Lies Hidden in My Garden 2023 K Drama Episode 3

Episode 3 of Lies Hidden in My Garden start with a flashback from when Yoon-beom was alive. Sang-eun and Yoon-beom have a conversation where he tells her about how he has blackmail material to threaten many people that will eventually make him rich one day. She is scared but remembers seeing the spare phone in one of the boxes.

Back to the present day, Yoon-beom’s brother comes to the funeral home to visit Sang-eun and tells her that his brother has a debt of 200 million won from investing in a business for their father. He tells Sang-eun that he had taken out a bank loan and she wonders if she would have to repay the loan now after his death.

Yoon-beom’s brother offers some petty cash from his parents in compensation for their absence from the funeral because Yoon-beom’s parents get cold easily. Sang-eun claims that Yoon-beom busted his ass and worked to give his parents and his brother whatever they wanted. She calls his family cheap for treating him like a nobody and yells at him, mocking them for taking advantage of Yoon-beom. She finally breaks down into tears for the first time since hearing the news of his death.

In the women’s room, Sang-eun meets Joo-ran. Joo-ran spots the spare phone on the counter and is suspicious. She leaves the restroom and joins Jae-ho as they pay their respects to Yoon-beom and Sang-eun, who are also outside. Sang-eun asks to have a private chat with Jae-ho which leaves Joo-ran confused. She recalls seeing the same phone in the hands of the girl from the anonymous text Jae-ho had received before their trip to the funeral home.

The two go outside to chat, while Jae-ho’s colleagues ask Joo-ran if her husband is feeling any better. The man tells Joo-ran that Jae-ho had asked for prescribed sleeping pills because he has trouble sleeping, which leaves Joo-ran further confused but they wait it out in the funeral home. Sang-eun’s mother keeps looking at Joo-ran, irking her, which prompts her to leave the funeral home.

Outside, Sang-eun shows Jae-ho the spare phone and asks him whom the phone belonged to. Jae-ho asks Sang-eun to stop bothering her with something so trivial and leaves. He claims that Sang-eun is a lot like her husband who made a lot of wrong choices. He asks her to take care of herself for her child which makes Sang-eun furious.

Joo-ran watches the conversation from the building and turns around to run into Sang-eun’s mother. The woman asks Joo-ran to marry her son and forces her by grabbing onto her. Joo-ran pushes the old woman away but Sang-eun comes in time to save her mother. Sang-eun tells Joo-ran that Jae-ho killed Yoon-beom, but Jae-ho arrives and takes his wife away.

Just then, Sang-eun gets another call from the cops asking about Yoon-beom’s death which makes her lose her calm. She yells at the people on the phone and breaks into a sob at the funeral home. Meanwhile, Joo-ran is in the bathtub at her house when she recalls what Sang-eun had told her. She goes to the basement to check the dash cam from Jae-ho’s car but finds nothing in the car or in his GPS location.

Jae-ho finds Joo-ran snooping through the car which makes her lie about losing an earring in the car. He tries to look for it with Joo-ran but reassures her that he would buy her another earring, taking her back inside. The next morning, Hae-soo looks at Joo-ran’s house from her balcony. Joo-ran asks Hae-soo to help see her CCTV footage but Hae-soo asks her the reason.

Joo-ran chickens out and goes back home instead of telling Hae-soo why she needed the footage. Whilst there, she looks up Yoon-beom’s home address. Meanwhile, the cop investigating Yoon-beom’s death interrogates Jae-ho about the 100 million won he had lent to Yoon-beom before his death. Jae-ho tells him that he had paid money to Yoon-beom to cover up for something related to their job.

Jae-ho tells the cop that he has an alibi to prove he was not responsible for Yoon-beom’s death. The phone keeps ringing at Joo-ran’s house but she is not home. That night, Hae-soo goes through the CCTV footage from the night of Yoon-beom’s murder and notices that Jae-ho was speeding outside at 12:50am in his car.

When Jae-ho gets back from work, he notices that all of Joo-ran’s earring pieces are in place and picks one earring out. Jae-ho meanwhile, tells Joo-ran that Hae-soo is famous and adds that the house Hae-soo lives in is the spot where a man was murdered by his wife. This shocks Joo-ran because Jae-ho claims that the stench in their backyard is related to this same murder.

Jae-ho talks about killing being unethical. Joo-ran asks Jae-ho about him being out all night when Yoon-beom was murdered but he claims that he had just gone out for a bit and came back because of rain. He takes Joo-ran to the basement and shows her that he has found the missing earring. Joo-ran points out that the earring was never missing and adds that she has lied when Jae-ho angrily tries to gaslight her.

Joo-ran starts asking more questions about Yoon-beom’s death. Jae-ho asks if she thought he was the murderer and the two argue. Joo-ran tells Jae-ho that she will be able to help him out if he really was in trouble which makes Jae-ho lash out. He tells Joo-ran that her actions have put their son, Seung-jae in trouble because he was not able to forget the ‘incident’.

Jae-ho yells at Joo-ran claiming he was very tired because of everything that was going on in their lives. He leaves to go out to get some air leaving Joo-ran in the basement. Hae-soo is at the grocery store she is being mocked and called a murderer. Seung-jae helps Hae-soo and tells her that he was doing so because she helped his mother.

On their drive back, Seung-jae asks why Hae-soo had returned to the house and she claims that she was back to her childhood home. That night, Seung-jae gets a text message about an apartment he had inquired about. Meanwhile, Joo-ran waits for Jae-ho to return and throws away the medicine that she has been taking. The next morning, Sang-eun and her family leave the funeral home and go out for lunch.

There, she learns that Yoon-beom has not one but five insurance policies under his name that she was unaware of. Sang-eun leaves her meal and goes to the insurance company to talk to the agent. The agent tells Sang-eun that she could get up to 520 million won as long as Yoon-beom’s death is not ruled as suicide. She’s sure Yoon-beom’s death was not and goes to her building terrace, recalling the night of Yoon-beom’s death.

As it turns out, it was Sang-eun who had killed Yoon-beom in his car on their way to her mother’s house and had driven the car away. Sang-eun recalls asking Yoon-beom why he used to blackmail people, but he tells her that he did it because he could. The episode ends with Sang-eun going back to her apartment and finding Joo-ran waiting at her doorstep.

The Episode Review

Wow, the ending of this episode was reallt sinister. I wish the makers showed us how exactly Sang-eun killed Yoon-beom but it looks like it had something to do with the drink she had him consume after she left the grocery store. I am not sure what Sang-eun is up to here but what was the point of blackmailing Jae-ho first when she was going to show him the phone later?

After this episode, the show has gotten more and more interesting and things are finally picking up speed. Sang-eun is losing her mind in a funny way, which is totally not normal for this show. I love Lim Ji-yeon in this role after she acted as the iconic bully – Yeon-jin in The Glory. Sang-eun’s character losing her mind from time to time makes me worry that she will soon end up going crazy.

Whatever Jae-ho is up to can be termed as proper gaslighting and mental manipulation, and I am sure Joo-ran finally teaming up with Sang-eun can actually lead to Jae-ho being incarcerated for Yoon-beom’s death with no fault of his own. If Jae-ho did not kill Yoon-beom, what was he hiding from Joo-ran? An affair perhaps?