The Dead Body
Episode 6 of Kairos begins with the shocking discovery of Song-Ja’s hanging body. Just then, Seo-Jin receives a call from Ae-Ri who tells him to check his messages. Taek-Gyu is the one responsible for this it seems and Seo-Jin tells her he’s been tailing him and found a dead body in an abandoned house. Unfortunately their minute is up and they’re forced to abandon this call for now. Just before he leaves, Seo-Jin finds a letter in Song-Ja’s pocket. Taking it with him, he heads up to a public phone box and calls the police to let them know about the dead body. Only, someone happens to be watching from afar when he does. Out on the road, Seo-Jin starts heading home but follows the bug he planted on Taek-Kyu’s car to a bus station. Taek-Kyu is wise to this though and phones Do-Kyun to let him know. He reassures the man who, telling him he took the bug off before he could be tracked further. Seo-Jin heads home and checks out the folded letter he uncovered. It seems to have a bank account number attached and the word “Haeshin”. On the back of this, he phones Jun-Seob who happens to be at the bank and asks for help tracking down the account number. He agrees to help and after hanging up, Seo-Jin starts looking through the files at Yujung. There, he realizes that Taek-Kyu and Do-Kyun actually knew each other before they started working at Yujung together. After a bad dream, Seo-Jin receives a call confirming he’s got lunch with Chairman Yu. Just before he leaves, Seo-Jin tries desperately to find older documents from 2001 given the digital files only go up to 2005. Seo-Jin arrives to see the Chairman where Do-Kyun happens to be too. He stares daggers through the man but remains civil for the time being. Given what he’s been through, the Chairman gives Seo-Jin the upcoming project that could decide the fate of the company. Afterward, his frostiness continues as he confronts Do-Kyun about his relations with Taek-Gyu. The bank account numbers come back and it turns out the number is actually from Song-Ja – whom he confirms Taek-Gyu has killed. As he curses his luck, Seo-Jin realizes his one hope comes from Ae-Ri. Meanwhile, Da-Bin wants to head home but Hyun-Chae simply tells her to go to bed. Afterward, Hyun-Chae talks to Do-Kyun and hugs him tightly, telling him she wants to leave the country. Back in August, Ae-Ri catches up with Da-Bi at an indoor soft-play and starts spending time with her. Only, Hyun-Chae collects a series of incriminating photos to hold against her. As she looks through these later in the day, Do-Kyun returns and confirms his plan, including using DNA that matches Da-Bin’s to fool everyone into believing she’s dead. And now we cut back in time and see more of the past. Namely, we see Hyun-Chae and how much of an absolute psychopath she is. With her alcoholic father trapped inside the house, as a child she lights it on fire and watches as he burns. She eventually walks away, setting up a – presumably – life-long series of craziness. Still in August, Ae-Ri continues to work at the convenience store while Hyun-Chae watches her in her car. The earlier bank account incident is elaborated on further, as Song-Ja receives 100,000 dollars in her account. She tells her sister and immediately they suspect the worst. Back in September (or forwards!), Seo-Jin goes hunting for Song-Ja, eventually heading up to her local hang-out spots to try and find any clues that may lead to her whereabouts. Getting nowhere, the night draws in and the pair manage to communicate again. Seo-Jin confirms he was there when Taejung collapsed all those years ago and one of the survivors. If you remember – there’s also 2 other survivors too. He also agrees to help with the account number. While Jin-Ho lies in prison, he thinks back to moments from August where Do-Kyun arrived and saw first-hand that Ji-Ah was suffering badly. While Jin-Ho is out the room, he looks at the medicine for both kids. A heartless Do-Kyun looks over the files and notices that the kids have the same issue – Lupus. He even goes on to challenge Jin-Ho and ask exactly how he’s going to prove that they used illegal materials. As Jin-ho vows to kill them all, Do-Kyun tells him to channel that anger at someone else. Someone like Seo-Jin perhaps? Realizing he may have been played, Jin-Ho sits up in prison and phones Seo-Jin in the morning and asks him to come and meet him. Before that though, Seo-Jin continues to look into Song-Ja’s whereabouts and stumbles upon a breakthrough. It turns out she was staying at a nearby market on September 14th. As the evening draws on, our phone calls return. Ae-Ri confirms that it was Taek-Gyu who originally transferred money to Song-Ja. In exchange, Seo-Jin tells Ae-Ri she needs to find Song-Ja before September 26th by any means necessary. Realizing what this means, Ae-Ri questions whose dead body he found. For now, he goes through the exact address where her Mother was on the 14th and the call ends. Song-Ja phones Soo-Jung from a restricted number and now we see that she was on the other end of the line during her call from the phone box. She confirms that she’s going to transfer the money to Ae-Ri and apparently received that on the basis of never seeing her daughter again. She apologizes for burdening the pair and hangs up. Ae-Ri however, happens to be on the roof and heard everything. In the morning, she shows Gun-Wook the address and he decides to tag along and head up to Ilju too. They’re not alone though and Soo-Jung joins, despite suffering from travel sickness. In September, Jin-Ho is left alone without any guards as Do-Kyun shows up. When the guards return, they find him gone. Honestly, how stupid are these officers? Anyway, Jin-Ho, as we soon see, is murdered and thrown off the roof. It’s clear he has crucial intel and now there’s no way of getting that. Seo-Jin receives a call from the detectives who confirm Jin-Ho’s death. They’re convinced it was suicide as they even have a note to confirm that too. Seo-Jin thanks them for calling before receiving a call from the restaurant owner confirming he remembers Song-Ja getting on a bus across town. As the plot thickens, a detective feeds back to Detective Park that Song-Ja’s autopsy brought back some alarming facts. This wasn’t a suicide and even worse, a tie-pin in her mouth has the name “Seo-Jin”. He’s being made out to be the culprit of this crime. The fact he phoned the police too doesn’t paint him in a particularly favourable light. The detectives learn that too, with his phone pinged to that very location. Now he really does look guilty. Seo-Jin continues to investigate Song-Ja’s whereabouts, finding the place she stayed a month ago. After falling asleep, Park ringing wakes him up as he learns Taek-Gyu and Do-Kyun have framed him for the murder. Now it’s serious and with Seo-Jin unwilling to hand himself over to the police, they head to the hotel instead and have the place surrounded. Eventually Seo-Jin is captured and looks set to spend a lengthy spell in the police station. Back in August, our trio arrive at the diner but after a fruitless search, eventually stumble into Song-Ja just walking down the road. As Ae-Ri hurries over and embraces her Mother, the future changes and all the officers after Seo-Jin disappear. Time has changed again, thanks to Seo-Jin’s interference. But how much has it changed?
The Episode Review
With more of the past starting to come unraveled, it remains to be seen exactly what part Hyun-Chae has to play in all this. It’s obvious she’s completely unhinged thanks to her past but right now it’s still unknown why Seo-Jin’s being framed for all this and pushed out the equation. There’s clearly something we don’t know about him but we’ll have to wait and see. When it comes to time being rewritten, there’s lots of questions around exactly how much has been undone. Is Jin-Ho still alive? Is time just rewritten for certain instances that are directly affected by a certain individual or person? If Jin-Ho is still dead though, surely security footage would confirm that Do-Kyun arrived and took Jin-Ho outside? For the time being though, it’s obvious that Seo-Jin and Ae-Ri are going to continue rewriting time while doing their best to thwart the threat of Do-Kyun and Taek-Kyu. Kairos bows out with another compelling slice of sci-fi, one that leaves the door wide open for tomorrow’s episode!
