Recap Korean Drama "Mouse" Episode 10

Episode 10 of Mouse begins a month after Seo-Joon’s arrest. Ji-Eun finds herself struggling, pregnant and eyed suspiciously at the hospital.

Outside though, her water breaks just as a woman is pushed out the top window to her doom. With blood oozing across the floor, Ji-Eun looks up and sees a young child watching from up high. His identity is revealed at the end of the episode so watch this space!

Back in the present, Moo-Chi awakens to find himself in Ba-Reum’s apartment. He’s still alive but in his drunken state has forgotten what happened the previous night.

Despite being hit repeatedly and the blood spatters, there’s barely a scratch on him. Outside, a blood-stained rock happens to be in the garden. As we soon see, Ba-Reum was about to kill Moo-Chi but a voice in his head – Yo-Han’s it seems – convinces him not to. The blood across his face was actually his own.

Ba-Reum immediately heads in to see Seo-Joon, questioning quite what is happening to him. He mentions the surgery, and how with mice it turned docile creatures into violent ones. Interestingly, only part of Ba-Reum’s frontal lobe was replaced and that seems to hint that Yo-Han lives on inside him.

Meanwhile, Bong-Yi’s statement about the night she was grabbed doesn’t seem to hold weight with Jae-Pil being the killer. In fact, the hands that held onto her were soft and had a ring on – very different to Jae-Pil’s, especially when we learn the man used to work with deliveries.

To throw more doubt on this, it seems like another left-handed assailant may have dug the holes. This would killer the killer a solid alibi. With a 20 minute window to work with, that may have been enough time for the killer to fix the window and give himself an alibi. It’s not, however, enough time to murder the victim.

In fact, the truth of the matter is that Na-Ri was stashed in the fridge days earlier with the temperature set to 1 degree. This would give said killer extra time to then eventually take her out and have his way with her.

While this is going on, Bong-Yi encourages a young girl called Ya-Na to head home with her. She’s worried and concerned about Duk-Soo whom she believes is going to kill.

Heading back home she runs into a troubled Ba-Reum, who happens to be sitting outside. It’s a brief chat, but one that sees the two hug. Bong-Yi wanders off but finds herself stalked all the way by someone operating in the shadows. That someone happens to be Moo-Chi, whom she punches square in the face.

Bong-Yi apologizes and helps patch him up as she asks him about Ba-Reum and how sensitive he’s being lately. While they talk, we cut across to Ba-Reum himself in church, praying to the Almighty. He wants to make sure he doesn’t turn into Yo-Han going forward.

In the morning, a new murder takes place. Yo-Han’s alleged trademark is found at the scene, including a burnt body sitting on a chair and a red cross up on the wall. Ba-Reum smells mint too, which seems to hint that he’s involved. Again, that’s just a hunch at the moment.

The investigators decide to start investigating, as Ba-Reum heads back to the station and checks out the footage from the previous crime scenes. He examines the pictures of Yo-Han’s basement against that for the one holding Han-Kook. They don’t match. This seems to hint that we’ve got another killer on our hands.

The plot thickens. Another murder suspect – disguised as a suicide – shows up. This one holds Father Ko’s necklace, along with Bong-Yi’s grandmother’s brooch too. This seems to confirm that Yo-Han isn’t actually the killer.

As Moo-Chi keeps investigating, it also seems like Hye-Won was killed and a text message sent to pretend she’s still alive. Moo-Chi eventually finds the murder weapon and another buried victim. Now it seems likely that Hyung-Chool was the murderer.

Ba-Reum looks into the rope strangulation and learns that our victim, Jin-A, ingested acetone. Despite this, the victim still died from strangulation, which explains how her fingers are caught in the rope. Realizing who the killer is, Ba-Reum charges in to an apartment and saves another woman from certain death.

However, the killer manages to get away, where he and Ba-Reum come face to face in some abandoned warehouses. Hyung-Chool is our killer, and he’s also the boy who pushed that woman out the window during the opening moments of this episode. It turns out he was operating around the same time as the Head Hunter.

Ba-Reum bides his time while Hyung-Chool is monologuing and knocks him to the ground. Ba-Reum is encouraged by the voice in his head to choke out and strangle this man. As he does, Yo-Han suddenly shows up before him and smiles, mentioning how exhilarating it is to kill someone.

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The Episode Review

Mouse returns with another intriguing episode – and a much longer run-time too. This episode seems to confirm we’ve got multiple killers running around which explains why the deaths and the way the victims have been killed are different.

There’s still the subject of Han-Kook and Daniel Lee too, which remains a mystery for now. All our other victims have now been explained though. With Hyung-Chool revealed as another killer, the ending seems to hint that Ba-Reum is as well.

Now, we learned this episode that Ba-Reum only had the damaged parts of his frontal lobe replaced so it’s not unreasonable to suggest he’s hallucinating and envisioning a lot of this as if it’s the truth.

Yo-Han could be the big killer of course, but it just seems way too convenient. The mint smell is, if you’ll remember, what Yo-Han sensed before he arrived at crime scenes or followed the killer.

The voices we’ve been hearing may well be Ba-Reum fighting against the “good” part of his brain, disguised as Yo-Han following this operation. Still, that’s just a theory at this point so do take my words with a pinch of salt!

Mouse has been twisting and turning over the weeks though, and it has been quite difficult to follow at times. Thankfully, we’ve got a recap episode coming up in the middle of this run so that should go some way to explain what’s been happening and get us up to scratch for the second half.

Love it or hate it, Mouse has been absolutely fascinating and aside from the wonky brain transplant parts, has certainly been one of the more unusual and intriguing K-drama entries on the calendar so far.

If this is any indication as to what next week’s follow-up will be like, we’re certainly in for a treat!