'Four Hands, Two Sonatas' Episode 9-10 Recap: Why Does Pi-O Still Want To Play Nemesis?

The latest two episodes of Four Hands, Two Sonatas took a nose dive in my opinion, because it became all about revenge, and this means the truth will come out only right in the end, which doesn’t leave any time for reconciliation between the two besties. The show was great until it switched to trying to be a thriller. There’s nothing thrilling about the idea of two friends who were once close becoming sworn enemies because of an external force. I genuinely believed Jeong-Yo would come back knowing wholeheartedly that Pi-O was never responsible. Honestly, it doesn’t make sense that he came back almost as a villain, based on his current behavior. But the thing that bothers me the most is the lie Pi-O tells Jeong-Yo, and what that implies for the rest of the two episodes. The drama is just not working out. But I won’t talk about any of that anymore. Let’s get straight into this recap of episodes 9 and 10.

Spoiler Alert

Episode 9 begins where we left off in episode 8, with Pi-O receiving the picture of his mother with the kidnapper back in the day. He’s shocked, as you’d expect, and rushes home, leaving Jeong-Yo behind. Jeong-Yo, who is fully of the mindset that this guy is the reason he can’t play the piano anymore. Pi-O calls his drunk mum back home, and she has a meltdown as soon as he brings up the incident. Of course, she denies it to begin with, but after some time, she can’t lie to her son any longer, so she bursts into tears and tells him the whole truth. He wants to take her to Jeong-Yo immediately and beg for forgiveness, but while he’s telling her all of this, her immediate reaction is to tell him that she’d commit suicide if anyone found out the truth, because it wouldn’t just be on her, but Pi-O’s entire career would be destroyed too. Jeong-Yo then spends the whole night playing the piano, fueling his guilt over what happened to his friend.

He then makes his way to Jeong-Yo’s to tell him the truth, but he chickens out when he sees the guy and decides to tell him that he won the competition because of his notes, so he owes him his entire career. While this is actually the only thing Pi-O should feel guilty about, Jeong-Yo doesn’t care at all, because he believes his 17-year-old friend at the time wanted him dead. Nothing is making sense. Jeong-Yo can’t believe Pi-O would come see him for such a small thing, and sends him off, asking him to be the guy who plays his symphony if he cares so much.

The song is called “Nemesis,” and for obvious reasons, Pi-O’s grandfather is excited about it because it’s Jeong-Yo’s first composition, but he can sense the revenge in it too. After some time, Pi-O decides to work with Jeong-Yo, because it would make him feel better, doing some work for his old friend. At a dinner announcing the concert that will basically act like a Live show for the release of the track that Jeong-Yo composed, the two of them almost seem to be excited to be working together like back in the day. I know Jeong-Yo is upset, but for just a moment, he doesn’t feel that way. At a dinner afterward, Jeong-Yo pretends to be confident that Pi-O is the only person who can play this track for him. But Pi-O, on the other hand, is cancelling all his performances and work until he’s certain about the new composition. In the meantime, Ji-Hye goes to Hyun-Soo when she’s drunk and tells him to look out for Pi-O and bring him back to her. She says she’s scared for the kid, and wants him to stay safe. This behavior is no ordinary mother behavior. She’s clearly lost her mind in all these years, so we need to get her to a therapist right now. In the meantime, even her father plans on retiring and giving his job to the same guy she wants her son to stay away from. So much so that she tried to have the boy killed. I don’t think Pi-O is hiding her secret out of love for his mother, I think somewhere deep down he feels like he can’t reveal the truth anywhere.

By the end of episode 9, Pi-O has figured out that Jeong-Yo is lying about his amnesia, because he can see that he’s saying the same stuff they used to say to each other back in the day. His face wore a strange expression in places of importance to him, like the auditorium in which his mother died. While Ji-Hye feels the same way because she’s paranoid, Pi-O knows what she’s thinking, and doesn’t pay heed to her. He goes straight to Jeong-Yo, and the guy doesn’t even deny that he never forgot anything. He tells him that he knows he’s the one who had him kidnapped back in the day, and needs to hear a confession. This is why he’s been doing all this drama. But Pi-O remembers how his mother said she would commit suicide, so he admits to hiring the kidnapper himself. This is the worst mistake he could’ve made, and it doesn’t really make sense.

In the meantime, despite all of this, Pi-O is going to play Jeong-Yo’s song, but he needs to give it his all and get out of his slump. To make things official, Jae-In and Jeong-Yo’s manager, i.e. Seon-Ju, discuss a contract together. It’s meant to be for an album they will release together. At first, Jae-In is delighted that her boyfriend is coming back to the music and ready to shine like never before. But when she sees the way Jeong-Yo is hounding him, she can’t believe someone would do such a thing to a stranger, never mind a friend. Nobody else knows he’s not got amnesia now.

Finally, when the practice begins, Jeong-Yo works Pi-O to the bone, so much so that he needs ice baths for his fingers, and yet Jeong-Yo doesn’t let him go. Pi-O doesn’t get worked up for a really long time, however, Jae-In shows up and stops him from playing.  Instead of listening to her, knowing his fingers are bleeding and what not, he decides to break-up with Jae-In. She’s left devastated, but we already knew he never had true feelings for her (I think). Jae-In has always been a point of comfort for the other two, but Pi-O took it too far when he thought he could handle a relationship in the middle of the mess that was his life.

On the other hand, Jeong-Yo keeps telling Pi-O that he’s messing up the timing, and the way he’s playing. Everybody is watching this, but nobody can say anything because he’s completely immersed in that performance. Yet still, by the time the whole orchestra arrives, Jeong-Yo has made him play the thing enough times for him to forget how to use his fingers at all. Finally, Jeong-Yo tells Pi-O he’s fired, which leaves him devastated. Turns out, Jeong-Yo’s revenge was well thought out; he wanted Pi-O to feel so guilty he would feel betrayed by his friend who knows how good he is. He gets in trouble for messing up the orchestra’s timing, and it’s made to seem like it’s only Pi-O who is not getting it right, but it’s not really true, it’s only partially so.

At the end of episode 10, Hyun-Soo calls Ji-Hye home and asks her if Pi-O was the one who tried to have Jeong-Yo killed. Again, despite her experience, she chooses to lie about it first, before finally admitting she’s the one who did it. On the other hand, Pi-O finally has a heart to heart with his grandfather for the first time ever. Nobody thought Pi-O’s grandfather cared about him enough, because he always tried to get him to drop the piano. Turns out, it was because Pi-O is a perfectionist like his grandfather. It seems, he’s been seeing a reflection of himself in Pi-O, that’s why he never encouraged him, and why he gave him so much trouble. Ultimately, when Pi-O says he would want to play the piano even if it’s the last thing he does before drawing his final breath. Basically, he truly loves the form, and his grandfather says to use that as his heart, not the metronome. At the end of the episode, Pi-O goes back to Jeong-Yo and tells him he’ll never find anyone who can play Nemesis like him, because he was clearly the muse. All I know is that in the last two episodes of the show, we should expect something really big to happen. The preview doesn’t really give us anything substantial for the next two episodes, but it repeats Pi-O’s lines from whatever has happened in this episode, so that’s that. The only theory I want to have about this show is that, despite everything, they will become friends again.