Recap Korean Drama "Little Women (2022)" Episode 2

Episode 2 of Little Women starts with In-joo preparing dinner for herself and In-kyung. At the table, the younger of the two informs In-joo that she was suspended from her job for a month due to her alcoholic dependency. 

In-joo pledges to help In-kyung not turn into an alcoholic like their father and they decide they need to throw away the summer radish kimchi their mother left behind. In-hye paints her rich friend’s portrait at her house.

Back at the Oh family house In-joo cleans the boxes of kimchi and replaces them with the cash she found at Hwa-young’s house which totals up to 2 billion won. She sneaks 1 million into her purse and goes to a convenience store wondering what someone with so much money could do. 

She contemplates how someone with so much money, could kill herself and concludes that Hwa-Young could actually be alive. In-kyung is having dinner with their great aunt and they chat about  In-kyung’s line of work. 

Hye-suk asks her to quit and start working with herm believing she would help In-kyung make money by investing in stocks as she did as a child. Meanwhile, In-joo meets Hyun-min as she agrees to help them as per her terms and conditions.

In-kyung reaches out to one of the victim’s relatives from the Bobae Saving’s Bank case but is not able to speak with him. Jong-ho invites her in for a meal and she catches up with his grandfather who she hung out with as a child. 

Just then, she receives a call from the victim’s nephew who makes her note down an address, asking to meet him at the fish market the following day. Meanwhile, Do-il and In-joo visit Hwa-young’s house to look for clues but In-joo asks him to leave so that she can concentrate. 

She starts by making a  tally of the items Hwa-young purchased from the receipts she left behind and finds that she spent a lot on luxury goods despite claiming to be poor. In-joo recalls a conversation when Hwa-young where the latter explained the perks of living a double life with a different identity outside of work.

In-joo then goes through Hwa-young’s phone and finds a burner Instagram account. This, in turn, leads her to Hwa-young’s secret life. In-joo calculates Hwa-young’s total expenses and finds many gaps that she knows someone like Hwa-young would not have. 

Hyun-min arrives and lures In-joo into helping him find Hwa-young by claiming that she could keep the luxury items the former accountant left behind. He gets too close to In-joo making her uncomfortable. So much so in fact, that she cries. He insinuates that the job she is tasked with is dangerous and requires her to be presentable, demanding she wear expensive heels. He also makes her uncomfortable by touching her inappropriately.

As he is getting close to In-joo, who is visibly in tears, he notices that Hwa-young’s house has an orchid that seems very fresh. Hyun-min leaves in shock.

Early the next morning, In-kyung and Jong-ho drive to the fish market but they spot a car accident on the way there. 

At the market, she tries calling the victim’s nephew but he doesn’t answer the call. She senses something wrong and asks Jong-ho to drive her back to the accident scene. Near the car, she calls the man again and finds his phone ringing. Turns out he had died in the car accident. Jong-ho finds the same orchid as the one at Hwa-young’s house.

In-joo is at the shop that sells the same heels Hwa-young gave her, and learns that it was Hyun-min who purchased it. She talks to her team leader who is sure Hwa-young and Hyun-min were in a secret relationship which could be easily exposed using the ledgers.

She adds that Hyun-min only seeks to have an affair with women that wear cheap heels, which shocks In-joo. In-joo thinks about the day and goes through Hwa-young’s burner Instagram account when she has an epiphany. She rushes to meet Do-il and they discuss the nature of Hwa-young’s relationship with Hyun-min. 

In-joo informs him that it was Hyun-min who gifted the rare heels to Hwa-young and they conclude that Hyun-min made her steal the money because of their affair. They assume that he killed her to make her the fall guy and keep the 70 billion won for himself.

Do-il adds that Hyun-min is the person who handled the forensics for Hwa-young’s murder/suicide. In-joo visits Hwa-young’s building owner to inspect the CCTV footage from the night of her death but it is somehow missing. 

Meanwhile, In-kyung and Jong-ho are with the cops looking at the dash-cam footage of the victim’s nephew, Cheol-seong’s car from minutes before the accident. They notice that Cheol-seong lost balance of the car but nothing out of the blue to prove In-kyung’s hunch.

In-kyung is back at home when she breaks down reading a text from the now-deceased Cheol-seong. Meanwhile, Do-il and In-joo go through Hwa-young’s chats with Hyun-min and learn that it was Hwa-young who orchestrated the travel ban on an unbeknownst to Hyun-min.

Due to this ban, he couldn’t leave the country and unknowingly sent her to Switzerland to transfer the 70 billion won from the slush fund. They conclude that Hyun-min probably learnt about Hwa-young’s betrayal of him after she returned to Korea and hounded her till she gave up and killed herself. 

In-joo and Do-il look up the woman who worked at Hwa-young’s position before her and learn that she too had committed suicide. In-kyung attends the funeral of Cheol-seong and secretly hands a note over to his brother. In -joo and Do-il learn that the employee who worked at Hwa-young’s position before her had also died with the same MO (Modus Operandi) as Hwa-young.

Do-il concludes that Hyun-min’s MO was to involve poor women in embezzlement schemes and eventually coerce them into killing themselves. In-joo asks Do-il to report the crimes to the police but he states that since the funds are illegal they will become the property of the state

She wishes he would help solve Hwa-young’s murder but Do-il explains how he values money more than life shocking In-joo. In-kyung chats with Jong-ho about her being over-empathetic. She explains the Park Jae-sang case to Jong-ho but he is having a hard time trusting her hunch about the Mayor candidate being responsible for so many deaths.

When In-kyung is back at home, In-joo, who is overwhelmed breaks down in front of her sister. The younger of the two shares her troubles with In-joo and mocks her for spending her severance pay on ice cream and cosmetics unaware of the money Hwa-young has left behind. 

In-joo receives a package from Hyun-min and they are branded red heels leaving her shocked. The girl that In-hye was making a portrait for, Park Hyo-rin, uses In-hye’s artwork as her own to win a grand prize where they call her a child prodigy. Park Hyo-rin is none other than candidate Park Jae-sang’s daughter. 

In-kyung watches the same painting on a billboard on the street and recalls her younger sister painting it. At the same time, In-joo confronts Hyun-min about the murder/suicide of his past two employees and asks if she was his next target.

Hyun-min swears that he is not responsible for the two deaths and claims that Hwa-young and he weren’t seeing each other but that she only took advantage of him. Hyun-min claims that he was willing to take responsibility for the embezzlement.

On his way out, his car starts acting up and he too meets with an unfortunate end in the same way as Cheol-seong did. A blue orchid inside his car can be seen, just before the car falls off the rooftop parking lot, killing Hyun-min as In-joo watches in a state of shock.

The Episode Review

The show’s trailer did not reveal Little Women to be as thrilling as the first two episodes have made it out to be – which is a really pleasant surprise! From In-joo’s investigation of Hwa-young’s death to In-kyung’s investigation of Park Jae-sang’s past crimes who is somehow connected to Choi Do-il, there’s a lot to like. To top that off as well we have In-hye, the youngest of the three sisters, and another player in this.

There is so much to unload with this drama and I am not sure if 12 episodes will be enough. However, I believe that Hwa-young is alive and since she was the person who discovered Hyun-min’s former employee dead. She could well have staged her death to look the same. Only time will tell how this theory pans out.

Moreover, I do wish Do-il would take the front seat with this show but it seems like he is one of the least important chess pieces in this complicated game. In-joo needs to share her secrets with her sister, while In-kyung really needs help with her emotions. In-hye seems cryptic too, but with so many moving pieces, we’ll have to wait and see what next week has in store for us.