Liar Game

A debt collector (Daniel) gives her a rude awakening the next morning, and Sunhwa shoots out of bed to hurriedly stuff the cash back in the bag while shooting the debt collector a reminder that she has two days left to pay him. “Oh, is that right?” he asks, genuinely wondering. Haha.
Like a kid making petulant demands of his mother, the debt collector, Daniel, asks Sunhwa to feed him. Apparently he’s gotten used to her making breakfast, which is weirdly kind of adorable. I’ll take man-child debt collectors over the usual kind any day.
Sunhwa’s attempts to shoo him away only make him more suspicious, and it’s like he can recognize the sound of money inside as he lets himself in using a spare key he sniffs out.
With one stack of cash still visible under her bed, Sunhwa thinks fast and pretends to be in a state of undress so she can justify chasing Daniel out. At least he cares enough stops her from chucking a picture frame of her and her dad(?) at him.
Cut to: Sunhwa’s incredibly unimpressed face as Daniel chows down on the ramyun she ended up making for him. Hah. Daniel then tsks over the possible temp jobs she’s circled in the newspaper and advises her to get a real job. I already love these two.
When she asks how Daniel found her spare key, he claims to have picked up some tricks from his fellow inmate during his last prison stint, who was so insanely smart that he’d read books upside down for the challenge. Reading normally just came too easily to him. He also had a saying: “People are complex beings, that’s why they’re such simple animals.”
After a round of sibling-like bickering, Sunhwa uses the first opportunity she can to sneak the last stack of bills into the suitcase—which, consequently, Daniel had already taken notice of.
She’s pretty obvious as she tries to sneak the bag out the front door with her, and Daniel’s expression instantly sharpens as he asks if there’s money inside.
Daniel can’t come up with a feasible excuse or lie, so she instead makes a run for it, dragging the suitcase behind her. She manages to steal away in a taxi after biting Daniel’s hand to free herself, but he’s nothing if not persistent as he pulls up next to her to try and dissuade her from taking the money to the police, who’ll treat her like a criminal.
Meanwhile, who should we find in prison reading upside down but Lee Joon, the “Never trust anyone” teacher from the beginning and Daniel’s former cellmate. He’s called to meet someone—is he being released?
Outside the police station, Daniel has a death grip on the suitcase as he desperately tries to talk Sunhwa out of what she’s about to do. He argues that she must’ve wanted the money if she dragged it all the way to her house, which she doesn’t deny—she can’t deny that it felt good to sleep on a pile of money.
That’s all the reason Daniel would need to take it for himself, as he temps Sunhwa with all the things that money could do: pay her debt, her rent, her tuition. What reason is there not to take it?
“How can I?” Sunhwa asks, tears in her eyes. “How would I sleep soundly after that?” To her, the loss of that money would be enough to drive the grandma and her family into the same kind of debt that’s landed her where she is today.
She knows exactly what would happen—that the grandma’s children would have to give up on their dreams, just like she had to. That they’d live every day struggling to earn pennies that won’t ever be enough, as useless as pouring water into a broken jar.
Her conviction is enough to make Daniel let go, but what neither of them notice is that someone is watching. A phone hidden in the suitcase suddenly rings, which Sunhwa answers.
Then, a robotic voice and/or just a robot on the other end tells her she’s been chosen as a contestant for a reality show named Liar Game, where she could win up to ten million dollars.
Daniel, listening intently, overhears the robot prompt her to press 1 if she wants to keep the half a million dollars in her hand, and he presses it for her.
Sunhwa tries to undo the command as a police officer approaches them to ask what the trouble is, causing both her and Daniel to go nervously stiff. They don’t know the officer is TV host T.O.P until he reveals so with a smirk: “Welcome to the Liar Game.”
Seung hyun holds out his hand, and the instant Sunhwa shakes it, a camera crew surrounds them.
It turns out Lee Joon wasn’t called upon to be released, but to do a service for the detective… something only he can do. He’s left alone with an alleged criminal who passed his polygraph test, but Lee joon knows better the moment he takes a look at the man, and puts together every little detail he sees into a full and alarmingly true picture of the criminal.
Not only that, he’s able to use an impressive round of questioning and his uncanny ability to interpret even the slightest facial tic into a fully formed thought to get the criminal himself to confess to kidnapping a little girl. Wow.
The detective who asked Lee Joon to perform the interrogation looks on with a satisfied smile, calling Lee Joon “a human lie detector.” Ain’t that the truth.
Sunhwa is led in front of the live studio audience gathered for Liar Game’s recording by Seung hyun and his devilish smile. She admits she’s still not sure whether she’s dreaming or not, which I doubt is metaphorical—she does seem rather shellshocked.
She’s introduced to the audience with a video of her helping the grandmother, who the show hired as an actress. The whole reason Sunhwa is now a contestant is because she was the only one who stopped to help her, when everyone else would’ve probably been glad to help only after finding out about the money.
Seung hyun also cites how Sunhwa waited six hours for the grandma to return as another virtue of hers, and even agrees with what little she can stutter out as her reason for taking the money home that night as being totally understandable.
That and her attempt to return the money the next morning is what put Sunhwa in the same lead as forty other contestants who’ve made it onto the show, which surprises Sunhwa—she thought this was the end of the game.
“This isn’t the end,” Seung hyun replies. “It’s just the beginning.” In order to win the first round and the prize of one million dollars, she’d have to deceive another contestant. She’s uneasy with that idea and stammers that she doesn’t think she’d even be smart enough to deceive someone else.
Seung hyun presents this to the viewing public as yet another virtue of Sunhwa’s, but his mention of the final ten million dollar prize gives Sunhwa pause. As the wheels turn in her head, Seung hyun puts her dilemma to a vote for the people: Do they want to see her play the game, or see her give up?
After the broadcast wraps, Sunhwa approaches PD Dasom to request that her portion of the show be cut entirely. PD Dasom praises her for being a good person, but not for being good at math—even if she won nothing, the money she’d make for just appearing on one episode would be more than she’d make in months of regular work.
Even so, Sunhwa says she still doesn’t want to accept money for deceiving someone else. That’s when PD Dasom scoffs, insinuating that her goody two-shoes nature is there reason why Sunhwa is where she’s at in life right now. Which isn’t very far.
Sunhwa: “You do have a right to say that to me right now. You’re young, pretty, capable, and you probably earn a lot more money than I do. But don’t think that’s because you did your best and I didn’t. It’s simply because the world that you live in was a lot kinder to you than it was to me.”
Sunhwa spaces out at her part-time coffeeshop job the next day, unable to stop wondering how long she’d have to work at her current meager rate to make a half a million dollars.
While fretting over five thousand won (five dollars) that’s suddenly gone missing from the cash register, a customer claims to have found it—and Sunhwa looks up to recognize him as her old high school teacher.

Notes

Thanks for reading!!!
I will update soon!!!♥♥