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It’s finale week and things are finally starting to unfold for our characters. Chae-Ah and Min-seok fight their inner demons and embrace the honesty that they had been avoiding this entire time. The more challenging part is getting Soo-ho’s dad to also do the same and to confront his mistakes and wrongdoings. Will Ji-hyun be able to achieve justice for Ji-eun, Mom, and Soo-ho or will things continue to remain hidden in the shadows like before?

Time (시간): Episode 15 Recap

After receiving the $10 million like he demanded from Soo-ho’s dad, Min-seok shoots Ji-hyun in the chest and she falls over into the water while bleeding.

Soo-ho’s Dad and family assumes Ji-hyun is dead from the bullet. However, Ji-hyun is still alive and was immediately saved by Min-seok and Chae-Ah thanks to her bulletproof vest. They transfer her over to a private clinic to get treated.

Ji-hyun is still suspicious of Min-seok and worries that he’ll betray her. While looking at the security camera footage of the intense showdown between Min-seok, Ji-hyun, and Soo-ho’s dad, Ji-hyun questions whether Min-seok will betray her and delete the footage. However, he reassures her that he’ll turn himself in after Ji-hyun fully recovers.

Min-seok has no plans of betraying Ji-hyun. Even after conversing with Chae-Ah, he remains committed to the original plan of turning himself in after everything is done. Min-seok then secretly heads to pay his mother a quick visit. He reassures that he’ll return once everything is concluded and for her to wait patiently in the meantime. Please don’t hurt Mom 😦

Chae-Ah is also suspicious about Min-seok and his intentions, but there’s no telling what he’ll do next or what his true plans are. Anyone can change at any time. Chae-Ah and Ji-hyun will just have to be cautious of him. With that, Chae-Ah decides that she’ll tell the truth about Ji-eun’s death after they finish their investigations on Soo-ho’s case.

Soo-chul commends Chae-Ah for cooperating with him regarding the whereabouts of the ledger. Now Chae-Ah might still have the chance to inherit her father’s company since she was able to protect her name.

Min-seok visits Ji-hyun at the clinic and asks for the whereabouts of the USB drive with the security camera footages of the showdown on it. It’s crucial evidence that proves that Soo-ho’s dad engaged in acts of bribery to quiet Ji-hyun down. However, Ji-hyun doesn’t easily trust Min-seok and tricks him into thinking the USB drive is in the restroom. When the two receive an unexpected visitor hired by Soo-ho’s dad, Min-seok runs over to the restroom to find the USB drive. It’s then that Ji-hyun quickly traps him inside and makes her escape to her apartment. Min-seok loses not only Ji-hyun but the USB drive as well.

Ji-hyun returns safely to the apartment and is taken care of by a worried and confused Young-hee. Meanwhile, Min-seok updates Chae-Ah about Ji-hyun’s escape with the USB drive. Why would they put themselves through all of this when they can’t even trust each other? If they wanted, Min-seok could just run away with the $10 million while Chae-Ah will never have to reveal to everyone the truth about Ji-eun’s death. However, Min-seok can’t bring himself to betray Ji-hyun.

Ji-hyun and Chae-Ah meet alone in private to discuss about matters. She gives Chae-Ah a copy of the USB drive and wants Chae-Ah to broadcast the security camera footages to the public. This way, the truth about Soo-ho’s dad will be revealed and she too can admit her faults in all of this mess. Ji-hyun gives Chae-Ah until midnight that night to move forward with the broadcast. Failure to do so will lead Ji-hyun to expose everyone herself. Oof.

Min-seok returns home to find Dae-chul interacting with his mother. NOOOO. Min-seok is brought to talk to Soo-ho’s dad who wants evidence that Ji-hyun is dead. If Min-seok fails to bring proper evidence, there’s no saying what will happen to him or his mother.

Chae-Ah shows the reporter the security camera footages of the showdown. The reporter attempts to persuade Chae-Ah to change her mind and claim that the video was fabricated. That’s what Soo-ho’s dad will probably comment about the footages anyways.

It hits midnight and Chae-Ah hasn’t publicly broadcasted the CCTV recordings. This leaves Ji-hyun with no choice but to do it herself so she uploads the security camera clips onto Youtube for everyone to see. Within seconds of uploading it, the video is already viewed by many and the legal team at W Group begins to panic. Min-seok himself prepares to escape with Mom, but wants to watch the video for himself first to determine his next move.

News that the video was fabricated begins to spread and lies that Soo-ho’s dad was somewhere else at the time of the showdown permeates. Soo-chul and his mother devise the plan to paint Ji-hyun as the suspect behind Kang In-bum’s murder. However, Soo-chul is advised by Dae-chul to wait just a little bit longer before making his next move; Soo-ho’s dad is meeting with Chae-Ah.

Soo-ho’s dad offers a different set of options for Chae-Ah. She’s adamant in revealing the truth behind Soo-ho’s death to the public, but Dad reminds her that she’ll have to tell everyone about Ji-eun first before bringing up Soo-ho. What she could do is work with Dad so that they both can overtake Ji-hyun and quiet her down. They’ll leave the video up for a little while since it’s already been uploaded, but eventually bury it afterwards and everything will be fine then.

Ji-hyun’s a little disappointed that the video isn’t making as big of an impact as she had expected. However, she finds another way to defeat W Group: the ledger documents recording all their financial corruption and acts. Thankfully, Min-seok is unable to go through with his decision in giving Soo-chul the documents as Chae-Ah and Ji-hyun were able to get to the documents first. In the end, Chae-Ah hands Ji-hyun the files and gives her the authority to handle the ledger documents as she likes. Chae-Ah will support her and back her up.

And so the hunt for the ledger begins. Ji-hyun continues with the original plan which was to hide the ledger documents and reward whoever discovers it with $100,000. With the help of Young-hee and Bok-gyu, the trio promote the treasure hunt and Ji-hyun herself promotes it online through a video.

Chaos ensues and the legal team at W Group come up with ways to ease the public. Dae-chul and Soo-chul decide to recruit Min-seok once again to give them the ledger in exchange for money and a quiet escape with his mom.

Chae-Ah reminds herself of her reasons in working with Ji-hyun and Min-seok by re-reading the letter that Soo-ho wrote to her before his death. She manages to persuade the reporter to work with them and to make a report about the treasure hunt. In conclusion, there are three ledger documents that are respectively hidden in the locations where Ji-eun, Mom, and Soo-ho each passed away.

Ji-hyun visits Mom and Ji-eun’s memorial site and questions whether everything will finally be over. Right next to their memorial site is a reserved spot just for Ji-hyun herself. Oof.

Chae-Ah gives Min-seok the final opportunity to leave quietly with his mother forever and never get caught again. She’ll reveal the truth about everything for the both of them so that he can escape safely. Min-seok considers the offer.

News of Chae-Ah as the primary suspect behind Kang In-bum’s murder spreads online. Meanwhile, Ji-hyun plans on revealing more information and details about W Group that evening.

Ji-hyun hosts a live stream that night to record herself reveal the truth about Mom, Ji-eun, and Soo-ho’s death. She’s joined by many others as well as Soo-ho’s dad who stops by the public event. Ji-hyun first starts off by talking about Ji-eun and her efforts to investigate the death that was originally investigated for two days and ruled a suicide. She then moves on to discussing about Mom and how Mom died in the process of discovering the truth behind Ji-eun’s death. Ji-hyun will not allow this corruption to be perpetuated. She will not stand for this type of injustice.

At that moment, Soo-chul intervenes and announces that Chae-Ah was the person behind both Ji-eun and Kang In-bum’s deaths. Instead of denying the accusations, Chae-Ah admits her faults and reveals to everyone the truth. She was the one who killed Ji-eun as Soo-chul stated. While watching Chae-Ah confess, Ji-hyun begins to tear up. Maybe justice is finally being achieved.

My Thought:

Okay, I have a lot of thoughts about this second to last episode and most of them aren’t going to be so nice and happy, but I do have to say I’m just glad that we’re finally reaching that point in the investigation where the truth is getting revealed. It took us a while (a very long while I might add) to get here and there were many bumps and challenges along the way, but we’re finally here and it’s going down in these last two episodes.

I feel like I should be happy and relieved that Chae-Ah, Min-seok, and the rest of W Group are going to be punished for the wrongdoings that they committed in covering up the deaths of Ji-eun and Mom, but another part of me is also a little disappointed at how it all unfolded. Now that Chae-Ah exposed herself, there’s nothing left for her to be scared about and there’s nothing left for Soo-ho’s dad to threaten her with. This will eventually lead Soo-ho’s dad, Soo-chul, and everyone else to also confess their faults because they know that they now have no power to control or threaten Chae-Ah like they used to do before. Ji-hyun wins in the end as she should, but I question why it took us so long to just get there.

With the way that the truth was finally unveiled in this episode, a part of me can’t help but feel disappointed at how anti-climatic it was. We received so many hints in the earlier part of the drama on the fact that there was no other way Chae-Ah, Min-seok, and W Group were going to get caught other than turning themselves in. No matter how many security camera footages or secret recordings or ledger documents Ji-hyun had of the antagonists, nothing she did would ever be powerful or big enough to take them down. Ji-hyun even acknowledged this herself in that ending speech at the end of this episode.

It was nice to see Chae-Ah be honest and admit her wrongdoings in the case of Ji-eun’s death, but there was nothing surprising or great about it. It kind of just happened and you knew that this was going to happen sooner or later. You knew that Chae-Ah was eventually going to out herself to protect Ji-hyun and to reveal the truth about Soo-ho (which was her primary motivation behind working with Ji-hyun). Yes, it’s great to see Chae-Ah now face the consequences for her past actions and decisions, but it didn’t feel nice. It didn’t feel great. Why was it that even until the last minute, she was being persuaded left and right by Soo-chul and Soo-ho’s dad to change her mind? Hell, in the last episode, Chae-Ah was reminding Min-seok of different options they could take to save themselves. The confession made by Chae-Ah was predictable and straight-forward which is why it left me a little disappointed.

For all that Ji-hyun’s had to endure this entire drama, I wished that she had been given more. Maybe this will come in the form of Chae-Ah, Min-seok, and W Group finally admitting their faults and coming forward with the disturbing truth about Ji-eun, Mom, and Soo-ho’s death, but I don’t think it’ll ever amount to the amount of pain and misery that Ji-hyun had to go through alone in her journey of fighting against them. If you really think about it, this entire fight was primarily between Ji-hyun against all the other wealthy and powerful characters. There was no way she was going to win, but yet she chose to keep going and to keep fighting. Ji-hyun’s such an admirable and determined character in that sense, but it was so so difficult for her because she was essentially alone and powerless. This makes me wonder how the drama would have ended had Soo-ho was still alive. I know his early departure from the drama was unexpected and not something the drama had originally planned, but I genuinely am curious as to how Soo-ho would have helped Ji-hyun with the case had he not died. Would he have died from his cancer before all of this happened or would he have helped Ji-hyun with the investigation and then die afterwards? There are so many unanswered questions related to Soo-ho and it’s a shame that he couldn’t be there the entire drama to show us how things would have resumed.

Throughout the entire drama, I was always amazed and fascinated by how selfish our characters were and how easily persuaded they were in doing things for themselves. I tried to understand where they were coming from and their reasoning for doing things for themselves. In Min-seok’s case, he was willing to betray Ji-hyun at the last second in order to move away with his mother and protect himself. Ji-hyun, Min-seok, and Chae-Ah were supposed to work together as a team, but even then still had trust issues with one another and couldn’t easily work as well as they had wanted or expected. The part about Min-seok that irks me is the fact that he’s not betraying Ji-hyun to protect his mother, but is rather doing it for himself. He admitted this himself to Chae-Ah when he was about to give the ledger documents to Soo-chul. It’s so sad because even until the very end, Min-seok was looking out for himself just like he had been doing from the very beginning. As Ji-hyun stated, people can change in an instant but at the same time, they also truly do never change.

With the finale finally here and our last episode ready to air, it seems like the hard-fought truth that Ji-hyun’s always wanted will finally be revealed to everyone. With Chae-Ah done, all that’s left is for Soo-ho’s Dad to give up his pride and to also turn him in as well. There’s not much left that he can do to maintain the despicable lies and his position as Chairman. Sooner or later, he’ll have to give everything up and maybe it’s in this process that he’ll finally understand how Ji-hyun felt when she lost Ji-eun, Mom, and Soo-ho.