Omg I was so confused when they fucked in the dream, I was like "wait I swear they never did this in the novel????"
Like I love this comic & novel so much, so I agree with you 100% that it was kinda unnecessary
They actually do in the novel. This comic shows side story 13 (Kwan's dream) and 23-24 (Yeonseo's dream). There are a few other side stories they get a bit steamy too but Riceball gets in the way. There are almost 200 chapters of the novel and 24 side stories. The comic probably didn't want us to wait that long. Honestly, this added dream sequence doesn't change anything about the story. They have done a pretty good job of staying true to the novel.
reading again after reading the novel and i actually really dislike the smut inclusion. it’s not part of the novel, they don’t do anything dirty until the end when they’ve resolved feelings and such. it feels like the smut dream was just thrown into this story for the artist to be like “don’t lose interest! see they do fuck!” the story is so good it doesn’t need that. thankfully from reading the non official tl it doesn’t seem that detrimental to the overall story but it still bothers me.