A Superior Day episode 1: A killer and a kidnapper on the loose

In the current wave of romantic K-dramas, A Superior Day has debuted with an adrenaline-filled storyline, which kicks off with a thriller and action-packed storyline.

A Superior Day episode 1, which was released on March 13, starts in the present, where we see firefighter Lee Ho-cheol, played by Jin Goo, injured. He is then seen stumbling out of an ambulance after having driven to a secluded location. He takes out a gun and starts walking with an unknown destination in mind.

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Ho-cheol is on a dangerous mission in A Superior Day

Image via OCN/Instagram

H0-cheol reaches a parking lot where we see a man holding on to his daughter Soo-a. He desperately calls out to her but to no avail. He then suddenly gets a call from someone who instructs him to kill the man he sees to save his daughter and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. The story then goes back in time, almost two years ago, when the events happening now were first set in motion.

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Ho-cheol’s simple life turns on its head

Two years ago, Ho-cheol was working as a firefighter for 911 Paramedics. One day, while helping an elderly man in a society building, he hears a girl’s scream.

As he goes on to investigate, the man who killed the girl attacks him and slashes his right eye. Had the police not arrived in time, he would have killed Ho-cheol as well.

As he leaves, Ho-cheol looks back at the murder scene he left behind, a dead woman bound to a chair and her neck missing, while a gory painting of her posture is made on the wall behind her with her blood. It is later revealed that it was the work of a serial killer, known as the Rich Girl Killer who only strikes women working in elite fields.

Fortunately, minor surgery saved his eyesight but he suffers from PTSD, unable to return to his job. His wife, Jung Hye, who is a police detective, advises him not to become a witness in the case as she fears that the killer will come after their family if it gets out that Ho-cheol saw his face. While Ho-cheol agrees at the time, some nosy photographers leak his photos.

Surprisingly, the killer never strikes and even goes dormant, not killing anyone for the next two years. Meanwhile, Ho-cheol’s family shifts to a high-security society called Parisville, where they live next door to a seemingly nice artist, Kwon Si-woo, played by Lee Won-geun. But he is one of the prime suspects.

He gives their daughter lessons in painting and is helpful but harbors some creepy aspects, like claiming human blood is the best red color when it comes to painting and smiling mysteriously whenever Ho-cheol turns his back on him. The Rich Girl Killer strikes again one day, this time killing a girl in her 20s living in Parisville, thus triggering Ho-cheol’s repressed trauma.

He starts being extra cautious, even ordering his daughter to stay away from the society’s bodyguard Seo Dong-ju, who killed someone two years ago while defending himself and was released from prison. But despite Ho-cheol’s extra precautions, someone kidnaps his daughter from right under his nose.

When the kidnapper calls him, Ho-cheol mistakes him for the serial killer and assures him that he doesn’t have to hurt his daughter to shut his mouth as he doesn’t remember his face.

Turns out the man on the other side is someone else as he threatens the desperate father to remember the killer's face and kill him in 24 hours or be responsible for his daughter’s death.

The next episode of A Superior Day will tell whether Ho-cheol succeeded in finding the killer or the kidnapper in time.