Bear's request...
7
5 minutes before 12...
33
Helmet...
59
Rambutan...
87
My sister's house...
113
A day without locks...
139
Interview after that...
165
Author's Note...
189

Delivery workers, sexual minorities, women, refugees… …
Children standing on the crossing border
The first collection of young adult novels by author Jin Hyeong-min, who stands by his side.

This is the first book for young readers by author Jin Hyeong-min, who has been greatly loved for every fairy tale he publishes since winning the Changbi Good Children's Book Award in 2012.
This is news that readers who occasionally encounter his youth novels in webzines or anthologies have been eagerly awaiting.
This book, which collects seven works, faithfully meets readers' long-standing expectations.


Although all the characters in "The Bear's Request" are teenagers, they cannot be lumped together as a group called "teenagers."
Because the author has been by their side for a long time and has accumulated layer by layer in his heart, each child's life in the story is unique.


The seven novels are written at a brisk pace, but with sentences that flow neatly and without being scattered.
The novel's skill in lightly and nonchalantly unraveling the oppressive and heavy situations is condensed into Jin Hyeong-min's unique sophistication, interspersed with wit and humor like commas.
Thanks to this, readers of this book will surely laugh, but sometimes they will find themselves cursing the world along with the characters in the story, and in the end, they may cry.
This is because the children we will meet in “The Bear’s Request” are “youth on the border, outside the border” (Song Hyeon-min) and “real children who have been enduring and living in a murky landscape” (Song Mi-kyung).
Ultimately, "The Bear's Request" is a story about children who live bravely in a world rife with absurdity and the resulting anxiety, and even the possibility of sudden violence.
The genre of this story, which is funny but not funny at all, is, so to speak, “a comedy that isn’t funny” (“The Bear’s Request”).

“The world was clear in every corner.

It's so obvious that we're here
Rather, I had nothing to say.”
_From "Bear's Request"

In the title piece, “Bear’s Request,” ‘I’ have always painted the sun red.
The reason I could do that so confidently and without any doubt was because I had never seen the sun in detail.
However, the sun that slowly appeared before my eyes as I stood on the winter sea at dawn was not red, but “dazzling yellow.”


The author places at the center of each story beings that many people have not even bothered to look at properly, such as the sea or the sun, despite their “existence being so obvious.”
A child who says, “I want to live without worrying about money” while working as a delivery worker, a child whose love “must be kept quiet,” a child who opens a condom package for the first time with a sensitive heart, and a child who has to live “as if the world doesn’t exist” in an alleyway in a foreign country.
These children are put in situations where they “have to hide” or “have to keep explaining,” but in reality, they reveal their true feelings by saying, “My most honest feelings are when I have nothing to say.”
Even if the world ignores them or even treats them as non-existent, the fact that they exist in a dazzling yellow color is so obvious that there is no need to add anything.
The author's words, "Knowing that I am there is the beginning of me," contain the hope that no one will have to explain or prove their existence.


“I can’t even bring myself to offer feeble consolation or hasty hope.
I write novels quietly.

Are you okay? I'll leave a brief greeting.

Knowing that it is there is my beginning. “
_From the author's note

To those who are passing through a season that is like a long tunnel
Seven powerful stories that ask if you're okay and ask you to be okay.

In "Rambutan," Sedige tightly fastens her hijab to cover her hair, and in "Five Minutes Before Twelve," Yeongchan hides something in his bag and does not take it out in front of adults.
Jiyong from "The Unlocked Day" always keeps his door and heart tightly locked.
Even though they are constantly going back and forth between being okay and not okay, they are all unable to easily express what is on their minds.
They say, “Does it really matter if I’m okay or not?”, “I’ve never thought about whether I’m okay or not?”, or “I don’t have the energy to think about whether I’m okay or not.”
But the truth is, “I don’t know where or how to cry, so I’m just holding it in.”


Jin Hyeong-min's first young adult novel, "The Bear's Request," is a message to these children who are going through a long tunnel-like season - a question asking if they are okay, and a request for them to be okay.
It is also the heart itself that wants to be there for each other and become “a person who can ask each other if we are okay” rather than offering hasty words of comfort.
Then, every now and then, carefully, “It’s okay to cry, now is the time, offer your little shoulder.” (Song Su-yeon) While reading this book, the moment you suddenly feel “two palms gently touching my back,” the lock on the door of your heart might be temporarily released.