Prologue: Writing because I don't know when I'll die

Chapter 1 - When I Press Your Heart

When I press your heart
About what was lost
I should have gone and had coffee with her.
Let me tell you a funny story
People live there
The day I got scolded by a patient
Dog and man
Police cars, ambulances, poop, and me
My son died
When I press your heart
Hang on a pine tree and die
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
Hunger
What level of civil servant is a firefighter?
Children's temperature difference
I was smart when I was young
Please fix the door.
Christmas Wishes (Potty) Log
Cheongok-dong

Chapter 2 - You Are More Precious

You are more precious
Flower rain
Ramen is not rice
A Train Named Mom
My house is in Hokkaido
That's my world
Running to the end of the universe
What are you sorry about, Grandma?
The wall is life
You are more precious
Is love an indulgence?
To you who committed suicide today
Human attitude toward human death
My mom, can you take me with you?
No one died for love.
The river water is cold
I want to live
The ship is going
After the play ended

For the Epilogue Faucet

Poverty, accidents, death… a firefighter's closest friends and enemies.
A story hidden in the shadows of the world, never revealed until now.

“After I started riding in an ambulance, my belief that the world was worth living in crumbled.” (p. 122)
How much pain and suffering exists in the world that we cannot fathom?
People who are crushed by poverty and are about to make extreme choices, people who cannot raise their heads due to deep depression, people who are thrown into the middle of misfortune without even knowing the reason…
They were waiting for him at the scene of the operation, looking like something out of a novel.
Before becoming a firefighter, the writer thought there were few such people in the world.
Because I didn't see it.
After riding in the ambulance, I realized that this painful life was not just a story in a novel, but an extremely everyday reality.
Only then did they realize that they were hiding in the cold, dark shadows because they were too embarrassed, too sad, too sick.


What the author realized after working as a firefighter for many years is that poverty is not unusual.
Poverty was deeply rooted and widespread throughout society, though it did not reveal itself.
I felt that the current society, which turns its back on that reality and only pursues its own comfort, was even more miserable.
Through this book, I wanted to talk about how we should recognize the reality of poverty and death, rather than labeling them as "tragedies" and treating them as something special.

In this book, Baek Kyung, a firefighter with eight years of experience, reveals for the first time stories hidden in the shadows of the world that he encountered while riding in an ambulance, stories that had never been revealed before.
The story he tells is neither a heroic tale of firefighters nor a story about a world worth living in, such as the fact that more people die in warm spring than in cold winter, and that people who frequently use ambulances are usually poor.
The reason why the author insists on bringing up painful aspects that we would rather ignore than telling a beautiful story that everyone would cheer for is because of the author's belief that we should not turn our backs on the pain of the world.
Through "You Are More Precious," we convey the message that the world can only move in a more positive direction after we clearly realize that there are wounds right next to us that need to be reached out and embraced.


About the pain that I will never get used to…
This article was written as an ordinary human being before becoming a firefighter.

A timid and uncool firefighter.
This is how author Baek Kyung introduces himself.
A firefighter who calms down a drunk high school student and sends him home, performs meaningless CPR on a corpse out of concern for the bereaved family, and is terrified that his family will make an extreme choice too, unable to overcome the trauma of a suicide scene.
A person who, because he cannot bear to lose his mind if he is blinded by all the deaths he encounters, from the moment he leaves for duty to the moment he returns, he keeps repeating the mantra, “They are not my family, they are not my friends,” but he inevitably ends up reading the images of his family and friends in them.
I am an ordinary person who is gradually becoming accustomed to my work as a paramedic, but I can never get used to the pain and death right before my eyes.

Born in a city with many ginkgo trees in the mid-1980s, the writer majored in film in college and worked as a part-time instructor at a prep school until he was thirty, while occasionally making independent films.
Then, the year my first child started walking, I hurriedly prepared for the firefighter exam and passed with flying colors.
Life as a firefighter hasn't always been smooth sailing.
From the beginning of my career, I suffered from severe anxiety disorder due to trauma, and I started writing to overcome it.
The writing that I wrote out of anxiety about not knowing when I would die initially became a will to be left to the world, but at some point it transformed into a story to the world.
I have written down the stories of life and death that I encountered while riding in an ambulance, and of those who live passionately even in a world filled with pain, and have left them online.

His writing, based on the writing techniques he learned while majoring in film, attracted attention with its solid writing skills that were no less than those of any other writer.
Among them, he became a hot topic through X (formerly Twitter), and tens of thousands of people came to read his writing on an account that had been open for less than a year.
Those who enjoy Baek Kyung's writing leave comments of sympathy and support, saying things like, "Thank you for showing me a side of society I didn't know about," and "My heart is filled with emotion at the calmly written writing." However, some also voice concerns.
Yet, the author says, he continues to write about the world's suffering because "no one tells the stories of the poor."
It was to make known that while the world is abuzz with stories about delicious restaurants, luxury goods, and real estate, the stories of the poor also exist.
I wanted to tell real stories of poverty that permeate our lives, not the exaggerated images seen on television or in movies.
If you don't want to see it, you can close your eyes, but that doesn't mean the world's pain will disappear.

“So that we can continue to mourn the sad things”
Why a paramedic runs through the rain and sits at a desk every day

Some people say that the profession of firefighter is noble and deserves to be received.
However, writer Baek Kyung says that firefighters are not people who do special work, but rather people who do work that anyone can do, or perhaps people who are closer to 'people who do necessary work.'
Becoming a 'shovel' that scoops up misfortune that grows like a snowball if left alone is an ordinary task that anyone with a handful of heart can do, and that ordinary role has breathed life into the land we live on.

Ultimately, what the author wants to convey through this book is the importance of “seeing others as human beings like ourselves, and thus filling the world with ordinary warmth.”
Even a life that appears miserable at first glance is, upon closer inspection, a passionate life lived by humans with a body temperature of 36.5 degrees, just like us. The effort to face such a life from a level that is neither above nor below has been written down and compiled into a book.


Running through the rain is like writing down the stories of people who are going through hard times.
At first, the heart is heavy because of the miserable sight that clouds the vision, but as I write, I am deeply moved by the passionate life that is revealed.
I hope that those of you reading this are like me.
Instead of feeling sorry for the people who appear here, it would be better to think of them as humans with an average body temperature of 36.5 degrees Celsius, just like us.
That's why I never stop running on rainy days.
And that's why I never stop writing.
_From 'Prologue'

What the writer fears most right now is neither the difficult whistleblower nor the horrific scene.
It is something that an ordinary person should have, something that disappears from within.
It is the ordinary heart that empathizes with the pain of others, mourns death, and rejoices in happy events without cynicism.
As I was riding in the ambulance, I suddenly realized that I was becoming numb to those things without even realizing it.
To avoid becoming numb to the suffering of others, to preserve the humanity within himself, and to continue to grieve over sad events, firefighter Baek-kyung wakes up early in the morning again today, dragging his heavy body to sit down at his desk again.