침이 고인다

Through one ordinary day, a young woman worn down by the pressures of a competitive city thinks back over the three months a younger acquaintance spent living in her rented room. The two met, shared the cramped space and parted. In that time the junior told her a secret she had kept from everyone, that her mother had abandoned her as a child, and since then every separation has left her with a strange bodily trace, her mouth filling with saliva. She keeps reaching out to others in small ways, even splitting her chewing gum with them. Shut out wherever she goes, at the cram school, in the library, in her own room, the woman finds it easier to be alone than to make room for someone as hurt as she is.

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About the book

Form

Short story

First published

2006 by Munhak Sasang

Author's age

26 when first published