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A strange news item about a mouse with a human ear growing on its back takes the narrator back to 1991. His father's company had gone under, the family had split up, and after drifting between friends' flats he rented a room at the Gab-eul Gosiwon, a study house near campus, for 90,000 won a month with meals, paid for by his brother, a day labourer. The room is less a room than a coffin: to sleep he lifts the chair onto the desk and slides his legs underneath. The walls are plywood a centimetre thick, and on his first night his neighbour, the one tenant still truly studying for a state exam, angrily orders him to be quiet. So he becomes someone who makes no noise at all, walking on tiptoe and barely moving.

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About the book

Form

Short story

First published

2004 by Munhak Sasang

Author's age

36 when first published