Lilli_

I agree with everything but the last point. Ba Reum did check if the lawyer is still breathing and the ep. 11 preview talks about Ba Reum wanting to turn himself in for murdering the lawyer. So the lawyer must be dead after all.

As for why Han Seo Joon ended up doing the surgery, maybe he wasn't aware that the person he was supposed to operate on was his son at first, but he later found out and then agreed to do the surgery.

And this leads to another question, is Han Seo Joon actually aware that Ba Reum is his son? Or does he only know that Yo Han wasn't and that Ba Reum is also a psychopath?

Any ideas on who will offer Ba Reum a shocking deal in ep. 11 and what it will be about? And that person must know that Ba Reum killed someone, mustn't they? Or the deal just conveniently happens to hinder Ba Reum from turning himself in and they have no idea that he actually killed someone.

I'm somehow suspecting it to be the politician lady. Ba Reum sort of already warned his doctor that he might kill someone soon and we know that the doctor, the politician lady and the prison guard all regularly keep in touch. She might have put people on Ba Reum after hearing about his warning and thus she knows that he killed the lawyer. I have no idea what kind of deal she could offer, though. But her motive could simply be that it's too dangerous for her if Ba Reum confesses, since it might lead to the world finding out about the brain surgery secret.

Yes, he's definitely just imagining it.

I think I'm going to start watching the writer's other works while waiting for the new episodes in order to see if I can recognize any patterns on how she writes her stories and thus find new clues for Mouse as well haha.

It's been quite a while since I got this invested in a drama.

I really want to know that too, I've been wondering about it for weeks. I think the drama still hasn't given us any clues yet, or they were so subtle that I missed them.

They mentioned the politician lady is the president's secretary, right? Was the president's face shown or his name mentioned? I'm not sure if I missed it. Could he be Detective Shin's dad? We know that his dad was running for presidency but we haven't learned the result yet, I think. Or is the voting period still ongoing? I'm a little confused with the timeline right now.

I'm betting on the kidnapped boy's body that still hasn't been found.

Wouldn't actually the opposite, aka Yo Han being the killer, be the predictable case? Everything was clearly shown in a way to make us believe Yo Han is the killer right from the start, while there were only hints telling us that's it was Ba Reum.

I think it's just due to technical limits, like you said. They have no choice but to show us viewers the scenes from that perspective.

Yes, I think so. The drama never showed us proof that he's indeed dead. Plus, his character seemed too important to just disappear like this right at the beginning. I personally believe he will make a comeback later in the story.

I keep thinking about the red string from the opening scene and how it's linked to the story.

In East Asian mythology, the red string of fate ties two lovers together by destiny, and even though a little boy attempts to kill the girl he's destined with, he still ends up marrying her. It shows that destiny can't be changed no matter the circumstances.

I think we can disregard the romantic theme in the case of "Mouse" but the moral of the story that destiny can't be changed no matter what is definitely important.
At first I was very surprised to see Ba Reum kill someone after the surgery, but maybe the writer is really trying to show us that Ba Reum can't escape his destiny determined by his genes, even though his current circumstances would be perfect for him to not turn into a murderer. That would mean that there's no hope that a psychopath will ever change, which is actually also what the lawyer's story with his mom and dad told us in ep. 10. Thus, the answer to the drama's initial question whether psychopaths should be aborted before they're born would be yes.

But we've only reached the half point of the drama. Would the writer really tell us the conclusion already now and just let the further story unfold to prove this conclusion? Or could the red string in the opening rip at some point?

It seems like a lot of people lean towards thinking Ba Reum has started to imagine things and this is definitely possible. But I rather think everything was real and here's why. He remembered previously smelling the mint scent on Yo Han only after he smelled the same scent on the body, so his memory was actually triggered by the new body. His subconscious could play tricks on him, but I don't think it's very likely. And since I suppose the mint scent was real, I think Grandma's brooch and the priest's necklace hanging on the body was real too. If Lee Min Soo is the killer, it's actually very easy to explain how the items suddenly disappeared again.

If we assume everything was real, this means the new cross killer knows that Ba Reum is the previous cross killer and he's sort of trying to provoke Ba Reum, although it's still unclear what his motive is. And the new big mystery then is, how did the new killer know about Ba Reum's true identity and how are the two related?

Because he knows her story. After she was raped, she went to the police station and asked Moo Chi to take revenge for her and he actually promised to kill the rapist for her. Moo Chi recognized Bong Yi as the little girl from back then.

There are so many possibilities right now, but yeah, we definitely can't exclude this one.

It's become more and more sure that Ba Reum is the previous cross killer. Every new episode just throws even more hints at us that prove this, so unless the writer is completely fooling us and there will be a twist nobody could have imagined, Ba Reum is the cross killer and I'll start my theories from there.

I see the following possibilites as to how the story will unfold from now on:

1) Ba Reum is unable to fight his killer instincts but will channel them and unlash them only on people who he deems deserve to die for their crimes. The dark hero theory, as how you named it. Basically, he would become what Moo Chi wanted to become but couldn't.

2) After his "first kill" (first kill after surgery to be precise), he is so shocked and ridden with guilt that it will completely surpress his killer instincts and he now indeed turns into the good guy I originally thought he'd become after surgery. He will think he succesfully overcame it at some point, just to discover that he brutally killed even more people as the cross killer.

3) He feels so excited after his "first kill" that his killer instincts completely take over and he randomly starts to kill people whenever the situation allows it. Or, he might even start to plan his murders and basically gradually turn into the cross killer again without knowing that he used to be the cross killer. And he'll justify it by telling himself it's not him doing these things but Yo Han's brain.

4) His inner conflict grows so big that he goes completely crazy and doesn't know what he's doing anymore. He might even hallucinate and start to see things that aren't there, etc.

Everything is completely in the open now, I have no idea which direction the drama will take.

I don't think this theory is that crazy. It would explain how the new murders could be so similar and how the killer got his hands on the items (if we suppose Ba Reum didn't just imagine them). Even the mint scent could be explained through this since the killer might know that Ba Reum is sensitive to mint if they knew each other well.

But what makes me believe that this theory must be wrong after all is that the previous cross killer sees himself as a god, and just like Han Seo Joon, I think he'd want to be the only "god" and wouldn't allow someone else having the same power as him. Furthermore, the story clearly centers on Jae Hoon, so I think if there had been two cross killers working together, there would have been two children in the center and not just Jae Hoon.

But I could imagine that he had an accomplice (who didn't have the same god-like status and was more like an underling) and that accomplice now "upgraded" to a killer. Or it's someone who has been stalking the cross killer because he looks up to him.

And if it's really Lee Min Soo like I'm assuming, he could simply have studied the case files intensively since he has access to them as a police officer. But it doesn't explain the items and the mint scent yet. Unless Ba Reum imagined those things, but I somehow feel they were indeed real. Especially since he only remembered having smelled the mint scent from Yo Han before after he smelled the same scent on the body.

But one thing is for sure if Ba Reum didn't imagine those things: The new culprit knows that Ba Reum is the previous cross killer.

I wonder why the church didn't give Ba Reum flashbacks. It was an extremely important place to Jae Hoon after all and the scene with Jae Hoon praying was entirely mirrored. It should have made him remember something.

Come to think of it, we never saw Ba Reum remembering the 10-year-old Jae Hoon, did we? I think he only had flashbacks of the 5-year-old one. So far, like everyone else, I was convinced that the 5-year-old boy in the yellow rain coat and the 10-year-old Jae Hoon are one and the same person, but now this makes me wonder, what if they're not the same person after all? But this doesn't seem likely, they have to be the same person after all. So is Ba Reum not having any flashbacks in the church just a plot hole?

True. I still believe Daniel Lee will make a comeback haha. His character seemed too important to just disappear like this and we have no proof that he's indeed dead.

The last one was already confirmed.

Still wasn't found. He'll probably become an important clue in finding the real culprit later on.