Recap "Bad and Crazy" Ep 9

Soo-yeol freezes as the mysterious X calls him by his birth name. A splitting headache pulls him back into his hall of memories, where he marches straight up to door #1002. Now he realizes it stands for October 2nd, the same date Young-joo chose to kill herself on. When he gathers the courage to open the door, he finds Young-joo standing there in her raincoat… over his father’s body. But then her face changes to that of his younger self. Soo-yeol panics, and the hallway melts away.

Soo-yeol searches through police reports of his father’s death, alarmed by what he finds. His mother had told him his father died in a fire, but police reports revealed the fire was only a cover for murder – his father was stabbed 12 times, and blood was found on a yellow raincoat.

He rushes home, but Mom isn’t there. Her phone is, however, tucked away in a drawer, along with her Alzheimer’s medication. He wakes Dong-yeol to help him search for her.

Dong-yeol finds her outside her shop’s old location from ten years ago, confused as to why it’s now a shoe store. Dong-yeol breaks down as Soo-yeol arrives, and Soo-yeol takes them both home. By the time they get her tucked into bed, Mom regains her memories, and Soo-yeol nags at her for not telling him about her condition.

Of course, she nags right back that he wouldn’t have had to see this if he’d moved out already. She doesn’t want to burden him, and announces the conversation closed. Soo-yeol quietly explains that he’s never seen her as a burden – rather, she was the one who took care of him when he had no one. He retreats to the bathroom to hide his tears.

 

The next morning, he finds her sitting at the table. She doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be able to remember certain things, so she’s ready to answer all his questions about his childhood. Hesitantly, he asks if she was scared to take in a child that might have killed his own father.

She recounts finding him bleeding and unconscious, and nursing him back to health. He’d remembered his name and where he lived, but when she’d taken him home, the police had started questioning him about his father’s death, clearly suspicious he might have had a hand in it, though he’d seemed confused and shocked. Mom had jumped to his defense.

He’d immediately lapsed into a week-long fever, and to avoid harming him with further trauma, she’d determined to tell him everything once he regained all his memories. Now, she assures him that if he were guilty, he’d have been arrested years ago.

With a sad smile, she adds that as her own memories start to fade, she may not always recognize him. But right now, she knows for certain that the boy she took in back then was a boy who ran away to save his own life – and that he’s grown into a man who upholds the trust she placed in him. She urges him to trust and protect himself, too.

 

Kyung-tae meets with Jung-hoon – the boy who reported Joo-hyuk’s stabbing to the police – to get his official statement. Jung-hoon is covered in bruises, some fresh and some old, and he seems to get more anxious the longer Kyung-tae talks to him. He brushes off Kyung-tae’s concern for his wounds, claiming he can bear the pain just fine.

When Soo-yeol steps outside, K is waiting. It’s the first Soo-yeol has seen of him since K stopped him from opening door #1002, and with a snarl, Soo-yeol chases him down the street. Eventually, Soo-yeol trips on stairs and falls flat. K helps him up, and Soo-yeol uses the opportunity to pin him against the wall and demand answers.

 

K claims he doesn’t know anything, and that he didn’t let Soo-yeol open the door because he was scared. Soo-yeol presses to know what he was so scared of, finally provoking K to admit he was afraid he’d killed Soo-yeol’s father.

They go to Geun-soo for help. Unfortunately, Geun-soo agrees it seems probable one of them committed the murder. That plunges K into despair, and Soo-yeol has to keep shoving him back into a chair to keep him from hurting himself.

It finally strikes Soo-yeol as odd that October 2nd would be important, since his father died on the 23rd. Geun-soo chalks it up to distorted memories, but cautions that the brain often distorts memories to hide even worse ones.

Hee-gyeom keeps Soo-yeol company while he scours police reports for the October 2nd connection. All he explains to her is that it’s connected to Young-joo’s “gaslighter,” though she knows there’s more he’s not comfortable sharing just yet.

 

While looking through the files on a murdered drug dealer, Soo-yeol pauses at pictures of a bloody knife wrapped in a yellow raincoat. Even more interestingly, the victim’s son was initially blamed, only for another man to be convicted, having been found in possession of the murder weapon (and raincoat).

That same man, Sung Bok-joon, is now a barber after serving more than ten years in prison. Though he’d initially claimed innocence, he suddenly gave up appealing and confessed. When Soo-yeol asks why, Bok-joon says he “suddenly remembered” committing the murder. He describes it in unemotional detail, down to how much he paid for the raincoat. The story adds up, but it feels more like something he memorized than an experience he actually remembers having.

Outside, K rides up to Soo-yeol on a bicycle. He strikes a pose and announces that heroes don’t let fear stop them. He’s ready to regain their lost memories, proclaiming, “From now on, this hero exists only for you.” He takes Soo-yeol on a (painful) ride to his old neighborhood. When that doesn’t work (because Soo-yeol is too busy complaining about his sore backside), he lets the bike careen down a hill into the river, singing jubilantly the whole way.

Hee-gyeom meets with the lawyer who defended Bok-joon. He remembers that Bok-joon received a ton of letters while in prison, all of them from the same person.

When Soo-yeol and K return to Bok-joon’s place, Bok-joon is no longer there. Despite Soo-yeol’s protests, K takes that as an opening to search through Bok-joon’s belongings for those letters. He easily finds them, and Soo-yeol can’t help taking a peek. Every one of them is addressed from the murdered man’s son, Jung Yoon-ho. And the contents of the letters are Bok-joon’s confession verbatim.

Naturally, Bok-joon returns at that moment and catches Soo-yeol with an open letter in hand. He attacks Soo-yeol for suggesting Yoon-ho manipulated him into confessing when he was actually innocent.

 

He shoves Soo-yeol’s head into a bucket of water, unknowingly triggering a memory: young Soo-yeol attempting to drown himself in the river. But Yoon-ho had convinced him not to follow through, and taken him to the youth shelter. Soo-yeol finally breaks free from Bok-joon’s grasp, and Bok-joon begs him to let him go on believing he was the murderer. Ack, K looks even more shaken than Soo-yeol.

Later that night, Soo-yeol waits until X logs online, and then types into the chat: “Jung Yoon-ho.” X responds: “Finally, you remembered me.” Soo-yeol demands to know what really happened back then, but X wants him to figure it out himself.

All Soo-yeol remembers so far is that Yoon-ho told him they wouldn’t be able to stay long at the youth shelter, because certain people needed to disappear for good – otherwise they’d never see an end to their misery.

 

Geun-soo wakes up to Soo-yeol pounding on his door. But it doesn’t take him long to realize this is actually K. K has remembered his very earliest memory, and while he doesn’t share it, he desperately asks for confirmation that it might not be accurate.

Geun-soo agrees it might not be, but adds that K’s emotions at the time of recalling the memory probably were. K’s voice trembles as he says he felt like he wanted to kill someone. In his memory, he was gripping a large knife.

Soo-yeol visits Joo-hyuk and finds his information (as Jae-hee) in the shelter’s old files. The starting date is the date he first met Yoon-ho, and also a number on one of the memory doors. The file also contains friendly photos of him and Yoon-ho together. Joo-hyuk doesn’t really comment on any of this, except to say that at least now Soo-yeol knows what he’s dealing with, and to invite Soo-yeol to contact him any time he wants to talk.

Soo-yeol goes up to the rooftop where one of the pictures was taken. There, he sees a woman leaning over the edge, but when he calls out to her, she quickly leaves the rooftop without a word.

Kyung-tae gets a social worker to accompany him to check on Jung-hoon. They find the door to Jung-hoon’s house open, and when no one answers their greetings, they venture inside. To their horror, they find Jung-hoon’s older brother (and guardian) dead, and Jung-hoon sitting glassy-eyed in front of him.

Soo-yeol questions Jung-hoon at the police station. Jung-hoon repeatedly brushes Soo-yeol’s questions aside to ask if his brother really is dead. In a flashback, we see Jung-hoon approaching his abusive brother with a heavy frying pan, shaking in anger. He tells Soo-yeol that it doesn’t matter who killed him – as long as he’s dead, Jung-hoon’s misery is over. That phrase makes Soo-yeol pause, since it’s the same one Yoon-ho used.

 

Just then, Kyung-tae calls Soo-yeol out into the hallway to report that Jung-hoon has a confirmed alibi: he was caught on security camera stealing from the register at the restaurant where he works. Soo-yeol angrily goes back in to ask Jung-hoon why he said he killed his brother when he clearly didn’t. But Jung-hoon retorts that he never said that – all he said was that as long as his brother was dead, nothing else mattered.

He stands to leave, but Soo-yeol grabs his arm asks who fed him the line about his misery ending, offering to help Jung-hoon any way he can. Jung-hoon scoffs, confirms AGAIN that his brother really died, and gets up close to say that whoever killed his brother already helped him.

As Soo-yeol watches Jung-hoon go, Kyung-tae returns with more updates. The restaurant owner is certain Jung-hoon knew the camera was there, which makes Jung-hoon’s alibi seem a bit too perfect – perhaps even intentional.

Kyung-tae and Jae-sun tail Jung-hoon, snapping pictures from afar. Deciding that Kyung-tae doesn’t blend in with their surroundings well enough, Jae-sun leaves to buy them both ice cream cones. But the girl working the register recognizes him (she’d been the witness to the fire in Kyung-tae’s apartment).

 

Kyung-tae, who was already anxious about being found out, is so distracted by Jae-sun’s antics that Jung-hoon easily sneaks up on him. Jung-hoon asks outright if Kyung-tae is tailing him, and Kyung-tae’s panic response is to run and kick Jae-sun to the ground and handcuff him, pretending Jae-sun is a wanted criminal and the real reason he’s here. Jung-hoon does not look convinced.

Hahaha Kyung-tae patches Jae-sun up later, but even though he apologizes, he’s very proud of himself for thinking on his feet.

While going through security footage, Soo-yeol spots the same woman he’d seen on the rooftop at the youth shelter. It takes him a moment to put together that he’d seen her just a few hours after Jung-hoon’s brother died.

He and Kyung-tae investigate at the shelter. Kyung-tae gets the woman’s information, while Soo-yeol tries to figure out what she might have been looking at over the rooftop edge. There’s nothing of note down there except a manhole, so they open the manhole grate to investigate further. And what should they find but a sack with a bloody murder weapon and a yellow raincoat.

The woman, Ki So-yeon, is currently being rushed to the hospital. Turns out, she’d already been scheduled for disk surgery due to repeated beatings. Jae-sun hasn’t found any links between her and Yoon-ho, except that she’d been a long-time volunteer at the shelter.

 

While her surgery is underway, test results confirm the blood on the murder weapon belonged to Jung-hoon’s brother, and So-yeon’s DNA was also found. Furthermore, So-yeon’s abusive ex, Park Sung-gwan, happened to be present everywhere Kyung-tae photographed Jung-hoon.

Soo-yeol connects the dots: the two must have conspired to help each other. Jung-hoon intentionally created an alibi for himself while So-yeon killed his brother. Now she’s got her alibi – undergoing surgery – so it’s the perfect time for Jung-hoon to move in on Sung-gwan.

 

Sure enough, as Sung-gwan walks down the street, Jung-hoon drives by on his motorbike and swings a large metal pipe at his head. Sung-gwan dodges, causing Jung-hoon to wipe out, and then jumps on Jung-hoon in retaliation. That’s when Soo-yeol arrives. He gets between them, flinging the pipe away, only for Jung-hoon to pull a knife on him. While Soo-yeol tries to talk him down, Sung-gwan takes off running.

Jung-hoon gives chase, with Soo-yeol at his heels. Although Jung-hoon catches Sung-gwan first, Soo-yeol pulls him off and pushes him up against a fence. As he looks into Jung-hoon’s frightened eyes, he sees his younger self, and then Yoon-ho. He remembers watching his father’s body being carried out of their home, and Yoon-ho, beside him, whispering thanks. Since Soo-yeol killed his father for him, he promises to do the same.

When Soo-yeol comes back to the present, both he and Jung-hoon realize that Jung-hoon has accidentally stabbed him. Jung-hoon drops the knife and flees as Soo-yeol sinks to the ground.

In his mind, he staggers down the memory hall. At the end, door #1002 opens to reveal his father’s death again, but this time the boy in the raincoat is Yoon-ho.

 

A hand clamps down on his shoulder. It’s K, who asks if he plans to stay in this maze forever. Soo-yeol suddenly looks around in confusion, not remembering why he’s here. “You got stabbed,” K tells him. That brings back the revelation that it was Yoon-ho – not him – who killed his father.

Soo-yeol, giddy with relief, wants to go catch Yoon-ho right now, but K stops him. “Do you remember my part of the story?” he asks. When Soo-yeol looks down, K is holding a bloody knife. “This is the first memory I have of myself,” he says in a haunted voice. “I killed someone.”