Episodes 9 and 10 of Idol I go further into the mystery as well as the romance between the two leads. The show has been consistently hinting at their closeness, but in typical K-drama fashion, we have to wait until the last 4 episodes for something to actually happen, and it finally did (a kiss of approval). But despite the joy in the romantic bits, the murder mystery still hasn’t been solved, and more importantly, there are now too many suspects. But additionally, Byung-Gyun is really focused on putting La-Ik behind bars for this one, so things are getting really tough for Se-Na. Not to mention everything that happens with the fans, but with only two episodes left in the show, we can imagine there’s going to be a resolution and a happy ending because, at the end of the day, this is a K-pop fan dream scenario, no? A girl can only dream, I guess. With that said, though, let’s jump straight into episodes 9 and 10.
Spoiler Alert
What Was Geum’s Big Secret?
At the end of episode 8, La-Ik and Se-Na had walked into Manager Geum’s office to confront him about some big secret he was keeping. In episode 9, it turns out it’s not that big a secret at all, or at least, nothing we hadn’t already guessed from the information we’d been given. Turns out, Woo-Seong had been dissatisfied with how their management had been treating Gold Boys, prioritizing La-Ik when it came to album releases and tours, and not giving the rest of the band enough flexibility. It had even gotten to the point that La-Ik had collapsed from exhaustion and started taking medication in secret. In the middle of this, the representative from the rival talent management agency had been calling Woo-Seong at all hours of the day to get him to switch over to them. When he does finally meet him and verbally agrees to get Gold Boys to switch over, the manager makes a voice recording, which he uses to blackmail him. Ultimately, Geum also finds out Woo-Seong’s been in talks with his rivals, and he threatens him with heavy penalty fees in what ends up being their last conversation together. Geum now claims he kept all this a secret to protect La-Ik, but La-Ik retorts that Geum was probably just trying to avoid being seen as a suspect in the murder.
Is Hye-Joo Finally Out of La-Ik’s Life?
The next day, after La-Ik has had a good cry in Se-Na’s company, as she’s leaving for work, he starts planning to move back to the apartment where he lost everything. Just then, he gets a phone call from Hye-Joo, but he rejects it, only for her to text him that she just wants to say goodbye. They end up meeting, and she reveals she’s about to leave for the US. But here’s a plot twist: she offers him a ticket too, giving him a way out and a clean break if he wants one. Unfortunately for Hye-Joo, he says his life is here, and he can’t leave his responsibilities behind to run away, so she accepts his decision and says she can finally let go of him. It feels like she’s lying to herself, though, as she crumples up the picture of them she’d brought out to use as a prop the moment he walks away. I don’t think she’ll be vengeful, though; she knows Se-Na only has La-Ik’s best interests at heart, plus when she’s reading the negative news about them later, she looks heartbroken, not gloating.
How Does Se-Na Help La-Ik Feel Ordinary?
Knowing that La-Ik will be feeling down after Geum’s revelation the night before, Se-Na hurries to finish up with work and then rushes home with absolute bucketloads of fried chicken. She’s been a La-Ik fangirl all her life; she knows that he always eats chicken when he’s down, and the smile on his face is quite the sight. Suddenly, though, Chung-Jae turns up, almost like the smell drew him in, and he joins them for a meal. When Se-Na leaves the table for a little bit, he tries to warn La-Ik to watch himself, saying Se-Na fell in love with a version of himself that’s quite different from who he is, and La-Ik accepts that, saying he knows he’s dependent on Se-Na’s instinct to help all those in trouble. At the end of the day, though, he talks to Se-Na about how nice the meal was, since it helped him feel a little bit ordinary, which is a very valuable experience to someone in his position.
Taking a cue from that, she drags him to his old school the next day, and they even get into his old classroom, and in the middle of joking about how small all the furniture is, La-Ik has a flashback to how he spent his childhood wishing for adulthood to come so he could finally be happy. He then takes Se-Na to a restaurant he used to come to all the time as a kid because it was cheap and tasty and he could get tteokbokki for 500 won. Plus, because the owner knew nobody would come to pick him up, he probably felt sorry for the kid, slipping him extra fish cakes and fritters. Just as he’s telling this story to Se-Na, an older man comes up and gives them an extra plate of fritters they didn’t order and walks away with a quiet smile on his face. We see the faded Gold Boys poster on the window and know now that he never stopped supporting La-Ik; it’s a really wholesome moment. Given La-Ik’s been walking through his childhood, he makes Se-Na take them to her favorite aquarium from back when she was a kid, but they end up being recognized there and have to hide in the jellyfish exhibit.
This is when they almost kiss for a moment, but then La-Ik backs off. They end up going to the riverbank where he first gave her his cap all those years ago, and they both talk about how much they mean to each other. When they’re nearly home, Se-Na tells La-Ik she likes him more when he’s ordinary, and it triggers La-Ik to go ahead and confess that he does genuinely like Se-Na, and that he’s interested in her, but he says she doesn’t have to give him her reply immediately. They both go to bed that night with their hearts beating a mile a minute.
How Does Prosecutor Byung-Gyun Respond to Being Taken Off the Case?
When you first see Byung-Gyun in episode 9, he’s being taken off the Woo-Seong case, and he doesn’t love that for himself. He reacts by asking his assistant to give him all the files on the case before they can go to prosecutor Jang. While he’s looking through these files, he notices that the facts on Jae-Hee’s car crash don’t quite line up, indicating it might not have been a suicide attempt after all. This only confirms what Se-Na had already figured out and what the other boys had been saying all along. Opportunist that he is, he realizes he can use this to invalidate Jae-Hee’s confession, and by doing so make it look like La-Ik killed Woo-Seong and then also attempted to murder Jae-Hee. In episode 10, despite his theory not working on his colleagues, Byung-Gyun indicts La-Ik, just because he couldn’t admit he was wrong all along.
Why Does Se-Na Get in Trouble?
In episode 10, after La-Ik’s wonderful confession, Se-Na asks for some time to give him an answer. Even though this is a dream scenario for her, it doesn’t really make any sense, no? Additionally, he decides to move back to his house because he finally feels comfortable after being around Se-Na for so long. Instead of telling her he’s leaving, he leaves a note at her desk, saying he’s waiting for her answer but also needs to go back home so he can fix his problems by himself. Oh, look, grown man talk. He then goes to see Jae-Hee and plays one of their songs for him because it used to be his favorite. At night, Se-Na gets excited because La-Ik left a cap in her house, deciding to go give it to him. He finds it funny that she would show up in the middle of the night for something so frivolous when he bumps into her, but obviously, she feels for him, too, and he thinks it’s adorable.
However, the next morning is when all hell breaks loose because it’s revealed in the news that La-Ik and Se-Na have been living together. Immediately, the article is flooded with negative comments, but to make things worse, later on, Byung-Gyun makes sure it becomes public knowledge that Se-Na is the daughter of a murderer. This is, of course, all thanks to the journalist Baek, whom Se-Na and La-Ik went after earlier in the show. In the middle of all of this, Chung-Jae is still trying to get in the way of Se-Na and La-Ik getting together. But anyway, by the time someone is able to throw a Gold Boys lightstick at Se-Na through the press and fans that have gathered in front of her office, La-Ik shows up to block it. Everybody is shocked that he showed up to support her, and it may or may not have aggravated the situation further. All while Hye-Joo sits and mourns the career that she left behind, thinking La-Ik still loves her.
Anyway, though Se-Na feels like La-Ik made it seem like they’re running away from their problems, he convinces her that, just for the time being, he wants to keep her safe. They run off to a cabin in the woods, where for one day, they can pretend everything is alright, and they’re just a happy couple on vacation. At night, Se-Na tells La-Ik that she became a lawyer to clear her father’s name, but ultimately, she feels like she’s been running away because she never did what she was supposed to. She says she was scared that she’d be called names again and calls herself a coward, but of course, La-Ik tells her she was only protecting herself and surviving. He tells her that running away wasn’t an act of cowardice, but a way for her to keep living. She cries, and they soon get ready for bed, with La-Ik falling asleep on the couch, but finally, we get the kiss we’ve been waiting for all along.
At the end of Idol I episode 10, Se-Na gets a call from her boss about the indictment, but now, instead of running away, she shows up at work. Now, Chung-Jae feels bad for being mean to La-Ik earlier and decides to do some investigation of his own. Late at work, Se-Na and La-Ik listen to the recording of the last call between Geum and Woo-Seong. In it, they hear the sound of a door lock, but Geum’s office doesn’t have one, so it means there was an intruder in La-Ik’s house, proving that there was someone else in the house when Woo-Seong died. Now, while Jae-Hee wakes up in the hospital, La-Ik takes Se-Na home, where he shows her a singular earring that matches the one in the evidence. That means there are two earrings, but who does the second one belong to? Or did someone try to steal it and then drop it accidentally? Now, earlier in the episode, when La-Ik decided to move out, we saw a shadowy figure near Se-Na’s house and assumed it was the journalist, but there’s a chance it was Geum. What if this whole thing was Geum’s doing because he thought his biggest talents were leaving him out to dry? Guess we’ll have to wait for next week to find out, in the ending of Idol I. Are you suspicious of anyone on the show? Do you think Hye-Joo could be the villain? I think the earring could’ve just been one of the other two members, but I could be wrong.
