I have a theory that the difference in how Seo-ri and Se-gye remember their past life is completely intentional, because the story separates two different kinds of memory: memory of the self, and memory of the heart.

Seo-ri regains her identity, her past, her history, almost like awakening into herself again. But she does not remember Se-gye. Meanwhile Se-gye does not consciously remember his previous life at all, yet he keeps seeing Seo-ri in dreams, reacting to her presence emotionally before understanding why. To me, this feels more like the story showing that intellectual memory and emotional memory survive differently after death.

The deepest bonds are remembered by the heart before the mind.

That is why Se-gye’s memories come through dreams first. Dreams in reincarnation stories often feel like emotions crossing the border between lives before conscious thought can catch up. His soul recognizes her before his mind does.

At the same time, I think there is a reason Seo-ri remembers everything except him specifically. In many East Asian tragic romances, the lover becomes the last memory to return because that memory is the most painful one. Sometimes the soul suppresses the deepest wound first.

And honestly, I keep thinking about her death scene. She dies while looking up at the sky, where the sun is, and Se-gye is literally her “sun” in symbolic terms. That makes me wonder if he was her final thought before death. If so, forgetting him in the next life almost feels less like absence and more like emotional self-protection.

I also think their different forms of memory may hint that both of them died suddenly or violently, but what matters is not only how they died physically, it is what filled their consciousness at the final moment.

If Seo-ri died carrying duty, guilt, revenge, responsibility, then those memories would persist the strongest. Her reincarnation preserves identity and purpose, but seals away intimacy.

If Se-gye died consumed by longing, grief, or love for her, then emotional traces would survive more strongly than factual memory. He forgets the world, but not the feeling of her voice, her presence, her existence.

Which makes their dynamic even more beautiful to me, because it creates that very classic East Asian tragic-romantic structure: one remembers the world - and he is literally Se-gye (세계), “world.” The other remembers the feeling - and she is Seo-ri (서리), the name sounds similar to 소리 - "voice", something fleeting and emotional, like frost or condensation that appears quietly and disappears just as softly.

Neither of them carries the complete past alone. Together they become the full memory of what they once were.

You have described it so beautifully

I really like this interpretation, I kind of thought the same but I won't be able to put into words as beautifully as you did. 🥹 Anyways, thank you for this!

I think her relating the Zhuangzi butterfly tale aligns with this theory, and represents their two different mirrored journeys. Her physical self is only a memory in the past but she is rediscovering her soul in the present. His physically self is in the present but is re-discovering his soul through memories of the past. He is the man who is dreaming he is a butterfly, and she is the butterfly who is dreaming he is a man. But in the end, they are both the butterfly and the man.

But what happens to Seo Ri's memories? It is found that she is a famous child actor. Will the Seo Ri inside the body awake?

I didn’t see that at all, thank you for this post, it makes the story more beautiful ♥️