Nine Puzzles: Episodes 10-11 (Final) » Dramabeans

Nine Puzzles: Episodes 10-11 (Final)

by starrygazer

In the finale week, our sleuths finally piece together all the links between the victims and the killer. As they race to catch the killer and stop the puzzle from being completed, how will our heroine cope with the truth behind her uncle’s death?

 
EPISODES 10-11

Han-saem is in a panic as he watches the former chief prosecutor die at the hospital. It seems impossible; Han-saem stood guard the entire time and there were no outside visitors. As the police investigate, they find out that his IV was swapped with poison.

Han-saem realises the Puzzle Piece Killer must be someone with medical knowledge who is also close to Yi-na, and has a connection to the luxury apartment building, The One City. This realisation prompts him to put Dr. Hwang and Dr. Lee’s photos on the incident board as their medical practice is in The One City, narrowing down the suspect pool.

As the police start combing through the hospital’s CCTV, Commander Tae receives a call that an assemblyman, KIM MU-RYONG (Kim Eung-soo), has gone missing. Meanwhile, Han-saem answers an anonymous call and the caller asks a single question before hanging up: “What makes you so sure the killer is sending the puzzle pieces?”

The police rush to the call box where the call originated, hoping that the caller is still there. Of course, he’s not, but Han-saem notices a nearby car facing the call box, and they check the dashcam footage – the caller was Dr. Hwang. At the police station, Han-saem questions Dr. Hwang about the call and Dr. Hwang spills. Ten years ago, Dr. Lee had asked him to draw a very specific piece for her, but it wasn’t a puzzle at the time. He knows it looks bad, but he knows Dr. Lee and she wouldn’t kill anyone or further traumatise Yi-na.

Meanwhile, Yi-na revisits the reed field where Captain Yang died. As she goes through her thought process, she determines that the killer didn’t finish off the target (the former chief prosecutor) at the field because they didn’t want Captain Yang to die. Not knowing Dr. Hwang is at the police station, Yi-na goes to his office to find him. Once she spots (and swipes) his home keycard, she leaves quickly to investigate his home, incidentally also Dr. Lee’s home as they’re housemates. Yi-na notices that the painting in Dr. Hwang’s office is signed with an H, as are the paintings in his home – and the puzzle pieces. Though Dr. Hwang’s home is full of artwork, his home reminds her of Captain Yang’s in that nothing fits the Puzzle Piece Killer profile. Yi-na thinks to herself that that only leaves the person who knows her better than anyone else – Dr. Lee.

As Yi-na leaves Dr. Hwang’s house, she notices a door is open in an adjoining building. She steps inside and it’s busy and cluttered with object, all in a carnival theme. No one is there, but she finds another puzzle piece. After receiving a call from Han-saem, who fills her in on Dr. Hwang’s whereabouts, Yi-na heads over to the station to ask him the meaning behind the last puzzle piece they got at the broadcasting station. But Dr. Hwang knows nothing, he simply drew what Dr. Lee asked him to.

Yi-na asks why Dr. Hwang helped Dr. Lee, how could he know nothing when they live together? Yi-na wonders if they’re romantically involved because why else would he go to such lengths for her? Dr. Hwang hesitates then answers that they have been close since medical school. She is the only person in the world who knows his big secret – that he is gay. When Dr. Lee opened a clinic at The One City, she asked him to work with her and so he did. Han-saem asks if he knew Captain Yang, and Dr. Hwang says he didn’t, but during their residency, a policeman dropped by a couple of times to see Dr. Lee. At the time, people had gossiped that it was because of an ex-boyfriend or that a patient was suing her.

Yi-na and Han-saem continue asking about this policeman and whether any of Dr. Lee’s friends would know the background of the encounter. But Dr. Hwang informs them that Dr. Lee has no friends; Yi-na was the closest person to her. One person does come to mind though, patrol officer NAM NA-RI (Lee Joo-young). Dr. Hwang explains that he has been treating the patrol officer because she didn’t feel comfortable seeing Dr. Lee, as they attended school together.

Yi-na seeks Officer Nam out to get more information about Dr. Lee. Officer Nam explains that they were in the same eighth-grade class together. One day that still sticks out in her memory was the day their class went on a field trip to an amusement park while they both stayed behind at school.

Dr. Lee had told her she didn’t want to go to an amusement park because she’d been abandoned at one when she was seven by her mother and then sent to an orphanage. Officer Nam had suggested that Dr. Lee could go back to the amusement park and find clues about her mother, and Dr. Lee retorted that if she found her mum, she would kill her. (That gave me goosebumps.)

Through this clue, our duo discovers that Dr. Lee was the person Captain Yang was looking for when he became a policeman, and his last words, Shindonga Seo-jin confirm the clue. “Shindonga” was the name of a market that was levelled to build The One City, and “Seo-jin” was the name of a diner that was run by Dr. Lee’s mum and where Captain Yang worked 20 years prior. (Not a link through the orphanage like I had suspected.)

The tragedy that links the victims is unveiled, and we see it unfold in a flashback. A young Mi-young had tried to convince Dr. Lee’s mother, LEE NAM-SOOK (Oh Min-ae) to accept the offered compensation and vacate her diner. But Nam-sook held out. She didn’t care about money, she wanted to stay at the market because she still had hope that one day her lost daughter would find her way back. Other vendors followed her lead and their persistence meant delays in breaking ground for The One City. A young Chi-mok was an enforcer for CEO Yoon-soo’s construction company, pushing out reluctant vendors so they could clear land. When Chi-mok called Yoon-soo to report that the market vendors were still refusing to leave. Yoon-soo instructed Chi-mok to take the necessary action – time was money after all.

Yoon-soo had the police wait on site until he gave them the all clear that they could go into the market. While the police stood by doing nothing, Chi-mok and his band of thugs wielded flamethrowers and Molotov cocktails, causing a fire to break out. That’s one way to clear the market of people.

Chi-mok targeted Captain Yang, and Nam-sook tried to stop him. Chi-mok and Nam-sook were hit with fiery debris and while Chi-mok escaped, he left Nam-sook there to perish.

Cheol-jin, who was in charge of construction for The One City, had made an arrangement with Uncle Dong-hoon to keep things quiet about the death at the market, and Uncle Dong-hoon agreed to bury the case for money.

The missing Assemblyman Kim was a local politician at the time with greater ambitions. He wanted The One City to be a landmark for his district, and he personally thanked Uncle Dong-hoon for covering up this case, stating that Uncle Dong-hoon would become a billionaire, and he would be on the road to becoming a minister and then an assemblyman.

The former chief prosecutor had brushed the case aside, and Reporter Lee wrote a story about Nam-sook and lied about the entire thing. He had labelled her as a redevelopment terrorist claiming that she started the fire because she wanted more money and an apartment in The One City. (This makes my blood boil.)

We jump into another flashback, ten years after the Shindonga fires. We see Captain Yang visit Dr. Lee in medical school. He has the handkerchief and a book that belonged to her mother. Captain Yang explains that her mother took him in and gave him a job years prior, and he’s been looking for her for a long time.

In a jump to a time after the killings had started again, Captain Yang had taken the handkerchief back to her after he retrieved it from Yoon-soo’s crime scene, recognising it as hers. And he pleaded with her to stop; to go and live her life. It’s what her mother would have wanted. Captain Yang tries to connect with Dr. Lee through their similar backgrounds in the orphanages and assures her that he will take responsibility for it all and make the truth of Nam-sook’s death to life. But Dr. Lee brushes his attempt aside and is adamant that the life she wants includes killing.

Yi-na returns home, only to find Dr. Lee waiting for her in the same spot she had waited when she killed Uncle Dong-hoon. Creepy. Yi-na seems shaken but holds herself together as she asks if it was fun watching her struggle with this case. Dr. Lee said she wanted Yi-na to get close but not too close. Dr. Lee had stopped killing after Uncle Dong-hoon because no one was curious about the case, so she didn’t see the point. Until Yi-na came to see her with the puzzle piece. Dr. Lee asks Yi-na if she wants to go with her to find the missing Assemblyman Kim. Yi-na willingly goes, and in the car, she gets a call from Han-saem, which prompts Dr. Lee to throw her phone out of the window.

As Dr. Lee drives to The One City, Yi-na tells her there could have been another way to deal with this. Dr. Lee disagrees, saying not one of the victims asked for mercy or offered an apology because they didn’t even remember her mum existed. Dr. Lee gives Yi-na a key fob to access The One City and tells her which apartment she can find the next victim and puzzle piece.

As Yi-na rushes off to find Assemblyman Kim, Han-saem has realised she’s gone and the police are in hot pursuit. Han-saem and his colleagues arrive at The One City, and the falling body of Assemblyman Kim nearly hits Han-saem. (This shook me.) Yi-na finds another puzzle piece in the apartment she was sent to, but this time it leaves no clues for her – it is blacked out. And Dr. Lee is in the wind again.

When Yi-na and Han-saem discuss what they know, she tells him that Uncle Dong-hoon had received three apartments in The One City but put them in her name, later selling them and buying his luxury home. She also reveals that her parents owned ten units of the Shindonga market, so they would have been handsomely compensated too. Yi-na is slowly spiraling at her family’s involvement, and I can’t blame her.

Back at base camp, Yi-na and Han-saem discuss Assemblyman Kim’s involvement. At the time of the Shindonga fire, he had been head of the city council and accepted bribes from Yoon-soo for years. He also helped Yoon-soo rebrand himself as a trustworthy businessman and expand his company. All the dots have been connected and so our duo just needs to figure out the final piece of the puzzle. Han-saem follows a lead that Dr. Lee went to the funeral home where Captain Yang is, but in the CCTV footage, she just stood outside in the rain for ages without going in.

Yi-na goes back to the amusement park, and she finds Dr. Lee sitting and waiting for her on the carousel. It appears that Dr. Lee has taken poison, which means that she is the last piece of the puzzle. Yi-na asks her not to end things this way but Dr. Lee just begins to explain that she enjoyed riding the carousel with her mum. Dr. Lee had forgotten where her mum’s restaurant was and would return to the amusement park in the hope that her mum would come back for her. Yi-na apologises for her family’s involvement, and Dr. Lee tells her that it’s neither her fault nor her burden to bear. She tells Yi-na that she’s too sensitive and that’s why she can’t sleep. (This all feels really sad.)

Yi-na tries talking to her about the case and asks why she put on classical music before killing Mi-young. Dr. Lee corrects her to say that the song was already playing when she got in Mi-young’s car. She continues it was so beautiful she almost forgot she was there to kill someone. Yi-na tries to convince Dr. Lee that she can move on, pay for what she’s done, and then live her life. But Dr. Lee replies she has no desire to live – she can’t tolerate herself any longer.

Han-saem arrives and tries to take her into custody. Dr. Lee doesn’t even blink. She doesn’t see the point in struggling so hard just to live. She takes out a lighter and sets the carousel on fire. Yi-na asks why, and Dr. Lee responds, “Why would people kill someone just to build a place for someone else to live?” (And if that doesn’t highlight the absurdity of it all, I don’t know what does.) Dr. Lee goes and sits inside a carriage on the carousel to burn, as Yi-na and Han-saem become unwilling witnesses to the completion of the puzzle.

At the police station, Commander Tae tries to question Yi-na, but she is traumatised and says she can’t remember. It’s a full circle moment from when we first saw her being questioned as a teenager. Han-saem realises this and stops the questioning. Yi-na understandably retreats into herself, and Han-saem does his best to help her, even taking her for a terrible meal at his mum’s place. But it doesn’t seem to work, and she decides to quit her job as a profiler.

And at the end of our show, Han-saem is called to another weird murder scene, and when he arrives, accompanied by San, the profiler team is there. Minus Yi-na, or so he thinks, until she steps onto the scene and starts explaining the killer’s mentality. (Yay, I’m so pleased she’s back! And equally as pleased her boss put off filing her resignation when Yi-na initially tried to quit.) And the last thing Yi-na does is pull out another puzzle piece! Copycat? Second season, pretty please.

I did feel sad for Yi-na when Dr. Lee committed suicide. Dr. Lee was obviously significantly damaged from being lost when she was young and ending up in the orphanage. Then, to find out what had happened to her mum tipped her over the edge. I don’t think she was trying to traumatise Yi-na. Rather, she saw herself in Yi-na, both alone, isolated and traumatised by their past, and ultimately wanted Yi-na to catch her. Overall, I found this thriller captivating to watch. I wanted to know where it was going, and it was hard to predict, which made it an enjoyable watch.

 
RELATED POSTS