My Perfect Stranger (2023) Episode 14

Episode 14 of My Perfect Stranger begins with Soon-ae heading home. Her parents are not happy about the note being found in her room, and Yoon-young is understandably rattled too.

While Baek sees this as a reckless move toward taunting them all, Hae-joon believes the opposite. He thinks the killer is in a tight spot and scared of being caught. He’s threatening Soon-ae to keep quiet, and is panicking as he failed to kill her. This also means he’s likely to be sloppy and make mistakes, which should help Baek and Hae-joon’s case.

There thing is, the police officers aren’t making a big deal over Soon-ae, and want this wrapped up quickly, even refusing to check her house or post guards outside. They want to pin the evidence on Min-soo. Baek overhears his comrades actually tampering with evidence to fit their narrative too so he grabs what he can from evidence before it’s destroyed or “goes missing”.

Yoon-young figures as much back home, when she notices the detectives just nonchalantly letting Soon-ae head home without even following up on their line of enquiry.

Yoon-young does her best to be there for Soon-ae in the meantime though, while Hae-joon heads back and gives his thoughts. He believes that the parents need to go public and usurp the police. He believes the safest way of protecting Soon-ae is to expose her on the news and get loads of journalists here. Soon-ae’s father is not so sure that’s a good idea. Her mother though has a different thought, and believes they need to try a different tact. And Soon-ae herself is all for it too.

Baek shows up just before the interview goes forward, as he brings up the tampered evidence at the station. Hae-joon knows that this press coverage is also going to bring a lot of intense scrutiny on the police to make changes to protect Soon-ae and her family, while also intensifying their desire in framing Min-soo as the real culprit.

Detective Baek speaks to Mi-sook, pointing out that she could face a big punishment if they find the real murderer and her lies with Min-soo are proven. He knows that she’s a tough cookie to crack. Hae-joon though, organizes a a secret meeting with Min-soo to try and find a way to intensify the police’s need to find the real killer.

In order to do that, Hae-joon convinces the new journalists in town to put extra pressure on the police, pointing out that Min-soo was incarcerated at the time of Beom-ryong’s murder. As a result of this pressure, the police have no choice but to let him go.

Mi-sook follows Min-soo back home from a distance, fiddling with her necklace nervously. Yoon-young notices and she saves Mi-sook from a potentially horrific outcome. She has experience of Min-soo’s ways and he’s definitely far from saintly. Yoon-young encourages Mi-sook to follow her down to the dock, making up a lie that they were always scheduled to meet.

Down by the lake, Yoon-young speaks to Mi-sook and admits she helped her because she noticed Mi-sook was nervous and potentially in trouble. Mi-sook begins crying, prompting Yoon-young to point out the hypocrisy of her doing so now, especially after so many people have died or ended up hurt.

Back in town, Chung-a packs up her things and prepares to leave. Hae-joon watches her from afar as she cradles a box full of baby stuff that she refuses to give up. This plays on his mind as he visits his grandfather, who’s confident that the police will do everything in their power now to catch the culprit. Hae-joon decides to borrow Director Yoon’s car and head out that night to “somewhere pretty”.

This happens to be the ocean, where he and Yoon-young blow some steam. This feels like the calm before the storm though, as everything gets closer to the truth.

Before we reach that point, Hae-joon heads back home again and notices Chung-a closing up the store. She’s actually pregnant and has been collecting baby stuff for a while. Chung-a regrets not being able to spend time with her child, and she’s been having doubts this whole time. She packs up her gear and leaves town, saying goodbye to Hae-joon.

The news hits the mainstream channels and they actually have an exclusive from Hae-joon, who presents himself as the eyewitness who chased the culprit that fateful night with Soon-ae. He claims to have seen the culprit’s face clearly, obviously goading the real killer out of hiding and using himself as bait.

Detective Baek happens to be watching and he agrees to keep an eye on Hae-joon from now on, believing that the real killer is going to show up that night. Among the crowd of people watching the report is Yoo-seob, who points out to his brother that he’s angry about the report. He also, as we know, fits the description.

Hae-joon hears footsteps approach that night but it’s not who he thinks. It’s Chung-a. She’s seen the news and knows that Hae-joon is lying. But how does she know? Well, it turns out she actually knows who the culprit is,. The red yarn and the matchbox letters match what we’ve seen recently and belong to her. However, it’s actually not her, it’s Yeon-woo that’s been using her as a smokescreen. This explains why Chung-a doesn’t want to give birth to her child and why she’s running away – because of the shame and shock of it all.

When Hae-joon heads into the garage, he’s shocked to finds the time travel car is gone. Yeon-woo seems to have moved it. Baek also notices Yeon-woo but he ends up clattering around and blowing his cover. A for Yeon-woo, he drives the car right out to the familiar tunnel, having clearly fixed it now, and runs it right into Hae-joon. As the pair stare one another down, the episode comes to a close.

The Episode Review

The truth seems to have been finally unveiled, what with Yeon-woo apparently being the killer but we’ve seen these misdirections before and this could be another big one. Aftwer all, what is Yoo-seob so angry about? Having said that though, Yeon-woo certainly fits the description of the killer, given we know they must be intelligent to evade capture until this point.

The timeline between Baek chasing Yeon-woo, and the latter showing up in the car and driving out to the tunnel seems to indicate that some time has passed here so we’ll have to wait for next week’s follow-up to figure out exactly how much time has passed. This should then allow us to piece together everything that’s happened in a cohesive way.