It’s a quirk of this blog that I break down dialogues. Yo solo hablo Ingles and the easiest way for me to understand what’s said in Korean (or Chinese, now that I’ve started to watch Chinese drama) is to go line by line in order to read between the lines. 😂 Often, I glean a lot of information from reading the words that I missed just watching the characters say them.

Let’s take for instance, the opening scene in Episode 8. In the flashback, the dad of Jaein asks a favor of Lee Ahn’s dad. He goes, “I may be overstepping my bounds here, but may I ask a favor from you? (referring to young Sungmo) He moved into Unit 701 about a month ago. He moved in the middle of the night, and I haven’t seen much of his mom. He sits there looking into the distance.”

Is this an interesting fact? On the surface, no. After watching this scene once, I could have skipped it because it’s unremarkable.

Lee Ahn and his dad then approach the teen Sungmo. The dad says, “I’m not someone suspicious. I live in 1501.” Meanwhile, Ahn proudly shows off his dad’s badge, “This is my dad’s.” as if to prove that his dad is indeed trustworthy and not at all suspicious.

But Sungmo only answers, “So what?”

Right there, this brief exchange of words tells me five things about the lead characters.

One, young Ahn hero-worships his dad and sees his dad as a crusader. His dad captures bad guys. Two, his admiration is in stark contrast to Sungmo’s apathy. Sungmo is done with that whole Superman/Batman/Aquaman hero crap; a police badge doesn’t impress him one bit.

Three, Sungmo’s apathy is rather nuanced and short-lived. When a breeze almost blows away the card left by Lee Ahn’s dad, he tamps it down and proceeds to read it. See? He can’t be “impressed” with the badge because we now know that he has Alexithymia or that inability to feel or express emotions. But neither does he reject Ahn’s dad’s work as a police detective as inconsequential.

Four, Ahn retains this admiration for police work because thirteen years later, he plans to join the police as psychometrist. His mindset remains unchanged. It’s almost inevitable that he’s going to be like his father, and help people with his gift.

Five, Sungmo’s personality hasn’t changed thirteen years later. As a grown-up and a prosecutor, he works side-by-side with the police but he’s still as remote and untouchable as he was when he was a teen.

See that? The original scene is so short but if I write it down, I can see how the past is prologue. We get these flashbacks because we must see how Lee Ahn’s and Sungmo’s past is setting up the stage for their future, for their intertwined destinies.

Let’s continue.

Lee Ahn’s dad asks him, “Why are you sitting in the cold without a coat?” Sungmo answers without hesitation, “This is the best place to see people enter and exit the apartment.”

That’s a strange answer, right? But it connects with what Jaein’s dad observed earlier that Sungmo just sits there looking into the distance.

But little Ahn sees nothing wrong with Sungmo wasting time by watching people come and go. He simply assumes that Sungmo’s waiting for a loved one. “Who are you waiting for? Your mom? Dad?”

And Sungmo answers, “I’m not waiting for anyone.” He follows this up with a polite request, “Could you move aside? You’re blocking my view.”

And now I get it. Here’s their connection to the future.

I don’t know if you noticed but after Lee Ahn got stabbed in Episode 5, Sungmo parked his car at a bridge. He and Jisoo had just left the hospital, and Jisoo was questioning him about the existence of a stalker who, according to Ahn, had been following him for 13 years. He pulled off and parked after a bridge.

This is symbolic. To me, it means his past has finally and truly caught up with him in the present time. Jisoo asked him, “Why do you hide so much?”

To me, the answer is because he’s trying to hide his traumatic past. He’s built a new life as a promising and hard-working prosecutor. He’s even purchased a new apartment. But the attack on Lee Ahn surprised him because he didn’t expect his stalker to cross over the metaphorical bridge from his past and meet him so soon on new grounds. He probably thought he had more time….

Then we next see him, at the very beginning of Episode 6, standing on a bridge again. Across from him, there’s a train rushing past him. And below him, cars were zooming in and out of a tunnel.

This is symbolic, too. To me, it means that he’s returned to his old task of  “looking into the distance,” as Jaein’s father said. He’s again out in the cold, standing at the “best place to see people enter and exit,” to watch for the enemy approach.

The train here is like blasting from his past, and carrying with it all the unfinished and unforgotten emotional baggage. He remembered a lot of things from the past including his mother saying this:

And to me, his location on the bridge here represents his existence. He’s the connection, the missing link to the puzzle and the mystery of the unsolved cases. But everything is in the dark because he doesn’t know yet his next course of action.

Then now in Episode 8, he’s tracking down his stalker/killer. He’s still out in the cold, watching cars coming towards him.

But he’s become a vigilante. He knows his enemy won’t stop until he’s ruined and his loved ones injured so he tries to go at it alone and stop the stalker/killer on his own.

Unlike in Episode 6 when he was standing in the shadows, in Episode 8, his purpose is already clear to him. He stands in the light because he already knows what he’s going to do. You can say that he’s “enlightened.” lol.

He’s told Lee Ahn what he’s about to do, remember?

When he was young, he couldn’t kill him because it would hurt his mother terribly if he were to become the “same person as THAT person”.

When he was young all he could do was wait in silence and in denial.  He couldn’t tell anybody back then that he was waiting for the stalker/killer.

But now that he was older, he isn’t waiting anymore. He’s going to stop his stalker/killer at all costs.

However, the young Sungmo still lives on in the grown-up Sungmo. He’s still waiting but this time for a different person.

He’s waiting for Lee Ahn. This guy. That’s why he wants him trained to use his own gift

and has entrusted Jaein to help Lee Ahn.

To me, he’s waiting for Lee Ahn to save him from crossing that bridge of self-destruction, from becoming a monster just like “THAT” person his mother warned him. He wants Lee Ahn to save him from himself.

And Jaein confirms it.

That’s the whole point of that conversation about the baby chick towards the end of Episode 8.

JI: The thing that Prosecutor Kang wanted to show you but can’t show you, do you know what it is?
Ahn: What?
JI: Sometimes baby chicks can’t get out of the shell even though it’s time for them to come out. It’s definitely time for them to come out of the shell, but they can’t break out of the shell on their own. But if they miss that timing, the baby chicks end up dying. But they die even if you break the shell from the outside, too.
Ahn: Why are you bringing up baby chicks right now?
JI: I’m telling you that you’re the one to break the shell for me right now.
Ahn: I’m flattered that you overestimated my ability but do you think my Hyung thinks like that?
JI: No. Prosecutor Kang also wants you to do it. I choose you. Prosecutor Kang is waiting for you too because he trusts you.

And so we’ve come full circle. Do you see that? The flashback reveals the connection between Sungmo and Lee Ahn.

When young Lee Ahn asked him 13 years ago, “Who are you waiting for?”

young Sungmo answered, “I’m not waiting for anyone.”

Of course, young Sungmo didn’t know back then that the person he was really waiting for was right in front of him. He has to wait for that kid to grow up.