You’re All Surrounded: Episode 7

by girlfriday

It’s an hour full of rom-com hijinks, and it’s not even my birthday. Awkward confrontations and budding feelings put everyone on edge, but thanks to police work and dramaland’s rules of proximity, there’s nowhere to kiss and run. Luckily there’s no shortage of crime to keep the excuses coming. Wait, that’s a bad thing, right?

 
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Lee Hyori – “10 Minutes” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 7: “A person coming…”

Soo-sun tosses and turns in her tent, replaying Dae-gu’s surprise-attack kiss in her head until she sits up in defeat, realizing she’s too worked up to sleep.

We go back to 24 hours earlier… where an ajumma arrives at Seoul Station decked out in what must be her version of fancy vacation wear. Oh ha, it’s Soo-sun’s mom, and she calls her daughter with zero advance warning that she’s here to visit.

Soo-sun jumps up in alarm and next thing we know, the whole team is gathered on her rooftop. She confesses that she’s been living in this tent, and begs the boys to let her pretend she lives with them just for one night while Mom visits.

Tae-il and Gook are shocked that she’s been living at the precinct, and readily agree to roommate cosplay for Mom’s benefit. Dae-gu on the other hand, remains unmoved. He says no, and Soo-sun threatens to jump off the roof if he doesn’t change his mind.

He peers over the edge and casually tells her to go ahead: “It’s three stories so you won’t die.” Pfft.

At that, she clasps her hands together and cries, “I’m sorry! Mom’s already at your place!” The boys freeze and Dae-gu looks like he might just pitch her over the ledge himself.

But then we cut to the ridiculously giant spread that Mom has cooked for the boys, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad that she’s there. She hand-feeds Dae-gu and calls them all her sons, and Soo-sun is a little miffed that the naysayer is the one getting all the best parts of the fish.

Tae-il pours Mom some more wine and she can’t believe how handsome they are, deciding with a cackle that they should call themselves Eye Candy. But then they’d have to be a rock band, and then we’d have Cop Rock on our hands.

After dinner, Mom comes out of the bathroom ready for bed, and Soo-sun doesn’t know what to say when Mom asks for her room. But Dae-gu’s already got a blanket and pillow for the couch and lies that his room is Soo-sun’s, and she just hasn’t had time to unpack yet.

Mom heads off to bed, and Soo-sun looks over at him gratefully. Aw, you just know she reminds him of his mom and he couldn’t be rude to her if he tried.

The foursome heads to the roof for some beers, and Soo-sun thanks the boys for helping her not appear homeless in front of Mom. She asks how they feel after nabbing the hit-and-run perp, because she expected to feel like she’d saved the world, but she’s feeling rather subdued.

Tae-il says that Batman saved Gotham but he wasn’t exactly happy, and Soo-sun cheers up to be compared to Batman. But Gook is the one to say that he was ecstatic, because the moment he saw footage of that little boy alive, he knew he’d do anything to catch the bastard who killed him.

He says he felt for the first time that maybe he’d done the right thing in becoming a detective. They’re surprised to hear him say that, after his whole “Nothing we do changes the world” speech. They declare that Gookie has returned to his old less-jaded self.

Soo-sun narrates: “Gook might be right. The world doesn’t change. But today we took out something that had been sitting in a worn-out drawer for a long time…”

Sa-kyung goes home that night to find Pan-seok waiting on her doorstep again. She gives him the brush-off and says they can talk tomorrow, but he stops her and says he might’ve put it off to tomorrow in the past, “But in doing that I’ve let too many things slip by.”

He knows he asked her why she came to Gangnam and why she became a detective when she so hated his job before, but he realizes that none of that matters now. “What’s important is that the moment you walked into the precinct, I don’t know how you’ll take this, but… My heart started to race.”

He asks her with such hopeful eyes, “Can we start over?”

Soo-sun continues her narration: “…For some people, love.” Tae-il takes out a picture of his brother(?) and puts it up on his desk. “…For some people, pain.” And in her tent, Soo-sun opens a drawer and takes out the necklace that Combat Boots went in search of the night Dae-gu’s mom died. “And for others, an old memory.”

Wait, why do you have that? Combat Boots dropped it that night when he went after Dae-gu in the school. I assumed he picked it back up, but she must’ve found it after they were both gone.

The next morning we catch up to the moment when Soo-sun suddenly recognizes Dae-gu as Ji-yong thanks to his Clark Kent specs, which makes more sense now that we know she was thinking about him just the night before.

He panics when Pan-seok approaches and kisses her, and it does the trick—Pan-seok flees like he’s seen something horrifying. Soo-sun breaks away in shock and puts a hand up to her lips, and Dae-gu is so flustered that he just bolts out of there.

Pan-seok watches them go off in opposite directions and wonders if they’re acting like nothing happened because they do this all the time, ha, and wonders just how much hanky panky is going on around here.

That night Soo-sun sits in her tent wondering what it means: “Does he like me?” But then she argues that he’s always yelling at her and being mean. “Is he a pervert?” Hahaha. “How long has he liked me? Was all that just playing me hot and cold?”

Dae-gu thinks over the kiss as he brushes his teeth that night, and pauses to look at himself in the mirror as if asking, Why did you do that? He quickly gets back to his furious tooth-brushing, thinking he can clean the memory off his lips.

Soo-sun drops Mom off at the train station in the morning, and Dae-gu goes to see his doctor to ask for sleeping pills because his insomnia is getting bad lately.

They arrive at work at the same time, and Dae-gu spins on his heels the second he sees Soo-sun heading toward the elevator. But then he stops himself and decides that he has no reason to run.

Soo-sun hides when she sees him approaching and tries to get the elevator doors to close. He makes it, but then so does Gook. He asks Soo-sun about Mom and she thanks them again for letting her stay.

Gook worries about her tent situation, but she says it’s just for two months. He tells her that if ever things get dire she should stay with them, and Dae-gu shoots eye-daggers at him silently.

Someone watches them as they get off the elevator—eek, it’s Combat Boots, who wonders why Dae-gu became a detective and came here.

Meanwhile, Pan-seok goes to a department meeting and apologizes again for his conduct, and Chief Kang warns him not to go anywhere near Prosecutor Han again.

One of the other detectives pulls Gook aside in the hallway and warns him not to be too nice to Tae-il because there are rumors all over Gangnam that he’s gay. The ignoramus warns Gook that if he’s too nice Tae-il might confess undying love or something. Why do straight guys assume gay guys have no standards? It’s insulting. You wouldn’t be pretty enough for Tae-il anyway!

Gook isn’t exactly open-minded about it not mattering which way Tae-il swings, but he does defend his friend in his own (albeit misguided) way. He swears up and down that Tae-il isn’t gay, and yells at the guy not to go spreading lies.

Soo-sun runs into some trouble when Chief Toad finds a stash of her belongings in the precinct, and she ends up having to tell Pan-seok the truth about her living situation. She begs him to look the other way for just two months, and Pan-seok agrees to cover for her and tells her to do a better job of hiding her stuff.

The team gets a new case involving a pojangmacha assault, where a drunk man came along and bumped into a pair of scary looking thugs, who beat him up and stabbed him with a kitchen knife.

The victim made it through surgery, and they’ve rounded up possible suspects for the pojangmacha owner to identify in a lineup. The ajumma comes in and Pan-seok assures her she can’t be seen through the glass, and they wait patiently as she dismisses group after group.

But one of the men clearly scares her, and they see her shaking despite her denial that she recognizes any of the suspects. Pan-seok kneels down and asks if she’s too frightened to identify the gangsters, and she admits that people warned her of being a witness—what if they retaliate?

Pan-seok promises her in his most earnest reassuring tone that she can trust them to protect her. Augh, the look in Dae-gu’s eyes when he hears that familiar speech. I’m cringing at the confrontation to come.

Pan-seok continues to persuade the ajumma, and Dae-gu’s anger builds and builds until he finally tells him to stop. He tells the ajumma that she doesn’t have to do anything, and it’s within her rights to walk out right now. That’s exactly what she does.

Of course that gets Pan-seok roaring at him, and Dae-gu says he’s stepping over into coercion when she’s clearly too afraid to identify the suspect. He rattles off dates and cases and says the thing they have in common is a second crime that the police failed to prevent in the name of solving the initial case.

Pan-seok screams back that a detective’s job is to solve the case in front of him and catch the criminals in the first place, not worry about a second crime before it even happens. And then Dae-gu names the case he shouldn’t—his mother’s—though he only calls it by date and town, as if it’s just one of the others.

It’s Pan-seok’s sore spot, and Eung-do gasps to hear it brought up. Pan-seok’s eyes light up in fury and he asks if Dae-gu’s been doing background checks on him now. Dae-gu says just a quick search of the legendary Seo Pan-seok will bring up that case, acting like he just read about it on the internet.

Dae-gu yells at the top of his lungs that he doesn’t understand how Pan-seok could have lived through that case and still be coercing witnesses to this day. Pan-seok tells him he doesn’t have to understand—he can just sign his resignation papers and get the hell out.

Dae-gu goes to the roof and takes out his frustration on the punching bag, kicking himself for letting it get that far when he’s waited eleven years for this chance.

Pan-seok takes out Dae-gu’s file and tells Eung-do he’s going to get rid of him through proper channels. Eung-do clearly doesn’t want to, but there’s no talking Pan-seok out of it today. He’s surprised when he sees that Dae-gu is from an orphanage, and Pan-seok tells him to look into his past to see what Dae-gu has against him.

The rest of the team finds Dae-gu brooding alone, and Soo-sun gets all stiff and awkward at the sight of him. Gook sighs that he’s going to put up a talisman in the interrogation room, because anytime they go in there, Dae-gu and Pan-seok are at each other’s throats. Heh.

Eung-do calls Tae-il and Gook out to go follow the one suspicious possible suspect from the police lineup, and Soo-sun trails after them, wanting desperately not to be left alone with Dae-gu.

At the station, Sa-kyung walks past Pan-seok and does this brush-pass where she sneaks something into his hand. She just keeps walking without looking back, and smiles to herself. Okay, that was hot.

Pan-seok looks down at his hand and finds a heart-shaped note telling him to come to the place where they first met at seven o’clock tonight. He grins like a boy with a crush.

His face darkens when his secret phone rings. It’s Combat Boots, and he wants to meet. Pan-seok says they should meet now instead of putting it off, and Dae-gu listens in wide-eyed, realizing this is his chance. Pan-seok gets behind the wheel, and Dae-gu follows.

The rest of the team is mid-stakeout just waiting for their suspect to come out and make contact with his partner. They eat jajangmyun in the van and wonder if they’ll be able to go home tonight, and Eung-do says a detective’s schedule is pretty much at the mercy of criminals.

He asks the kids if they knew Dae-gu was an orphan, and they’re all shocked, having expected him to be the only son of a wealthy family or something. They know that his mother died when he was fifteen, but never imagined that meant he was an orphan.

Soo-sun sighs that she’s his partner but she really knows nothing about Dae-gu. Tae-il says that it reminds him of the poem: “A person coming is a truly big thing. Because one person’s lifetime comes along with it.”

Dae-gu follows Pan-seok into a crowded shopping mall, but the covert meeting hits a snag when Pan-seok spots their pojangmacha suspect just waltzing around in the mall when he’s supposed to be at home.

That’s news to Eung-do and the gang, who are still sitting in the van parked outside the guy’s house. Dae-gu still doesn’t know what’s going on, and follows Pan-seok following someone, thinking it’s Combat Boots.

Pan-seok follows the suspect, who eventually notices the tail and makes a run for the subway. Pan-seok goes running and frantically chases him down onto the train platform and goes running from car to car.

He finally jumps off the train at the last second, and of course he spots the suspect inside the train just as it pulls away from the station. Pan-seok growls at him through the glass, and Dae-gu finally sees that it’s not Combat Boots they were chasing after all, and deflates.

Pan-seok gives Eung-do an earful about gabbing his way through the stakeout and losing their only lead, and so Eung-do sends Dae-gu and Soo-sun to the suspect’s hometown to see if he shows up there.

He tells them to get a room for the night, which surprises them, until they hear that the suspect is from an island. Woohoo, island stakeout date?

They take the boat ride in silence, and after checking to see that the suspect hasn’t come yet, they get a room for the night until the first boat in the morning.

Meanwhile, Gook and Tae-il are in a car outside the suspect’s apartment. They talk about Dae-gu and how they should probably be nicer to him, since maybe he’s so prickly because he grew up all alone.

Gook asks if they’re true friends, and cautiously broaches the subject of secrets, offering to share a deep dark secret of his to prove that they’re friends. He says that nobody knows this, but he likes… And Tae-il interjects, “Soo-sun?” Gook is shocked that anyone could notice, ha.

And then he asks Tae-il for his secret, and prefaces it with: “I’m your friend, so no matter what you’ve done or whom you like, I’ll understand.” Awww, Gookie. You ARE a good friend! He braces himself for the secret, and Tae-il whispers it into his ear. It must be something unexpected, if we’re not allowed to know yet.

The boardinghouse on the island only has one room of course, because this is a drama. To top it off the room has no door, which the ajumma thinks isn’t that big a deal. When Soo-sun asks for a second room the ajumma asks why they’d need one assuming they’re a couple, and they can’t exactly say they’re cops on a secret mission, so they let her assume.

Dae-gu ends up sleeping outside, and Soo-sun sits anxiously in the room with no door, wondering how to deal with this awkwardness between them. She finally goes out and pokes him to chat with her outside, so he follows.

She launches into this long prelude about how hard she worked to get this job and how much she really likes it now and wants to become a good detective. And then she finally asks, “Do you like me?” and quickly adds that she doesn’t have any intention of dating in the workplace.

Dae-gu scoffs, “Is this because of that kiss? So this is what total loss of reason is like.” Ha. Before she can even react, he deadpans, “I don’t like you. We good?”

What cracks me up is that she’s worked herself up for a soft rejection thinking she’s going to be nice and let him down easy, but now she’s the one who’s upset that he doesn’t seem to be in love with her.

Soo-sun: “Then why did you kiss me?” He says it was for a different reason, one he can’t tell her. He points out that she should be happy since she didn’t want to be mixed up with him, which she agrees is technically true.

Dae-gu: “Why, does it seem unfair? You can kiss me too then.” *blink blink* He hurriedly says that that clears things up then, and goes back to bed, leaving her speechless.

She comes out a little later and sees Dae-gu curled up on the patio watching cartoons on his phone, and tosses him a pillow and blanket. His phone dies, and he mutters that there’s no chance he’ll fall asleep now. Soo-sun: “Why, because you’re thinking of me?”

She admits that she was a little miffed to think that he was just messing with her, but she decides to put it behind them and just be good partners. She puts out her hand for a shake and he swats it away. She smiles that now it’s just like it used to be and she can relax and forget about the awkwardness. She skips off to bed happily, while he remains annoyed.

In the middle of the night, Dae-gu heads to the outhouse alone, and turns around twice from fear before ultimately running away. Hahahaha. He’s too scared to pee alone.

He tries to hold it, which doesn’t really get him very far, and then he finally goes to Soo-sun’s room to see if she’s awake. OMG. I love that he needs her to go with him to the scary bathroom.

So she actually escorts him there with a flashlight, and he keeps making sure she’s still outside while he goes.

She gets bored waiting, so she offers to sing a song. It’s Lee Hyori’s “Ten Minutes,” (posted above) of course, which was her anthem in high school. She’s just as terrible at the singing and dancing as she was back then, and Dae-gu peeks out from the window to watch her.

He can’t help it—a huge smile spreads across his face. She’s so terrible but she’s so into it that you can’t help but love her in the moment, and he naturally remembers that day when he caught her singing and dancing to the same song in her school’s broadcast room.

She stops to ask if he’s still not done yet, and he lies that he needs more time just so he can keep watching her dance through the window. She gets back to it, and he breaks into a goofy smile.

Soo-sun narrates, repeating the poem Tae-il shared: “A person coming is a truly big thing. Because one person’s lifetime comes along with it.”

EPILOGUE:

Masan, 2003. Ji-yong pines as he watches his noona crush receive yet another love confession from a boy. Ding Dong wonders what’s so great about her when she seems like she’s keeping all of them on the hook, but Ji-yong sighs that you can’t help loving someone.

Suddenly Soo-sun busts into the snack shop with her posse, and “Ten Minutes” comes blaring through the speakers as if on cue. She struts over to the pretty popular girl from Seoul and calls her outside. Ah, so this is the prologue to the fight on the pier, and the first time Ji-yong ever saw Soo-sun.

 
COMMENTS

Cuuute. I love anytime we get flashbacks, because their teenage counterparts are so adorable and spunky. And any reference to the teenage Soo-sun is entertaining because she’s so earnest and good as an adult that I often forget that she was such a rowdy troublemaker. The best part is that Dae-gu is falling for her first, despite himself. And it’s not the kiss, which he frankly does more for self-preservation than anything, but her adorable off-key, off-beat song and dance that puts a smile on his face. I’m actually happy that he swore he didn’t like her, because now the more he likes her he’s going to die of embarrassment.

The thing that bugs me is that it feels artificial to have Soo-sun accept his don’t-ask answer about the kiss and forget about her momentary flash of Kim Ji-yong when she saw his glasses. Why is she not more suspicious? It’s one thing if the thought that he has a crush on her took over her brainspace, but once they clear the air, shouldn’t she wonder why the heck he kissed her, and remember that she may have uncovered a secret identity? I guess she’s been slow on the uptake before, but it feels like a glaring omission to just accept that she could forget about it.

I’m at least glad that she’s the one with the necklace, which should prove useful when they finally connect some dots and go after Combat Boots together. There’s obviously more to Pan-seok and Combat Boots than Dae-gu is anticipating, but so far I can’t tell what their relationship is to make Pan-seok want to see him face to face. Is he not evil? But we saw him kill Mom. On the upside, Pan-seok IS suspicious enough to go digging into Dae-gu’s past, which is the confrontation I’m really waiting for. He can’t be that antagonistic and expect Pan-seok to leave it alone, can he? It’s another way in which they’re the same—a temper that precedes reason, and gets them into trouble every step of the way.

I’m happy to watch all the love blooming, from Pan-seok’s second chance with Sa-kyung (yay), to the rare moments when Dae-gu lets his guard down around Soo-sun. And poor Gookie of course, who’s going to get his heart crushed. Tae-il might not even be gay (they’re teasing it so much that it seems like an obvious setup for a twist), but I like that the point isn’t his orientation, but Gook’s very supportive moment of being a good best friend. I would like very much for Mom to just move to Seoul so that the threat of her popping by at any time would get Soo-sun in the apartment, because I seriously can’t believe the boys just let her go back to that rooftop tent. Until then, outhouse dates will have to do.

 
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