Three Secrets Shatter in Episodes 3-4 of The Affair Was Just The Beginning

Suspense and chaos cascade through the latest episodes of “The Affair Was Just The Beginning,” unraveling the carefully constructed lives of two neighboring families. What begins as a hit-and-run confession from teenager Ye Ji (Jeon Si Hyun) triggers a domino effect of lies, cover-ups, and hidden secrets that stretch far beyond the initial crime. Her parents, Kyung Hee (Kim Hye Soo) and Jae Hong (Kim Ji Hun), find themselves plunged into a web of deception as they attempt to protect their daughter from the consequences—and their own reputations from complete destruction. Across the street, Soo Jung (Cho Yeo Jeong) faces her own impossible choices when her daughter Min Seo becomes implicated in the same accident. In episodes 3 and 4, the carefully constructed facades of both families begin to fracture in three distinct ways.

A Secret Romance Beneath the Surface

When connection transcends friendship

The heart of the accident lies not in recklessness alone, but in emotional complexity few recognize. Ye Ji, despite being her influencer mother’s pampered child and constant social media prop, craves authenticity and genuine connection. Across her mother’s accounts and social platforms, she poses and smiles for the perfect family fantasy that Kyung Hee has cultivated for millions of followers. Yet in her own life, Ye Ji remains a spare tire to her mother’s curated image. When she meets Min Seo, the cool and prickly girl next door, something shifts. Min Seo becomes the person Ye Ji has always wanted to be seen by—not as an accessory to a brand, but as herself.

The two girls forge a bond that transcends typical teenage friendship. They exchange couple rings and post sweet, affectionate content celebrating their togetherness. Ye Ji listens to the music Min Seo likes, drinks with her on the sly, and eagerly absorbs every detail of her personality. Most significantly, Ye Ji boasts that she knows how to drive and promises Min Seo a joyride in her father’s car. These moments, tender and genuine, hint at a romantic connection that neither girl can openly acknowledge to their families.

Min Seo’s fractured home and her need for validation

Min Seo’s path to this connection is paved with parental neglect and manipulation. Caught between her warring parents—particularly in a custody battle where she has become a pawn in their ongoing conflict—Min Seo realizes that neither truly prioritizes her wellbeing. Her mother Soo Jung dismisses her artistic aspirations, pushing instead for a career in medicine. Her father uses her against Soo Jung as leverage in their fight. Meanwhile, Min Seo pours her heart into designs, mostly sketches of cars, which she cherishes as her way of expressing herself.

When Ye Ji shows interest in these designs and compliments them genuinely, Min Seo finds validation she has never received at home. Unlike her parents, Ye Ji looks at her with admiration and acceptance. For the first time, Min Seo feels chosen and valued, not as a bargaining chip in custody negotiations, but as a person worthy of love.

The Accident: Protection Born from Love

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Ye Ji takes the fall for her girlfriend

The fateful day arrives when Ye Ji sneaks out her father’s car. Yet when the hit-and-run occurs, Min Seo is behind the wheel. In a moment that reveals the depth of their bond, Ye Ji immediately confesses to her parents that she was the one driving. She takes the fall—not to protect the car, not to shield her parents from financial liability, but to protect Min Seo from juvenile detention and exposure.

A double secret: the crime and the relationship

This single act of sacrifice exposes a deeper truth that both girls fear far more than legal consequences. Should their parents discover that Ye Ji’s protective deception involves a romantic relationship between two girls, the fallout would be catastrophic. Their silence is not merely about hiding a crime; it is about preserving the only safe space where they can exist as their true selves. The weight of this double secret—the accident and the relationship—creates unbearable tension that will inevitably demand resolution.

The Cover-Up Begins

Parents hide the body and destroy evidence

While the girls grapple with protecting each other, the adults descend into calculated criminality. Kyung Hee, who planted a tracker in Jae Hong’s wallet on suspicion of infidelity, follows him to the accident site—only to discover him attempting to hide a body. Rather than report the crime, she and Jae Hong make the conscious decision to become accessories: they bury the body, eliminate evidence, and orchestrate what appears to be an elaborate cover-up.

Their motivations are unmistakably selfish. Kyung Hee is on the verge of securing a major investment she has pursued relentlessly. Jae Hong is finally in a position to write his drama—a professional breakthrough he cannot afford to lose. Both recognize that their daughter’s involvement in a fatal accident would shatter their carefully constructed lives. The prospect of Ye Ji in juvenile detention is unthinkable, not because of parental love alone, but because it would obliterate the family reputation and personal ambitions they have prioritized above all else.

Soo Jung’s ruthless manipulation

When Soo Jung discovers that Ye Ji is protecting Min Seo, she probes deeper into the girls’ relationship. Min Seo, bound by a promise to Ye Ji, remains silent, but Soo Jung’s maternal instincts tell her something is amiss. Rather than press her daughter for the truth, Soo Jung manipulates the situation. She takes the dashboard footage from Ye Ji under the pretense of safekeeping, then destroys it entirely. She eliminates all evidence of Min Seo’s involvement in the accident.

Soo Jung’s primary concern is not whether her daughter was reckless or whether someone was hurt—it is whether the incident will cost her the custody battle with Min Seo’s father. For Soo Jung, the accident is merely another variable in her personal power struggle. She will sacrifice evidence, manipulate her own daughter, and potentially obstruct justice if it secures her position in the family hierarchy.

When Blackmail Unveils a Deeper Betrayal

The extortion message demands 5 million won

An extortion message arrives demanding 5 million won—approximately $3,500—in exchange for silence. The blackmailer threatens to upload a recording that would expose the family’s crime. Kyung Hee, despite her guilt and moral conflict, pools resources with Jae Hong to gather the ransom. Yet her attention to detail—the very trait that has made her successful—becomes her undoing. She places a tracker in the bag carrying the money, confident she can trace the blackmailer’s identity.

Kyung Hee discovers an affair instead of a thief

What she discovers is not the expected revelation of a stranger, but something far more intimate and humiliating. The blackmailer is a clinic staff member—someone who works with Soo Jung and happens to be a devoted fan of Kyung Hee. The video the extortionist threatens to release is not footage of the body disposal, but of Soo Jung and Jae Hong in a deeply compromising position. Kyung Hee’s husband, the man she married and trusted to build their future with, has been having an affair with her neighbor and supposed ally.

The clinic worker confronts Kyung Hee with brutal directness, asking why she remains married to a man capable of such betrayal and suggesting she divorce him immediately. In that moment, Kyung Hee faces a cascade of emotional reckoning: Is she more wounded by her husband’s infidelity, or by the public humiliation of having her private suffering exposed to a stranger? Has her relentless pursuit of professional success inadvertently driven her own family toward dissolution? Kyung Hee stands stunned, unable to respond. She later tells Jae Hong quietly that she has “sorted out the business,” but she does not confront him directly, her silence suggesting the emotional devastation that runs beneath her composed exterior.

An Unexpected Victim at the Scene

The investigator caught in the crossfire

The plot acquires an additional layer of absurdist complexity when it becomes apparent that the victim of the hit-and-run is no random pedestrian. The person struck by the car is an investigator hired by Soo Jung herself to track her husband Bo Sung’s lawyer. This revelation transforms the accident from a reckless teenage mistake into something far more intricate—a collision of multiple schemes, all unfolding without any party’s awareness of the others.

Soo Jung, convinced that her husband’s attorney possesses damaging information, employed the investigator to surveil and gather evidence. Instead, this investigator becomes the very casualty that sets off the chain reaction threatening to unravel both families. The sheer improbability of this convergence—that the person Soo Jung tasked with uncovering secrets would become the accident victim—underscores how thoroughly circumstances have spiraled beyond anyone’s control.

The lawyer’s deadly secret at the scene

Yet the investigator’s death is not solely attributable to the teenage girls’ driving. A secondary complication emerges when it is revealed that the lawyer himself was at the scene. The two men had previously clashed—the investigator had threatened to leak explicit videos and compromising material involving the lawyer, putting him in a precarious position. When their conflict escalated into a physical fight, the lawyer was knocked unconscious.

The investigator, apparently attempting to gather himself after being struck by the vehicle, rose to confront the lawyer again. The second altercation between the two men proved fatal. During this fight, the lawyer struck a decisive blow that killed the investigator. This detail has been carefully concealed, hidden beneath layers of deception about the actual cause and manner of death. The hit-and-run becomes less the definitive cause and more one element in a larger tragedy shaped by multiple actors with competing motivations.

Bo Sung emerges as an unexpected pivot point

As the carefully constructed narratives of both families crumble, an unlikely figure emerges with potential significance. Bo Sung, Soo Jung’s husband and the lawyer who delivered the fatal blow, has already crossed paths with Kyung Hee in what seemed an insignificant encounter. Yet this seemingly random meeting may prove to be a critical juncture in the unfolding saga.

Kyung Hee does not yet know that Bo Sung was present at the accident scene or that he killed the investigator. Neither does she know that her husband’s affair is with Bo Sung’s own wife. The convergence of these hidden truths means that Bo Sung, despite being entangled in his own culpability, may represent an unexpected opportunity for Kyung Hee to navigate the minefield of deceptions surrounding her. Their paths crossing at this particular moment could fundamentally alter the equation for both families, potentially creating an alliance neither party anticipated.

The game remains far from over. With multiple secrets layered atop one another—the accident, the affair, the investigator’s death, the girls’ relationship, the blackmail, and Bo Sung’s hidden role—each family operates under incomplete information, unaware of how thoroughly their fates have become entangled with the other. One watches to see which truth surfaces first and what form the eventual reckoning will take.