Since I suspected Sungmo hired the services of Kim Gab Yong, I’ve been on the lookout for emerging signs of his psychopathic tendencies. So far, however, nothing in his actions in Episode 13 proves conclusively that he’s turned evil.

Perhaps in the following episode (which I haven’t seen yet 🙂), but not in Episode 13.

In fact, if I’m correctly “interpreting” the director’s intention in this episode, the director was trying to show us that the dad manipulated Lee Ahn to doubt Sungmo.

There were three occasions.

One, this tunnel scene.

I relished this scene; it was cathartic to watch Lee Ahn pummeling GeunTaek.

But TO ME, the location of their encounter was significant because it deepened the narrative. There was Lee Ahn, punching GeunTaek in a long, shadowy, unused TUNNEL. And as he was beating the daylights out of him, he was getting VISIONS of the past.

Did you get it?

Visually and metaphorically, Lee Ahn was getting tunnel visions. 🙂

A tunnel vision is a DEFECTIVE perspective.

True, Lee Ahn was seeing a vast array of GeunTaek’s memories which would help the investigation. But his vision or “reading” was impaired by his intense emotions, his volatility, and his lack of backstory. 

Remember: we, bitches on this blog, are ahead of the plot. When it comes to piecing the puzzle together, i.e., understanding Sungmo’s motives, deducing his involvement with Kim Gab Yong, and figuring out the existence of his mother, we’re in fact a few steps ahead of Lee Ahn and Jaein in the story.

Funny, isn’t it?

We weren’t flabbergasted, like Lee Ahn was, to learn that Sungmo was at the Hangmin Nursing Home because we already analyzed that. We were already aware a) that Sungmo knew more than he was letting on about the fire, b) that he must have known who did it from the start, and c) that he was covering it all up.

He’s Psychometric: Kim Gab Yong’s Boss

For Lee Ahn, however, everything he knew about his Hyung, was overturned WITHOUT WARNING at that encounter in the tunnel. His world, wherein his Hyung could do no wrong, was being upended with the visions he was seeing.

He only discovered the truth when he took these readings.

And FOR THE FIRST TIME, he began suspecting that his brother was deeply involved in the arsons and murders that they’d all previously known.

Remember now: only last episode, he was naively saying that, in the WORST case scenario, the person who hired KGY would be Hyung’s mother.

So, the tunnel was the place where disjointed facts and images were being fast-tracked without any context or background explanation, like Jaein wanted to do. To me, this this whole camera angle looked like he was heading for a train wreck. Yes, there was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel… if he didn’t have a head-on collision with harsh reality first.

This was also another brilliant camera shot.

The close-up camera shots of his face, from different angles, indicated not only his PHYSICAL dizziness (this is a side effect of his readings, remember?), but also his MENTAL discombobulation. He was assimilating too many things at once.

With all this “tunnel vision” then, it was no wonder that he couldn’t distinguish truth from lies. He couldn’t tell that GeunTaek was manipulating him.

But to me, it was clear.

GeunTaek was lying about the YungSung fire to Sungmo’s mother to shake her confidence in Sungmo…just like he was manipulating Lee Ahn. GeunTaek was sowing seeds of doubt in Lee Ahn’s mind about Sungmo’s benevolence and “big brother” act.

GeunTaek deceived the mom into wondering whether Sungmo had a part in the YungSung fire to alienate her from him.

Toward the end of Episode 13, we see GeunTaek’s lies in the mom’s memories.

Let’s be clear here for a minute.

Sungmo could NOT have stolen the jacket which his dad dropped in the hallway.

And he could NOT have stolen his dad’s “custom-made” knife which was used to kill the women. Remember? In Episode 11, Jaein said the murder weapon was a homemade knife, and here they were in the suitcase.

And Sungmo didn’t have opportunity to kill those ladies as he, too, was trying to avoid a face-to-face encounter with his dad.

So, nice try, GeunTaek! You can’t fool this bitch.

Obviously, GeunTaek wanted the mom to doubt Sungmo so she would sever her link with him.

See that?

And he was now doing the same thing to Lee Ahn. He insinuated that Sungmo only “tamed” him for personal motives.

Like with Sungmo’s mother, his goal here was to cause estrangement, a disconnect between Sungmo and his loved one. He wanted Sungmo isolated and Lee Ahn distrusting Sungmo.

My one advice to Lee Ahn is this: Never trust anyone who can distort and pervert such an innocent book as the “Little Prince.” 

Now moving on to the second occasion where the director was hinting at GeunTaek’s manipulation.

It was this weed on the track. lol.

Thank goodness it’s not another sunflower!

If my “read” is correct, this weed is connected to the “Little Prince,” too.

Here’s the narrator in the book talking about good seeds and bad seeds:

source: Little Prince pdf

Indeed, as I learned, there were on the planet where the little prince lived–as on all planets–good plants and bad plants. In consequence,there were good seeds from good plants, and bad seeds from bad plants.

But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin–timidly at first–to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish.

But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it.

To me, the weed on the train track was a warning. Just like they’re good seeds and bad seeds in the little prince’s planet, there are good advice and bad advice in Lee Ahn’s world.

Jaein and Jisoo were his constant source of good advice. Jisoo was the one who told him to help his brother because he was lonely, too.

See here:  Jisoo was already making him aware way back then that he wasn’t the only one who felt loneliness.

And Jaein, if you noticed, told him to calm down. She’s his source of reason. As he jokingly said, without her, he isn’t a psychometrist, but a psycho.

But what Lee Ahn heard from GeunTaek was bad advice. “Don’t be mistaken and think that Kang Sungmo is your life savior just because he saved you. Kang Sungmo only tamed you.”

GeunTaek was “planting” a bad seed of doubt in Lee Ahn so he’d suspect his Hyung’s every motive, doubt his Hyung’s past, present and future actions, and question their whole relationship.

Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them.

A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces . . .

Here’s the drawing from “The Little Prince.”

This is what Lee Ahn should have done with “advice” from GeumTaek.  He should have just WEEDED it out.

But since he didn’t, his doubt grew like the baobab tree.

See here. He’s replaying GeumTaek’s words in his head.

lol. I love the seedlings props in this scene.

The next thing we knew, Lee Ahn was bursting into his Hyung’s room and turning things upside-down. (But remember how he’d asked permission to enter Sungmo’s room to borrow books?)

That was the effect of GeumTaek’s words in his mind. They’re like bad seeds taking over his thoughts until he was confused.

GeumTaek was insidious alright.

And the third occasion when I thought the director was hinting at us to watch out for GeunTaek’s manipulation was in the prologue. 

Sungmo was saying, “A person who fights with a monster should be careful that they don’t turn into a monster during the fight. If I look into the abyss for a long time, the abyss will go inside of me, and I see you.”

And on the mirror, he arranged post-its.

Basement. Kang Geun Taek. Metal chains.
Yoon Jaein. (empty) Eun Jisoo.
Yungsung Apartment security guard sets fire himself. A ghost station that exists but does not exist. Hanmin Care Home and Yungsung Apartment Fire copycat.

Later, he would add “Psychometry” in the middle.

Of course, there are other ways to interpret this arrangement, but for me, the obvious one is the warning. The more Sungmo tried to fight his dad, the more he became his dad.

But this warning could also be applied to Lee Ahn because he was trying to “read” both father-and-son. Both of them were at conflict with each other so he was getting a “double vision” of not one, but two monsters.

And on top of this, his psychometric skills made him a “monster,” too. Lee Ahn was fighting his own personal demon, too.

And here. It didn’t matter whether Lt Nam thought he was a crazy guy or a “monster.”

The more involved Lee Ahn became with his hyung and GeunTaek’s hostilities, the more unstable or turbulent he became with his own skills and emotions.

The old Lee Ahn wouldn’t have done this:

This:

Or this:

GeumTaek’s words “Kang Sungmo, all he did was tame you,” struck a nerve in Lee Ahn because Lee Ahn always had a love-hate relationship with his psychometric skills.

Do you get it?

GeumTaek made him think that HE was truly a monster who needed to be tamed by Hyung. His words made him forget his special bond with Sungmo.

From Episode 2:

Sungmo didn’t consider his time with him as taming a wild beast, but more like “raising a child.”

And Lee Ahn replied that HE raised his hyung, too.

From Episode 4:

Sungmo considered him a “virtue” not a monster.

It’s most unfortunate then that, in their brief fight in the tunnel, Lee Ahn quickly forgot all the good memories he had with his Hyung and replaced them with the ugly memories retained by GeumTaek. Lee Ahn might have successfully beaten up the old guy

but to me, it looked like a hollow victory.

GeumTaek’s skills weren’t in fisticuffs anyway. His expertise was in manipulating and exploiting the vulnerabilities of his victims. With that in mind, I say, then, that GeumTaek won that round in the tunnel handily.

I’ll end this post with a reminder on one of the themes of this kdrama. lol. No, it isn’t about “compensation.”  Right, @nrllee?

It’s about secrets.

From the start, it was all about secrets. He’s a Psychometric: Ep 4 On Kang SungMo

Jaein said it herself, “Sometimes, there are secrets that people protect with their lives.”

She didn’t think Lee Ahn would understand.

And he protested saying, “Did I say I didn’t understand? I understand but why would I be expelled because of that?”

lol. No. He didn’t REALLY understand.

He was still questioning: Why should he have to take the fall for somebody else? Why did he have to protect another person’s secret? Why did he have to sacrifice himself?

The answer is love. He didn’t get that. The secret and the sacrifice were done willingly out of love.

The mom was doing it here for Sungmo: keeping their meetings secret even though it might backfire on her. She was lying to protect Sungmo in the same way that Sungmo had been lying all these years to protect.

At no time did Sungmo quibble that protecting his mother would destroy his career or his future. He wasn’t a high school kid who would weigh the cost of keeping a secret.

This:

versus this:

See the difference back then? And they were probably around the same age, too….

I TOLD YOU, ladies, that was the whole point of Lee Ahn’s crisis in Episode 10, didn’t I? I kept on insisting that you have to go beyond “feels” for Lee Ahn’s pain. That wasn’t the point of the writer.

The main idea was Lee Ahn MUST grow up, not just for his psychometric talents, but to become “human.” He needed to learn to go beyond his own pain and walk in somebody else’s shoes in order to understand her pain, too.

He’d been giving Jaein’s empty promises before. But after their falling-out, he realized what loving and protecting someone entailed.

Links: On Creating Heroes and Umbrellas vs Shoes

Now, in the upcoming episodes, it’ll be his brother’s turn.

Back in Episode 5, he said this:

Then, in Episode 9, he said this:

Sungmo could only sigh.

For now, his trust and confidence in his Hyung have been shaken because of GeunTaek’s scheme. But let’s see whether he’ll get over it and get on track again.