Friendship That Survives Absence

This flow follows Kim Jiyoung’s connection to Cha Seungyeon, whose early kindness in the university hiking club becomes a lasting source of care and later returns through Jiyoung’s grief and dissociative episodes.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

A Welcome in the Hiking Club

A Friendly Senior Finding a place Kim Jiyoung joins a university hiking club without much love for hiking itself. Cha Seungyeon, an older member who is kind to other women in the club, helps her feel welcome and becomes a friend with whom she shares the joke that neither of them particularly enjoys the activity. A model of attention The club’s male members often treat women as decorative guests, offering special treatment instead of equal responsibility. Cha Seungyeon recognizes the difference and argues that women want opportunities and duties, not to be praised as flowers among weeds. For Jiyoung, Seungyeon’s companionship is both personal and instructive. The senior makes the club less lonely while showing that friendship can include a clear-eyed challenge to the way a group distributes authority.

The Club Presidency Fight

A Promise to Keep Fighting Friendship and principle Cha Seungyeon repeatedly objects when the hiking club gives women attention but withholds its leadership roles. She says she will keep fighting until a woman becomes club president, even though the members around her mostly smile and let the existing order continue. A delayed change Seungyeon graduates before a woman takes the position. Years later, Kim Jiyoung hears that a younger student has finally become president. Seungyeon responds lightly that time moves mountains and rivers, treating the change as a gradual result rather than a personal victory. Her stance remains part of what Jiyoung carries from the friendship. Seungyeon’s insistence gives a name to the difference between being welcomed and being treated as an equal, and the delayed outcome shows that her effort mattered beyond her own time in the club.

A Private Confession

The Memory Daehyun Keeps Feelings on the athletics field Cha Seungyeon confesses her feelings to Jung Daehyun on a hot summer day at university. When he cannot return them, she immediately tells him to forget the conversation and promises to treat him as before, then runs across the field and resumes their friendship without making him responsible for her feelings. A moment preserved Daehyun rarely thinks of the confession again. It remains a private memory shared by only the two of them, proof of the trust Seungyeon once placed in him and the care with which she protected their friendship after rejection. Years later, Kim Jiyoung recalls the scene while speaking as Seungyeon. What had seemed safely buried returns with unnerving precision, showing how deeply the friend’s words and personality have been retained in Jiyoung’s life.

A Friend Lost in Childbirth

Grief After Seungyeon’s Death News at a vulnerable time Cha Seungyeon dies giving birth to her second child after an amniotic fluid embolism. Kim Jiyoung hears the news while experiencing postpartum depression, and the loss comes when ordinary responsibilities already feel difficult to manage. An absence with weight Seungyeon had been more than a former club senior: she was a friend who had looked after Jiyoung and whose example shaped her sense of how women should be treated. Her death makes childbirth feel dangerous and cruelly unpredictable, especially for someone who has recently given birth herself. The grief joins rather than replaces Jiyoung’s existing exhaustion. She struggles with daily tasks, and Seungyeon’s absence becomes part of the emotional landscape that later resurfaces through Jiyoung’s impersonations.

The Friend’s Voice Returns

A Familiar Voice in Jiyoung Recognition through a private detail After drinking one can of beer, Kim Jiyoung addresses Jung Daehyun as though she is Cha Seungyeon. She recalls Seungyeon’s old confession and imitates her familiar teasing manner, including a phrase Daehyun remembers from the past. Intimacy transformed by loss Daehyun recognizes details that Jiyoung should not know as an observer, and the encounter frightens him. The next morning, Jiyoung does not seem to remember what happened. For Daehyun, the episode makes the dead friend’s private history suddenly present inside his marriage. The friendship has become an unexpected channel through which Jiyoung’s distress speaks. Seungyeon’s words once offered Jiyoung care and companionship; now their return signals a condition that neither Jiyoung nor Daehyun yet understands.

Kim Jiyoung’s early university years

During Cha Seungyeon’s university years

Nearly twenty years before autumn 2015

The year before the first symptoms in 2015

Autumn 2015, during an evening with Jung Daehyun