Jin Hwa-young is Oh In-joo’s colleague at the accounting firm and she’s a fellow outcast. Her suicide comes as a shock to In-joo but it turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. Episode 1 of Little Women is now streaming on Netflix.
Oh In-joo is the 13th-floor outcast at her job while Jin Hwa-young was the outcast on the 14th floor. Their shared misery is what brought them together but when Hwa-young dies, In-joo begins to realize that there is so much that she didn’t know about her friend.
Having each other’s backs
Hwa-young plans on going away for a while and she asks In-joo to tend to her plants while she’s gone. While she explains what needs to be done, the two of them discuss why they’re both outcasts at work.
In-joo only went to a 2-year accounting school and is a divorcee while Hwa-young is just a high school graduate with no money or marriage prospects. They are shunned because they’re not as privileged as their colleagues.
Hwa-young offers to lend In-joo the money she needs to send her sister for the Europe field trip because In-joo was the only one who helped her when her mother died. She says that she will dip into her savings for the money.
Dreaming of a better future
Hwa-young takes In-joo to a fancy restaurant so that she can have a taste of the good life. Hwa-young says that she went there before with their boss, Director Shin, and a guest from London.
They discussed what things about work and what either of them would do if they were rich. They had simple dreams of living a comfortable life with basic necessities and not worrying about each day.
Hwa-young then sends In-joo the 1.25 million won that she promised before bringing up an accounting software that she created and sent for beta testing. She says that this software is the future and together they can get rich.
She asks In-joo to sign some documents that are completely in English because Hwa-young wants to register abroad. In-joo cannot read English but she signs the documents anyway.
More than meets the eye
Soon after Hwa-young leaves on her trip, she sends In-joo an email with all the dirt she has collected about their colleagues. Hwa-young continues to take care of her plants until one day she meets Choi Do-il, the guest from London who worked with Hwa-young before.
He spends time with In-joo at the office and then one day at lunch asks her if she’s heard from Hwa-young who was supposed to have returned a few days prior. In-joo tries reaching her phone but there’s no answer so she visits Hwa-young’s home.
She walks in and feeds the fish before noticing a pair of feet in the cupboard. Upon further inspection, she sees that Hwa-young hung herself.
The news reports that Hwa-young was severely depressed and had plastic surgery done a few days before her death because she wanted to have the perfect face before she died. Everyone at the office begins speculating about Hwa-young’s issue but In-joo has trouble accepting it.
She exposes the secrets about her colleagues that Hwa-young sent her and is then summoned by Director Shin and Choi Do-il. They tell her that Hwa-young was actually stealing money from the company, an amount close to 70 billion.
They tell her that the money belonged to a slush fund and when the director found out about it, he confronted Hwa-young which is the real reason she killed herself. They ask for In-joo’s help locating the money because she was the only person close to Hwa-young.
In-joo politely declines to help because the slush fund they’re talking about was illegal in the first place and she also planned on quitting her job anyway. After leaving, she gets a call from a yoga studio that lets her know she’s the beneficiary of Hwa-young’s membership.
In-joo visits the studio and gets a key to Hwa-young’s locker. She finds a note addressed to her telling her to get the nice apartment with windows for herself and her sisters. The note is on top of a big backpack and when she checks inside, she finds stacks of cash.
In-joo immediately realizes that this is part of the money that Hwa-young stole and she’s once again left in a state of shock.
After investigating Hwa-young’s life with the help of Choi Do-il, In-joo realises that Director Shin was in on the embezzlement but when he found out that Hwa-young stole the money from under his nose, he threatened her.
There is more mystery involved when he gets spooked by a blue orchid at her apartment. The same blue orchid shows up at the sight of the car accident involving a contact who was supposed to give In-kyung some information about Park Jae-sang.
Director Shin also warns In-joo that there is someone higher up than them who is pulling the strings that they should be worried about. Soon after that, he crashes to his death with the same blue orchid on his dashboard, hinting that Hwa-young’s death might have been staged.
The shocking reveal
In the final episode, Jin Hwa-young arrives during In-joo’s trial much to the shock of everyone present. She takes the blame for all the crimes that In-joo is accused of, thereby absolving her friend of all charges.
Later on, she sits down in front of the press to reveal how she survived. She initially planned on faking her death with the help of a girl she met online who wanted to commit suicide.
They maintained similar bodyweights and but before the other woman could kill herself, Won Sang-a killed her and staged her suicide in Hwa-young’s apartment.