Everyone and their mother has a secret. That’s the great secret this show has been trying to reveal to us from the start. All has skeletons in the closet.

Take for instance, Lee Ahn. His secret is the obvious one. He’s psycho. Or psychic. It’s understandable that he wants this gift/curse of his kept confidential. He’d been bullied enough for knowing the secrets of his peers. BTW, there is a real field of study called psychometric but Lee Ahn’s skills strike me as more psychic than scientific.

Then, there’s Jaein’s secret. Hers is her father’s incarceration. She doesn’t want people to know that he’s in jail. She’s the one who made Lee Ahn first aware that that in life, people kept a secret they’ll protect with their lives.

Their friends also have secrets. Ahn’s best friend, Da-bong, hid the truth from him that the yellow pencil case belonged to his crush Sohyun. And in turn, SoHyun’s secret was her unplanned pregnancy which Jaein didn’t want Lee Ahn revealed to anyone else.

His Unnie Detective Jisoo’s not-so-secret secret is her feelings for the Hyung Prosecutor, Kang Sungmo. Her character amuses me. I felt her second-hand embarrassment in Episode 3. She showed up on a Saturday at the Hyung’s office, all prettily dressed up, with the pretext of being concerned for Lee Ahn’s test day. It’s as plain as the nose on your face that she was there only to show herself off when she was all dolled up.

Jisoo: Prosecutor Kang. Did you know? Ahn is taking the Police examination?
Sungmo: Recently, he started to study unlike before.
JS: What if he passed by chance? If he can pass the exam through cheating…that means his ability got even better, right?

hahaha. Isn’t that ludicrous?? He’s successful cheating = sign of growing powers. Jisoo jumps on SungMo to whisper but it’s obviously for skinship.

SM: Let’s see what happens. It won’t be late to worry about this after the result.
JS: Yes.
SM: But is this why you came on your day off?
JS: Yes, of course.
SM: Then, please excuse me. I have something to take care of.
JS: (grimacing as she realized that he’s leaving without a word about her appearance) Prosecutor Kang!
SM: Yes.
JS: I…am going on a blind date today. (He shows no reaction) Should I not go?
SM: Why not?

lol. She might have been dressed up in a garbage bag for all the care he gave about her blind date. She berated herself, “Dang it. I’m so embarrassed. I can’t see him for a while.” But her resolution proved weak; it didn’t even last 24 hours because that evening, she showed at their apartment with beer. The girl’s persistent … and thick-skinned.

Last, there’s the Hyung, Kang SungMo. His secret is most intiguing.

Remember what I wrote about the mask posters? The mask is to contrast the two brothers. Not everything is as it seems with that Hyung while our hero Lee Ahn is what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

That’s why when the Hyung stood in front of the posters, the posters look ominous whereas when Lee Ahn posed right smack in the middle of the three posters, the whole feel of the posters switched from being sinister to being comical.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not saying that the Hyung is evil. What I’m suggesting however is that he’s got an ulterior motive for getting Lee Ahn to WANT to read Jaein. Remember what he said in Episode 1?

Jisoo: Until when are you planning on just observing Lee Ahn?
SungMo: Until he has someone he truly wants to do psychometry on. I have someone in mind.
Jisoo: Who’s that person?
SungMo: They might have met already…that child.

And his ulterior motive is tied to his dark secret.

My BITCH’S sense tells me that Sungmo lied about his mother perishing in the fire. That’s the secret he’s willing to protect with his life.

This is the picture of his mom hanging on the wall:

She could have been the “Missing Person” posted on the elevator wall of their apartment.

But she’s the one who escaped in the middle of the night and hid when she saw the evil man with the luggage.

To me, Sungmo probably hid the truth and identified another body as his mother’s so his real parent could escape and have a “free” life and a new identity.

That would explain why he urged Lee Ahn to be cautious of his skill. Remember their conversation in Episode 2?

Ahn: Hyung can’t you trust me just once? This is the only thing I can do for you. (meaning, his psychic power can help his Hyung.)
SungMo: I know. I know you want to do something for me and I know you want to help with that ability of yours. But I think your psychometry is still pretty dangerous. Your ability can see the person who’s wielding the knife, but not the person he stabbed or know if the person could be covering up for someone else. It’s an ability where we can’t know anything. Don’t be proud of seeing ONLY A PORTION of a big picture.

The Hyung argued that there might be a good reason for a person wielding the knife could have stabbed the other person. Perhaps the person with the knife did in self-defense, for survival, or to protect someone or to “cover up.” All these are mitigating factors which Lee Ahn was incapable of deciphering from a brief psychic moment with an object or person.

To the Hyung, psychometry showed a limited understand of the WHOLE entire truth. In fact, the audience can see the Hyung’s point very clearly in these four episodes. Lee Ahn’s psychometry has produced incomplete and DISTORTED pictures like the bra size, the pregnancy test that looked like a lucky ballpoint pen, and a tshirt with the numbers 1946. lol. Lee Ahn sees things imperfectly. His visions are brief and dark. And he needs time, maturity, and greater perception to see everything with perfect clarity. That’s what the Hyung meant when he said that Lee Ahn’s pyschometry was still dangerous.

I’m sure there was a double meaning here, too. The Hyung probably believed that if Lee Ahn were to learn about his own involvement in the fire and the existence of his mother, Lee Ahn wouldn’t be able to comprehend and see the “big” picture. After all, the Hyung was complicit in jailing the wrong person and letting the real criminal go free.  That’s why he became Jaein’s benefactor or “Daddy-long-legs” even though he could hardly afford it. He was trying to salve his guilty conscience.

To me, too, the revelation in Episode 4 that he had also been a victim of the serial murderer/arsonist, and was himself chained to the bathroom explained a lot of things. For instance,

1) he was lousy with his jokes. I mentioned this, right? He lacked “toilet humor” get it? hahaha and he was unable to exchange social banter because he didn’t grow up normally around kids. Even when Lee Ahn was beaten up in high school, there had been time, when his parents were alive, that he felt loved and cherished.

2) he avoided any closeness with JiSoo. He grew up ?? tortured? (We’ll get a better picture later.) He couldn’t READ her romantic hints, just like Lee Ahn couldn’t get an accurate read of the victims. He sent mixed signals. Although he limited his socialization with her off-hours, it was apparent that he watched out for her on the job and listened to her counter-views when nobody else did

3) he understood that the chain wrapped around the victim’s foot was a message for him. He told Jisoo, “It’s a challenge from the culprit.” The murderer knew he was the lead prosecutor handling working with the police on this Nursing Home fire investigation.

To me, given his childhood trauma, the reason he hadn’t turned bad was due to Lee Ahn’s presence in his life. This was mentioned in the show three times.

First, in a flashback in Episode 2, he explained to Lee Ahn that he didn’t eat the extra kimbap thinking that his young brother would “see” it.

Hyung: Noradrenaline in the brain turns bad emotions into memories. So instead of all the good memories in people’s minds, bad memories emerge. Especially because people are bad. Not because you’re a monster. Bad memories stay with people the longest, and you can see them.
Ahn: Why can I see them?
Hyung: I think it’s a relief you can see them. Earlier, I wanted to secretly eat another roll of kimbap, but I stopped myself because I felt like you’d see.

Ahn: Really? But I can’t even see your memories.
Hyung: That’s why you and I match each other so well.
Ahn: So you don’t feel bad when I touch you?
Hyung: Not at all.

The reason they matched well was Lee Ahn served as a deterrent for SungMo. Although Lee Ahn couldn’t read him, he feared that Lee Ahn would, so he forced himself to behave well. Meanwhile, Lee Ahn didn’t have to worry that he would offend his Hyung with his psychic readings because his Hyung was the only person who was impervious to him.

But if Lee Ahn really could have read his Hyung’s memories, he would have been horrified by his Hyung’s memories. SungMo was chained to the bathroom for an unknown length of time when he was young.

For now, we don’t know why SungMo unaffected by Lee Ahn’s powers. Perhaps saving the young boy “reset” or blocked his bad memories. After all, he did become Lee Ahn’s savior when he took the fall for both of them. Literally, he took the fall from a blazing building. Being somebody’s savior and hero would have more than made up for his unresolved traumatic experience as a kid.

Second, in Episode 2 as well, when Lee Ahn bragged about keeping his brother good, he was exactly right.

Hyung: That a day would come when you teach me something! Is this what they call a reward of raising someone?
Ahn: I raised you! By watching you closely so you don’t do anything bad.

Since his younger brother idolized him and hung on to his every word (even quoting him, I’m assuming), Sungmo kept to the good side. In a strange way, Ahn became his de facto “conscience.”

Again, I must point out that if Ahn could only read the BAD MEMORIES of a person, then that image of Jaein in his Hyung’s memory should be interesting.

This vision would indicate that SungMo’s earlier encounter with JaeIn brought out his latent bad memories. I wouldn’t be surprised if his meeting with Jaein reopened his guilt that her father’s in prison when he knew the real criminal was still out and about.

Third and last, SungMo said that Lee Ahn’s value was that he was a person he saved. True, he saved Lee Ahn but Lee Ahn saved him, too. Having Lee Ahn to look at was like a having a reminder for him to do good.

Here’s their dialogue from Episode 4:

Ahn: …Were you going to report me? (for an exam scheme) Do you want me to be indebted toward you forever? Aren’t you scared? Especially in this generation? (meaning: aren’t you afraid that I’d mooch off you for the rest of my life?)
Hyung: It’s okay. You’re worth it to me.
Ahn: Value? What value do I have? (He’s surprised that his Hyung considers him valuable.
Hyung: You are the person I saved. It’s kind of like keeping the virtue I’ve saved up to look at from time to time.

Ahn: The person that you saved…if he became a policeman and did the same line of work you did, in a pyramid scheme-like situation, he could bring you more value. Why don’t you think of it that way?
Hyung: So do you have to limit it to becoming a police officer?
Ahn: Of course. It was so obvious I was going to die but you saved me and I gained this skill I need to display it somewhere for this to be right. It’s a crime to keep this hidden.
Hyung: But it’s such a wishy-washy skill to be displayed.
Ahn: Wow! You’re so bad. Do you like saving me then hurting me? You pervert-psychopath?
Hyung: Sorry, I didn’t think it would hurt you.
Ahn: Anyway, you didn’t think this through. How can you call yourself a prosecutor if you buy chicken without beer? It’s really a mystery, a mystery.

lol. I like how Lee Ahn kept calling his Hyung a “mystery.”

He said he didn’t really know what’s in his heart. In spite of his Hyung’s mystery, their bond and their brotherhood are plain to see.

Will work on the rest of Episode 4 sometime this week.