone killed Soon-ki after both of them left, but that he should hide out somewhere. Kyeon, after the call is over, murmurs the name “Oh Seung-ha.”
“The First 24 (II)”
Oh-soo goes back to the station, where he finds that there have been new and disturbing developments. Seok-jin’s cell phone records show that he talked with Boss Kyeon three times before the murder, and the last call was made from near the warehouse, and Kyeon was also near the warehouse. Oh-soo takes off again to talk with Seok-jin. (On his way out, he brushes by Ban’s own boss. The chief asks Ban, “Don’t you know he’s on suspension?” Ban humbly replies, “But that doesn’t mean he can’t come in the station,” and reassures him that the rumors that he’s still working the case are all wrong!)
(Outside the station, Oh-soo runs into Hae-in, whose calls he has been avoiding all day and who has now come down to the station to make sure he’s okay. “You have to be strong and be a good detective,” she says. “I’m not a good detective,” he answers grimly.)
Seok-jin is at home, reliving the nightmare of the beating and Soon-ki’s cries for mercy, when Oh-soo bursts in on him and angrily demands that he tell him the truth. Why was he at the warehouse? Why did he talk with Kyeon? Seok-jin, frightened, tells him that he and Kyeon just wanted to meet Soon-ki to “persuade him”, but just talked with him at the warehouse because “Soon-ki wanted to meet me there”. Oh-soo has no time to explore the holes in this shabby story, because Min-jae calls him – according to d-addicts, the cell phone ID shows Min-jae as “wife”, which is a humorous bit if they have it right – and tells him that a team is coming out with a search warrant to check Seok-jin’s tires for traces of mud and such, and Chief Ban wants him out of there.
“Am I not human?”
Ill at ease, thinking both about his past and about Oh-soo’s piteous arguments, Seung-ha does something uncharacteristic: he invites his office manager out for a drink, and, once in the bar, actually drinks something. Kwang-doo remarks on how unusual this is. “I’ve never seen you drink,” he says. “Even when you go out for drinks, you never drink.” “I don’t like being drunk,” Seung-ha says. “You’re so perfect,” Kwang-doo teases. “Drinking makes you feel more human.” “You’re saying I’m not human?” asks Seung-ha. “You’re very good at managing yourself,” replies Kwang-doo.
The conversation turns to Oh-soo, for whom Kwang-doo expresses some sympathy. “Nobody can understand Jeong Tae-seong without experiencing what he experienced,” objects Seung-ha. “If I were Jeong Tae-seong, I couldn’t forgive Kang Oh-soo.”
Kwang-doo, with some insight, points out that the whole trouble is that both Oh-soo and Tae-seong were adolescents – 17 and 16 – at the time of the original incident. Oh-soo was unable to act properly, and Tae-seong was unable to process things properly, “more hurt and unable to forgive.” If Tae-seong had been an adult, he wouldn’t have gone so far as to murder people. Both of them are stuck at the age of 16 and 17.
It’s not clear how drunk Seung-ha actually gets after this, but he does go by Hae-in’s place and hang out wordlessly in the street. Hae-in notices his presence and calls out to him; initially he turns to go, but when she follows him, he goes up to her and abruptly hugs her! Hae-in is startled by this, but then hugs him back. At least she starts to. But he pulls away, and stalks off, not having said a word throughout the whole encounter! (What a weird date! Between this and the vomiting business, it seems like it ought to be enough to scare the heck out of her, even if you leave aside all the mastermind business. But some women enjoy rescuing guys with issues. Look at Faust and Gretchen, for example.)
“The First 24 (III)
In the morning, the police get a new break. A traffic control camera near the warehouse caught Seok-jin’s car speeding. Jae-min and Min-jae go to the hotel and serve an arrest warrant on Seok-jin; they cuff him as Heui-soo looks on balefully and bring him in. Kyeon has evaded the net. They are still analyzing the mud from Seok-jin’s tires.
Seok-jin tells Oh-soo, “I didn’t do it – trust me!” Oh-soo does, and tells Ban that Seok-jin is being framed. Ban says he needs to come up with some evidence. The questioning doesn’t get very far; Seok-jin says he wants to talk with his attorney. Of course, when the attorney arrives it is that well-known defense counsel Oh Seung-ha. Oh-soo can’t believe this; this is the last straw; he has a fit – “I won’t let you do this! Who hired you?” Seung-ha tells him it was Kang Heui-soo.
Meanwhile, while Hae-in was looking at the music box that Seung-ha gave her mother as a present, she had a vision of the old man. Again she saw his lips move wordlessly – but this time the sounds eventually arrive – “My name is Seung-ha. That’s what he said.”
During the night she has thought about the implications of all this a lot. In the morning, she impulsively decides to blow off work and instead goes out to visit Soo-gon. As she gets out to his property – I suppose she took a bus? – he rides up on his bicycle. She asks when he met Seung-ha. It was 12 years ago, when he was 16. Does he have any pictures of him from that time? By coincidence he does; he has one that he found recently (in Episode 11) which he has just had framed and has just now picked up from the framer. He pulls the wrapping off the picture and shows it to Hae-in. The boy on the right – the future lawyer Seung-ha – is immediately recognizable as the boy she met in her old neighborhood; the boy she saw in her vision while reading the “Swords” cards; the boy whom Oh-soo has said may be Jeong Tae-seong.
End of episode – Friday morning, May 4, Day 26.
(1) There is some more fooling around with these pictures, and talk of a finger pointing at Oh-soo, but you know what? I'm not convinced that these pictures are important. If I find out I'm wrong, I'll let you know.