Villa De Foret
We begin episode 7 of Kairos with Song-Ja running into her daughter. This reunion rewrites time as we’ve seen before, and in August Ae-Ri takes her Mother home. She holds her hand and promises to be there for her. In September, Seo-Jin heads to the police station and asks about Jin Ho and Song-Ja. The latter definitely hasn’t been a missing person case there but Jin Ho has still fallen to his death and they’ve chalked this up to a suicide. Seo-Jin leaves the station and checks his phone, where a location tracker pings for Yujung Building. Suddenly, he realizes that the tracker is still attached to Taek-Kyu’s car. That evening, Seo-Jin reveals all on the phone to Ae-Ri and finds out that Song-Ja is still safe. He also reveals about Jin-Ho’s suicide and quizzes Ae-Ri about her Mother’s involvement with the construction site. As Ae-Ri tells him to catch Taek-Kyu, the call ends. In the morning (August), Ae-Ri asks her Mother outright about what happened. It turns out she got her hands on a sizable amount of cash after selling her husband’s lot of land in the countryside. Of course, that money brought the attention of less desirable people and she hid to make sure he wasn’t found out. Only, this doesn’t explain Jin Ho. It turns out he knew Song-Ja’s husband had passed away and he visited her afterwards. He wanted help with the Yujung Construction gig. When Ae-Ri turns her attention to Taek-Kyu however, she’s completely rattled and claims that’s the name of the person who bought the land. Something doesn’t add up here. Song-Ja and Ae-Ri visit their father at the destroyed building but she struggles to compose herself. As Ae-Ri heads off to buy some flowers, when she returns she finds her Mother gone and a note pleading with her not to come and find her again. Meanwhile, Hyun-Chae and Do-Kyun put their plan in place, including leaving Da-Bin with Jin-Ho. As we cut across to the bridge – that same bridge on the fateful night Hyun-Chae “disappeared” – she works with Do-Kyun to stage everything. With the plan coming together, including getting Jin-Ho involved in all this, they kiss out in the open as a train passes. After buying herself a taser, Ae-Ri tails Taek-Kyu through the various streets until she’s suddenly grabbed by Gun-Wook who stops her from going after him. Eventually she comes around to his way of thinking and asks for his help. He refuses to do so though until she tells him more. Back home, Ae-Ri shows off the messages From Seo-Jin to her sister and Gun-Wook. Eventually she goes on and mentions how she’s been communicating with him in the future. On the back of this, Gun-Wook teams up with her and agrees to help find and kill Taek-Kyu. During the 10.34 phone call, the pair realize that all of this stems from Da-Bin’s abduction. Ae-Ri decides to set out and try and stop it from occurring. First port of call though is bringing a new teddy to Da-Bin which seems to rewrite history again. The reason? She put a location tracker in the stuffed toy and that could help track down Da-Bin. In September, Seo-Jin heads to the hospital to see for himself what happened on the rooftop. Given Jin-Ho had a limp and was cuffed, Seo-Jin is not so sure this adds up to him jumping to his doom. Even worse, the tracker on his phone points at it being Taek-Kyu responsible – especially given he was there at the same time. Seo-Jin uses the tracker to continue following Taek-Kyu while Do-Kyun and Taek-Kyu come to blows. Taek-Kyu demands his money but Do-Kyun simply tells him to stick to the contract or he won’t be getting anything at all. As they head out into the parking lot together, Seo-Jin sees Do-Kyun and Taek-Kyu liaising and getting into separate cars. As they leave, he decides to follow from afar. Only, he carelessly misses his turning on the highway and curses his luck. Thankfully he manages to phone Ae-Ri and she mentions the tracker with the teddy. Well, it turns out the service is unavailable and for some reason, it doesn’t seem to be working. Now it’s worth mentioning that we’ve gone ahead a month so from now on Ae-Ri is in September. Why is this significant? Well, September 6th is obviously the night of the recital and it looks like Ae-Ri is on course to rewrite history. On September 1st, Hyun-Chae looks outside and notices a strange scarred man approaching Seo-Jin. Only, she quickly messages and asks to meet first, stopping him going after Seo-Jin. Is she being blackmailed? It seems that way and looking at the burns, this could actually be Hyun-Chae’s father. Anyway, before we find out for certain we to cut to 2nd October as Seo-Jin heads back to work following the death of Jin-Ho. It’s this date where Taek-Kyu spots the tracker under his car and removes it. Realizing this could spell trouble, he feeds it back to Do-Kyun and vows to take care of Director Kim. Before that though, Seo-Jin continues to look into the various files regarding Do-Kyun and Taek-Kyu. He realizes they both visited the same high school and brings Do-Kyun in for questioning. Specifically he asks about Jin-Ho’s murder. He feigns ignorance though, saying he doesn’t know anything. After some tense moments, he eventually dismisses his work colleague. Back in September, Hyun-Chae arrives at Ae-Ri’s convenience store and outright mentions Da-Bin and her connection to this case. She tells her to stay out of this business, until she mentions Da-Bin’s disappearance. Ae-Ri knows what’s going to happen and tells her to phone the police. What she doesn’t know however, is that Hyun-Chae is directly responsible for the disappearance. When she leaves, Gun-Wook brings back the ID tracker and a brand new log-in. While it’s working now, they know it’s not going to work after Da-Bin’s disappearance so they need to move quickly. Well, that quick movement begins with phoning Seo-Jin at 10.33 and giving him the new details. This time though, he finds the tracker works and points at a place called Villa De Foret. Even though the teddy doesn’t have a tracker inside (given it’s in the police station), something happened that points toward this secluded location. Seo-Jin is desperate to find out what and hurries there, driving through the night. When he gets there, it turns out to be a crowded place full of people. Zooming in on the app, he eventually heads up further to a villa where Da-Bin happens to be playing outside. He also finds Hyun-Chae too and sees Do-Kyn with his wife. With a murderous intent, he walks toward them… until Taek-Kyu smacks him in the back of the head with a lead pipe. With the recital coming up, Gun-Wook and Ae-Ri work together to do everything they can to prevent the kidnapping that night at the recital. They have everyone in place and now it’s up to our characters to follow this through and hope for the best.
The Episode Review
What a dramatic episode! After a lot of cancellations thanks to Korean baseball, Kairos is finally back with a big double bill of action. There’s a lot of moving parts in this one and with time reaching the inevitable disappearance, all eyes now turn to Ae-Ri and her ragtag group to try and stop Da-Bin’s disappearance. With Seo-Jin uncovering the truth about his wife, what’s next for him? Clearly he isn’t dead but that was a pretty nasty blow to the head. Could he have amnesia? Well, we don’t have long to wait as episode 8 aired straight after this one in Korea so we’ll have more to say about this show in the episode 8 review portion!
