Brain Works 2023 Episode 10

pisode 10 of Brain Works starts in the final scenes of episode 9 with our witness describing the suspect she passed on the street and Ho-young with the murder weapon in his locker. Detective Geum calls Ho-young telling him that they found new evidence on the case and needed to talk to him. He lies that he was at the swimming pool while he was outside his house.

Unfortunately, the detective is already outside his house too and he is caught in the lie. The detective invites him out for a meal but he insists on dropping his bag. The detective figures there was something in the bag, which makes Ho-young run. The detective almost catches him when he bums into a woman but the woman’s baby stroller rolls onto the street and the detective chooses to save the baby which gives Ho-young a chance to escape.

Back at the station, the teams get an update that Jung-yoon’s credit card had been used for a transaction. The captain is certain it was her son Ho-young. The detective and Dr Shin follow up on the lead. They find the room he rented in a motel but he is not in the room but on the roof drinking. They decide to stake out the motel.

Detective Geum shares a painful memory of one of his stakeouts outside a motel. He was waiting when he saw his wife with another man. He got angry and hit him but his memories are fuzzy after that. He crushed his car and sued him but nothing happened since they were outside the motel. He was acquitted. Since then, motel signs make him seek the stomach.

The detective thinks Dr Shin’s life has been all good since he says he does not have such a painful memory but Ha-ru reminds him that he lost his parents when he was six. Before he could enlighten the detective on how to not let negative emotions get to him, they get a police update that Ho-young is attempting suicide at the motel.

They both rush to the rooftop and while the detective tries to talk him down, Dr Shin asks him if he wants to die. His answer makes the doctor jump off the roof with him. He had noticed that the inflatable mattress was ready and they land on it. The doctor is unharmed but Ho-young needs some medical attention. Myung-se is worried to death as he runs down the stairs. He scolds the doctor who is unbothered.

Joon-young is released and he meets with Ho-young outside the neuroscientific interrogation room. He is told that his brother has been arrested as the mother’s murder suspect and he is shocked. When asked why he killed his mother, Ho-young says he did not want to hurt her, he only wanted to kill himself so he could escape her since she was a monster.

He reveals the incident that led to Joon young’s condition and that the mother knew about it. Ho-young did not want to go swimming that day so Joon-young agreed to skip practice with him and take the fall when the mother got angry. She got angry and beat him causing him to hit a nail stuck on the wall.

Afterwards, Joon-young started complaining of headaches but their mother did not get him any help. She was afraid he would remember what she did and her misdeeds will be known. When his headaches got back, he stayed in his room and later he turned into a reclusive loner. The father believed the stepmother that Joon-young was addicted to games and a reclusive loner. Ho-young thinks maybe he knew about the condition and turned a blind eye, he was not sure.

After the father died, the stepmother started mixing cleaning solutions into Joon-young’s food. Since Ho-young could not stop the mother, all he could do was stop his step-brother from eating the food. He kept reminding him every day but somehow he could remember what Ho-young told him. That was the reason why he did not eat the food given by the detective in their test to see if he remembers some memories.

Ho-young mustered the courage one day to confront his mother. She admits that she married Joon-yoon’s father for the money and now she wanted him dead so Ho-young could get all the money. After the confrontation, she planned to send him to a dorm since she had realized he feeds him behind her back. She regretted having him and blamed him for making her life miserable and turning her nasty. That is when he thought he should be dead.

He followed her during her walk and threatened to kill himself with a knife. She tells her is he wants to die, he should kill her first and they get into a struggle for the night. He stabs her accidentally. He gets scared by the sight of the blood and he ran off.

At home, he goes into his brother’s room and tells him everything. He says Joon-young was happy he could forget everything after a few minutes but he could never forget. Joon-young asks him to take off his bloodied clothes and take a shower. When he got out, his brother had locked himself in. Ho-young wanted to forget everything and so he went to take a nap. He woke up when the police showed up and thought they were there to arrest him. He was shocked when they said Joon-young had turned himself in as the killer.

Desperate to protect his younger brother, Joon-young put on his brother’s hoodie and called the police. Ho-young thought he would get away with it and subconsciously pretended not to know anything. He wondered why his brother tried to protect him.

Dr Shin tells him it was because of his memories. When asked about his happiest moments, he said that it was when he was younger and his father remarried after his mother’s death. Although his stepmother was scary, Joon-young adored his little brother because he always listened to him. Despite the age gap, Joon-young felt they were good friends and he always had someone on his side. His happiest moment was when they took swimming lessons together. In the water, he could not hear his stepmother’s angry voice and it felt like it was just the two of them in the world. He felt at ease when he thought of his younger brother. Joon-young is released from prison and is under police protection and Dr Shin’s treatment for his amnesia disorder.

After a nudge from Ha-ru, the detective has to give captain Seul an answer. He asks for more time since he has a lot to consider. The captain assures her that she could handle Yi-na since she was a little sick in the head. She will be a good stepmother. The detective still thinks the captain cannot handle the teenager and she suggests that they meet first. At home, Yi-na acts crazy which makes the detective adamant that they should never meet.

Dr Shin visits Dr Hwang and they chitchat about the recent case. When asked about his most intense memory, Ha-ru says it was seeing the brain for the first time. Dr Hwang asks about his worst memory and when he seems to not think of any, he brings up the incident about Ha-ru’s parent’s death. Ha-ru seems unbothered by the incident since he could not remember it. He believes his brain erased the memory as a means of survival and he did not wish to dig up the memory. While leaving the visiting room, Dr Hwang says Ha-ru will find a reason to dig up the memory.

Back home, he is trying to work when the memory of him being trapped and someone banging on the window pops up causing him to mess up. His aunt visits and he asks her about who saved him. He remembers that whoever saved him called him “kid” and he thought Dr Park would never call him that since he would have referred to him as “Ha-ru.” The aunt feigns ignorance and says maybe it was a distorted memory. Outside Ha-ru’s house, the aunt calls Dr Park who is shocked to hear about it. His eyes are full of fear.

Dr Shin tries to help detective Geum forget his bad memory. He takes him outside a hotel and says the first step to forgetting is exposure. The second step is viewing the bad memory as a spectator without emotions. Excluding the emotions, the detective thinks it was good that he found out about the wife then because otherwise he would have been led on for longer making the betrayal more hurtful. He thinks captain Seul asking him out is a good thing. He learns to turn bad memories into valuable experiences.

After the nudge, he musters the courage to ask captain Seul out to dinner. He confesses that he had liked her for so long but was afraid to ask her out given his failed marriage. He was glad she asked him out first. The ex-wife calls after their date to report a dead body. Elsewhere, Dr Shin is having a stare-down with a masked man who broke into his house and is holding a knife.

The Episode Review

The episode got me overwhelmingly emotional. Listening to the brother’s story and their empathy for each other was an emotional rollercoaster. Signs continue to show that Dr Shin has changed even though he might not think so.

Joon-young does not remember meeting him before but he feels he is a kind person. I am very curious about Ha-ru’s story after it was brought up by Hwang and I also wish to know the connection between the two. What do Dr Park and the aunt know about his parent’s death and why are they hiding it from him? Who is the man in his house and what case are we handling next?