In this episode the murder mystery appears mostly resolved, though the police department is still investigating Kim Moo Young. As they should. His actions are highly suspicious, especially as we’ve seen how good he is at manipulating women. Im Yoo Ri might think the deed rests solely on her, but Moo Young definitely helped her do it with little regard for what Yoo Ri’s life would be like after committing murder.

Realizing he’s not going to get anywhere by shouting at Jin Kang, Officer Yoo gives the non-apology apology and tells her she’s an adult, can make her own choices regarding her life and Kim Moo Young, and that he will respect that. This is a tactic. Officer Yoo is hoping she’ll make the right choice. Officer Yoo both underestimates the allure of Moo Young and of course has no idea they are all likely headed for tragedy no matter what he does.

As for the love story: We get a lot of cuteness as Moo Young and Jin Kang try to date without being obvious to everyone. Since Moo Young is objectionable as a romantic partner to anyone who is using half a brain, it’s understandable that Jin Kang lies to her brother even though he agreed to respect her choices. Like her boss said, she’s knows she’s going the wrong way, but it’s too far to stop now. Moo Young is on good behavior, taking her to their old hometown of Haesan to visit the Catholic orphanage where he grew up.

This too cute by half couple even has their own verbal exchange. “I’m going to keep hating you.” –Jin Kang.  “Good luck with that.” –Moo Young. And then they smile.

For this autumn leaf decorated getaway, Moo Young ditches his mandatory police interrogation. Police seem not only to be rather inept in S. Korea, but have next to no power as well (if the former is true, maybe the latter isn’t such a bad thing), and so have no choice but to wait for Moo Young to come back to town. Officer Yoo is also out of town, going on the trip he and Jin Kang take every year to the temple in Haesan. Jin Kang doesn’t know why they go there, but we learn that this is where her parents are buried.

Really, I want to like the love story, I do. It’s just that Moo Young is a psycho and Jin Kang is kidding herself if she thinks she not jumping into the exact same fantasy world her friend resided in briefly before returning home as ashes in an urn. Moo Young is very good looking and charming, but that doesn’t explain why the “good” Jin Kang is diving headfirst into a relationship with him. They are playing that she’s going to teach him how to be a good person with normal empathy and emotions. This girl is in for some serious heartbreak, but she’s been warned plenty of times, so whatever happens how is on her.

Episode 10 ends with a sex scene, love scene, whatever you want to call it. It is both cute yet creepy as they are giggling together at first like little kids…like siblings? Their initial kiss was rather passionate, so it’s clear that the writers want the kid connection to be made clear at this time. Maybe they’re just childhood friends, but we do have a mystery “sibling” to contend with. The happiest thing about their relationship, and also perhaps a big tell to being related, is that they are completely relaxed around each other. They can just be themselves.

Moo Young keeps having the same dream about his childhood. He’s running in from playing with his sibling and a man shoots his father. He also hears Jin Kang calling his name. She comforts him when he has a nightmare and he shows her a childhood drawing he made of his family–his father, mother, and sibling.  The translation on viki just says “sibling,” so I’m assuming what he’s saying in Korean is the same, not indicating if it’s a sister or brother, and he doesn’t remember much about this sibling. This dream is what instigates the lovers heading to the orphanage to find some answers.

At the orphanage, while Jin Kang seems emotionally moved and thrilled by the kids singing, Moo Young literally stands off to the side, clearly only there for the sake of Jin Kang. He tells one of the nuns who raised him that he’s trying to look good to her. The nun seems ecstatic to see him, so maybe he didn’t cause much trouble as a kid there. He asks her what she thinks a good person is, and the nun answers it’s someone who has a lot of love. Moo Young responds that in that case he’s in trouble. The nun jokingly agrees. From her, Moo Young learns that an officer had come looking for a child with a burn on their arm. Supposedly this child was someone else and was found, but he nun is clearly hiding something.

On their trip, we learn that Jin Kang knows Officer Yoo is not her real brother. She’s grateful that he took in and raised a stranger. Moo Young is suspicious because Officer Yoo used to be an officer in Haesan when he and Jin Kang were both children, yet Officer Yoo lied to him about knowing any policemen in Haesan. Add that to the fact that Moo Young believes his father to have been a police officer. He sometimes seems to believe his father could be still alive, but it’s not clear if that’s just wishful thinking or if he actually considers that a possibility.

At the temple, Officer Yoo has come for what is a yearly pilgrimage of penance. Jin Kang calls Deputy Tak to join him, and show she’s shows up and they start their usual banter. For at least the second time, Officer Yoo jokes about her being pretty and Tak becomes very short in her manner. One would think such a great detective would pick up on the clues to what is going on behind her anger, but people are dumb and often miss the signs that they most need to see. Or maybe he does get that she likes him, but he thinks he’s not good enough for her. He finally confesses to Tak, that he is actually a murderer, that he killed a man and pretended the man fell off a cliff. Like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Officer Yoo has been tormented by guilt ever since. Tak is shocked.

The new more overt villain in the show is new CEO Jang Se Ran. Much like her deceased brother, the “fiancee,” she has trouble taking no for an answer. Hauling Moo Young in for martinis, she wants to know why he turned down her great offer of running his own bar.   He honestly explains that he’s going to be learning how to be good from Jin Kang instead. CEO Jang laughs and says “that’s so not you.” Moo Young answers that because it doesn’t fit him, he’s going to give it a try.

CEO Jang says they are the same kind of people, two peas in a pod. It’s “too late for them to become human beings.” She says she is bored and always chasing after the next shiny thing, finding it to be meaningless in the end.  Still, the chase passes the time for her.  Moo Young is now the newest, shiniest thing she can see. She tells Moo Young he will come to her eventually. At this, Moo Young says good-bye, but we are left to wonder if they really are the same and if Moo Young’s newest shiny thing is Jin Kang. He also in his words likes to “mess” with Officer Yoo. Dating Jin Kang is also the perfect way to mess with Officer Yoo.

I don’t want to be too hard on Moo Young, as it’s not his fault he was traumatized as a child and likely became emotionally impaired due to it. However, psychopaths or whatever name we call them, despite in some ways deserving of our pity, are extremely dangerous, and giving them too much benefit of the doubt is like giving the devil a foothold. Jin Kang is genuinely sorry that he doesn’t care for the feelings of others, and  Moo Young’s using that skillfully against her: Teach me. I want to be a good person. Really. I want to see what I’m missing. Sure he does. Right until the next shiny thing comes along, likely in the form of revenge against Officer Yoo for killing his father.

Am I too cynical? Jin Kang could use some cynicism right now. It might save not only her life, but other lives as well. And what kind of good person sleeps with her best friend’s boyfriend after he broke her heart and caused her death? Jin Kang is making so many bad choices with this, I don’t know where to begin. Are the two peas in a pod Moo Young and CEO Jang, or Moo Young and Jin Kang? We’ll see what happens as Jin Kang becomes further torn between lover and fake brother. Or real brother and fake brother? Really, really hope we don’t have to go there.

Finally, in this series, they appear to be wrapping up the murder mystery. Most of episode 9 is spent on it, which is great, because it’s been sort of dragging on, and isn’t such an integral part of the overall plot that it needs to be stretched out to the end or anything (unless this isn’t really the end of it, and they do decide to reveal something more about it the last few eps of the show).

The beginning starts where last episode left off, with Eom Cho Rong in super detective mode, realizing Officer Yoo has been keeping evidence about Kim Moo Young’s possible guilt and is out with his team to arrest him. Cho Rong is surprised to catch Moo Young following his girlfriend, Yoo Jin Kang, and only becomes more defeated upon discovering that she is one of the people Moo Young calls and texts the most. We see a very assertive Cho Rong as he calls Moo Young out on this and asks him what his plans with Jin Kang are. Does he want her to be questioned in a murder investigation? Moo Young didn’t forsee this possibility, and subsequently decides not to call her later, so that her number won’t be recorded while he is in jail.

Officer Yoo, on the other hand, has finally gotten a solid confession out of Tattoo girl Im Yoo Ri. Yoo Ri was at the scene of the crime at the right time and though she was on medication and doesn’t remember what she did, she is the likeliest killer as it comes to light that the murdered girl was blackmailing her for a long time. Officer Yoo and his previous team member Lee Kyung Cheol but heads, as Lee thinks that Moo Young is the culprit. Officer Yoo again talks to Moo Young, asking him if he’s just playing a game again, but once again, Moo Young doesn’t give him any serious answers.

As far as the larger plot goes, Kim Moo Young is starting to remember the trauma that happened in his childhood, and also is subconsciously connecting Jin Kang to it. Officer Yoo knows the truth, but he’s no longer feeling supportive of Moo Young in any way, because although he finds the young man isn’t the murder, he’s possibly something far worse.  Officer Yoo calls him a devil.

Through their investigation, Officer Yoo and Cho Rong’s team find that Kim Moo Young did indeed meet the murdered girl before she was killed. She was acting the angry drunk at the Arts bar, and Moo Young took her home. They also find that Im Yoo Ri called him the night of the murder because she found herself in the girl’s apartment, but didn’t remember how she got there or why she was there. Instead of coming right over, Moo Young walks in the rain where the car black box catches him with the Arts umbrella, and then goes to a convenience store for almost half an hour, sitting in a spot where he has a clear few of the fated upper story apartment. He claims to actually have heard her fall.

Sensing the darker truth, Officer Yoo calls Moo Young to come to the same convenience store and he tells Moo Young to his face that he is a devil for what must have been going on in his head. Officer Yoo says Moo Young memorized the apartment code and also the route to avoid all cameras, and told both to Im Yoo Ri, knowing she was desperate to get out of being blackmailed. We do actually visit Moo Young’s mind briefly, and Officer Yoo’s idea is the right one. Moo Young found out about the blackmail and basically helped Im Yoo Ri set up the murdered girl, inviting her to the bar where she would drink too much and he, playing the nice guy, would take her home. We see her trying to sleep with Moo Young, but he’s disgusted by how she’s preying on Yoo Ri. He always calls Yoo Ri “pretty” and this seems to be his main reason for having anything to do with her. Perhaps his motive in all of this is to help her, but making it possible for her to commit and nearly get away with murder isn’t what most good people would consider “helping.” It also ends with Yoo Ri being sent to prison for, if not life, a long, long time.

This is why Officer Yoo calls him a devil, and gets extremely upset when he finds out that Yoo Jin Kang has been spending quite a lot of time with Moo Young. He wants to force her to stay away from him, shouting at her all of the reasons Moo Young is bad, especially considering what happened to her friend, the Damsel. Jin Kang asks him, “so you think everyone can change, but not him?” Her pretend brother says, no, Moo Young can’t change because he doesn’t have normal feelings. He is a psychopath, a devil, and a monster, due to his emotional impairment. Moo Young doesn’t know what being good means.

In her heart, Jin Kang knows that Moo Young is risky business, but she is inexplicably drawn to him. She’s overly concerned over his arrest, though really it shouldn’t come as so much of a surprise, and she finally tells Eom Cho Rong that she’s sorry, but their relationship isn’t working. Cho Rong says it’s ok if she doesn’t date him, but please don’t turn to Moo Young. Anybody but him, as he’s bad news.

Jin Kang’s boss gives a defining speech about bad boys like Moo Young as the working trio goes out for a drink. Jin Kang says, “poor, good-looking, complicated men are the worst.” Her boss agrees, and even says, “listen to me on this because I have such a man at home.” She says, “Does a person go in that direction because she doesn’t know she shouldn’t go there? No, it’s that as you’re going, you realize you’ve gone too far to turn back.” You also may get one more chance to turn and, essentially, be saved, and if you run away at that point you will be saved. This thought preys heavily on Jin Kang’s mind, but we already know she’s reached the point of no return, so despite all of the continual warnings, she finds herself again at Moo Young’s rooftop home.

Jin Kang is crying. She knows she shouldn’t be there, she knows that Moo Young is bad and doesn’t know how to be good. Perhaps out of options to have her as his, Moo Young puts forth his last card: “Teach me,” he says, in a desperate tone of voice and pulling out all of the stops as tears appear to spring into his eyes. A bad boy wants to be reformed by a good woman? Oy vey, there’s so many woman that fall for that, and he’s broken through all of Jin Kang’s defenses at this point, plus it’s they have a fated attraction that is impossible to overcome. That will likely be aptly explained if they are indeed siblings. This has happened before in real life, brother and sister meet and fall in love, all the while not knowing they are related. They are devastated when they find out later. Is their attraction merely the familiarity of family genes? Are they genuinely in romantic love? I don’t know, but it’s very tragic.

One player is still left over from the Damsel and CEO storyline, Jang Woo Sang’s sister, Jang Se Ran, who is the new CEO of the company and who made some sort of deal with Moo Young after the accident. A million dollars for his silence. Se Ran is intrigued by Moo Young: he amuses her, and like so many women on this show, she’s probably attracted to him as well. She bails him out of jail and offers to set him up as manager of a new bar she plans to open. Normally, this would be a pretty good deal for Moo Young, but Jin Kang tells him not to take the position and to stay away from that family, as they are toxic. If only she took her own advice. Sigh. Moo Young wants Jin Kang more than he wants the job at this point, so he agrees to turn it down without any hesitation.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes presents us all of these storylines, yet it is not a cynical story. It is full of hope, laughter, and happiness at the same time. The truth is, people don’t often sense when things are going to end in tragedy. Officer Yoo is perhaps the exception, but both Jin Kang and Moo Young seem to think they will somehow beat the odds. Perhaps this is a ray of hope they built in their minds from the long ago trauma of their childhood? Or is it just the normal hope that humanity in general possesses? We’ll see what happens.

Things are heating up on the show. Lots to be revealed yet, but this episode gave us a lot to consider.

Episode 8 starts with the car crash from episode 7 and the thing to notice as the Damsel and Moo Young are tumbling down the cliff is the material bouncing around inside the car. It is the charms from the bracelet that Moo Young gave Seung Ah the night they met, the one he put together perfectly after it was broken. Not sure if I mentioned it back then, but the the bracelet is a bit girly, especially for a tough guy like Moo Young. So, why did he have the bracelet in the first place? Whose bracelet is it? A long long sister’s perhaps?

The end of the storyline has seemingly finally come for the Damsel and her fiancee Jang Woo Sang, who sadly both die in this episode, but off screen. Seung Ah’s mother seems sincerely mourning her state, even calling in Jin Kang for a hug, forgetting the hard slap she gave her a few episodes ago. In fact, everyone, even Jin Kang’s brother, Officer Yoo, is deep stricken by Seung Ah’s death. They cry real tears, especially Jin Kang, and that doesn’t happen often, even in dramaland.

However, we learn there is a possibility that some of Jin Kang’s tears are guilty ones. She tells Kim Moo Young she never really thought the Damsel would die, that her focus was on him, as he is missing for a time after the accident. Jin Kang tells him this and pushes him away again, still denying her feelings, and, again, rightly so. Moo Young really seems to have no feelings or emotions, and shows no remorse for the fact that he agitated Jang Woo Sang, the rich fiancee, and pretty much set in motion the likelihood of a disastrous end to the affair. Moo Young even takes a bribe from Woo Sang’s sister, which is interestingly only one million dollars, not the two million that Seung Ah gave him.

No one is more upset about this than Officer Yoo, and he goes to confront Moo Young. At first, Moo Young shrugs off his accusations. Who could have known what would happen, after all? Yoo Jin Kook even says himself that Moo Young probably didn’t mean this game to go that far. But as the officer gets angrier and angrier at him, Moo Young snaps into defiance mode, declaring that he would have done everything just the same, even knowing the outcome of two deaths. For that, he receives a punch in the face, and I have a feeling that Moo Young’s taken quite a few punches his whole life. Jin Kook tells Jin Kang to stay away from Moo Young because he only cares about playing games with people.

The highlight of the episode for most was probably the kiss. Seo In Guk, who plays Moo Young is known as the “king of kisses,” and this is largely due to the fact that he delivers actual kisses on screen, not the weird motionless kisses so many drama actors do. This wasn’t a super kiss, as Jin Kang (Jung So Min) pushes him away, but it does show that the actors and especially the characters do indeed have romantic chemistry. Will they fall in love and make it to the end of the show only to find out they are siblings?

Officer Yoo probably knows the answer to this, as he now knows who Moo Young is. He’s a kid who went missing many years ago when Officer Yoo shot someone, got his detective team disbanded, and made Jin Kang his pretend little sister. A member of his old team is the traffic officer for the car accident, and Yoo visits him, searching for information. The traffic officer brings up that kid from long ago who came looking for him at the Haesan precinct. Officer Yoo is shocked. He’s had no idea that this happened, and it’s been about 20 years since. He angrily confronts the other old team member, the snide Lee Kyung Cheol, who is his current superior on the detective team. Lee says it happened long ago and doesn’t matter anymore.

On the murder mystery side of things, Eom Cho Rong is on the case, perhaps to avoid thinking how terrible his progress is in dating Jin Kang. He finally figures out that Officer Yoo has been keeping information from him regarding Moo Young. Some of this is due to the fact that Officer Yoo now thinks Tattoo girl did it. Im Yoo Ri does not confess and claims to not remember what happened that night, though we find she was in the murdered girl’s apartment and witnessed her fighting with her now exonerated boyfriend. Officer Yoo has the idea that Moo Young showed her how to go from her house to her friend’s without being observed by CCTVs in the area, and that he even told her the code to get in the apartment (speaking of that, let’s not forget he now knows the code to Officer Yoo and Jin Kang’s house).

Eom Cho Rong follows a lead regarding Arts Brewery beer glasses and learns from Moo Young’s old coworker No Hee Joon, that the murdered girl was a nasty drunk while at the Arts Bar, and that Moo Young took her home. The episode ends with Eom Cho Rong and his detective team going to arrest Moo Young. They catch him as he’s follows a distraught Jin Kang home from his place. She is so sad that he doesn’t show remorse or feelings about the death of Seung Ah. The only person he does care about is Jin Kang, though the reason is still a secret. Is it that she is his sister? Is it fate that’s drawing him, or is it just that he has genuinely fallen for her despite his emotional handicap? Whatever the reason, Eom Cho Rong is clearly wondering what he’s doing hanging around Jin Kang.

Overall, this episode wasn’t as awesome as I thought it would be. I really didn’t expect Seung Ah and her fiancee to die and am not sure what will fill the space for their storyline. I’m also hoping the murder mystery wraps up soon or they get a new interesting case to follow, as I fear it’s dragging on now. Perhaps the murderer is really Im Yoo Ri, and perhaps she will turn herself in so they’ll release Moo Young. Good thing is, there’s definitely going to be an all out war between Officer Yoo and Moo Young, with Jin Kang caught in between. Will she fall for Moo Young’s manipulation? Will she forgive Officer Yoo for whoever he killed back in the day and raising her as his sister? Will she be able to save Moo Young from himself and his stupid games?

Until next time.

Episode 7 is mostly setup for episode 8. The biggest thing that came to light for me was that Eom Cho Rong (Jin Kang’s boyfriend she’s holding at arm’s length) really does not know Kim Moo Young. Poor guy, I berated him for not recognizing the jerk when he really hasn’t actually met him.

This episode solidified the fact that Jin Kang does indeed have feelings for Moo Young. She uses the woman screaming super power to stop a bunch of thugs from beating him up and stays with him in the hospital. Even so, she’s still in denial of her feelings herself, probably because the pendulum is constantly shifting back and forth on Moo Young being decent (not sure we could ever call him good) or a royal bastard of the first order.

Moo Young follows this second nature, seeking revenge on the Damsel’s fiancee for sending gangsters to beat him up. The only time he appears to be second guessing this plan of action is when Jang Woo Sang (the rich fiancee) threatens Jin Kang’s safety in response to Moo Young’s confrontation at an Arts Brewery event. Moo Young even goes so far as to tell Jin Kang to leave the party, as she’s throwing him off his game.

The show producers and writers aren’t going to give the audience any easy answers regarding Moo Young. He’s quick to manipulate the Damsel’s emotions once again to get back at her fiancee, and risks three lives in this process. He tells Woo Sang that Baek Seung Ah knows he’s trash, that’s she knows it, but will still run to him over Woo Sang. My guess is Moo Young is just the easiest way to escape the prison of her life, and he gives her a foothold to openly defy Woo Sang. Or maybe she just likes pretending to be a bad girl. Moo Young tells him he wouldn’t have bothered with Seung Ah if he saw her by herself. Rich girls are a dime a dozen. What interested him in playing this game was that once he saw Woo Sang, he knew right away how easy it would be to take her away from him, and that was the true temptation. He did it all just because he could, and without much effort. The episode ends with a spectacular car crash involving the three of them, and one has to wonder why Moo Young seems to have a death wish, as he’s generally so entertained with his games of manipulation it seems he wouldn’t want to give them up. Maybe it is just that he can’t escape his stated philosophy of taking “eye for eye and tooth for tooth,” as he tells Officer Yoo.

Speaking of Officer Yoo, not a lot regarding the murder mystery this time, but it appears as if Tattoo girl, Im Yoo Ri, is going to turn herself in for it. She’s a bit angry with Moo Young for not liking her in a romantic way and thinks he sees her the same as the stray cat he’s adopted. This is probably accurate, as Moo Young doesn’t seem to have any genuine feelings for anyone except for Jin Kang.

Officer Yoo and his friend Tak keep doing that will-they-or-won’t-they friends vs. lovers dance. Men and women can’t be BFFs, and they should both be sat down to watch When Harry Met Sally. At some point their friendship will end, either because they will become lovers, or because they won’t become lovers and thus can’t be friends anymore. One of the two, either man or woman, will have romantic feelings and either ruin the friendship or make it something more. It’s as inevitable as the sun rising in the east.

I wanted to note one more thing: This show makes use of a lot of great overhead shots, and I think this is for the following reasons: One, this is a tragic story, so the shots remind us to look at everyone and everything objectively. Don’t get too invested. Two, it’s a signal that the characters in a sense are just following their fate. Three, it’s reflecting the nonemotional state of Moo Young who in his rooftop house is almost a god overlooking his kingdom. So many of the other characters come to him, and he’s happy to receive them if they amuse him. Their hurt feelings are not his concern. Well, only Jin Kang, who throws him off his game. Will he come to resent her for this? We will see.