Second Night _8
I can't be the only one who laughs _16
The Last Breath of Summer _30
Amusement Park Guide for Young Lovers _38
First Summer _46
Boiler _60
Meanwhile _68
Our Shadowing _84
How to Get in Water Without Getting Wet _94
I just walked around in the evenings _116
About Weathering _132
Dangerous Reunion _148
Water of Relationships _156
A Life of Just One Handful _170
May the wind blow again _190
Tokidoki Yuki _198
Do you see the same light as me? _206
Like a fish jumping into the river _218
There's a black part there _224
So many summers _240
Author's Note _294
So Many Summers_Playlist_300
Bookstores and libraries hosting reading sessions _301

“To meet face to face, that is what it means to exchange stories.”

That's how we live our days.
And each day adds up to a lifetime.
I thought about the things they take care of every day.
I thought about the process by which things like carrots, cabbage, and tangerines grow well with care and end up on people's dinner tables.
As I thought about it, the specific shapes, textures, and scents of things like carrots, cabbage, and tangerines became clear enough to touch.
What they work hard to create during the day, and what gives people at night the strength to live again.
I wanted my story to be like that when they gathered together and listened to it.
After that reading that day, my thoughts about the novel completely changed.
I ended up writing more novels than prose.
Rather than giving lectures, I started holding reading sessions more often, where I read short stories I had just written and listened to people's stories.


The novels I wrote to be read to people at such reading sessions were gathered together to form this book.
(……) After the reading was over, I asked the attendees to share their stories.
What do you do for a living, what are your current interests, and how did you come to this reading?
Then someone raises their hand, and everyone looks at that person.
I look at his face too.
(……) I realize anew that when we meet face to face, that is precisely what it means to exchange stories.

_From the author's note

… … And, Kim Yeon-su’s ‘next’ step

Since publishing her short story collection, Such an Ordinary Future, last year, Kim Yeon-su has repeatedly mentioned that, while a strong “internal desire to change” has been building, “things have happened externally that have forced change.”
The new book, "So Many Summers," is a collection of short stories written after that period, and is Kim Yeon-su's first step toward "what's next," driven by her internal desire for change and external demands.
The author read these novels to readers “face to face” and “exchanged stories” in various bookstores and libraries.
The works changed little by little as they met readers directly.
From Jeju Island in October 2021 to Changwon in June 2023, these novels were written, read, heard, and 're-written' in various libraries and bookstores.

The author, who used to find stories hidden in all things, now faces people, looks into their faces, listens to the stories within them, and rewrites them.
Rather than just telling a story, we tell the story ourselves and share it with others.
The characters in the novel, who constantly tell each other stories and create their own stories, now walk out and meet the author face to face.

Perhaps that is why the novels in this book read a little differently than the previous novels.
By experiencing the process in which stories and lives intersect and permeate each other, and by reading the stories born in this way, we naturally come to understand why some lives begin anew after encountering a story, and why loving stories makes us faithful to life.
(Except for "Too Many Summers"), novels ranging from 16 pages to less than 50 pages at most show a single scene from life, while simultaneously passing through life as a whole, making us pause and pause.
Rather than making you reflect on the past or plan and resolve for the future, it's as if something suddenly seeps into your whole body and wakes you up.
Like the novelist in his work, if we simply watch what happens without striving or making any effort to do anything, will we be able to “witness a new world unfolding afterwards”?


“Only with reasonless affection”

Writing is cognition, and cognition is the essence of creation.
And creation comes only from reasonless affection.
When you are affectionate towards others without reason, things that did not exist before are created anew, and the plot of your life changes.
Although I lived without knowing that fact, I hope those who come after me will know that beneath the ground where they now lie and weep, there exists a world of possibilities unknown to them.
I want you to know that you can make that world happen if you want to.
Only with reasonless affection.
_From "How to Get in Water Without Getting Wet"

“I may have had an identity as a novelist before, but it’s a bit different now.
I wrote because I liked writing and wanted to write well, but now that I understand the role of story, I feel more confident that I need to provide better stories.
I went to a reading held at a small bookstore in Moseulpo, and the readers there were wearing work clothes and looking tired and sleepy.
Reading the story to them felt like giving them something like bread or rice.
“I began to think that it would be nice if my novel could be a spiritual bread provided to someone who is hungry.”
_From an interview with reporter Kim Yong-chul, Segye Ilbo, November 22, 2022

In fact, stories have always been important to writers, and the individual history/story of each person within the grand history was even more important.
Although it was not directly spoken by the author or the characters, readers have always been comforted in a completely different way while reading his novels, without even realizing it.
His novels still don't ask us to be anyone else.
It doesn't tell you to be a cool person, or a great person.
Rather, it tells us to become ourselves, to become more and more me.
However, the writer is more concerned about 'how' to tell the story.


“I am very interested in what kind of stories people live with and what kind of stories they create.
(……) I think the current situation changes completely depending on how you talk about it. So, can’t we talk about it in a better way? If that’s difficult, can’t we explain the current situation in a better way by creating the future and imagining it?”_Reporter Kim Yong-chul, Segye Ilbo, November 22, 2022, in an interview

His novels have become more affectionate and kind, as if the characters themselves are speaking.
And his novels comfort us as if they were exhorting us.


We are beautiful in our own right.
When we pick up a pen to write something and then stop, let whatever thoughts come to mind flow by, and simply look at the world unfolding before us, this moment is perfect.
Can you believe this is our one and only world? This is perfect, this one and only world.
In this world, we too naturally become beautiful.
Thoughts become less and less useful, each heartbeat becomes palpable, and it becomes clear that nothing is wrong, even though you simply don't know.
_From "So Many Summers"

I hope that these stories, written “with nothing but reasonless affection,” will become a warm loaf of bread that soothes the hearts of readers.