Dear X Episode 3 Recap: The Night Ah Jin Finally Fought Back

In Dear X Episode 3, it begins with a small flicker of hope. Ah Jin’s eyes shine when she sees Choi catching a thief. For a moment, she thinks maybe there is still some good left in people.

She soon joins his café as a part-timer, where Jun-seo, her close friend, wonders if meeting her again was destiny or just another accident in life.

Choi, once a promising basketball player, now runs the café after an injury ended his career. Life gave him a second chance, but he still doesn’t have regrets. Meanwhile, Ah Jin’s life remains messy and unsafe. Jun-seo warns her to move away because her father knows where she lives.

He tells her that her father will only keep coming for money. But Ah Jin stays firm. She believes that if she pays him, he won’t hurt her. That kind of thinking reveals how deeply flawed she already is.

Jun-seo’s Guilt and Ah Jin’s Fight Back

Jun-seo moves out of his mother’s house. She tries to stop him, blaming Ah Jin for ruining his life. But Jun-seo refuses. He says he can’t live under the same roof with someone who once abused Ah Jin.

It’s guilt mixed with shame. He’s trying to make up for something he couldn’t change in the past.

At the café, Ah Jin becomes popular quickly. Many customers are drawn to her looks. Her pictures even go viral online. But behind that sudden fame, there’s danger. One man keeps staring at her, following her every move. He wants her number, her attention, her fear.

That night, the stalker attacks her on the street. But Ah Jin fights back hard. She hits him until he bleeds. When Jun-seo arrives, she yells at him for being late. She asks what he would do for her.

He says he can do everything—except kill someone. Ah Jin laughs bitterly. If not for his conscience, she says, she would have asked him to kill her father, Suk Gyu. She walks away disappointed.

Jun-seo threatens the injured stalker to forget everything, then secretly calls an ambulance. He throws the bloody rock into a river. That small act shows his conflict—part revenge, part guilt.

The Breaking Point

When Ah Jin reaches home, her father is already there. He finds the money she hid in a flowerpot. Suk Gyu chokes her, demanding more. He says he’ll sell her off if she doesn’t pay. Then he leaves.

Moments later, Jun-seo finds Ah Jin shaking and bruised. She asks him to hit her to make it look like the stalker’s attack. This request is a classic, albeit twisted, sign of complex PTSD. Ah Jin isn’t just manipulating a crime scene; she’s re-enacting her trauma, trying to gain control over the pain by directing it herself.

It shows how she has been conditioned to see violence as a currency and a solution. He refuses, knowing she’s suffered enough. She hugs him, saying she doesn’t want to lose him. She trusts him more than anyone else.

The next day at work, Choi notices her neck injury. He worries, but Ah Jin brushes it off. Jun-seo, still obsessed with saving her, follows Suk Gyu and catches him planting a hidden camera in a women’s restroom.

He records it as proof. But Suk Gyu spots him, and a violent fight breaks out. Jun-seo almost kills him, but again, his conscience stops him.

Police arrive and arrest Jun-seo. Ah Jin tells them he was the stalker, claiming her father followed him to protect her. Jun-seo tries to explain that Suk Gyu blackmails her and that he has proof. But Ah Jin had already deleted the video from his phone.

When she visits him in jail, she speaks coldly. She says if he was going to take such a step, he should have killed Suk Gyu. Because once released, her father will just start again. Her words sting, but she’s not wrong.

At work again, she hides her new wound with a band-aid. Choi insists on walking home. When they arrive, a small box waits by her door. Inside is a dead mouse and a note saying, “You are next.”

Choi chases a shadowy man but loses him. Ah Jin tells him not to worry. She calls a friend to stay over, though she sounds far from calm.

That night, Choi sits at home, staring at his baseball bat. The look in his eyes shows he knows something bad is coming.

The Night Everything Ends

Later, Ah Jin visits a convenience store. The stalker from before is there again. But this time, her co-worker Yoo-sik notices and becomes serious.

Ah Jin texts her father to come that night, promising him money. The next morning, an acting agency owner tries to recruit her, but she says she needs to handle family matters first.

At the café, she tells Choi someone broke into her house. He offers to help, but she avoids the topic. When Yoo-sik tries to warn Choi about the stalker, Ah Jin cuts herself to stop the talk. Everyone’s hiding something now.

Choi later puts Ah Jin in a taxi to take her to his place, but she secretly changes the destination back to her home. She texts him saying she forgot some things. He regrets letting her go alone.

At her apartment, her father is already waiting. She gives him a beanie, the same kind the stalker wore. Ah-Jin hugs him, pretending everything’s fine. She hands him a bag that’s full of paper instead of cash. They both laugh, broken and tired. Then he starts hitting her.

Meanwhile, Choi calls her, and she leaves the line open. He hears her screams. He rushes out.

Freedom or Emptiness?

At home, Ah Jin sprays pepper spray at her father, buying time. Choi bursts in and hits Suk Gyu with his bat in self-defense. The hit is too hard. Suk Gyu falls, motionless. Choi freezes, horrified.

Then, in silence, Ah Jin takes the bat. She delivers the final blow herself.

Jun-seo, just released from jail, runs toward her apartment. He sees Choi running down the stairs, shocked and pale. Inside, Ah Jin stands under the rain, covered in blood. She calls the police and says her father is dead.

Then she laughs—a loud, eerie laugh that mixes pain and freedom. Her face is bruised, but her eyes look calm. After years of being trapped, she’s finally free.

That final, chilling laugh under the rain isn’t just a sign of freedom—it’s the sound of a soul shattering. Ah Jin achieves her goal, but the story forces us to ask a difficult question:

When the only path to safety is through ultimate violence, is the person who emerges ever truly free, or simply a new kind of prisoner? Her calm eyes suggest not peace, but the profound emptiness that follows a storm she was forced to become.

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