The latest episode of My Perfect Stranger is like a filler episode with a cliffhanger that has left us desperate for tomorrow’s episode. In this episode, a lot of problems have been solved, and it feels like things are coming together for Hae-Joon and Yoon-Young to go back home in the near future. Of course, the culprit isn’t caught yet, but that’s the big mystery of the show, so it’s going to take up to episode 14, somewhere in the middle, for us to know exactly who they are if we follow the typical pattern of Korean dramas. My Perfect Stranger is reminiscent of older K-dramas from the early 2010s that are fun, mysterious, and simultaneously charged with extreme emotion. There are even some tears to be shed in this episode, and not to forget that Jin Ki-Joo’s smile is so contagious you can’t help but feel a jolt of energy while watching her.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In Episode 11?
In episode 10, we left off with Hae-Joon figuring out who his mother is between Go Mi-Sook and the cafe owner, Chung-A (our hunch was right about her being important way back when she was first introduced!). Chung-A is, in fact, Yeon-Woo’s girlfriend, aka Hae-Joon’s soon to be -be mother. Hae-Joon is unsurprised that he didn’t like his mother from the first time he met her, because she abandoned him right after birth. We see a flashback of when he first visited the cafe, and she behaved as if she already knew him, even speaking informally and dropping egg yolk onto his shirt. Still, Hae-Joon feels a tug in his heart to know her as a person rather than a ghost who abandoned him. He can’t understand why she would do such a thing.
It’s the day Baek Yeo-Seop has been released, and Hae-Joon goes to meet him immediately because, even though he knows he’s not the murderer, he’s the only person connected to both victims. Yeo-Seop and Joo-Young were actually in a relationship and wanted to run away together. They hid in the town because Yeo-Seop wanted to spend some time with his younger brother, Hee-Seop, for the anniversary of their parents before leaving him completely alone. Yeo-Seop and Joo-Young were hiding in the abandoned house where Kyung-Ae’s body was found. The reason Kyung-Ae went all the way there was that she had followed Yeo-Seop after he helped her fight the scammers, and she wanted to thank him. After seeing him with Joo-Young, she became friends with both of them and said she would help them however she could. The thing they needed was a book, and unfortunately, the night Kyung-Ae went to find them, Yeo-Seop had gone to Seoul, and that was the night both girls were killed. Both the victims had books with them, and so the words written on the chit in the matchbox can be read in two ways. One is that the killer is threatened by women who read, so they’re on a killing spree of reading women. Or they’re hinting at themselves as a reading woman who is dangerous because she’s a killer. Yoon-Young feels confused because she’s read all of Mi-Sook’s works and feels like her coming to the past is not just a coincidence. She could be right because we still don’t know where this time machine came from. We have no idea who made it or anything about it.
Out of the blue, Soon-Ae’s stolen novel is released under Mi-Sook’s name, and it’s an instant hit. The whole school is reeling, and Soon-Ae sees that it is her novel that has been wrongfully published. When she finds Mi-Sook, she’s immediately threatened by her. Mi-Sook tells Soon-Ae that she should keep her mouth shut because she has no evidence and she shouldn’t want to end up like her sister too. Mi-Sook gives another cryptic one-liner to Yoon-Young, who just stares at her in anger because she knows she’s a huge threat to everybody around her. Soon-Ae feels completely defeated and confesses to Yoon-Young that she will give up because nobody will be proud of her for writing a novel. Yoon-Young hashes out a plan to prove otherwise and tells Soon-Ae’s family and Hee-Seop the truth. They all show their support to Soon-Ae, and she finds the confidence to conquer her fears and tell the publisher the truth. Yoon-Young takes Soon-Ae to the publisher’s office, where they meet Mi-Sook and her mother. Mi-Sook is still as arrogant as ever and doesn’t believe Soon-Ae can defeat her, but she’s proven wrong rather quickly. It’s not like only one book can be used to write a novel; Soon-Ae has multiple books of research and work done on the novel, which proves that she wrote it. Furthermore, she can answer any question regarding the book if asked, but Mi-Sook cannot. The publisher obliged her request for him to read her material, and everything is fixed! Soon-Ae will be named the author of the novel, and the cover will be changed, but Soon-Ae has one request for them: to mention her sister Kyung-Ae’s name in the novel, as she had requested Soon-Ae to do on the night she died. If she’s mentioned in a book, she will be eternal. On the other hand, Yoon-Young wonders why Soon-Ae wrote “To Y” in her book, and Soon-Ae says that the name of her future daughter will start with the letter “Y.”
Yoon-Young might be catching feelings for Hae-Joon because she keeps getting nightmares, and when Hae-Joon asks about them, she won’t tell him what they are. In the nightmare, she says everything is exactly as she hoped for in the future, where her parents are happy, and she’s living her best life, but before she can complete the story, they are interrupted. We can assume that Yoon-Young sees a future without Hae-Joon, which is making her sad and also afraid because he’s become an important part of her life now.
What Is Mi-Sook’s Next Move?
A completely defeated Mi-Sook gets yelled at home by her mother, who has no faith in her. Mi-Sook seeks out her brother for revenge. We find out that Min-Soo has been beating up Mi-Sook for years now, and her mother has pretended not to notice it. Their father was an abuser, too, so she would’ve imagined her mother would help her instead of walking away. For many years, Mi-Sook got beaten up by her brother, and her plot for revenge was to get him arrested for the murders. She asks him if his hand has been healed, and it looks like it has. Min-Soo is drunk for the most part when she’s telling him her big plan and has no idea what she’s talking about. On the same night, she tells Detective Baek the “truth” that her brother is the murderer, and she has seen him do it herself. In the end, at Hae-Joon’s home, Yeon-Woo asks to talk to him. It so happens that he has found the matchbox with the faded message in it. He picked it up because it was from his girlfriend’s cafe, but when he realized what the contents were, he was afraid. Yeon-Woo realizes he doesn’t know anything about Hae-Joon and starts to panic a little. He thinks Hae-Joon is the murderer with the special car that looks like it doesn’t belong there.
Ah, we really don’t need any misunderstandings, and we hope that Hae-Joon is able to explain things to Yeon-Woo without any further problems. Of course, he can’t tell him he’s from the future, but some kind of explanation to save Hae-Joon from being arrested (considering the detective doesn’t like him very much either) would be a good start. In the next episode of My Perfect Stranger, we might find out how Mi-Sook went about killing the women. We also see that Soon-Ae will be kidnapped; this is for obvious reasons, but we’re hoping Yoon-Young will come to her rescue again.
