Yeong-hye is found standing at the open fridge before dawn, whispering that she has had a dream.

Yeong-hye stops cooking meat and refuses to eat anything but vegetarian food, alarming her husband.

After Yeong-hye refuses intimacy for weeks, Mr. Cheong begins forcing himself on her sexually.

Yeong-hye embarrasses Mr. Cheong at a work dinner by refusing meat and ignoring his supervisor.

Mr. Cheong and his father-in-law agree over the phone to arrange a family intervention meal.

At the family dinner, Yeong-hye's father slaps her across the face twice for refusing to eat meat.

After her father forces meat into her mouth, Yeong-hye grabs a fruit knife and cuts her own wrists.

Mr. Cheong finds Yeong-hye topless in the hospital garden, clutching a small bird bearing bite marks.

The brother-in-law realizes the woman in his flower-painting fantasies is his sister-in-law Yeong-hye.

The brother-in-law films himself painting elaborate flowers across Yeong-hye's naked body at a friend's studio.

The brother-in-law arranges for his artist friend J to have sex with Yeong-hye on camera, both painted in flowers.

Painted with flowers by his ex-girlfriend, the brother-in-law goes to Yeong-hye's apartment and they have sex on camera.

In-hye arrives at Yeong-hye's apartment, finds the brother-in-law there, and calls emergency services for them both.

Doctors and nurses try to force-feed Yeong-hye; she screams, vomits blood, and is tranquilized for emergency transfer.

In-hye rides in the ambulance with Yeong-hye and stares fiercely at the trees through the window.

Yeong-hye's decision to stop eating meat after a disturbing dream triggers a cascade of confrontations with her husband, Mr. Cheong, who grows hostile as his wife refuses to meet his expectations and ultimately rapes her. A family intervention escalates violently when Yeong-hye's father slaps and force-feeds her, prompting her to cut her own wrists at the dinner table. After hospitalization, Mr. Cheong distances himself from his wife, while Yeong-hye's brother-in-law becomes obsessively drawn into a film project involving painting flowers on her body. The project spirals into sexual acts recorded on camera, leading In-hye to discover the affair and call emergency services to have them both committed. The novel closes with Yeong-hye near death in an ambulance as In-hye stares desperately at the trees outside the window.

The key events driving Yeong-hye's transformation and her family's collapse.

Mr. Cheong describes his wife Yeong-hye as completely unremarkable and values her quiet compliance with his routines.

Yeong-hye empties the fridge and kitchen of all stored meat, throwing it away despite her husband's protests.

Yeong-hye's father phones to shout at her about her vegetarianism; she sets the receiver down and walks away.

Mr. Cheong finds Yeong-hye shirtless in the kitchen, surrounded by a massive pile of freshly peeled potatoes.

At the hospital, Yeong-hye's mother disguises black goat broth as herbal medicine; Yeong-hye drinks it and immediately vomits.

Mr. Cheong wakes in the hospital to find Yeong-hye's bed empty and goes searching for her.

The brother-in-law attends a dance performance where the performers' bodies are painted entirely with flowers.

In-hye tells her husband that Yeong-hye has been served divorce papers and is living alone.

The brother-in-law arrives at Yeong-hye's apartment to find her walking calmly out of the bathroom fully naked.

The brother-in-law buys Yeong-hye a shaved ice and proposes painting flowers on her body; she quietly agrees.

After the filming session with J, Yeong-hye firmly rejects the brother-in-law because he has no flowers painted on his body.

The brother-in-law's ex-girlfriend P paints his entire body with large red flowers before he leaves for Yeong-hye's apartment.

Yeong-hye stands naked at the veranda railing as the brother-in-law is overcome with the urge to jump.

In-hye recalls that Yeong-hye went missing from the psychiatric hospital and was found standing motionless in the rain among trees.

In-hye sits beside Yeong-hye in the hospital ward and tries offering fruit and tea, but Yeong-hye will not respond.

This pool follows the quieter but crucial moments that shape the texture of daily life around the novel's central crisis. From Mr. Cheong's early satisfaction with his passive wife to the incremental provocations that expose the family's dysfunction, these events reveal how ordinary life slowly breaks down. The family's failed attempts to intervene — through phone calls, disguised food, and confrontation — only deepen Yeong-hye's withdrawal from the world. As the brother-in-law's obsession grows, small moments like a walk and a shaved ice become charged with dangerous intent. The pool closes in the psychiatric hospital, where Yeong-hye's impenetrable silence speaks louder than words.

The supporting moments behind Yeong-hye's unraveling and growing isolation.

Yeong-hye narrates a dream of bamboo hung with blood-red meat, feeling terrified and finding herself covered in blood.

Yeong-hye refuses to be intimate with her husband, telling him that his body smells of meat.

Yeong-hye recalls a childhood memory of her father running a dog to death for biting her, then eating its meat.

After returning home to his exhausted wife, the brother-in-law goes to the bathroom and masturbates while imagining Yeong-hye.

On the night he decides to start his painting project, the brother-in-law has forceful sex with In-hye until she cries.

During the painting session, Yeong-hye tells the brother-in-law that the flowers painted on her body quiet her nightmares.

After completing the first tape, the brother-in-law concludes the next phase requires another man to have sex with Yeong-hye.

After having sex with Yeong-hye on camera, J accuses the brother-in-law of trying to film pornography.

Emergency services arrive at Yeong-hye's apartment and stop the brother-in-law from throwing himself over the balcony railing.

In-hye recalls first admitting Yeong-hye to the psychiatric hospital, where Yeong-hye says all the trees of the world are like siblings.

In-hye recalls finding Yeong-hye doing a handstand in the hospital corridor, insisting she no longer needs food, only water.

In-hye recalls the sisters getting lost on a mountain and realizes Yeong-hye wanted to stay and escape their father's beatings.

In-hye privately recalls bleeding for nearly a month and experiencing suicidal thoughts after her husband forced himself on her.

In-hye understands that Yeong-hye's withdrawal from food and people has been an attempt to live free of her father's violence.

Yeong-hye regains consciousness in the ambulance as In-hye whispers to her, asking whether the dream is really all there is.

This pool centers on the internal turning points that explain why characters act as they do, tracing the psychological undercurrents running beneath the novel's events. Yeong-hye's disturbing dreams and childhood memories reveal the deep trauma driving her vegetarianism, while the brother-in-law's private obsession escalates through a series of decisions he cannot fully explain or control. Small revelations — Yeong-hye's belief that flowers quiet her nightmares, her insistence that she is becoming a tree — illuminate the logic of her transformation. In-hye's own hidden suffering comes into focus through memories of violence and suicidal ideation, culminating in her understanding of why her sister chose to disappear from human life. The pool closes with Yeong-hye waking in the ambulance and In-hye left searching for an answer that may never come.