Content Warning: If I Had Your Face discusses body dysmorphia, suicide, child abuse, sexual assault, violence, and miscarriage.

The novel opens with Ara, her best friend Sujin, and Kyuri drinking together in Ara and Sujin’s apartment. Sujin discusses how she wants to become a room salon girl like Kyuri. They discuss Sujin’s facial features and how her previous cosmetic surgery procedure on her eyelids didn’t turn out the way she’d wanted. Ara, as a result from a traumatic experience in her teens, does not speak, and communicates by writing on a notepad. The friends discuss Ara’s favorite K-Pop idol, Chung Taein, and Kyuri comments that the manager of his band often visits her room salon, Ajax.

Ara contemplates why Sujin is so obsessed with her appearance, deciding that it must be because she was raised in the Loring Center, an orphanage and home for people with disabilities. The friends continue to discuss cosmetic surgery and the famous Cinderella Clinic where Kyuri has all her surgeries performed. Sujin asks Kyuri if she can refer her to her surgeon because she wants to get jaw surgery. Kyuri is hesitant to agree, stating that while the surgery did change her life for the better, she still wouldn’t recommend it because of how painful it was.