Behind Your Touch: Episodes 11-12
by lovepark
Our psychic vet unearths an old case that hits too close to home and realizes that the truth she once accepted may have been a sham this entire time. It seems the key to solving the present mystery may lie in the past, though how exactly everything adds up remains unclear. However, all the clues point in the same direction, and at the center is one man.
EPISODES 11-12
While Jang-yeol is fixated on Sun-woo being the poncho killer, a secondary plot surrounding Ye-boon’s late mom develops simultaneously. These two seemingly unrelated cases intersect as more overlapping details emerge, and our heroes learn that this tangled mess may have started decades ago.
During the redevelopment scam that rocked their quiet town, Assemblyman Cha (an overworked aide back then) spearheaded the campaign which caused the collapse of multiple families. Of the victims was a single mother who disappeared one day out of the blue, leaving behind her young son, who we later learn is Sun-woo.
The reveal of Assemblyman Cha’s double-faced nature shocks Ye-boon who has a difficult time accepting the possibility that her mom may have been murdered by a man she once trusted. As she sits lost in thought, Sun-woo joins her, and they find a bit of solace in their shared experience of misunderstanding and missing their moms.
Still convinced that Sun-woo is the culprit, Jang-yeol warns Ye-boon to stay vigilant, but she defends her crush, calling him empathetic unlike a certain detective she knows. Jang-yeol balks at her comment since he is a very understanding person, so Ye-boon decides to test his claim.
Under the guise of a quiz, she uses her real-life experiences as examples to see how he reacts, and after failing the first couple of scenarios miserably, Jang-yeol finally catches on to Ye-boon’s true intentions. He reaches out to pat brush her shoulder, and Ye-boon shows him how to properly comfort someone. (Oh gosh, these two…!)
Wanting to know the truth, Ye-boon decides to ask Assemblyman Cha in person about her mom’s death, but when she heads over to his office, she spots Shaman Park following the assemblyman while wearing a green poncho and holding a flowery knife. However, one word from Ye-boon has him frozen in place and crying. Like Sun-woo, Shaman Park lost a parent due to the scam, and he harbors a grudge against the assemblyman.
Though she does some research on her own, Ye-boon hits a limit on what she can uncover, so she turns to Jang-yeol for help. Despite his busy schedule, he looks into her mom’s case but finds nothing unusual about the investigation. He tells her that the police ruled it as suicide because of Assemblyman Cha’s testimony, and that tidbit is enough for Ye-boon to fill in the blanks.
At this point, everyone in Ye-boon’s home is aware of some form of the truth, so when Assemblyman Cha drops by unexpectedly, they listen to him ramble with forced smiles, maintaining the ruse that no one believes. While Grandpa sees the assemblyman off, they get into a heated argument downstairs, and Ye-boon peeks into their conversation through her dog’s eyes.
Confronting her grandpa, Ye-boon asks why he hid everything from her all these years, but he replies, “This isn’t about your mom. It’s about my daughter.” He blames Ye-boon and her dad for causing this incident in the first place, and his words are like daggers to her heart. She agrees to deal with this by herself since they were never family to begin with and storms out of the house.
As Ye-boon sits by the sea, Jang-yeol joins her and asks if she needs comfort or help. She says that she needs neither, but when he gets up to leave, she grabs his jacket. She wishes he was psychic, too, so he could know what was bothering her, but even without powers, Jang-yeol correctly guesses what happened. He advises her to use her abilities on her grandpa to see what he really means, but Ye-boon is scared of what she might find.
With nowhere to go, Ye-boon sleeps over at Ok-hee’s house and fills her in on her mom’s case. Like the awesome friend she is, Ok-hee gathers her crew the next morning to help Ye-boon, and convinces Assemblyman Cha to join her in a drinking contest. Soon, the entire table is covered in empty bottles, and right when Ok-hee nearly drops, she uses the power of friendship to pull herself up by her hair and beat the assemblyman. Ha!
Using this precious opportunity courtesy of her bestie’s liver, Ye-boon searches the assemblyman’s memories and learns the truth about that night. Though Assemblyman Cha originally offered to help her mom reveal the scam to the public, his boss caught wind of his betrayal, and when push came to shove, the assemblyman chose to save himself. Thus, he drugged Ye-boon’s mom and disguised her death as a suicide.
Meanwhile, on the police side of things, Jang-yeol and Jong-muk keep bumping into each other while investigating different cases, and eventually over a game of rock-paper-scissors, they share their findings with each other. Jong-muk informs Jang-yeol of Sun-woo’s background, but when Jang-yeol’s turn comes around, he talks about aliens and superpowers, which earns him an earful from Jong-muk.
Even though Jong-muk does not believe in Jang-yeol’s crazy comments, he humors him for a second and asks why Sun-woo killed the other victims. Jang-yeol thinks there must be a connection they are missing, and after mulling it over, he finally discovers a commonality: betrayal. Of course, this only makes sense under the condition that Sun-woo is a psychic, which probably won’t hold in a court of law.
Right then, Jang-yeol receives a call from Deok-hee who lost sight of Sun-woo on his stakeout, and immediately, he rushes to Assemblyman Cha’s office. Just as he feared, he walks into a crime scene: On the couch is the assemblyman bleeding from multiple wounds, and on the ground in a pool of blood is Ye-boon’s grandpa, holding the murder weapon. Oh no…
The death of an assemblyman catches the media’s attention, and before the higher-ups can replace their team, Jang-yeol convinces the others to relocate to his apartment. Though the news depicts Ye-boon’s grandpa as the killer, Jang-yeol thinks differently since her grandpa had Parkinson’s disease and could barely use chopsticks, let alone stab people.
As Ye-boon realizes that she may have misunderstood her grandpa, she rushes to the hospital to check his memories, but before she can touch his butt, Grandpa grabs her hand. He opens his eyes for a moment, and looking at Ye-boon, he passes. Sometime later, the news reports on the arrest of a new suspect, and we see the police take Shaman Park away.
Both episodes this week ended with Shaman Park, and I can’t tell if this last cliffhanger is a deliberate misdirect to hide the character’s true identity or if it’s another red herring like before. Part of me thinks Shaman Park doesn’t seem like a serial killer, but then another part of me thinks anyone could be a psychopath. The biggest question mark is still Sun-woo, and though we know why he came back to this town, I think there’s more to uncover about his backstory. We still don’t know what happened to his mom besides the fact that she disappeared, and since Sun-woo experienced a change of heart recently, I’m assuming he learned something about her disappearance that is linked to the real estate scam. Also, I get the impression that something suspicious is going on again in town with Assemblyman Cha buying up all the land, so I’m curious as to how things will unfold now that he’s dead.
Ok-hee continues to be a standout, and I love all her scenes. I busted a gut when she asked her crew to bring weapons and someone brought her mother-in-law (with the perfectly cast Seo Kwon-sun no less). Also, her back-and-forth with comedian Kim Yong-myeong is always a hoot, and their custody battle over the TV was hilarious. The best thing about Ok-hee, though, is her friendship with Ye-boon, and I adore these two so much. She immediately drops everything to help her friend, and does all this for Ye-boon without expecting anything in return simply because she hates seeing her friend be sad. Besides Jang-yeol, Ok-hee is the only one I completely trust to always be by Ye-boon’s side and protect her at all cost.
While the romance isn’t necessarily at the forefront of the show, I love the slow progression we’re getting between Ye-boon and Jang-yeol as their relationship develops from adversaries to begrudging partners to silent confidants. The two scenes where Jang-yeol comforts Ye-boon perfectly captured the growth between their characters, and the small changes we see in their actions highlighted how much they’re starting to rely on each other for emotional support. Their relationship is especially adorable because neither of them has registered their feelings yet, so we get cute moments like Jang-yeol’s jealousy and Ye-boon’s jacket tugging.
What made these scenes in particular so great was their juxtaposition to each other. At first, Ye-boon scowls at Jang-yeol’s answers because she sees them as too rational, but when he actually shows up, it’s his practical advice that grounds and comforts her. Also, Jang-yeol learned from their “quiz” and approaches Ye-boon with more tact. He allows her to reach out to him rather than insert himself right away, and he gives her the choice to have him stay or leave her alone. It shows how much he has grown and understands her better now than when they first met and constantly misread each other. Plus, the way they stare at each other makes my heart skip a beat, and it’s so fun watching them fall in love.
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