Now that Eps 5 & 6 are postponed for next week, we have more time to go over the last episodes.

I’ll refine my response to GB’s comment. She asked:

The other question is why the villains want to get at SE through HJ. Why not directly? What are they asking for?

@GB, my short answer is this:

They want to get at SE through HJ because she’s his one and only weakness.

That’s why I have two suspects:

1. HJ’s step-unnie, Hong In-A (IA)

SE told HJ/406 that he was the last person to meet with IA before she disappeared. They made a deal.

SE: 406, you don’t know anything.
HJ: What?
SE: I’ll only say this once, so listen very carefully. Before Hong InA disappeared, the last person she met with before the wedding was me.
HJ: What?
SE: I guess you didn’t dig that deep.
HJ: When you two met, what did you talk about?
SE: We made a deal.
HJ: What deal?
SE: Because of that deal, Hong InA can never become Paik SaEon’s wife. What now? I think I just got rid of your motive for blackmail.

Deal = blackmail.

I think he blackmailed IA with something. Something he knew about her, something perhaps from their childhood days. (I can only think of the accident that caused HJ to end up in the hospital.)

Whatever it was, SE expected the deal to be ironclad. She can’t rescind or revoke their agreement. Hence, he categorically told HJ/406 that IA could *never* become his wife.

Yet IA is now back in Seoul, ready to take the spotlight as the so-called reclusive wife of Paek SaEon.

Note: Both the Hong and Paik families never bothered to correct the media reports that SE married the older daughter.

Because of their last meeting, IA is the only one aware of SE’s true intentions for HJ. IA knows that he’ll go to any lengths — even make a deal with her — to marry HJ.

With all that said, I’m still keeping my eye on Suspect #2.

2. SE’s mom

Remember during the bird-hunt in Episode 3 when she was scrolling through her phone and chanced upon the news report of the bombing of an office?

Well, my theory is that she was the one who texted that fish butcher afterwards. She left the hunting party to text that hired assassin after she learned about the bomb incident in the news.

The fishy guy received a text from his master with just a link to the news.

Fisherman: Did you see it? What do you think?
Master: Don’t act alone from now on.

The bombing wasn’t on her list of instructions, and she clearly disapproved of the assassin acting alone and going off-script.

To me, she was concerned that her son SE could have been injured by that blast and she didn’t want that. All she wanted is to go after SE’s weak spot, i.e., HJ. Injuring or killing her son isn’t part of the plan. After all, she needs him alive for her husband’s presidential campaign.

That’s her strategy to get SE to join the campaign. She obviously doesn’t trust her husband’s plan, so she made up her own back-up plan.

Also, take note of this: for such a smart woman (top negotiator, top criminalist, etc.) why is she married to a DUNCE like SE’s father? Isn’t she repulsed by him? I think she’s playing the long game here.

Also, in my opinion, if SE knew beforehand of the existence of HJ’s real father (i.e., he didn’t act surprised when he heard of Na JinCheol’s name), then his mother would surely know about him, too. I’m guessing that she was the one who ordered the assassin to target HJ’s father next.

One other thing: I know it’s been speculated that she isn’t the biological mother of SE because of the way she talked to the young SE when he wouldn’t eat the sashimi at the Hong garden party. In my opinion, however, that was her passive-aggressive style of parenting. In referring to her son as a third person, she was pushing the young SE to fit in the role of the “good son/obedient son.” She wouldn’t brook any argument or dissent from SE, so she appealed to the child’s nature to please the parent to get her way done.

That’s why she’s a top negotiator and crime specialist.  🙂

Anyway, those are my two suspects, @GB.

Until we have more proof, I don’t buy the second brother/hidden brother theory.