After the night * 7
Playing with Fire * 63
Dream of Love * 133
Beach Picnic * 187
First Love * 249
Director * 315

Commentary | Kang Ji-hee (literary critic)
Girls' Love and the Great Legacy * 363

Author's Note * 392

From secret conspiracies to the beginning of first love
A first-person world where everything is possible

"When the Night Passes," the story of a teenage girl drawn by Son Bo-mi, marks the beginning of the series of novels, and follows the first year of the ten-year-old girl, "Na," who is left in the care of her maternal uncle and his wife in Gyeonggi-do.
At that time, people said this about 'me'.
“He’s a weird kid,” so “he doesn’t even express his emotions” (p. 25).
But in fact, that wasn't the case.
At that time, I was a crazy woman in the neighborhood.
madwoman.
So, I spent a lot of time talking with a woman who was known as a 'crazy bitch'.
All kinds of rumors followed the woman who ran a small grocery store in the neighborhood.
She's divorced, her child is dead and she's practically murdered, she tries to seduce the townspeople, and most importantly, she has precognitive dreams.
And 'I' decide to go far away with 'that' kind of woman.
People say that the woman took advantage of my “abnormally” weak mind, and “those who like to be more extreme say that the crazy woman (…) ‘kidnapped’ me” (same side), but this is also not true.
Because it was 'me' who begged her to take him away and go far away.


Around that time, she was being secretly bullied by her classmates for some reason.
One day, during a dodgeball game during gym class, the kids threw the ball only at me, and I got hit in the face, screaming and collapsing in my seat.
After that incident, I was afraid of going to school, so I asked the woman to take me with her.
So, on a rainy evening, 'I' got into the car with the woman.
So it would be natural for me to correct the statements made by those surrounding the kidnapping as follows:
“I incited her” (page 38).

What about the "I" in "Playing with Fire," which was selected as the grand prize winner of the 2022 Yi Sang Literary Award with the comment, "It's an interesting read that you can read all at once, but it also leaves you with a new shock when you read it again from the beginning" (novelist Kwon Ji-ye).
As the world around me changes, the two biggest challenges facing me as a twelve-year-old who must navigate these changing circumstances are:
One is adjusting to the new family that has changed due to the father's remarriage.
My stepmother worked as a school teacher, but quit her job when she remarried my father.
What did my mother say about her?
“When a woman is crazy about a man, she becomes like that.
“Do you understand?” (Page 92) Another task is to find out the truth behind the rumors surrounding ‘Yang Woo-jeong’, a boy in the same class.
'I' talk about all sorts of things with my friends, and the topic that comes up the most along with boys is the Yang Woo-jeong group.
The group centered around Yang Woo-jeong are the only children in the class who can clean the dormitory, and there is a rumor that they stay there even after cleaning is finished.
There were rumors that middle school boys would come to visit, and that one of the group kissed a middle school boy.
Then, on a day when there wasn't much time left until the vacation, 'I' gathered my courage and carefully knocked on the door of the dormitory, and unexpectedly, Yang Woo-jeong easily let 'I' into the dormitory.


But what I encounter in it are not middle school boys, but children walking to the music as if they were models.
Yang Woo-jeong speaks to me, who is staring at the sight with a blank expression.
“How about it, you want to try it too?” (page 107) ‘I’ stand in front of the wall, thinking that I can do it to that extent, but somehow I can’t move even an inch.
Then, in the end, he escapes from there as if running away.
Not long after that, 'I' started playing with fire.
'I', holding my father's lighter that I found by chance in the house, walks up the stairs where the sun is shining brightly and heads to the rooftop.
And then there he lights a lighter and starts burning the paper.
As if adding heat to heat on a “sunny summer afternoon” (p. 119), or as if shaking off the memory of running away from the duty room, ‘I’ am fascinated by the fire play.


If "When the Night Passes" and "Playing with Fire" focus on a girl who interprets and navigates the changing world around her in her own way, "First Love" and "Moving" could be said to depict the changes that occur due to a powerful encounter with a stranger, a private tutor.
The difference between the two works is that the tutor in "First Love" is a male student from a prestigious university about to enlist in the military, while the tutor in "Moving" is a middle school student who is not much older than the main character.
But in both works, the protagonists fall into the illusion that they exist in a different world from their peers, while also harboring intense feelings for each other.
The feeling is so strong that the 'I' of "First Love" closes her eyes to the ugliness before her eyes so that the image of her 'fantasy first love' will not crumble even when she sees him appearing in a shabby and dirty appearance, unlike usual, and the 'I' of "Moving" repeatedly recalls the words her sister said while embracing her, "I... love you" (p. 343), rather than her sister's suspicious behavior.


And on another axis, what drives both novels is a certain passionate emotion that drives the mother.
In "First Love," the mother who sends me to tutoring because she wants me to "live a better life" (p. 301) than her own is reminded of the fact that she herself did not go to college, and in "Moving," the mother who has no choice but to leave me with her middle school-aged sister because of work is reminded of the reality that makes her want to shout, "Do you know how hard it is for a woman to raise a child alone?" (p. 319).
In the world of these characters, who are entangled with each other, sometimes secretly and sometimes openly revealing their desires, what is important may be the obsession with each other itself.


“I was only a child, yet I could be shameless and frivolous and corrupt.
I was able to surprise everyone.
By doing so, I was able to decide for myself where I would be.”

Growth is neither beautiful nor smooth.
A unique and exciting exploration of the world of sensations that only open up during adolescence.

"Love's Dream," the only novel in this collection told from a third-person perspective, is a story about a woman's impulsive winter night, yearning to leave her child behind and "get a chance to run away."
As time passes and the gaze returns to that day, the 'woman' is now driving, anxious yet excited, with her luggage simply loaded into the car.
After divorcing her husband several years ago and receiving financial support from his mother following his sudden death in an accident, she decided to raise her daughter on her own and had just taken a contract job in the school administration office a few months ago.
During that time, when she was simultaneously filled with satisfaction and misery, she became close to 'Princess Yeon', who also worked in the administrative office, and attended a meeting introduced by Princess Yeon.
There are married and unmarried women in the group, and the married women call the group '탈엄', meaning 'a group of mothers who are in a state of deviance'.
One day, at a gathering attended by Princess Yeon, a woman who runs a piano academy attends, and the new woman plays the piano several times at the urging of those around her.


The moment Liszt's "Dream of Love" fills the house, she sneaks out and gets into her car, listening to the performance as if in a dream.
Just getting into the car made me feel like I had already traveled far away, when Princess Yeon knocked on the car door and asked.
Why are you going alone without saying anything?
Only then does she suddenly realize what she was about to do and looks at Princess Yeon with startled eyes.
One day I said to myself, “Kids are really annoying.
It makes me feel needlessly guilty.
“Sometimes I feel like I want to throw it away, don’t I?” (page 159) Princess Yeon, who, if you think about it, is the same person who drove her out like this.

The following work, "Picnic on the Beach," can be read closely together with "Dream of Love."
Unlike "Dream of Love," which unfolds from the mother's perspective, "Picnic on the Beach" unfolds from the perspective of the daughter of a family with a similar background.
Every summer vacation, I, an eleven-year-old girl, go to my grandmother's house in Busan and stay there for about two weeks to a month. This summer, I head to my grandmother's house as usual.
But when I got home, a young man I had never seen before was sitting on the sofa.
The man who introduces himself as my father's younger brother, that is, my uncle, speaks.
“You don’t seem to take after your father very much.
Your dad is thin and tall… … Does he take after your mom… …? (…) Well, anyway, your mom is really amazing.
In return for your mother sending you here every summer… …” (page 207) At that, the grandmother shouts, “Where is this place? How dare you talk nonsense! Do you think your father will just sit by and watch you do this?” (same page).


There is a tense atmosphere between him and my grandmother, who is my father's half-brother, but I somehow like him.
Even though I felt like getting closer to him would be like betraying my grandmother, I couldn't suppress the urge to keep talking to him.
And then one day, when no one was home, my chance finally came.
'I' desperately hopes that he doesn't see me as a child, so he goes to 'I's' room and talks to me about this and that.
But his reaction is just calm.
The impatient 'I' ends up saying this.
“Do you know that Grandma and I are going to the beach for a picnic? (…) I want to invite my uncle, my half-uncle, there.” (p. 222) What scared ‘me’ more than betraying Grandma was the thought of him closing the door and simply disappearing from my sight.


Willing to become a traitor, perhaps that is the path chosen by Son Bo-mi's women.
Even though it may ultimately turn out to be absurd and absurd, the characters in "Dream of Love" do not hesitate to dent and shatter something that has been established, using shallow tricks, feeling a clear desire to hurt someone, expressing nervous impatience and resentment, and stirring up someone with petty impulses.
These children, who might be considered timid and ordinary from a distance, are brought before us by Son Bo-mi, who looks into the world in a unique and persistent way, as bold and disheveled, twisted and sloppy, persistent and passionate - in other words, as we have never known before.
And these characters of Son Bo-mi, who willingly choose to be fascinated by secrets, tragedy, and love, will leave us with “an everlasting trace” (p. 147).
Just as we can turn our eyes away to avoid the scorching sun, we cannot do anything about the “heat of our skin” (p. 118).


As I write this, I think the stories in 『Dream of Love』 were written based on the despair and cruelty I felt at that time.
I think so.
As always, I can recall the time and space in which I wrote the novels included here.
If nothing else, the time I spent writing this novel was not given to me by someone else's whim.
I don't know if it's possible to say it this way, but they were worlds chosen entirely by my whims.
Sometimes I was excited, sometimes I was frustrated, and sometimes I was dizzy.
Sometimes I felt intimidated, and sometimes I felt exhilarated.
I feel fortunate to be able to leave behind the times I've lived through in something tangible.
I was lucky.
_From the author's note