A new day dawns.
The morning light spills gently across the small apartment, casting golden streaks on tangled sheets and a young man curled beneath them.
Lee Jiyong stirs, his face half-buried in the pillow, eyes blinking open to an unfamiliar ceiling that somehow has become all too familiar.
"…Again?" he murmurs, voice hoarse with sleep and confusion.
He sits up slowly, the stillness around him wrapping the room in quiet dissonance. The apartment is his—yes—but it feels as though someone has rearranged the pieces of his life while he slept.
Everything looks right. Yet nothing feels right.
Because this isn't just any morning.
It's the day after another late shift at 'Il Giardino delle Parole', the cozy Italian restaurant where he works.
But ever since the strange phenomenon began—the inexplicable body-swapping with Gong Sunmin—no morning has truly felt like his own.
Still half-asleep, Jiyong reaches for his phone. The screen lights up, revealing a diary app now filled with more than just his own entries. Scribbled thoughts, chaotic messages—it's a shared log, written in two voices or let's say two different person.
Sunmin's voice dances through the words—witty, bold, chaotic, and weirdly comforting.
He smirks, reading:
"If you break my nail polish one more time, I swear I'll haunt you in your own body."
"Also, your manager at the restaurant? You're totally into her right!?"
Jiyong chuckles softly, shaking his head.
"Let's see what kind of trouble she got me into this time…"
At first, the swaps were a disaster.
Embarrassments, awkward showers, frantic apologies scribbled on arms.
But then… they adapted. They learned to leave notes about their daily activities while possessing each other's bodies. They marked each other's calendars, trying to track the body-swapping and uncover a pattern in the phenomenon. They shared secrets. And somehow, they began living each other's lives better than they lived their own.
But just as mysteriously as it began—it stopped. One morning, no switch.
No message. No voice. No goodbye. The phenomenon stopped, and Jiyong's life returned to its normal routine.
The movie doesn't offer answers—only silence. And in the dark of the theater, the audience leans forward, whispering:
"Wait, why did the body-swapping stop?"
"It's like a jigsaw puzzle that someone shook."
"The story feels... out of order, like something's missing."
But the story doesn't explain. It moves.
Jiyong, aching with an unnamed longing, follows a thread of memory that pulls him to Jeju Island. Sunmin once mentioned it on the diary—it was where she was from. Maybe that's where he'll find answers.
He takes the ferry in silence. The sea stretches endlessly, echoing the quiet resolve in his chest.
But when he arrives in Yongdam-dong, the hope that had carried him across the sea begins to crumble.
The town...
It isn't there anymore.
What greets Jiyong is a haunting stillness—an open wound where homes once stood, where children once played, where laughter once lived.
Rubble from the destruction lie the streets like forgotten memories, and grass pushes through cracked pavement and ruin building as if trying to heal what can't be undone. The weight in his chest grows heavier with each step.
Because three years ago, a comet struck.
Not just a meteorite. A tragedy.
The once-lively town was devastated in an instant—vanished from the maps, erased from time.
And among the names of the lost... was hers. Gong Sunmin.
He doesn't cry at first. He just stands there, like a photograph that's been left out in the rain.
Faded. Fragile. Quiet.
A local survivor—a man with weathered hands and eyes too tired for his age—watches him from afar. Something in Jiyong's face, maybe the grief, maybe the disbelief, stirs the old man's memory. He approaches gently, speaking as if afraid the truth might shatter this stranger into pieces.
"You must've known her well..." the man says softly, after hearing the reason Jiyong came.
Jiyong doesn't answer. He can't. He couldn't.
The memory of her still lingers—woven into the very essence of his being. And now, realizing that her existence has been erased from the world, he's left speechless. He has no idea what to say.
Out of sympathy, the man offers him more—direction. A place. Gwaneumsa Temple. He believes Jiyong needs his closure.
A quiet sanctuary nestled high on the slopes of Hallasan, where Sunmin once visited with her family. Where she lit candles and whispered prayers. Where she carried offerings—her mother's recipe of homemade wine from the local vineyard where she used to work, bottled with love and labeled by hand.
Driven by a fragile hope and an ache he doesn't fully understand, Jiyong climbs the mountain beneath a bruised sky. Each step up the narrow path feels heavier than the last, as if time itself is trying to hold him back, yet an unseen force encourages him to keep going.
The temple is nearly deserted, blanketed in dust and silence.
He enters the small storage shrine—nothing more than a wooden room with shelves warped by years and weather.
And there, tucked behind forgotten offerings, sits a bottle.Amber liquid, a little cloudy with age.
The label is faded, but still intact.
And there it is—her handwriting.
Familiar. Flowing. Alive.
His hands tremble as he lifts it from the shelf.
She was here before.
This bottle... it waited for him.
He drinks it, as if something is urging him to do so, a power he can't quite identify, yet it feels as though it's what brought him here. As the wine travels down his throat and slowly settles in his stomach, a distant calling echoes.
And suddenly—
Light.
Sound.
Memory.
Of her, flood his mind.
Her essence floods into him. Her childhood, her laughter, her final day. The screen is bathed in colors of longing and grief. In theaters, not a single eye remains dry.
Jiyong collapses—and only to awaken in her room again, a familiar scene, like something he had experienced countless times months before.
Time is brought back to three years ago.
Somin's voice echoes from the hallway. Her little sister bursts in. "Unnie! Come out and eat!"
But it's not Sunmin—it's him, in her body.
The sister stares, confused. Then bolts. Laughter erupts in the audience.
The absurdity returns—but beneath it, a deeper truth. Jiyong has been sent back. Given a chance. Not just to relive. To rewrite.
Knowing there is still time, Jiyong rushes to warn everyone. The streets and town are still intact, but not for long. Yet no one believes him. In desperation, he climbs the mountain again and returns to the temple. If there is an answer to the solution, it must be at the temple.
Meanwhile, back in the present—
Sunmin wakes up in Jiyong's body.
Dust. Silence. Time has passed, and the temple now feels older, heavier with age. But something stirs inside her. She gazes into the reflection that isn't hers.
And then, she realizes—they've swapped again. But this time…
They're in the same place.
As Jiyong approaches the temple, they begin to feel each other. They sense one another's presence, but no matter how hard they try, they can't seem to see each other. A quiet despair settles in their hearts, a weight of unfulfilled longing that spills over into the hearts of the audience watching, as if the very air is heavy with yearning.
It isn't until the first rays of morning break through that the miracle happens.
Sunlight cuts through the dust, piercing the old wooden slats of the temple. Beams of light fall onto the temple floor, growing brighter with each passing second. Slowly, the figures of both Gong Sunmin and Lee Jiyong materialize before each other's eyes, as if the miracle itself is guiding them into sight.
And there she is, walking through the light.
And there he is, emerging from the shadows.
Their eyes meet.
In the theater, everyone holds their breath.
They run to each other, hands reaching, their bodies trembling with relief. Laughter mixes with tears, their souls finally touching after an eternity of separation.
But time, as always, is cruel and fleeting.
Jiyong grabs her hand, his fingers trembling, and tries to write his name. Sunmin, overcome with emotion, forms a shaky line. Then, her body begins to fade, her presence slipping away like sand through fingers.
She's gone. Her memory dissolves with her.
Jiyong stares at the empty temple, a quiet scream echoing in his chest, as the memory of longing fades within him.
"…Why did I come here?"
Sunmin, left alone, returns to the town.
She doesn't remember his name, only the message he delivered. She carries with her a faint feeling of something lost. But as she looks at her hand, she reads the message Jiyong left:
"Saranghae-yo."
The entire theater erupts in tears.
Determined, Sunmin rushes to her father—the mayor. She convinces him to hold a disaster drill. The comet strikes, just as it was destined to. The town is destroyed.
But this time, no one dies.
Yet another question lingers in the air. What happens when you save the past, but forget the future?
Gong Sunmin and Lee Jiyong never met again. After the disaster, the memories of their time in each other's bodies faded like a dream upon waking—distant, hazy, unreachable.
The screen fades in softly, showing the passage of time. They grow up, graduate, and step into adulthood. Sunmin, as she once dreamed, moves to Seoul.
In the fast-paced rhythm of city life, both of them live ordinary lives. Once students in school uniforms, they now wear ties and skirts for work. Their youthful hairstyles have been replaced with those of working adults. The habits and joys of the past no longer seem as appealing—life as an adult is swift, demanding, and constantly pushing them forward.
But beneath it all, there's a quiet void—an unshakable feeling that something is missing. They both feel it too.
A lingering emptiness—a quiet ache as if they're both searching for something, for someone, for a memory lost in time. It's as if a part of them is missing.
Then, one day, they cross paths in a crowded city—a fleeting moment on a busy street. The instant their eyes meet, something stirs deep inside them. A familiar feeling washes over them. But before they can react, the crowd shifts and pulls them in opposite directions.
The audience feels the weight of the silence, the unspoken tension, and whispers to themselves, "Com'on, don't be shy, just say something."
"No, not like this, they can't let each other slip away."
"Please, director, don't make them miss each other forever."
Time passes. The scene shifts.
Now, both in the midst of their working lives, they find themselves on separate trains, gazing out the window at the horizon—a quiet comfort to them both, as if it's gently healing the lingering emptiness in their souls.
As the trains they're on pass each other on the bridge over the Han River, their eyes meet across the tracks between them.
For a brief moment, the world seems to pause—the chatter in the train stop, the flock of pigeons frozen mid-air—but the minds of Jiyong and Sunmin keep racing.
They both feel it—the connection, the unexplainable pull. The familiarity. The urgency to know why.
With just one glance, they know. That he or she is the person they've been searching for.
But before they can react to it, their trains separate—one heading north, the other south.
A wave of desperation surges through the scene, the atmosphere tense as the background music swells through the theater.
Confirming the presence of the other, they both get off their trains and race through the city, trying to find each other.
From subway stations to city streets, and then into the alleyways of the neighborhood.
They frantically search for someone they can't name, but whose absence has haunted them for so long.
The screen slowly shows their relentless pursuit, the pounding of their feet on the pavement, their desperate looks, as they search the crowds, their hearts racing with anticipation.
Just as hope begins to fade, fate intervenes.
It pulls them together again, like a thin thread weaving them toward one another.
They find themselves at a staircase.
Sunmin is at the top. Jiyong at the bottom.
Their gazes meet again, but this time, shyness and uncertainty flood them both.
They don't know how to begin the conversation, unsure if the familiarity they feel is real or just a figment of their own longing.
They move toward each other in silence, one ascending, one descending, both heads lowered, afraid to speak.
The tension in the theater is unbearable.
The audience is on the edge of their seats, willing them to just say something.
One voice rings out from the crowd: "If they don't recognize each other now, I swear I'll never watch another Lee-directed film again."
As the moment stretches into eternity, just when they are about to miss each other again, Jiyong finally muster his courage. "Um… have we met before?" he asks softly.
Sunmin freezes.
The words cut through her, and without thinking, she turns around. "I thought so too!" she replies, her voice trembling with a mix of relief and fear.
The music swells, slow and tender, as they turn to face each other fully.
Their eyes meet, and in that instant, everything that's been building inside them—an ache, a longing, a lifetime of searching—unfolds.
There's no hesitation now.
They both speak at once, their voices urgent, almost desperate to know, as they ask the same question together, saying.
"Your name...."
The screen in the theater fades to black as the haunting, beautiful soundtrack fills the space, wrapping around the audience's hearts, signaling the end of the film.
In that moment, everything falls into place.
The tension, the longing, the uncertainty—all find their release in the purity of the audience who shared this exact moment.
And as the music swells, the audience is left with a profound sense of peace—a quiet comfort in knowing that the journey has finally reached its end. The engaging yet mysterious story of Jihoon has slowly captured their minds and souls, leaving them to bask in the purity of the beautiful visuals, the atmosphere of the film, and the heartfelt story that lingers in their hearts.
There's no doubt that the story will linger in their hearts for a long time—a classic film that will accompany them throughout their lives.
[Author's Note: Heartfelt thanks to Wandererlithe for bestowing the power stone!]