d
No need to say anything

Umbrellas for All Beings / Kang Ji-hee
Author's Note
Announcement page of included works

“Why didn’t my loved one come with me?”
The end of a long story, or a new beginning

The story is based on the short story “Didi’s Umbrella” (『Passi’s Introduction』, Changbi 2012) by author Hwang Jeong-eun, published in 2010.
Didi, who reunites with her childhood friend Dodo, becomes close to Dodo after remembering a time when she was unable to return an umbrella she borrowed from him.
The two are happy to be together, even though the burden of life is heavy.
However, in the 2014 short story “The Laughing Man” (Nobody, Munhakdongne Publishing, 2016), Didi meets a sudden death.


In this new work, "Didi's Umbrella," the work that directly embraces these stories is "d."
After the death of 'dd', 'd' (Dodo in the previous short story), who also spent days that felt like death, sinks into the hard labor of daily logistics work at the Seun Shopping Mall in Cheonggyecheon.
Then, he slowly begins to step back into the world after meeting a woman who has been repairing audio equipment at Seun Shopping Mall for decades.
The young girl also reflects on her own life and the lives of those around her in the scenery of the commercial district that contains the glory and shame of modernization.


hey.
The girl pointed to the JBL speakers she used as a dining table.
Eat this and go.
A lumpy aluminum tray sat on a thigh-high speaker, and on top of it sat a bowl of jajangmyeon that had been delivered just before d appeared.
The girl picked up the receiver and called Donghaeru.
Bring me one more bowl of Jjajang.
I hung up the phone and sat down at my workbench to finish what I was doing.
(Pages 73-74)

“How will people remember today?”
A novel that speaks of a new 'revolution'

When I pushed myself to write a novel again, I could only think of someone's death, and I had a gut feeling that if I didn't somehow turn that into a novel, writing novels would become very difficult in a different way than before.
I needed to destroy something of my previous novels, just as something of my previous possessions had been seriously destroyed, and I chose "Didi's Umbrella."
The reason I chose "Didi's Umbrella" was because Didi said it was a revolution.
(From the author's note)

In the previous short stories, dd was a little surprised and amused after unknowingly saying the word 'revolution' in the title of a book.
In "d", d finds the book among dd's belongings and goes to Jongro to meet the original owner, but encounters the voice of the square and the barrier on the other side.
To D, who believes that “a revolution that makes revolution almost impossible” has arrived, that night, which seemed “wide, dark, and silently still,” is re-experienced as an eerily hot heat in the vacuum tube of the girl’s audio.


The topic of ‘revolution’ triggered by dd’s existence, and the ‘voices’ encountered as a result, naturally lead to ‘there is no need to say anything.’
The narrator of "Nothing Needs to Be Said" is a shoe company employee and a writer with twelve unfinished manuscripts.
She has been living with Seo Su-kyung, a girl of the same age who left a strong impression on her at a sports festival in high school, for 20 years.
The opportunity for the two to meet again after graduating from high school and develop a relationship began in 1996, when the so-called 'Yonsei Incident' occurred at Yonsei University.
Since the day when “movement and daily life were isolated” due to isolation and violence, they have lived a life where they constantly worry about living as citizens and becoming “adults,” even while facing the thought of “let’s just sweep our own front yards.”
What is noteworthy is that one of the foundations of the speaker's maturity in reflecting on humanity and society is the thoughts he gained from various actual books and animations.
This element, which is presented by going back and forth between the main text and footnotes, rather catches the eye due to its somewhat incongruent feel. This is a characteristic feature of this novel in terms of content and format, along with the articles presented in the form of footnotes.

On April 16, 2014, the day they were planning to hold a small party to celebrate Seo Soo-kyung's birthday, the two continued to take to the streets and plazas after witnessing the Sewol ferry tragedy.
One of the moments that feels special while reading this series of novels is when I find a scene where the actions of 'I' and Seo Su-kyung overlap with those of d.
For example, on April 16, 2015, the first anniversary of the Sewol ferry disaster, the two faced a situation where the Sejong-daero intersection had become a “space with two long walls between them” and encountered people chanting the same slogan.

Having directly and indirectly experienced various events, including Yonsei University in 1996, the 'Myungbak Mountain Fortress' in 2008, Yongsan in 2009, the scenes of mourning and anger from 2014, and finally the wave of millions of candles in the winter of 2016, 'I' soon witnessed the moment of the Constitutional Court's ruling on March 10, 2017, together with Seo Soo-kyung, her younger sibling, and her nephew, and then greeted a quiet afternoon when they were all asleep.
The work's present-day time setting is a short afternoon, but through the narrator's recollections, the story touches on various scenes and characters, including Nietzsche and 19th-century Europe.

The ending of the work is thrilling, showing that even at the moment when many thought the revolution had been achieved, there were things that “no one spoke of,” and that we still ignore them.
In a world like this, will the speaker's wish to "complete a story in which no one dies" ever come true?

I want to complete a story where no one dies.
If you ever write one, why not title it 'Nothing Needed to Be Said'?
Because if you write it, the story will inevitably die someday.
A story that is of no use to anyone and needs no further discussion.

Is that possible?
1:39 PM.
I record today, the day that revolution has arrived, like this.

We are gathered here.
(Pages 316-17)

Meanwhile, between "d" and "no need to say anything" is inserted a sentence: "When everyone goes back, an umbrella is needed."
The author seems to be saying that dd's thoughts of carrying an umbrella while worrying about her friends' return home in the rainy morning, and the heart of checking on each other's well-being, are what makes revolution possible, or are aspects of revolution itself.

"When everyone goes back home, you'll need an umbrella."
Love and life in our time, captured by Hwang Jeong-eun

Just as the audio system that d had painstakingly acquired to listen to dd's heirloom LP is "the only one of its kind in the world," and just as "even books printed on the same day, in the same printing house, with the same ink, cannot be the same in the same condition" to 'me', who cherishes books, "Didi's Umbrella" emphasizes that no object, and of course no person, is unique in the world.
If we recognize the preciousness of these unique beings, we may be able to find an opportunity to “break free from the disillusionment and discouragement of the times” (Kang Ji-hee, “An Umbrella for All Beings in the World,” included in this book).


As revealed in the author's note, the driving force behind Hwang Jeong-eun's novels in recent times was death, destruction, and revolution.
Still, 『Didi's Umbrella』 is not completely hopeless or cold.
Readers of this book will cheer on D's perilous steps, feel a sense of comfort in the girl's silence, and join in the trajectory of 'me' who does not lose introspection even while being surrounded by others, while also feeling warmed by Seo Su-kyung's empathy.
As the author says, “the world seems to have changed and at the same time, it seems to have not.” It still seems urgent to dream of a world where the uniqueness of all beings is fully expressed and where people hold umbrellas for one another.
Now, as our literature speaks in its own unique way and simultaneously seeks new novels, we have been given the brilliant story of "dd's Umbrella."