Summer Vacation _007
Six Casts _033
Remaining Memories _061
One Night _087
Yesterday's Dream _113
Square Memory _141
Eyelids _169
A Night No One Hates _197
Black Hole _225
Switch _253
April Fool's Day Every Day _281

Author's Note_309

“Grandma, you’re already all grown up.”
The grandson said.
I told my grandson that I still have dreams about being scolded by his mother.
The grandson replied that he had never dreamed of being scolded by anyone.
He said he was a good boy even in his dreams.

What kind of child was I and what kind of person will I become when I grow up?
The desire to grow old gracefully is to be affectionate rather than cynical.
Isn't it more about humor than technology?

Unfolding the wrinkles of the time we have passed and the time we will pass in the future
It inspires the desire to become a better person,
11 gentle and profound stories

The first half of the collection of short stories is mainly filled with narratives about elderly women, which author Yoon Seong-hee has been actively writing recently.
The 'I' in "Summer Vacation," which opens the door to the novel collection, has just been laid off from the company where I had been working for a long time.
It might be frustrating to have to retire a few months before the maturity of my savings, but I'm taking it in stride and thinking about how I'll spend my time after retirement.
The first is to buy a bouquet of flowers for yourself for working long hours, the second is to drink a celebratory drink, and the third is to change your name.
Changing my name to 'me' means parting with the time when "using a nickname with my brothers was a burden for the rest of my life" (p. 15).
After losing my father, I have been trying to take care of my mentally unstable mother and 'not go crazy'. I spend my time listing various candidates in order to have a name that "just hearing it makes me think... that I would be good at running" (p. 18).
And then, during the first summer after retirement, I get a call from an old lover.
I want to meet you sometime, I'll be waiting for you at the cafe.

In "Remaining Memories," 'I' also receives a phone call from 'Young-sun', with whom he had lost contact for a long time.
Yeongsun's request is that a woman who had an affair with her husband a long time ago and a man who embezzled public funds while working at her husband's company got married and opened a noodle restaurant that was a huge hit, and she wants her to go to that noodle restaurant with them and badmouth them.
Although I thought this was some kind of nonsense, I decided to follow Yeongsun to the place because I was grateful to Yeongsun for buying my son a lot of toys when he was young.
During the one-day journey of 'I' and Yeongsun to the noodle restaurant, the gap of decades since they last met is gradually filled and their stories flow into each other's stories.
What about the sixty-year-old grandmother 'I' who appears in the following work, 'One Night'?
While walking around the apartment complex, 'I' discover a pink kickboard parked in the playground and steal it.
To the exhausted 'me', the light on the wheel turning on and off seemed like a signal to take myself with me.
As I ride my kickboard around the complex, humming along, my resentment towards my husband, my sadness at not being able to see my daughter, and the pain I experienced as a child all seem to fade away.
One night, while riding the kickboard every day, I lost control of my speed and slipped and fell.
My past life flows through my head as I lie still, unable to move my body, waiting for rescue.

The life of old age, vaguely thought to be static and seasoned, becomes vividly concrete through Yoon Seong-hee.
When we decide to change the name we've used for decades, when we set out to avenge a friend, when we ride a kickboard stolen from the playground, Yoon Sung-hee impressively depicts through these works that our time refuses to stand still and flows more fiercely and vividly than ever.


“What would I have become if I had worn warm shoes and imagined myself as a fairy tale character?”

If we are to look at "Eyelids" and "The Night No One Hates" to see how the time we have passed, as well as the time we will face, holds us captive.
Both works feature a teenage boy as the narrator. In "Eyelids," the "I" is heartbroken by his best friend's excuse to go out with other friends, so he goes to an unfamiliar neighborhood, where he is hit by a bus that is speeding and weaving across lanes, and ends up in the hospital.
The voices of my family, who visit me every day and tell me stories while I am hospitalized, gently remind me that I am not as 'insignificant' as I think I am.

"I" from "A Night No One Hates", who created a club called "Proof King" with two friends, is going through his teenage years while realizing that it is impossible to prove the circumstances surrounding him.
Even when asked, "Do lonely people catch colds more easily?" or "Why did I come to hate my younger sibling so much?", I cannot easily answer, and I also cannot figure out why the older brother next door, who used to protect me whenever I was in trouble, committed a crime that would be on the news.
But then you vaguely realize that something is starting to happen in your life that you can't clearly prove, and that it's another aspect of growing up.

The three short stories at the end, "Black Hole," "Switch," and "April Fool's Day Every Day," look into the black hole that exists in everyone, a hole that remains unclear even after we have passed through that time.
In "Black Hole," three children come together to sell their house after their mother goes to prison.
A mother who was sent to jail for putting pesticides in the food eaten by the neighborhood people on the day of the sports festival.
Why did their mother act that way? Through the conversations of her children, who reflect on the past and try to figure out where things went wrong, we see moments when a dark hole formed in each of their hearts.


As I was waiting for the train at the subway station, two young women approached me and told me that I looked like I had a clear soul.
“I suddenly got angry at those words.
“I pushed the woman without realizing it.” One of the two women fell.
The older sister hit the fallen woman in the face with the bouquet of flowers she was holding.
(…) My sister repeated that over and over again every day until she gave birth to Miri.
Still, I didn't understand why I did that.
“Since that day… well, it feels like a big hole has been ripped through my heart.
Something like a black hole.
“I felt like I would be sucked into it if I made even the slightest mistake.” (pp. 247-248)

But what's troubling us isn't just the fact that there's a black hole in our hearts.
The fact that the person who confesses to having a black hole is our closest family member, the person who cared for us at some point, stops us in our tracks.
Perhaps that's why, while the 'I' in "Switch" goes to visit his youngest uncle in prison, he vividly recalls what kind of person his uncle was to him.
My uncle “made me a snowman” (p. 270), “didn’t bother me when I had to pee every morning” (p. 272), and “loved me the most among all my nephews and nieces” (p. 273).
Of course, we know that these recollections do not justify the uncle's actions.
But instead of giving us a definitive answer, the novel leads us into a realm of other possibilities.
This possibility is contained in the title story of this collection, “Every Day is April Fool’s Day.”

My family is on their way to see my aunt for the first time in three years.
Three years ago, my father and my aunt had fought and had not seen each other since, and then my aunt told me that she had cancer.
“That’s a lie,” said the aunt to her family, whom she had not seen in a long time.
He laughs, saying, “Everyone was fooled” (page 296).
After the relief and bewilderment have passed, the family members begin to reveal their stories to each other, starting with the words, “If it’s a lie like that, I can tell it too” (p. 302).
When each person's intimate story, which may or may not be a lie, is lightly thrown away under the guise of a 'lie,' the volume of secrets that had been suffocating the heart gradually decreases, and space is created for something else to fill its place.
To dull the sharp edge that can stab oneself or others through the story of lies.
Perhaps what Yun Seong-hee's novel offers us is precisely this magic of transition, of softening sharp edges.

Since the most important thing for this magic to happen is the time of waiting, it may be natural that Yun Seong-hee's novels cover a long period of time rather than a specific period in life.
"Square Memory," which connects the narrative of old age in the first half of the collection with the narrative of growth and family in the second half, is a work that demonstrates the magic of this transition that takes place over several decades, and is the only romance novel in this collection.
'Jeongmin', a college freshman, falls in love with 'Minjeong' by chance and joins the comics club 'NemoNemo' where Minjeong is the vice president.
What appears to be the beginning of a smooth relationship between the two people, however, takes an unexpected turn due to a sudden accident.
After the accident, Jeong-min and Min-jeong's lives take completely different paths, and what connects their seemingly broken relationship is the 'funeral hall'.
Jeongmin and Minjeong run into each other at funerals every few years and hover around each other, but due to their respective situations, they are unable to become close.
Then one day, Jeongmin says to Minjeong.
“Let’s date each other if we meet at the funeral one more time” (pp. 157-158).

In this way, the funeral hall is transformed into a space for reuniting with someone who has not been together for a long time, and a space for promising love in the distant future.
And this takes on a richer meaning when read together with the phrase, “life is like a blessing in disguise,” which is repeated several times in the novel.
The saying, 'Life's fortunes are so variable that they are difficult to predict' is interpreted in this way through Yoon Seong-hee's novel.
Even if life seems burdensome now, life is worth living.
Because it is the conclusion the characters reach after experiencing the joys and sorrows of life, it does not offer empty consolation, but rather wraps us in a soft warmth, like a tailored garment.
Perhaps that is why, after reading Yoon Seong-hee's novel, we become more determined and resolve to become better people.
Just as good literature rarely presents such moments, Yoon Seong-hee's novel presents us with such magical moments with an indifferent face.

★

Yoon Seong-hee's novels are like neat and beautiful hieroglyphs, condensed with long periods of emotion, and only those who are prepared to slowly and wholeheartedly traverse the letters can fully grasp them.
"One Night" is an autobiography written by an elderly woman who was left alone in an unfamiliar place after an accident in the middle of the night, and was rescued.
Within this short story, numerous issues of female narrative shine forth, and the astonishment experienced while reading as if entranced is a gift given only to those who read Yoon Seong-hee.
_From the judges' comments on the Kim Seung-ok Literary Award

★

While writing the stories in this book, I looked into the holes in people's hearts.
They were holes that seemed like they would never come out once you got sucked in.
nevertheless,
I wanted to give them the courage to get out of the hole.
I wanted to help them feel less lonely.
I wanted to tell them it was okay.
I wanted to be affectionate towards them.
_From the author's note