Kim Yoonhwan

Kim Yoonhwan, known in the Tower of Nightmares as the Smile Knight, is Jaehwan's last Carpe Diem companion and one of the emotional anchors of his resistance to regression. After dying on the ninety-eighth floor, Yoonhwan's soul reaches the Abyss, regains its memories inside Rift, and ultimately rejects Rift's compromises to reunite with Jaehwan. The First Nightmare later presents an ordinary-world Yoonhwan who becomes Jaehwan's friend and editor without explicitly resolving how that version relates to the Abyss survivor. (Chapters 1, 105–106, 202, 210–217, 253–265)

Biography

The Smile Knight's fall

Yoonhwan answers the Tower of Nightmares' summons and meets Jaehwan and Han Seoyul on the seventh floor. They become core members of Carpe Diem, humanity's volunteer force, and continue climbing even as most Walkers abandon their present with the Stone of Regression. Cheerful enough to earn the name Smile Knight, Yoonhwan nevertheless shares Jaehwan's conviction that the life being discarded remains real, wondering whether the Tower itself might have become the place where their actual lives were lived. (Chapters 1–3)

By the ninety-eighth floor, Yoonhwan and Jaehwan are the final two members of Carpe Diem. Giltikas inflicts a mortal wound that no remaining healer can repair, so Yoonhwan grips an ordinary pebble and pretends it is a Stone of Regression. The deception lets Jaehwan walk toward the next floor instead of staying with him; Jaehwan recognizes the pebble but honors the choice. Yoonhwan falls from the Tower after expressing gratitude that Jaehwan exists in this world, leaving behind both the Ice Demon Armor that aids Jaehwan and a sacrifice Jaehwan later wishes a real Return Stone could have prevented. (Chapters 1–2, 15)

A lost soul and the false Yoonhwan

Yoonhwan's death is not the end of his existence. His soul is caught among those hauled from the Borderlands into the Abyss, where a failed Memory Cover leaves him unable to remember his Tower life. In a cold detention cell he cannot name Seoyul, yet he repeats “Jaehwan” like a god's true name, and the remembered warmth of that name protects him from despair. A gray-haired buyer takes both amnesiac companions away; the organization behind their custody is later revealed as Rift. (Chapters 105–107)

Jaehwan climbs Metaverse partly because he believes Yoonhwan may be imprisoned or turned into a Doll. On the Yesterday floor he encounters a smiling Yoonhwan apparently restored to the old Tower village, but recognizes that figure as a Sanctuary-created image assembled from his own memories and destroys the illusion. The Driver later corrects his underlying assumption: the actual Yoonhwan is not in Metaverse and has not become a Doll; he remains alive near Caspion under a powerful force's protection. The replica and the surviving soul are therefore separate narrative presences. (Chapters 112–121, 136–137, 171)

The news gives Jaehwan a reason to keep climbing rather than a reunion. Memories of Yoonhwan continue to shape his choices through the upper floors, while the real man remains offstage in Rift's custody. This separation matters because nothing experienced or said by Yesterday's Yoonhwan restores the actual soul's identity. The living Yoonhwan's next development begins only when Rift returns the memories that were lost after his arrival in the Abyss. (Chapters 126–152, 171–173, 199–202)

Rift, incomplete Awakening, and reunion

Rift recruits Yoonhwan and Seoyul, and its Memory Restoration Chamber gives back their Tower memories. Yoonhwan then enters the Great Disappearance Simulation, a repeated virtual battlefield populated by people drawn from his past. Rift promises the shared Unique World Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood to the last survivor, requiring him to kill those familiar figures while experiencing the pain and moral consequence as real. He undergoes 1,954 cycles but stops rather than kill the simulated Jaehwan, and Mirel ends the test before he clears it. He still emerges as an incomplete third-stage Awakened One, but the text does not establish that he receives or can manifest Rift's shared Unique World. (Chapters 199, 202, 215, 221)

Rift promotes Yoonhwan to commander of its Twenty-Fourth Company and makes him secretary during negotiations with the Great Lords. The position exposes him to terms accepting cultivation, division of Products, and tolerance of the Palace of Rebirth. Watching prisoners abused after the agreement convinces him that future victory or reversed time cannot erase suffering that already happened. His aide Adele admits that Rift has lost its humanity and quietly gives him permission to leave; Yoonhwan finally follows the remembered image of Jaehwan's back, takes a prisoner's hand, and abandons the organization. (Chapters 207–210)

Rift pursues him as a traitor while he heads for the Seventh Site to ask Yu Seolha whether moral judgment remains possible after serving it. Seoyul intercepts him, condemns his selective refusal to kill Jaehwan in the simulations, and wounds him nearly to death. Jaehwan arrives before the final blow, proving to both former companions that this is not another simulation, and entrusts Yoonhwan's treatment to Chunghuh. Their long-delayed reunion therefore rescues the real Yoonhwan—the restored soul from Rift, not a Doll or the Metaverse replica. (Chapters 215–217)

Still on a crutch after the battle with Jerome, Yoonhwan volunteers for the Guides of Destruction and supplies current Rift intelligence. He uses his attention-drawing Setting to make the group confront Rift's new public legitimacy, then proposes Jaehwan as the person capable of holding its lord accountable. During the Seventh Site battle, he draws Barcant's lethal attack away from Runald despite knowing a third-stage Awakened One cannot survive it; Runald's intervention saves him. A year later, Yoonhwan remains alive and stands beside Jaehwan before the journey to Big Brother, accepting that he cannot follow while asking his friend not to resent those afraid of the unknown. (Chapters 225, 230, 237)

The First Nightmare and revision

Inside the First Nightmare, Jaehwan encounters Yoonhwan and Seoyul as high-school classmates in an ordinary world rather than fellow Walkers. They do not consciously remember the Phantasmal Tree, the Tower, or Rift, although Yoonhwan briefly reacts when Jaehwan mentions the Tower of Nightmares and recognizes that Jaehwan once wrote a story featuring their names. The narrative presents this Yoonhwan through Jaehwan's altered reality and residual memory; it does not explicitly state that the Abyss soul has simply moved intact into the schoolboy's body. (Chapters 253–256)

This ordinary-world Yoonhwan becomes Jaehwan's companion again through everyday crises. He and Seoyul support Jaehwan at his mother's funeral, remain with him through military service and unemployment, and try to stop him from entering a dangerous protest. When Jaehwan nevertheless crosses the crowd to save a person, Yoonhwan feels that he has witnessed the unwavering walk many times before. He and Seoyul run toward Jaehwan with an emotion they cannot explain, creating recognition through action without granting them recovered Tower memories. (Chapters 256, 258, 260–261)

Years later, Yoonhwan and Seoyul operate a small web-novel management company, and Yoonhwan wears glasses while advising Jaehwan on a revised edition of The World After the Fall. His former Rift-secretary aptitude is echoed in how quickly he organizes an anonymous patron's proposal, but here it functions as professional competence, not confirmed supernatural memory. He manages and edits the revision, recommends cuts and dialogue changes, and encourages Jaehwan through poor sales, leaving his latest state as an alive friend and editor helping the story of their other world reach readers. (Chapters 263–266)

Appearance and personality

The corpus gives few fixed physical details for Yoonhwan. In the Tower he habitually wears a smile and a cape, which is disheveled and blood-soaked after Giltikas's attack. Later he is called a young, handsome “pretty-boy,” spends his recovery leaning on a crutch, and appears in the revised world wearing glasses at the management office. These details belong to different stages and realities rather than a single unchanging costume. (Chapters 1, 221, 225, 230, 263)

Yoonhwan's cheerfulness is neither ignorance nor cowardice. He earns the Smile Knight title by smiling through catastrophe and uses humor to keep other people moving, but his final Tower deception requires him to face death without asking Jaehwan to turn back. That same tendency persists after his resurrection: even his bizarre attention call can release tension in a hostile meeting, while his readiness to make himself a target for Runald repeats the protective logic of his fall. (Chapters 1, 105, 225, 230)

He is morally earnest but painfully aware of his inconsistency. Rift's simulation breaks down his inherited ideas of justice, and Seoyul correctly exposes that he spared Jaehwan while killing versions of everyone else. Yoonhwan does not answer that guilt by declaring himself pure; he deserts because suffering remains real even when a system promises to erase it. His later strength lies in mediation—explaining public sentiment to the Guides and Jaehwan—rather than pretending his own choices were uncomplicated. (Chapters 202, 210, 215–216, 225, 237)

Powers and limitations

• Tower Walker abilities: As one of Carpe Diem's last Walkers, Yoonhwan climbs from the seventh to the ninety-eighth floor, fights Tower monsters, and uses System-granted equipment and skills. The story does not inventory those early abilities in detail. They are insufficient to repair Giltikas's mortal wound, and his progress ends before the Tower's final floor; the Ice Demon Armor he leaves behind is equipment rather than an innate power. (Chapters 1–3)

• Third-stage Awakening: The Great Disappearance Simulation pushes Yoonhwan into third-stage Awakening by making him repeatedly fight memory-based virtual entities. He refuses to finish the 1,954th cycle by killing Jaehwan, and Mirel stops the procedure, so Rift itself calls his Awakening incomplete even though it recognizes his new stage and rank. His later limits remain pronounced: while injured, he cannot block or evade a Great Lord's attack. (Chapters 202, 210, 215, 221, 230)

• Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood: This is Rift's collective Unique World, not an independently demonstrated world belonging to Yoonhwan. Mirel says clearing the simulation as its final survivor would grant access, but Yoonhwan does not clear the test. No supplied scene shows him manifesting or controlling Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood, so his third-stage status must not be treated as proof that he possesses it. (Chapters 202, 215, 221, 237)

• Pweee-yoooook, Pong: Yoonhwan's innate manipulation-type Setting develops from an attention-getting ability he trained since the Tower. Its spoken call draws surrounding attention, makes listeners focus on him, and shifts a group's mood; he uses it both to structure a difficult Guides meeting and to distract Barcant from Runald. It does not compel obedience, fails outright on Sirwen, and offers no defense once a stronger enemy redirects an attack toward him. In the final revised world, no supernatural use is shown. (Chapters 225, 230, 263–265)

• Analysis and administration: Yoonhwan serves as a negotiation secretary, commands Rift's Twenty-Fourth Company, and later turns inside knowledge into strategy for the Guides. In the revised world he similarly organizes publishing proposals and edits Jaehwan's manuscript. These are learned roles rather than named Settings: they let him interpret institutions and persuade allies, but do not grant combat strength or reveal information he has not personally obtained. (Chapters 210, 225, 263–265)

Power progression

Relationships

• Jaehwan: Yoonhwan trusts Jaehwan enough to follow him to the Tower's ninety-eighth floor and then uses a false regression to ensure Jaehwan continues alone. Even without memories, his soul repeats Jaehwan's name for warmth; after recovering, he refuses to kill Jaehwan's simulation and eventually reunites with the real man. In the First Nightmare they become friends again, and Yoonhwan helps edit the novel through which Jaehwan revises their shared story. (Chapters 1–3, 105–106, 202, 216–217, 237, 253–265)

• Han Seoyul: Seoyul climbs the Tower with Yoonhwan, arrives beside him as an amnesiac soul, and enters Rift's restoration and simulation process with him. Their different responses split them when Yoonhwan deserts: she nearly kills him while exposing his hypocrisy about the simulations. The First Nightmare recreates their old closeness in an ordinary form, culminating in the management company they run together. (Chapters 3, 106, 199–202, 216–217, 253–265)

• Adele: Adele serves as Yoonhwan's aide after his promotion and initially appears to defend Rift's promised ending. Their conversation reveals Adele's own disillusionment, and the older Awakened One indirectly tells Yoonhwan that it is not too late for him to leave. Yoonhwan's choice later gives Adele strength in return, making their brief command relationship a catalyst for moral change on both sides. (Chapters 210, 215, 221)

• Yu Seolha and the Guides of Destruction: Yoonhwan seeks Yu Seolha because she previously survived leaving Rift and because her Guides are the only organized opposition he knows. After his rescue, he volunteers while still injured, providing intelligence and a political reading of Rift's victory. He becomes a strategist and mediator within the group rather than one of its leading combatants. (Chapters 215–217, 225)

• Runald: Yoonhwan barely knows Runald when he uses Pweee-yoooook, Pong to draw Barcant's fatal blow away from him. Runald recognizes the sacrifice as the protection a Follower gives a god's world and intervenes, saving Yoonhwan. The exchange connects the Smile Knight's oldest instinct—to preserve another person's path at the cost of his own life—to his later place among Jaehwan's companions. (Chapter 230)

Items

• Ordinary pebble: Mortally wounded on the ninety-eighth floor, Yoonhwan holds an ordinary pebble as though it were a Stone of Regression. It has no supernatural effect; its purpose is to let Jaehwan leave without being forced to watch him die. Jaehwan recognizes the deception, making the pebble a shared acknowledgment of Yoonhwan's choice rather than a successful trick. (Chapters 1, 15)

• Ice Demon Armor: Yoonhwan leaves this armor behind when he falls from the Tower. Jaehwan later uses it while facing Velkisus, so the equipment continues protecting the last Walker after its owner is gone. The corpus establishes that practical legacy but does not explain the armor's full statistics or origin. (Chapter 2)