Umma eats a fish eye at the dinner table, declaring it the best part, while her daughters look on in disgust.

Ji-won overhears her parents argue and learns Appa left the family not because of them, but for another woman.

Umma tells her daughters she read that white men make the best partners and wishes she had never married their father.

Ji-won and Ji-hyun meet George at a restaurant, where he ogles the Asian server, controls ordering, and flaunts a wallet of cash.

Ji-won meets Geoffrey at a coffee shop after overhearing fraternity brothers make racist remarks about Asian women.

George moves into the family's apartment with three boxes of belongings and immediately makes everyone uncomfortable.

Ji-won falls asleep during a philosophy exam and later researches blue eyes obsessively on a university library computer.

Ji-won discovers an unhoused man dead in the bushes, cuts out his blue eye with a knife, and eats it.

Umma bursts through the front door in tears to announce that George has proposed and she accepted.

Ji-won overhears George describing Umma in objectifying terms and confessing sexual attraction to Ji-hyun during a phone call.

Ji-won secretly replaces George's work presentation with compromising photos, causing him to be publicly humiliated and fired.

Ji-won drugs George with crushed Ambien and drives him to an abandoned construction site, intending to cut out his eyes.

George awakens and attacks Ji-won; Geoffrey arrives and repeatedly strikes George in the head with a rock.

Ji-won wakes in a hospital bed to learn that doctors discovered and removed a brain tumor while she was unconscious.

Ji-won slips into George's hospital room, poisons him with crushed oxycodone in cranberry juice, then cuts out and eats his eyes.

Pool 1 covers the central arc of the novel, beginning with Appa's abandonment of the family and Umma's ritual of eating fish eyes in the hope he will return. Ji-won navigates her first year of college as George enters their lives, his predatory behavior making him a mounting threat in their home. A fixation on blue eyes quietly takes root, eventually driving Ji-won to commit her first act of consuming a dead man's eye. George's engagement to Umma, combined with Ji-won's discovery of his infidelity, pushes her to sabotage him professionally and then attempt to murder him outright. The confrontation at the construction site ends in chaos, sending Ji-won to the hospital where a brain tumor is discovered and removed. The pool concludes with Ji-won's most deliberate act: poisoning George in his hospital room and consuming his eyes.

The headline events driving Ji-won's story from abandonment to murder.

Umma cooks Appa's favorite meal and collapses in grief when a neighbor's keys in the door make her think he has returned.

Umma begins spending her days waiting silently by the front door for Appa to come home.

Appa calls the family for the first time since leaving but hangs up without speaking to Umma, sending her into a frenzy of cleaning.

Ji-won forces herself to eat a fish eye at dinner, choking through her nausea, solely to make her mother happy.

Ji-hyun tells Ji-won that Umma has been making secretive late-night calls and that she found Appa's divorce paperwork.

After dinner with George, he forces Umma down onto a wet bench, laughs at her, and openly stares at Ji-won's chest.

George begins sleeping over nightly, and his predatory stares at Ji-won and Ji-hyun push the sisters to agree they must act.

On Thanksgiving, George announces the family will eat at a Chinese restaurant, then storms out when he spots a white server.

Ji-won meets her estranged high school friends for coffee but denies any wrongdoing and storms out of the shop.

Ji-won learns she has been placed on academic probation and physically attacks George, screaming that he destroyed her family.

George grabs the entire plate of fish eyes at the family's end-of-quarter dinner and swallows them before anyone can react.

Alexis gives Ji-won a bottle of Ambien sleeping pills to help her manage the insomnia that has been consuming her.

Ji-won lures a drunk, blue-eyed man away from a bar, drives him to an abandoned lot, kills him, and eats his eyes.

Ji-won secretly steals George's prized Rolex watch, his most treasured possession, and destroys it outside the apartment in the early hours.

Police drag Geoffrey away in handcuffs while Ji-won tells an officer she woke to find Geoffrey standing over her with a knife.

Pool 2 captures the significant secondary moments surrounding Ji-won's psychological decline, beginning with the raw days immediately following Appa's departure and Umma's collapse into grief. The pool traces Umma's emotional dependency through her daily vigil at the front door, her excitement over George, and the family's strained first holidays under his influence. Ji-won's damaged high school friendships resurface as a source of guilt and isolation, adding another layer to her growing sense of being abandoned. Her placement on academic probation marks a turning point in her helplessness, while George's brazen consumption of the family's fish eyes at dinner mirrors his broader appropriation of their world. The pool follows Ji-won's violence as it escalates from opportunistic to calculated, and concludes with Geoffrey's arrest and Ji-won's successful manipulation of events to frame him for murder.

The quieter but crucial moments and relationships shaping Ji-won's unraveling.

Ji-won reflects on Appa's upbringing in poverty in Busan, how he taught himself to read from garbage-bin newspapers, and his move to California.

Ji-won befriends Alexis in class while Geoffrey forces his number into Ji-won's phone and watches their friendship with open suspicion.

Ji-won recalls stealing Han-byeol's grandmother's ring and planting it in Sarah's desk to frame her for the theft and fracture the friend group.

Umma sits her daughters down and reveals she has been dating a white man named George, whom she met at the grocery store.

Ji-hyun hears George snoring through the bedroom wall; Ji-won later dreams that Umma in her bed has been replaced by a giant wet eyeball.

Ji-won dreams the disguised stranger who has been following her slowly unwraps his coverings to reveal George's face underneath.

Ji-won finds George asleep on the couch alone, retrieves a paring knife, and draws a bead of blood from his skin before snapping fully awake.

Ji-won secretly tails George across the city and watches him emerge from a coffee shop holding hands with a woman named Jen.

Ji-won washes the unhoused man's eye in a gas station bathroom and swallows it, then destroys George's license in the garbage disposal at home.

Ji-won kills a blue-eyed man she encounters bleeding in an alley near Alexis's party and ravenously eats both of his eyes.

Geoffrey confesses romantic feelings, Ji-won rejects him and flees, then realizes her backpack is gone — taken by Geoffrey.

Ji-won tears through the apartment in a panic after realizing her murder weapon, the knife, is still inside the stolen backpack.

Umma confesses to Ji-won that she followed George herself, found his apartment, and discovered his ongoing relationship with another woman.

Umma tells Ji-won that Appa is aware of her hospitalization but has not visited, and that his new partner is expecting a baby boy.

Ji-won resolves to seek out her father, whom she holds ultimately responsible for everything that has broken her family apart.

Pool 3 focuses on the turning points and revelations that lay bare the psychological forces driving Ji-won. Beginning with the backstory of Appa's thwarted ambitions, the pool establishes the pattern of male failure and escape that haunts the family. Key revelations include Ji-won's full account of betraying her high school friends and the discovery of George's secret affair, both of which illuminate her capacity for manipulation and her rage at men who exploit trust. Unsettling dreams and episodes of sleepwalking chart the breakdown of the boundary between Ji-won's violent inner life and her waking reality. As her murders escalate, the pool tracks the moments of desperate cover-up, particularly the crisis surrounding her stolen backpack and its incriminating contents. The pool ends with Umma's confession about George, the news of Appa's expected son, and Ji-won's cold resolution to hold her father personally accountable for everything.