Dae-su stumbles into a sushi restaurant, ravenous. He collapses. A young chef, Mi-do (no relation to his daughter—same name, cruel coincidence), helps him. She’s kind, sharp, orphaned. He doesn’t tell her his real name.
She is not random. Lee arranged for her to work at that sushi bar, to be kind, to fall in love with Dae-su. Because Lee knows the final truth: Dae-su stumbles into a sushi restaurant, ravenous
Dae-su and Mi-do fall into a desperate, tender relationship—sex, confession, shared scars. She joins his quest. She’s kind, sharp, orphaned
He wakes up in a sealed, windowless room. A bed. A sink. A TV bolted to the wall. Three meals a day through a slot. Gas hypnotics keep him docile at first. Lee arranged for her to work at that
Flashback: High school, 1980s. Lee Woo-jin and his younger sister, Soo-ah, were inseparable. Dae-su, a rumor-mongering brat, saw them together and whispered to a friend: “They’re sleeping together.”
His captor releases him, dressed in a new suit, with a wallet, a cell phone, and a challenge: “Find out why you were imprisoned. You have five days. Fail, and someone else dies.”
He begins hunting. With the help of an old internet café worker (who owes him a gambling debt), he traces the prison: a private “rehabilitation center” run by a man named Mr. Han. But Han is just muscle.