Hyde, Jekyll, Me: Episode 2
With our basic setup in place, the kidnapping mystery takes over and further entangles our characters in a dangerous investigation. But given that a certain damsel in distress is what brings out our hero’s, well, inner hero, a little danger is actually a good thing. And even though they’re just teeny tiny cracks, we’re already starting to see that our leading man might not be as cold and unfeeling as he’d like to think he is.
Song of the Day - Falling (download - here)
EPISODE 2 - RECAP
After losing six hours of his day and no memory beyond losing consciousness in the elevator, Seo-jin is further horrified when Hana enters his room to ask if he’s the one who saved her in the water.
At the word “save,” Seo-jin’s secretary audibly gasps, and Seo-jin’s eyes widen. Hana says that she doesn’t remember much either, but she does remember someone holding her in the water.
Seo-jin covers his ears and tells her to get out, because he’s not the type of person to go rescuing women. But she notices his necklace and asks if it’s his with an air of recognition in her voice, and turns to go before she gets an answer. Seo-jin grabs his broken glasses and stares down his reflection in the window: “Why have you come back, Robin?”
Hana leaves the room and sneers back at the closed door, jumping to the conclusion that Seo-jin ushered her out before she could bring up her circus troupe’s contract. The necklace niggles at her though, and she thinks back to the moment when she was hanging off the edge of a bridge 15 years ago.
Her fingers start to slip, but a boy catches her hand just in time. He’s wearing that same Big Dipper necklace. He loses grip and she falls into the river below, so without hesitating, he jumps too, and pulls her up to the surface. She briefly opens her eyes to see the necklace, and in voiceover when she thanks him, he just says that this is who he is.
She shakes away the thought that it could be the same guy, calling it too much of a coincidence. Well that’s certainly true, but we know that it also fits the timeline for when Seo-jin’s split personality Robin first appeared.
 
Seo-jin’s parents arrive in country, and his bodyguard/chauffer reports to Chairman Dad about the day’s events, and his suspicion that Robin has come back. The parents seem just as horrified as Seo-jin is.
In the hospital room, Seo-jin finally remembers Dr. Kang and asks to see her, and Secretary Kwon sweats another bucket as he stammers, “Dr. Kang is missing…” We switch over to the police department where a detective is giving a presentation on the case. Handy, that.
The crime scene looks the same as when Hana first saw it, except for the very important fact that Dr. Kang is no longer lying there in a pool of blood. The police think she’s alive because she made an emergency call asking for someone to save her, and all the CCTV cameras in the offices were shut off before the crime.
 
As Seo-jin hears the news, he remembers seeing Hana fleeing from a masked man in black, and realizes that this could be the kidnapper/killer. The detectives split up the work, and a Detective Na gets assigned to investigate Seo-jin and Hana as possible witnesses.
Chairman Dad comes to see Seo-jin in the hospital straightaway, but it’s not concern that brings him there. He tells Seo-jin to get out before Robin ruins everything. They only have a month until the vote (presumably for Seo-jin to inherit the company), and Dad only sees Robin as a liability.
Seo-jin swears that it’s not what he thinks, and reminds Dad of how he’s been living for the past five years to control this thing, and how hard he’s worked to show that he can run the company. “You know that I’ve been closing my eyes, closing my ears, closing my heart for five years and didn’t change once!”
 
Chairman Dad sees Robin as a weakness and says that if Seo-jin hadn’t lived that way, he wouldn’t be standing in front of him now. Seo-jin says he did his best so that he could stand before his father, and plans to keep it that way in the future. He asks to be left alone, but Dad just says with disappointment that Robin will always come back.
Dad orders the bodyguard to keep close watch, and Secretary Kwon rushes in to give a little fist-pump “Fighting!” of encouragement, which Seo-jin shuts down immediately. Heh.
Seo-jin heads home and makes his way into a secret security room locked away behind a wall in the greenhouse, and scrolls through footage of Robin running to people’s rescue in Wonderland over the years.
Oh, he wasn’t kidding—Robin actually does save people. It’s all he does, apparently, like he’s got some kind of hero complex. Curious. Also, why is his alter ego named Robin and not Batman?
Seo-jin logs in to record a video message for Robin, which is standard practice for them. He looks into the camera and tells Robin to remember Rule 19, and that he’s changed so there’s no reason for Robin to come back anymore. “I don’t want you anymore. Go ahead and come back… and I’ll get rid of you forever.”
He then mediates to calm his nerves, repeating the chant over and over, “This too shall pass.” With his eyes still closed, he stifles back tears.
 
The next day, Seo-jin makes his rounds at Wonderland and asks about Dr. Kang’s investigation. Secretary Kwon says that there’s no CCTV footage and no witnesses, but Seo-jin knows there IS a witness, and looks over at the circus packing up their things with an exasperated sigh.
Hana is already being questioned at the crime scene, where Detective Na gets antagonistic the second he receives a phone call confirming that Hana is the only person who wasn’t seen entering the building before the security feed got cut. Hm, zip-lining and climbing through a window doesn’t look very good in light of the crime.
He demands to know how she got inside, suddenly treating her like his prime suspect, when Seo-jin arrives to tell the rather absurd-sounding truth and back her up. She says it’s his fault for trying to give her the brush-off, but he doesn’t let her get very far in the argument because he wants the case to come first.
He breaks the police tape to step into Dr. Kang’s office and Hana follows, leaving Detective Na sputtering between them and totally lost. Hana shows them how she climbed through the window and where she saw Dr. Kang, and then recalls feeling like someone was standing behind her. She turned around, and looked up…
Seo-jin grabs her shoulders and asks repeatedly, “Did you see who it was?” Hana struggles to picture the moment again, and says in a daze, “I did see. But I can’t remember.”
They consult a doctor, and Seo-jin calls the diagnosis before the doc can. Ha, who tells someone they have PTSD with an eyeroll? He accuses her of acting like she can’t remember, because the timing is too suspicious and it’s the perfect way for her to stick it to him.
 
That’s news to her, since she’s just learning that his case is important to him, but she lights up to know that she’s just unintentionally ruined his day. Seo-jin tells the detective to get a hypnotist ready, and Hana balks at the way he’s going about this, giving orders when he should be asking for her help and offering up ways to repay her. She reminds him that he knows exactly how to repay her, and adds sarcastically, “You must not be very bright.”
I love that she drives him crazy. Minutes later, he’s sliding over a copy of the new circus contract for her to sign. She wants an apology too, and he mumbles one out of the corner of his mouth, and she insists on a better one, from the soul.
Seo-jin: “I. Am. So-rry. Are we done?” Heh. She frowns to see that the contract is only for two years, and writes in ten years instead. He offers three, then four, but each time she comes back with ten years and an insult on the side, until he finally gets sick of sliding the contract back and forth and agrees to her terms.
 
He immediately gets up to take her to the hypnotherapist, but she stands up to look him in the eyes and asks again if he was the one who saved her. She steps close, which unnerves him, and says sincerely, “Thank you. This is how you do it, from the soul.”
She turns back to ask if that necklace has always been his, but then thinks better of it and mutters that it must be a coincidence. He follows her into the elevator, agitated and demanding an explanation for why she keeps asking about the rescue and the necklace.
Hana says it’s nothing and reminds him that he’s the one insisting he didn’t save her. Seo-jin grows increasingly distressed and asks what if it was him, and slams her against the wall as he asks what she is to show up and do this to him. Blech, quit manhandling her! It sends his heart rate skyrocketing though, so he backs off to breathe and calm down.
 
Seo-jin takes her to the police consultant hypnotherapist (a student of Dr. Kang’s, according to the detective), and Hana looks around in his car with curiosity. There are religious symbols hanging everywhere, but they’re a mishmash of various religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, used almost like talismans more than anything.
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Post time 23-1-2015 10:57 AM
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