I Remember You episode 11 recap

Side dish: What do you think was the first thing Joon Young ate after he escaped confinement? If he were in Toronto, he’d probably head straight for Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Cheesecake and stand in a lineup for an hour, so he could have some delicious cheesecake. The alternate option, of course, is to make it at home with this recipe from Happy Home Baking.

Episode Recap

Newly returned from her near death experience, police detective Cha Ji Ahn (Jang Na Ra) confesses how scared she had been of never seeing genius criminal profiler, Lee Hyun (Seo In Guk) again, then kisses him. His only reaction is surprise. Unnerved by the fact that he doesn’t kiss her back, Ji Ahn pulls back. Unnerved even more by his continued silence, Ji Ahn offers a laundry list of terrible excuses for kissing him, then runs away. Hyun says nothing to reassure her, other than that he was glad she didn’t die. She thanks him for finding her and closes her bedroom door.

Hyun’s amusement at Ji Ahn’s antics is interrupted by the sight of a journal sitting on his kitchen table. Hyun recognizes it as the missing journal of Detective Yang, and is pleased to have finally gotten a response from serial killer, Lee Joon Young (Do Kyung Soo or EXO’s DO). Back in the basement, Hyun lines up the journal with all the evidence he has so far gathered on Joon Young and promises himself not to run away anymore.

Meanwhile, next door, Hyun’s neighbour, medical examiner Lee Joon Ho (Choi Won Young) makes dinner and looks in the direction of Hyun’s house expectantly.

Back in her room, Ji Ahn can’t sleep due to annoyance at having confessed to Hyun. Hyun interrupts her mental self-flagellation to ask if she’s busy, but sadly, he’s not there to finally kiss her back. Instead, the two of them drive out to the scene of a case detailed in Detective Yang’s journal where 13 people, consisting of an entire family and members of their staff, disappeared overnight in 1993. Ji Ahn is jumpy as they walk into the house, and screams when someone (or a ghost?) runs down the hall behind them. Hyun is nonplussed by Ji Ahn’s fear of ghosts, and continues his search. In one of the rooms, they find an elaborate drawing of Purgatory on the wall, which Hyun attacks with a sledge hammer.

In the midst of creating another creepy painting, coldblooded lawyer, Jung Sun Ho (Park Bo Gum) gets a text from his uncle, that the children have come to the door. Sun Ho wonders what it’s about, but it turns out to be literal: Hyun and Ji Ahn have uncovered a door behind the wall. There are more surprises in store, as the two of them find a dusty room containing a coffin. They open the coffin to find the skeletal remains of a woman in her 20s, who had once borne a child. Hyun theorizes that the drawing of Purgatory was to cover the sins involving this woman, maybe suicide or murder. Either way, he decides to send the remains to Joon Ho for processing.

Having found what they came for, they go in search of Ji Ahn’s ghost, who turns out to be a woman. Later, in the interrogation room of the police station, the woman, Park Joo Ah, tells them the story of the house. The skeleton was the youngest daughter of the house, and after suffering a rape in her teens, she fell pregnant, and bore an unwanted baby boy. The boy grew up hated in the household, locked up and beaten by all the family members. As Joo Ah tells the story, Hyun thinks back to Joon Young’s interviews with his father, police psychologist, Lee Joong Min (Jeon Kwang Leol), where Joong Min had dismissed Joon Young’s repeated stories of abuse as lies. Hyun considers the possibility that they might have been true, as Joo Ah continues. After the boy’s mother committed suicide, the boy was permanently locked up, and a teenaged Joo Ah became his only visitor, bringing him food and sneaking in books.

When Ji Ahn asks if Joo Ah remembers his face, she answers in the affirmative: the sketch she produces confirms that she’s talking about Joon Young.

Back in the squad room, it’s time for a party to celebrate the return of injured team leader, Kang Eun Hyeok (Lee Chun Hee). As Ji Ahn arrives, the party descends into a food fight at her instigation. Hyun, meanwhile, decides to skip throwing cake into people’s faces in order to go back to the dead woman’s house. As he stares into the living room, he flashes back to Joo Ah recounting how she released Joon Young. Moments after letting him go, she was knocked unconscious, and when she woke, she was surrounded by dead bodies.

At the medical examiner’s office, Joon Ho painstakingly reassembles the skeleton of the dead woman, then greets his mother saying that it’s been a long time. The family reunion is interrupted by the arrival of Sun Ho, and the two of them face off over the woman’s remains. Joon Ho warns Sun Ho that Hyun will be arriving soon, but Sun Ho wonders what Joon Ho wants from Hyun anyway. Joon Ho wonders the same thing about Sun Ho, but he calls him “Min” when he asks. Neither of them get any answers as Sun Ho decides to leave before Hyun arrives.

On his way out, in voiceover Sun Ho says that he wants Hyun to know what he became, as the forgotten kid, the one who was left behind. Before he can tell us what he became, Hyun calls out to him and invites him to come along to meet with Joon Ho. We’re back to uncomfortably formal relations as Hyun obliquely questions them about what his discovery of this woman’s remains could mean. Sun Ho theorizes that it’s a plea for sympathy, but Joon Ho instead offers the explanation that it’s a plea for understanding. The conversation goes from a minefield to a battlefield as Hyun smilingly states that he doesn’t want to offer either sympathy or understanding. Their verbal chess match is interrupted by a text from Ji Ahn, who asks if Hyun wants anything at the market. When Hyun comments how much he enjoys their company, Joon Ho invites the other two for tea in his room. Hyun, instead, invites the two of them for soju later on.

At the supermarket, Hyun catches up with Ji Ahn in the produce aisle, where she informs him that she’s verified Joo Ah’s address. Ji Ahn theorizes that Joo Ah must have been in touch with Joon Young in the time since his escape. A question about whether Joon Ho’s examination of the bones matched Joo Ah’s story reminds Ji Ahn that she should take Joon Ho and Sun Ho out to dinner as thanks for helping save her. Hyun tells her to stay away from both men, but refuses to explain himself.

Later at home, as he cleans the house, Hyun wonders why the murders happened around the dates when he himself was back in Korea. Unable to remember the reasons for his trips, he takes advantage of having his stalker in the house by asking Ji Ahn, who reluctantly remembers every detail.

Ji Ahn recounts how, when he came to Korea after his book was published, he was treated as a celebrity and chased by women. Hyun recalls receiving gift boxes and leaving them unopened out of disinterest. He praises Ji Ahn for being occasionally useful, but she tells him that she’ll wait, in voiceover adding that she’ll wait until he tells her about his brother himself. Hyun hesitantly responds that his brain is in chaos, but Ji Ahn has no idea what he’s talking about. Instead of explaining himself, Hyun calls someone to ask a favour in English.

The next day, the body of a teenaged boy is found on an embankment, and the investigative team is back on the case. As Hyun and Ji Ahn pull up in the car, veteran cop Son Myeong Woo (Min Sung Wook) questions why the two of them showed up together. Ji Ahn lies and runs away, and when Myeong Woo tries to remember something he may have overheard about the two of them living together, Hyun breaks his line of thought. In the background, Eun Hyeok looks concerned at what’s he’s overheard.

Looking at the body, Joon Ho establishes the time and method of death. Ji Ahn theorizes that the body had been dragged here, while Myeong Woo points out that on first glance, the murder appears to have been committed by another teenager. As Hyun and Joon Ho trade their theories of the case, Eun Hyeok points out that Joon Ho also seems like a profiler. As they walk away, Hyun comments on Joon Ho’s good mood, but Joon Ho is just enjoying working with Hyun.

Joon Ho and Hyun stand at the ready as the parents come in to identify the body. The mother weeps openly, while the father looks on, expressionless. Later, as they interview them in the open squad room (really?), the mother tells them that she loved her son, even though he was adopted. At the father’s prompting, she points out some assaults that had happened at his school.

Hyun jumps in at this point to ask the couple where they came from before arriving at the police station, but the detectives cut him off for being rude. Hyun is unfazed and asks to see the family home. Ji Ahn and Hyun come up empty in their search of the home, unable to find a diary or even a social media account. Hyun is baffled by the discrepancies in the case, where the teenager was wearing expensive clothes, but the house itself was cheap and messy. He takes out a family photo he took stole from the house, with the teenaged victim standing apart from the rest.

The two youngest detectives, Min Seung Joo (Kim Jae Young) and Choi Eun Bok (Son Seung Won) question the victim’s classmates, and send over the information on his bullies. While Myeong Woo goes to interview the bullies, Eun Hyeok reviews the CCTV footage. That evening, Hyun gets a package that he opens at home, at his desk in the basement. In it are three of the eight gift boxes that he had received on previous trips to Korea.

As the opens them, he finds that each one contains a crossword, and a card with a drawing on it: a lamp, a clock and a train. Hyun adds the other two cards that he received, of flowers, and a car, and realizes that his brother, Min, had been continuously sending him messages, asking Hyun to find him and stop him. As Hyun looks at the cards, trying to find a pattern or code, Sun Ho stands in his art studio, and thinks back to all the times he watched as Hyun received the gift boxes, and didn’t open them.

Hyun tackles the crosswords next, and quickly solves the hidden code to find three names. He takes the names to his art dealer friend, Bong Song, and asks him to find the connections between them, and whether they had some involvement in a violent crime or abandonment. He also asks Bong Song to find whether there were any connections between those names and the people he asked him to look into previously. Bong Song complains about the tasks as per usual, but is taken aback when Hyun asks him to do it as a favour. He asks why Hyun keeps asking him, an art dealer to find these things out, and Hyun points out that everything in the world is connected to art. Hyun gives him three days to find the information, and leaves.

Myeong Woo, Seung Joo, and Eun Bok are staking out the favourite hangout of the victim’s bullies. Unfortunately, the bullies take off running the moment they see them, forcing them to give chase. Meanwhile, Eun Hyeok and Ji Ahn’s awkward conversation in the car is interrupted by a call from the other detectives. Just before they head back to the station, Ji Ahn senses something off with the case, and she gets out of the car to go back to the house of the victim’s parents. She finds Hyun already there, looking at the family getting ready to leave the house, in high spirits. Hyun asks Ji Ahn if the parents can be interviewed as witnesses.

Back at the police station, Eun Hyeok and Myeong Woo interview the three bullies, who refuse to talk. In the squad room, the parents arrive for their interview, accompanied by their lawyer, Sun Ho. In the interrogation room, Sun Ho declares the parents’ readiness to answer questions, and Hyun takes him at his word. Hyun asks the parents why they’d been acting so out of character for parents who had just lost a child. As he continues his line of questions, Seung Joo shows the rest of the team the CCTV footage of the victim being beaten by the three bullies, while a passerby watched, and did nothing. In a flashback, we see that the apathetic witness to the victim being beaten to death, was his adoptive mother, who watches then walks away.

In the interrogation room, Sun Ho points out that there is no evidence under which to file charges, though he takes care to add the statute under which the parents could be charged. In the elevator, Sun Ho encourages the parents to tell him the truth about the crime, since it would be covered under attorney-client privilege.

Later, Hyun goes to visit Bong Song to pick up the requested information. Bong Song hands off an envelope, the contents of which he hasn’t seen, but Hyun can’t bring himself to open it either.

Standing over the victim’s body, Sun Ho promises to remember the victim, who was abandoned and forgotten by everyone else. Joon Ho comes in, just as Sun Ho turns away, and they exchange a look as Sun Ho leaves.

The victim’s mother finds a card in her mailbox with a picture of a radio and a 6 (matching the cards sent to Hyun). Meanwhile, back at the gallery, Hyun finds the courage to take the papers out of the envelope as the episode ends.

Comments

Somebody posted a pretty big spoiler on Twitter a few hours before I watched this episode, and it did ruin it a bit for me. Just a heads up for those of you who love tweeting as you watch: put ‘spoiler’ at the start of your tweet so I don’t read it. Thanks!

I think at this point, we can safely assume that Joon Ho is Joon Young, and that Sun Ho/Min is the murderer. On the other hand, the evidence is not all on the table yet, so maybe “I Remember You” has some tricks up its sleeves. In the meantime, it’s hard to tell what Hyun does or doesn’t know or what he’s even letting himself know. No one wants to find out that their long-lost little brother has turned into a serial killer, so it’s not surprising that he has to work his way around to finding out the truth. For his sake, let’s hope a giant twist in the plot is coming, and the villain really does turn out to be Eun Hyeok.

But, let’s get back to Ji Ahn, Hyun and the kiss. It’s understandable that romance is not necessarily Hyun’s highest priority, but it wouldn’t have been difficult to explain himself, instead of staring at her blankly. “I am confused about a lot of things right now. Let’s put this on the backburner until I can give you the consideration you deserve.” See? I just did it.

That said, yes, Hyun is in a pretty bad situation, so it’s understandable that he’s not really prepared to jump right into love with Ji Ahn (however awesome she is). On the other hand, judging by the look on his face when he looks at her, there’s obviously something emotion there. Here’s hoping he can express it at some point.

I skipped writing about this scene since it had nothing to do with anything, but it was pretty cute. Here’s Ji Ahn and Hyun buying a pillow:

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I Remember You / Hello Monster (너를 기억해)

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