The Murderous Jin-Gyeom
Episode 13 of Alice brings the final pieces of the puzzle together as the last pages of the Book Of Prophecy are shown. Quite how this fits together remains to be seen but one thing’s for sure – time is starting to unravel. We begin with Sun-Young and Tae-Yi face to face in the bedroom. Only, she doesn’t seem phased and asks exactly how Tae-Yi showed up there. Only, Tae-Yi’s clearly been there before. Back in 1992 she was encouraged to stay with Sun-Young. This young Tae-Yi draws a picture of Alice next to a doorway and another of Alice alongside a monstrous giant snake. These pictures, as it turns out, are actually from the final pages of the Book of Prophecy which she had as a child. This, unfortunately, depicts someone punished for opening the door of time. The consequence of this sees Sun-Young burning the pages and sending Tae-Yi to Hope Orphanage to stay. Although the final pages are burnt, it doesn’t stop what could be to pass. As we cut back to Tae-Yi, Jin-Gyeom opens the door and finds Tae-Yi with his Mother inside. Meanwhile, Jin-Gyeom awakens after the crash in 2010 but is visibly weakened, passing out on the road. He’s not the only one either, Jin-Gyeom from 2010 also collapses too. Sun-Young tasks Tae-Yi with finding Jin-Gyeom and taking him back to their time period. He can’t be there. Only, when she gets to the hospital, Jin-Gyeom is gone. Instead, he manages to find his way back to Sun-Young. She’s not surprised to see him but implores Jin-Gyeom to head back to his time period before it’s too late. Only, things take an awkward turn when 2010 Jin-Gyeom receives a call from Tae-Yi. He answers and his demeanor is instantly changed, realizing just who she is and commenting how she sounds exactly the same. Tae-Yi has a bad feeling about this and something doesn’t add up. She suspects this may be a different past than the one she remembered. This strange version of Jin-Gyeom heads up to the roof and looks at the memorial for Sung-Eun. As Do-Yeon stands with him, Jin-Gyeom mentions how she wanted to be saved. It looks like that schoolgirl was killed after all. Later that evening, Do-Yeon is attacked in the street and taken to hospital. Jin-Gyeom races there to see her after learning that Professor Seok died earlier. The only thing Tae-Yi managed to uncover is a phone and that appears to belong to Jin-Gyeom. Our Jin-Gyeom heads back home and plants it outside for his younger self to find. Only, he and Tae-Yi have bigger problems. With Seok dead, the whole balance of time is thrown askew given he’s supposed to be alive until 2020. Intending to get to the bottom of this, Tae-Yi and Jin-Gyeom go searching and find a hidden room in Professor Seok’s office. Inside, they find the Book of Prophecy and details about a child in time disheartened by what’s happening rather than joyed. Even worse, one sentence stands out to her – “She will die by her son’s hands.” The “she” here appears to hint toward it being Jin-Gyeom. As we cut back to this 2010 version of Jin-Gyeom, he contemplates choking and killing Sun-Young. However, he senses that she’s pretending to be asleep and changes his mind. Unfortunately everything starts to unravel as our Jin-Gyeom hears screams and maniacal giggling. Red spots show up over his face and he eventually passes out again. Tae-Yi rings Sun-Young who hurries over to check on him. It’s just as she feared – he’s hearing sounds from another dimension. Sun-Young is trying to stop time travel in order to prevent this all from happening. Only, she tells Tae-Yi that once it starts it cannot be undone. Here, she reveals the truth. Sun-Young was also an orphan back in the day and she wanted to find her parents. In order to do that she followed the Book of Prophecy back to 1986. It’s here the truth is revealed for certain – Sun-Young is her Mother. Despite being declared dead, 2010 Jin-Gyeom bumps into Seok at the school. After calling him sir, Seok watches from afar with great interest. Only, he notices our future Jin-Gyeom and he chases the Professor down the street. While he does, Tae-Yi approaches Sun-Young again and realizes there is a way to stop time travel. That comes from resetting everything. Jin-Gyeom catches up to Seok and questions him over why he killed Tae-Yi, “I’d do no such thing!” He says incredulously as Jin-Gyeom is stuck with pieces but no discernable way of putting them together. As he races back to his old house, this is where he finds his Mother dead and bleeding out on the ground just as before. Tae-Yi meanwhile finds the final page of the Book of Prophecy tucked away in a photo frame. The culprit for who killed his Mother happens to be 2010 Jin-Gyeom, who shows up with a grin on his face. Grabbing him by the throat, he screams at Jin-Gyeom to reveal the truth…which is where the episode ends.
The Episode Review
So it looks like we’ve got a murderous Jin-Gyeom jumping through time now and killing Sun-Young across multiple dimensions. At least, that’s what I think is being implied here. The entire episode does well to build up this dread and the final pages of the prophecy seem to hint that either Jin-Gyeom or Tae-Yi are going to die. I’d imagine the former is going to occur in order to stop time travel. Resetting time may well send us all the way back to Sun-Young and Tae-Yi being kids and never meeting again. This drama is certainly not without its problems, and time travel shows in particular can be tricky to get right. However, the show is at least trying to explain most of the big plot points which is good. The Sung-Eun incident on the roof has always been a strange case and it’s good to get some clarity on this now. This seems to back up the theory that Jin-Gyeom – this 2010 version of course – appears to be jumping through dimensions. As we reach the final three episodes of this one, I’d imagine we’ll start to experience more craziness across the season before time travel is finally stopped. With no Alice this week (the organization not the show), this drama instead relies on our central cast in 2010, which does work quite well. Only, surely Alice would know what’s happening, especially given the drone was present during Sun-Young’s murder? For now though we’ll have to wait and see if that’s explained or not but this twisty turny thriller continues to deliver some compelling sci-fi – plots holes and all.
