i think you broke it down conveniently. now i can sorta piece together why i read a comment before saying Iheon remembered everything but he acted nonchalant. i guess he did not want to alarm Heemin. but lemme see if i got this one thing right: so their current timeline is the "real" world but Heemin thinks he's been isekai'd into the book he read while he was living his "second" life?
So, can I say Heemin had a psychological break down and Iheon wrote their life story into a book to… help him? Heemin’s art is a wish-fulfillment. That I understand. I’m truly confused about the different worlds.
Or, are there different worlds. Like, a time loop continuum thing, but the different versions of them have condensed?
Is this like the manga “Beyond Memories,” because that storyline I understand.
Thank you!
the second world is kind of weird because it's the world heemin drew on his first life but when they both died on their first life, they woke up on heemin's made up world (it's told on iheon's pov because he woke up on heemin's world during highschool and idk about heemin if he had childhood memories on that world or not, it wasn't told) for ~7 years, with heemin doing his things and iheon couldn't do anything because it's heemin's world, so iheon couldn't do anything on that world when there's no heemin because time and people stopped when heemin wasn't on sight. so you could say it's a world existing around heemin and not a real world where everything is going normal.
as far as i read the second world, it's not parallel universe or going back thingy, it's just they live in heemin's sketches
english isn't my first language, so excuse my mistake and asked away if something is confusing
so their first life is their life on the book.
heemin miscarried, iheon got killed, heemin killed himself. during this life heemin ran away from iheon to omega center, where he met 3 sisters. on omega center, he drew sketches of life he wanted, family (the 3 omega sisters from the omega center), life without abo, iheon as friend.
on "second life" which is the world that heemin drew, he has family (the 3 sisters), life without abo and iheon as friend. but his sketches are limited up to college life. iheon woke up from "the dead" of the first life on heemin's sketch during their highschool. the world here is miserable for iheon because it's heemin's imagination so when there's no heemin involved, the world stop and the people didn't move even when iheon was there. he endured that for years in loneliness and he knew that the time is running out as heemin's sketches only stopped at their college life. so he asked heemin to go to the us (means their original life from the start) before that, iheon found their book (or it was him who wrote it i forgot) and slipped in on heemin's bag, which was found by his sister and asked heemin to read it as the characters are the same name as heemin and iheon.
cue their life now that restarting from the auction scene. iheon remembered all, heemin knew the plot from "the book" and his memories from the imagination world. when iheon asked if his memories are back, he was asking about the 30 years old heemin (the first life heemin)
eventually heemin got glimpse of his past life from therapy, his "imagination world" sketches and the final blow is that he found "the book" on iheon's safe, that's where he realized that he is the main character of the book. he ran away to the omega center to meet his "sisters". while he was there he was afraid that iheon will chased him down and dragged heemin back (that's what happened on the first life) but iheon held back because he knew heemin will hate him for that. eventually heemin caved in seeing iheon went to the omega center just to do volunteer work and not disturbing heemin (but he gave a lot of gift when he knew heemin was pregnant)