Detective Jin, in an attempt to arrest director Ma, got into a brutal fight with him and ended up having a cardiac arrest. It was paramedic Seol, who kept him alive. However, director Ma has always had a way out of his crimes in “The First Responders,” and this time as well, his lawyer has claimed that they do not have enough evidence to charge him with any crime, let alone get him arrested.
Spoilers Ahead
How Did Jin Disprove Director Ma’s Alibi?
Detective Jin wakes up and wants to go to the police station to deal with Director Ma, who will be released soon if the police do not bring evidence. The doctor refuses to let Jin go, but Seol takes on the responsibility as a medical guardian, and the doctor entrusts her with the job. Myeong Pil and Anna have videos of Ma, but it is difficult to prove that it is really him in the video. Seol notices that Seok Doo and Ma have different gaits, and they can use this information to identify the person in Ma’s alleged alibi video.
Jin calls his friend, forensic officer Yoon, and she has a method that they can use to determine a person’s identity from his gait. This helps Jin get an arrest warrant against Ma, and he takes him directly to officer Yoon. Ma’s lawyer advises him not to undergo the test, but Ma is done with his lawyer and does what he wants. Yoon collects the data for Ma and Seok Doo’s gaits, and after comparing them with the video evidence, she concludes that the video has Seok Doo in it and not Ma, which cancels out his alibi.
Ma’s father and Jin’s father have long been friends, and they discuss whether Jin’s father should make a move to stop Ma’s arrest, as it can severely affect Ma’s father’s chances of running for president. However, his father already has a plan. He has already cut off contact with his son and told Ma’s lawyer to leave his side as well. He announces his retirement from politics, but he seems to have an ulterior motive behind it. With mounting evidence against him and no lawyer by his side, Ma has become desperate and has started losing his mind. Jin knows what to do and just keeps his silence until Ma starts speaking up. Ma asks Jin if he will get a lesser sentence if he confesses and reflects on what he has done. Jin’s silence starts getting on his nerves, and he finally confesses how he killed Mi Jung. Mi Jung was his girlfriend, and when she found out that he had installed spy cameras in her house, she threatened to report him. This would have ruined Ma’s image and his career, and that’s why he stabbed and killed Mi Jung in a rage.
Detective Jin cannot rest for a day until he solves the cases in his hands. He succeeds in arresting Ma but needs to find Kim Cha Hyung, who tried to kill Seok Doo. After going through the CCTV footage, they find his motorcycle, but it turns out that the owner of the bike has given the bike to the Daemoo group because he was indebted to them. This makes things easy for them, and they put up an act to catch Cha Hyung red-handed. Myeong Pil goes undercover and pays the Daemoo group to kill a man who is bothering him. The bait here is detective Baek, who is also undercover as a dancer, forcing Myeong Pil to give him money. They know by now that Cha Hyung is a skilled killer and will wait for the perfect opportunity. As expected, Cha Hyung attacks Baek in his car at a carwash center, and Myeong Pil catches him red-handed. Kim Cha Hyung is the brother of Kim Do Hyun, who tried to kill Anna because she had evidence against the Daemoo group. The arrest of Cha Hyung brings more trouble for the Daemoo group, which already had to close its illegal loan business.
Jin’s biggest case is closed as of now, but he cannot forget what Ma told him. Ma claimed that Jin’s father is also involved in many illegal activities and that his life will also be ruined if Ma gets convicted. Jin meets his father because he suspects that he gave Ma confidential criminal records so that he could contact Seok Doo, but at the same time, prosecutor Yang, who worked for Ma, confesses providing confidential data to Ma. Seol’s colleagues surprise her as she has won her first Heartsaver Badge for saving a patient from dying by doing CPR. Detective Jin and his team also join the celebration as they arrive at the same restaurant to celebrate Ma’s arrest. When Jin realizes that Seol saved him from dying, he tells her that he doesn’t like to be indebted to anyone. The restaurant owner sees Jin and starts yelling at him, blaming him for ruining her and her granddaughter, Hyun Seo. Jin doesn’t say a word and leaves the restaurant calmly. Do Jin and Seol followed him out, but Jin wouldn’t tell them anything.
What Is the Real Reason Behind Hae Eun’s Suicide Attempt?
The fire crew gets a report that a high school girl named Song Hae Eun is in an attempt to jump off from a window. Seol enters her house alone while other firefighters prepare a cushion below, and Do Jin goes upstairs to climb down to Hae Eun’s window. Seol keeps Hae Eun engaged in conversation when Do Jin climbs down and pushes Hae Eun inside the house. Hae Eun is tired of life because her mother only cares about her grades and not about her life. On the other hand, the police officers find a dead baby in a handbag, and at this moment, they miss detective Jin, who has taken a day off for the first time in a while. Jin would have solved the mystery faster than them. Forensic officer Yoon runs an autopsy on the baby and concludes that the baby was stillborn and was not born in a hospital, based on the rough cut on the umbilical cord. Anna makes their work easy as she finds out that the handbag in which the baby was found is a rare product only made for VIPs.
Anna and detective Baek visit the luxury bag shop, but the employee tells them that it is a knockoff and not an original product. Though they have reached a dead end, Myeong Pil finds a payment receipt in the trash bag, in which he also finds the placenta. On the other hand, Jin visits Ma in the prison because he believes that there is a mastermind behind Ma as well. It is indeed true, as Ma shakes in fear when Jin asks him about the mastermind, and Ma warns Jin that he can never handle that person.
Jin returns to the office and has already read through the abandoned baby case. Myeong Pil has found the owner of the handbag, and she is Bang Ja Kyung. She is a manager at an advertising firm and makes it clear that she hasn’t abandoned the baby. She tells the detectives that she has many maids going in and out of her house, and it could be any of them. Jin believes that she is really not the mother of the baby because she is more concerned about the knockoff bag than the baby, and officer Yoon confirms his doubt. Bang Ja Kyung is not the mother but the maternal grandmother of the baby, and Ja Kyung’s daughter turns out to be Song Hae Eun, the high schooler who tried to commit suicide.
As Jin and Myeong Pil search for Hae Eun at her cram school, they find her with Seol. They took her in for interrogation, but she wouldn’t answer anyone until Seol took over. Hae Eun tells Seol that she gave birth to the baby at home because she didn’t know that she was pregnant, and when she told her mother about the stomachache, she was just advised to take painkillers. Do Jin comes to the police station when he finds out that Seol is there and asks Jin to take Seol away from the case, but Jin wants one last confession from Hae Eun. Hae Eun gives Seol the names of not one but five boys she slept with, and Seol storms out of the police station after handing them to Jin.
Jin gathers the mothers of the four boys, and the fifth boy’s mother is not allowed to join the other mothers because her son is not a top student. Jin doesn’t need their permission to run a DNA test on their sons, but he needs to hear how the mothers defend their sons. As the mothers argue, Jin gets enough information about the boys, but what he finds most intriguing is that Hae Eun’s brother had a vasectomy three years ago. When Jin sees Seol eating alone at night, he asks her about her behavior earlier at the police station because he has never seen her act cold like that. Seol reveals to Jin that she was also an abandoned child, and that’s why she hated to know that Hae Eun had also abandoned a child. It hurt her more because she saved Hae Eun. Previously, she hadn’t been able to save a high schooler from jumping off a building, which scared her.
As Seol shares her deeply personal story, she asks Jin about Kim Hyun Seo, the girl who disappeared seven years ago and whom Jin was accused of being responsible for. Jin reveals that he was neighbors with Hyun Seo and was close to her. However, on the day of her disappearance, Hyun Seo told Jin about her stalker, but he ignored her, and Hyun Seo was never seen after that day. Jin refuses to tell Seol why he is seen as a suspect for the sake of the confidentiality of the case.
‘The First Responders’ Episode 9: Ending
The DNA tests of all five boys come out negative, which diverts the detectives’ attention to the new suspects, namely, Hae Eun’s teacher, her father, and her brother. Hae Eun’s teacher gets offended and tells the detectives to bring a warrant if they want a sample for the DNA test. To get the sample from Hae Eun’s brother and father, Jin and Myeong Pil stalk both of them until they leave something behind with their DNA on it. Does Jin notice something strange on his body that came from Hae Eun’s home and show it to the detectives? There is a slight movement of the bedroom door, and it doesn’t look like it’s because of the wind. The firefighters believed that no one else was home at that time. Officer Yoon took the video to analyze and check if there was any human presence inside the bedroom. “The First Responders” has an interesting case going on as the person who reported Hae Eun’s suicide, the one in the bedroom, and the father of Hae Eun’s baby all turn out to be one person, her brother, Song Min Jun.
See more: ‘The First Responders’ Episode 6 & 7: Recap And Ending – How Does Ma Frame Jin For A Crime?
