What the actual fuck. They skipped the fourth exam which had a lot to unpack. What the fuck???
The third exam was a hunting competition using rabbits which can be thought of as revenge for Kyunwoo. It was mostly a demonstration of Kyunwoo, Haneul, and Eunbi beating up monsters and other students. Kyunwoo and Haneul ended with enough points to have their own separate suites for the fourth exam which took place immediately after. All survivors of the third exam entered a hotel inside the dungeon where there was a banquet. There they played some social games (this is where Yuri gives Kyunwoo that nickname) and had some food and drink in preparation for the fourth exam. Here, Haneul's shyness caused a bit of trouble for her but she manages to meet her socialization quota (think speed dating).
The fourth exam begins when everyone falls asleep. Kyunwoo already knew what it was so he made preparations and warned Haneul about it too. The task is to slay a dream demon inside the worst nightmare it creates. All the food and drink at the banquet had been drugged by the proctors to make sure everyone fell asleep. The goal of the exam is to weed out anyone vulnerable to mental/psychic attacks. Examinees have to be able to identify they are in an illusion and break free on their own. Proctors only guarantee their lives but not their health. In order to make finding the dream demon easier, Kyunwoo placed the painting that served as its physical avatar in the hotel suite's bathroom and turned the faucet on. That way, he could track it down in the dream by following the sound of water.
When Kyunwoo enters the dream, he is immediately plunged into despair because he thinks he failed to save the world. Academy City was in total ruins and the sky was raining hard. However, he quickly remembered he was dreaming once he saw the reminder he had written on his body beforehand and set out to find the dream demon. It made rain in the dream to counteract the faucet trick Kyunwoo was going to use to find it. Then Haneul in her Witch of Calamity form appeared and immediately began using her Gift of Cloning to create thousands of clones to fight him with. He manages to overcome it because he realizes this is his dream and he can do anything like giving himself his ideal male body (tan skin, blonde hair, piercings, rabbit tattoo, etc.) and using Cloning himself which makes the army of Haneuls panic because they don't like it. He ultimately slays the dream demon by deliberately showing an opening and attacking the Haneul that actually tried to kill him. His explanation: "I knew it was you because the real Haneul could never kill me."
Haneul's battle with her dream demon was for more rocky. She was transported back to her first day in fifth grade aka Chapter 1 of the webtoon. The webtoon simplified the original seating arrangement game a ton so I'll explain how it works briefly here. The teacher had all the girls pick their seats first. Then each boy drew lots in the order that they will go find their own seats. They must ask the girl they're going to sit next to for permission. If the girl refuses, the boy has to try again with another girl. If they fail to get a seat after an entire round of asking, they go back to the end of the line. Each girl can refuse up to 3 times. It was a weird game to help make the boys more aware of how to interact with girls because all the boys wanted to sit next to the most popular girl in the grade, Kim Sooji, but she obviously staunchly refused their advances. The rest of the girls didn't want to be seen as "second place" so the inevitable result was an embarassing series of "No" for the boys in front of the whole class.
Haneul hated games like this because she was never going to be picked. She curled up into a ball and begged for it to be over as soon as possible. When Kyunwoo's turn came around, the most popular girl in the class had used up all her refusals just before and she sat sonewhere in front of Haneul. All the boys were crying out in jealousy as he approached Sooji and she even gave him permission before he asked because they were both members of the 10 Great Families. Of course, Sooji and the rest of the class's jaws dropped as he walked right past her and straight to a depressed Haneul. His gaze was fixed solely on a pair of bunny ears in the back of the classroom the entire time. That day he went straight to Haneul and asked to sit next to her only was the day her whole world changed and is one of her most precious memories.
Back to the recreation schemed by the dream demon, Haneul also quickly remembers she's in a dream after reading her own reminder. She briefly reminisces about how precious this memory is and as Kyunwoo walks down the aisle she muses about rejecting him this time just to see his reaction. But to her annoyance, Kyunwoo sits next to Sooji and the two start getting friendly in front of her. Haneul realizes that the dream demon was going to torment her by defiling her cherished memories so she activates her hammer and tears the room apart. Next thing Haneul knew, she was on the middle school playground. Kyunwoo was standing in the middle of a giant heart drawn with candles amidst loose petals and balloons. The entire school from students to the principal watched and cheered him on as he got on one knee and offered a bouquet of flowers in a very public confession. Haneul once again swung her hammer while crying out how much she hated public confessions.
The nightmare resets again, this time in the hallways of the school. She heard the students gossiping about a perfect pair. To her horror it was Kyunwoo and Sooji. After the cruel Haneul had so brutally beaten up Kyunwoo's heartfelt confession, Sooji had healed Kyunwoo's broken heart. Now Kyunwoo was publicly inviting Sooji over to his house where the two of them would be alone together. Haneul knew this was a dream and tried to suppress her anger but when Kyunwoo looked at her while moving to kiss Sooji, she snapped. This cycle of ruining her childhood memories would continue long after she lost count and mentally exhausted her. Even though she knew this was what the dream demon was trying to do, it didn't make it any less painful.
In the latest dream, Haneul contemplates using her Gift even though she didn't want to. It would've let her destroy the dream in its entirety instead of a localized area but she hesitated. Now she was at the lake where she shared a lunch with Kyunwoo after the first exam. Kyunwoo was next to her and in her exhaustion she mockingly asks what girl he was dating now. To her astonishment he replies that he's been going out with Haneul for a while now and that it's a weird question to ask. And she has a brief moment of relief and happiness as they walk around holding hands... which is promptly ruined when another Haneul shows up. More and more Haneuls show up which is the coup de grace that the dream demon had schemed. Haneul's greatest fear and trauma comes from her own Gift. Kyunwoo, unable to identify who the "real" Haneul was, could only look around in confusion and this is when Haneul absolutely loses it. With the resolve to simply destroy everything she unleashes her gift and begins the Haneul World End where she infinitely multiplies to destroy the entire world before all the clones turn on each other while muttering the mantra: "I am real I am real I am real I am real..."
When they meet up after leaving their respective dreams, Haneul is in tears and hugs Kyunwoo asking him to say the magic words. He immediately figures out what happened in her nightmare and tells her "To me, you're the only Yeon Haneul." There was a medical station set up because the proctors anticipated the overwhelming majority of candidates would be failed due to insufficient mental fortitude. Some students even wound up completely breaking and becoming possessed by their dream demon. Haneul was also on the brink of failure by the medic until Kyunwoo insisted it'd be alright if they slept together to help ease any PTSD. At this point, Haneul also asks Kyunwoo for his opinion on public confessions and he gives her the answer she did not want to hear: Kyunwoo would not mind because it'd be super memorable with all the publicity and the two are going to date anyways so why care so much. Haneul ends up scolding him about how rude it is and how much pressure it puts the other person under. The only thing Haneul wants is the proper mood and atmosphere. She doesn't need the relationship to be recognized by others. Kyunwoo makes sure to remember this for when he really confesses to her and he only realizes the meaning behind Haneul's words later. Confession is a confirmation of their mutual feelings, not a confrontation about how they feel towards each other. A proctor is later dispatched to Haneul's original room and the utter carnage he witnessed left him deeply disturbed.
Now for background on Haneul's mantra, Kyunwoo's magic words, and her hesitation to use Cloning which is only revealed way later in the story and is a big spoiler. In their second year of middle school (basically the year before this one), Haneul was encouraged by both Kyunwoo and Yena to use her Gift extensively. It was almost to the point of abusing it. She could create clones to do her homework, go to the grocery store, wash dishes, etc. Both Yena and Kyunwoo were a little bit jealous because like Shadow Clone Jutsu, the experience and memories of the clones returned to the original when they disappeared. This let her accumulate experience far faster than normal. For summer, they decided to go on a trip to the mountains and see the ocean (remember Haneul always wanted to see it?). Because the city has limited space, Haneul had never tried to generate a large number of clones but as soon as they arrived at their lodgings, she spawned dozens until she exhausted her mana. This was very bad because Haneul only now discovered she could not dispel her clones like this. Furthermore, there are 2 types of clones she could generate: a subordinate clone with worse stats but would absolutely listen to her or a near perfect clone with identical stats but its own ego. She had generated dozens of the latter and they no longer listened to her commands. While some of them did have minor differences in appearance and personality, Yena and Kyunwoo found it difficult to distinguish them. Kyunwoo had to rely on the Status Window to confirm who was real. At a total loss of what to do, Yena and Kyunwoo decided to simply wait for the clones to naturally dispel while treating them all equally for the rest of this study camp. And thus the disaster started.
The clones were all initially compliant and enjoyed spending time with Kyunwoo and Yena. After all, they were all Haneul. However, as mana sustaining their existence ran out they would cry in disappointment that they were not real and beg Kyunwoo and Yena to save them. The two could only watch helplessly. As the number of clones visibly plummeted, so did everyone's mood because they were truly just waiting for their deaths. Once the clones fell to around the teens, panic and the desperate desire to survive set in. The clones started turning on each other and hunting down the original Haneul in the faint hope that doing so would let them replace her as the real one. Ultimately, one clone managed to trap the others in the gymnasium used as their sleeping area and set fire to it. As rain started to fall, the clones started a final bloody brawl that Yena and Kyunwoo were unable to stop. The clones beat each other to death with even their bare hands until one Haneul was left. This Haneul, overwhelmed by the collective despair from all the previous clones realizing they weren't real and that they were going to die looked at Kyunwoo and asked "Am I real?" before passing out. So at the tender age of 14-15, Haneul experienced murder and death dozens of times over in the span of a week along with an uncertainty of whether she was actually Yeon Haneul. This became a painful memory that Yena, Kyunwoo, and Haneul do not like to discuss. Of course the study camp was discontinued and they went home without going to the ocean like Haneul originally wanted.
And in order to completely bury this incident, Yena and Kyunwoo made sure that there were definitely no clones left. Kyunwoo resolved himself to never let her go through this again and that he would clean up clones if it came to that. Unfortunately for them, they weren't thorough enough.
So yeah, super disappointed by the adaptation continuing to cut out the romance. I was really hoping to see the seating arrangement game done right this time. This was a chance to draw it from Haneul's point of view and show just how much that day Kyunwoo reached out means to her, how it impacted her life. Also, not showing Kyunwoo's nightmare of the Witch of Calamity Bad End means manhwa only readers totally miss out on his worst fear: failing to save Haneul.
