1.

As soon as I sat at the table with a fresh cup of coffee, a notification popped up on my phone. An e-mail, most likely. Even before checking it, my brows furrowed. Moments earlier, I had received a notification from my publisher, who’d sent me feedback for a novel slated for publication the next year. The e-mail was long and carefully crafted, very kind. But the conclusion was obvious—the manuscript needed significant revisions.

        I didn’t have to go along with all the edits, but as a writer it’s easy to get swept up into your own story and lose objectivity about it. I couldn’t very much ignore the advice of someone who reviewed my work with impartial eyes. To be honest, when an author complains about their intentions being misunderstood, it often really reflects an underlying trust in the editor’s expertise. If we writers didn’t know that editors were right, receiving feedback wouldn’t bother us so much.

        Sipping my coffee, I opened the e-mail.

[Author Kim Seonmin_Collaboration Request]

It was a message from the local library, asking if I would be interested in writing for their quarterly publication. The theme was ‘the childhood of an author.’ The deadline was good, and the payment reasonable. Not being the type of person who dwells too long on such things, I quickly confirmed the job. Only after hitting SEND did I realize I’d read the date wrong. I thought the deadline was the 27th of the following month, but it was actually this month. I wondered if another writer had bailed out, but then again, I didn’t really care.

        Even if another writer had fallen through, it didn’t mean my work wasn’t still my own.

        I tried my best not to let pride get in the way of my writing, but the very fact that I had to actively try meant that my petty ego was hard to let go of. I wondered why. After all, my decision to become a writer had been quite impulsive, and I’d made it in my teens no less.

2.

No one was home. Dad was a civil servant, while Mom sold insurance plans. My older sister was a high school student, and since she also frequented several hagwons, she never came back before nine p.m. I was always alone when I got home after school. I spent my time lying on the couch, watching endless music videos on Mnet. Nothing noteworthy happened at my school. The teens I saw in dramas, movies, and the news looked different from me. And not just them, but the whole world also seemed to be a never-ending string of events. But the world I lived in was utterly silent, like it had been vacuum-sealed. Were the dramas and movies lying? Or was I part of an elaborate prank, with a hidden crew secretly recording me?

        Time rolled by as I mulled over these thoughts until eventually evening came. Some days. I had hagwon classes, other times I didn’t. Because Mom never came home before seven, I rarely sat down to a proper meal. Most of the time I just grabbed some leftovers from the fridge and wolfed it down.

        I had no idea who I wanted to become, or the person I would end up becoming, but one thing was certain—I didn’t want to live like Mom.

        “Leave it, I’ll do it later.”

        Mom sat sideways on the couch, waiting for her daily soap opera to start.

        “Mom, what was your dream?”

        “Not now. And close the lid.”

        I know it sounds ungrateful to say, but to me, my mom’s life seemed incredibly dull. During the day, she begged people to buy insurance policies, then she came home, ate dinner and watched her soap opera. So mundane.

        When I looked at Mom through my fourteen-year-old self, I felt like she was barely living. Rather, she was just getting by.

3.

I had just accepted the library’s offer when another notification popped up. Work always comes in waves. It was an e-mail titled [Author Kim, is this the right address?]. I tapped it open.

        Author Kim, is this your actual e-mail address? I found it on Google, but I’m not sure if it’s legit. I’ve read Chance and Fate, the book you published last year.

After reading the first few lines, this person didn’t sound like a fan of mine, nor like they were writing because they had particularly enjoyed my work. There was a certain impatience and urgency in their tone. Or maybe it was just my state of mind. I’d published a fair number of works, but readers always remained a source of fear for me.

        I’m the leading member of a parent advisory committee. I read your book as it was selected for our school’s program, A Book per Semester, and. . . quite frankly, I was shocked.

        If a child’s parents are divorcing, it should be natural to try and stop them, but the girl in your book is actively encouraging them! I must also say that I found it rather uncomfortable that the teacher decided to never get married. I understand marriage isn’t for everyone, but why portray being single as a good thing—even cool!—in a novel for children who are still growing?

        I worry they might develop a distorted view of marriage. I sincerely hope that wasn’t your intention. Actually, I’m certain it wasn’t. After all, you must love children, or you wouldn’t be writing books for them. Am I wrong?

        In the future, I urge you to consider the impact your words will have on young, malleable minds. I believe it’s part of our responsibility as adults.
 

Occasionally I would come across one-line reviews about my work, calling it ‘boring,’ ‘insignificant,’ ‘not great,’ but this kind of review (if it could even be called that) was a first. After reading through it, I burst out laughing. Our responsibility as adults? I wondered what kind of books one would have to write to be considered a responsible adult, and who, exactly, gets to be the judge of that. But before I could type out anything, my fingers fell limp on the keyboard. I closed the laptop. To calm my nerves, I went to brew a fresh pot of coffee. I noticed that the earlier batch, now cold, was sitting abandoned on the counter. I poured it down the drain.

I couldn’t shake off the tension. It would be hypocritical of me to say I became a young adult writer because I liked kids. It had just happened, like everything in this world.

4.

“‘A Day in the Life of My Mom’? That’s so childish.” My Korean language teacher had assigned our class to write a record of our mothers’ daily life. “I bet she hopes we’ll end up saying something like, ‘Oh, now I finally understand her.’”

        It seemed like every writing assignment the adults gave us—whether it was a journal entry or an essay—followed the same formula. They wanted stories with a banal lesson that barely scratched the surface of life. They wanted to stitch us up before we even got a single scrape.

“It’ll be a piece of cake for you,” some classmate told me.

        Ever since I won first prize at the school essay competition, everyone started calling me ‘the writer.’ It’s scary how powerful it is to be pigeonholed like that. I literally won just that one contest, and hadn’t received any other awards since, and yet my classmates still asked me to write the Teacher’s Day letter on behalf of the class and nominated me for every essay contest that came up. The more these things happened, the less I wanted to write. I was afraid they’d eventually find out I wasn’t that good and be disappointed, a fear rooted in the fact that I never had anyone expect anything from me.

        “Come again?” I cupped my ear jokingly.

        It was barely past three o’clock, but it was already growing dark outside. The weather forecast had predicted rain, and with a flash of lighting, the sky burst open and poured down buckets. Even in this weather, Mom was probably trudging up to every house in the countryside trying to sell insurance.

        A day in her life. . . In the morning, she prepared breakfast just in time for Dad to eat before heading off to work. Then she woke my sister and me so we could join him. After we each left in turn, Mom would roughly pile the dishes in the sink and go to work herself. She’d meet with clients, sometimes closing contracts and other times not, then in the evening she’d return home for a quick dinner and settle in to watch her soap opera. By nine, before the news even finished, she’d be asleep on the couch. If we tried to wake her, she’d insist she wasn’t sleeping—only to start snoring moments later.

        Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night to see Mom sitting at the kitchen table, staring into the void. If I asked her what she was doing, she’d tell me to go back to bed. Come morning, it felt like I had dreamed all of it.

I already knew what her day was like. Maybe I could end my assignment with some nice catchphrases like, I had no idea my mother worked so hard for us. I’ll be a better daughter from now on.

        I thought about what I could write to get a good grade. Throughout the fourteen years of my life, no one ever complimented me on anything—except for my writing. I could easily get out of competitions, but school assignments were mandatory. I figured I might as well try to keep my title as ‘the writer.’ That’s how insignificant I was, clinging to such a meaningless label.

5.

        Dear reader, this is author Kim Seonmin.

        You sent your e-mail to the right address. Thank you for reading my book.

        I’d like to rectify a few misunderstandings, so I mustered up the courage to reply back.

As I typed the period at the end of the sentence, I sighed. Readers had the right to review my work, I shouldn’t react to every comment. And just because they viewed the world differently from me, it didn’t mean I was wrong. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t soothe my nerves.

        After all, you must love children, or you wouldn’t be writing books for them.

        Those words echoed in my ears. No one became an office worker out of love for a company, so why should a YA author love children? It wasn’t that I didn’t like them; rather, children were simply unrelated to the reason I decided to write the stories I wrote. I realized how pathetic a writer can seem, rambling on about misunderstandings regarding their work, and the hopelessness of knowing that even if I tried to explain, they’d never understand.

        It was better not to answer. Writers should let their works speak for themselves; going around taking issue with every reader review just didn’t feel right.

        I love writing young adult novels and children’s books. At first, I wanted my job to be nothing more than that, but along the way I became too attached. There’s a special joy I feel only when I’m writing, just like Yuna Kim feels when she’s skating or Son Heung-min does on the soccer field.

        Of course I can’t compare myself to these great names, but I do take pride in my craft. However, you seem to have misunderstood: I don’t write because I want to teach something to children. I care about them, but it’s a love for those I share the same space with, not for a specific person.

        Dear reader, you said that you were worried about children growing up with a twisted view of the world because of my writing, and mentioned our responsibility as adults. If someone reading my writing feels that living unmarried isn’t so bad, I would be very happy.

Despite knowing that answering the e-mail was a bad choice, I kept making excuses. I felt as though I’d never be able to write again until I released this urge. I could decide later whether to send my reply or not; for now, I needed to get this off my chest.

6.

“Good grief, are you planning on writing a best seller?”

        When I looked up some tips on good writing, I found a few commonalities. One of them was to be detailed. So, if I understood it correctly, instead of writing I ate, you’d write, I ate the kimchijjigae my mom cooked for me right after coming home from work, without even changing her clothes. As a result, I decided to follow Mom around to see for myself what her day was like.

        “I don’t want to hear you complain about waking up early tomorrow, understood? We have to be out the door by eight.”

        We lived in a small provincial town, but Mom worked primarily in the rural area where my grandparents lived. When she first started working in insurance, she immediately signed my grandpa and grandma up. Then, the married couple living next door mentioned they needed insurance too, so Mom explained how it worked, and that’s how it all began. She traveled around small villages signing up the dozen or so households living there, and at first her performance was pretty good. But now she said that things had become harder.

        “Are you taking all of this?” I asked, seeing the bulging bags she was carrying.

        “They won’t even listen unless you show up with some kind of gift,” Mom muttered. Back when I was in middle school, a five-day week was unheard of, and everyone worked on Saturdays without batting an eye. I went back to my room without a word and locked the door.

        All I did was lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.

        I wanted to have a crush on one of the boys in my class, fall in love with them, like in the movies or dramas. But they were all so immature, more like toddlers than teenagers. Finding them attractive felt to me like lowering my standards, and a single look at their faces was enough to make me sigh. The thought that they might feel the same about me never crossed my mind. While I knew the world didn’t revolve around me, I couldn’t let go of a tiny sliver of hope that I was indeed the main character. Maybe it was that faint hope that kept me going through the dullness of my days.

I heard Mom clicking her tongue just outside my door.

        “See? I knew you wouldn’t get up.”

        My eyes felt dry, as if I’d spent the night awake, only managing to doze off for a second. It’ll be a piece of cake for you. Those words kept echoing in my ears, the voices of my classmates expecting a piece from me worthy of an award. I forced myself to get up.

        Stepping out of my room, I saw Mom already dressed in her black spandex trousers, a flashy brooch pinned to her blue blazer. Standing at the dining table, she was eating some leftover pumpkin rice cake from last night.

        “You’ll get hungry later, so hurry up and eat something.”

        I went to the bathroom and after emptying my bladder, I washed my face and tied my hair. Mom put the rice cake in a Ziploc bag. I slipped into a pair of jeans and a hoodie, then followed Mom out of the house.

        When the chilly air of early fall touched my face, I regretted not putting on a jacket. Sitting in the passenger seat, I leaned my head on the window. Watching my mom leave the house before sunrise helped me realize the sacrifices she makes for me, filling my heart with a deep ache. From this moment on, I vow to be a better daughter. The sentences slowly formed in my mind.

        After an hour of driving, we were in the countryside. Mom parked at the village’s entrance, picked up her phone and made a call.

        “It’s me. You’re still home, right? I was in the neighborhood, and you’d mentioned you were out of disposable gloves so I brought you some. Is it okay if I stop by now? Ah, I know you’re busy, don’t worry. I also have somewhere to be right after. Yes, okay.”

        “You didn’t make an appointment?”

        “Nobody gives up their time for free, sweetpea.”

        Now that she had somewhere to be, her face brightened. She started up the car again, humming a tune. Was she really that happy about this visit? Less than five minutes later, we pulled into a house with a courtyard. Heads of lettuce and perilla leaves sprouted from the vegetable garden. A man and a woman, around my mom’s age, were getting ready to head out, their clothes stained with dirt.

        From the trunk, Mom grabbed bundles of rubber gloves, Ziploc bags, and toothpaste tubes, throwing them into a paper bag with her insurance company’s logo on it.

        “You’re such a hard worker,” Mom said to the ajumma.

        “We’re just back for a second, we need to head out again soon.”

        “Exactly my point.”

        Mom took the woman by the hand and led her to the wooden square bench out in the courtyard, where they sat. The husband, unsure of what to do, eventually decided to leave. Mom handed over the paper bag, telling the ajumma to let her know if they ever needed anything else. She scooted closer and, before giving her the chance to answer, Mom said, “Have you thought about it?”

“I already have an insurance—why would I need another one?”

“Your plan doesn’t cover cancer, which is why you need a dedicated policy. You know Mr. Kim from the next village over? Well, a couple years ago I tried to tell him how important it was to be covered in cases like that, and he ended up signing up for a small thirty-thousand-won-a-month cancer policy. He called me just two days ago, and guess what? He got cancer! You won’t believe how grateful he was I convinced him back then. Life is unpredictable like that.”

        The woman didn’t look like the type who said “no” very often. Mom, in contrast, was unyielding. She spoke as if people who didn’t get insurance were idiots. Watching her made me uncomfortable. Instead of the hardworking person I’d imagined her to be, she looked like a hustler, someone who’d push others into buying things they didn’t need.

        I left the courtyard, wondering if we were really that poor. I knew that despite the many hours he worked, Dad’s salary was low. I was also aware that my sister, a very ambitious student, was racking up quite a bit of tuition costs every month, and we were also dealing with some debt, the origin of which I didn’t understand.

        A while later, I heard Mom calling me. Back in the yard, I saw the woman signing some documents. Once she was done, Mom slipped the papers into a folder and opened the car door. I quickly climbed inside.

        “It was a wise decision! You’ll thank me later.”

        The woman nodded, a bitter smile on her face. Not wanting to make eye contact with her, I turned my head away.

        “We’ll be back just past eleven, perfect!”

        “Perfect?”

        “There’s someplace else I need to be. After that, we can go have a nice meal, maybe some kalguksu, or galbitang.”

I didn’t answer. The day was getting warmer. Now I was regretting choosing the thick hoodie instead of a t-shirt and a light jacket. Mom took off her blue blazer. The rhinestones on her black shirt sparkled in the sunlight.

        I thought about my essay, what I would write: My mom successfully closed a deal.

        In this world, there are both children who wish with all their hearts for their parents to be divorced, and teachers who decide not to marry. I don’t know if you’ve read my other books, but I also wrote about LGBTQ+ characters. The reason for this choice isn’t to encourage children to become gay, transgender, or adopt any specific identity (you can’t force someone to be something they’re not), but simply because these people exist.
 

As I put the words on the page, my emotions flared. Arguing with a reader was a foolish idea. If I were to send this e-mail, it would certainly stir up problems, even though I wasn’t that famous of a writer. Still, I couldn’t help it. I felt like after years of work, the dam had broken and water was gushing out. Many people accused me of promoting the wrong values just because they didn’t agree with my views, or believed that children’s stories and young adult novels should give straightforward answers. And it wasn’t just a few readers. All of them wanted me to be an agitator instead of a writer. However, the kind of agitation they expected from me didn’t align with my own values.

7.

We arrived at a five-story residential building. Mom went up to the first floor unit, the voices of a TV program pouring out from within. She rang the doorbell. Suddenly, the sound cut off. Mom rang again, saying, “Minyeong, we agreed to meet today. Answer the door please.”

        Inside, I heard the chattering of small children before it stopped.

        “Did you have an actual appointment?” I asked.

        “Are they gonna waste my time again? If they think I’m just gonna leave, they’re wrong.” She looked stern. “I swear, what’s up with you people? I gave you toothpaste, supermarket coupons, cooking oil, even flour! These are gifts for those who sign up for an insurance plan. How many times are you going to make me come here? Huh?”

        Mom’s voice was getting louder. I grew nervous, worried the neighbors might hear. Behind the door, only silence. Mom kept ringing the doorbell. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. It had only been a few minutes, but it felt like hours.

        “I’m not leaving today. You’re going to work at noon, aren’t you? Let’s see what you’re gonna do then! People should have a conscience.”

Right then, the door swung open. A woman, around ten years younger than Mom, stood at the threshold, furious.

        “I never said I wanted insurance! I simply asked a few questions out of curiosity, you’re the one who decided to shove all that stuff at me.” She glared at Mom.

        “I didn’t force you to take anything! You were all smiles and nice words, like you were going to sign right away, and now that you’ve got the gifts, you won’t even open the door? Unbelievable.”

        The woman gave me a once over, then with a smirk, she went back inside. She returned with a bunch of toilet paper rolls, plastic gloves, opened toothpaste tubes, half-used bottles of cooking oil, and thrust them into Mom’s arms.

        “If you care so much, here, take it all. You’re disgusting, really.”

        Mom’s cheeks trembled slightly. I just wanted to go home. I couldn’t understand why she was so invested in selling one more stupid insurance plan. I tugged at her sleeve. Mom opened her mouth, but she looked at me and sighed. The woman seized the opportunity and slammed the door in our faces. For a long while, Mom stood defeated in front of the metal surface.

        Eventually we went back to the car. Sitting in the passenger seat, I urged Mom to leave, but she hesitated.

“Wait here.”

        Mom got out of the car and walked toward the trunk to retrieve something. A part of me had a good idea of what she was about to do, but the other didn’t want to know. I closed my eyes.

        I doubt any author wants their readers to grow up with a distorted view of the world because of their work. And even if it does happen, I don’t think the writer should be held accountable for it. On the other hand, I don’t believe authors write books to educate readers on the correct worldview either—unless that’s the intention of the work.

        I’m not sure if you’ll understand, but I only write the stories I want to write. To be honest, I don’t really think about the impact my books will have on the world.

        My goal is just to be a sincere writer. It might sound strange since a novel is, by its nature, fictional. I guess what I mean is, I strive to depict the world I see and feel as genuinely as I can.

        Instead of describing a mother sacrificing herself for her children, I might write that she is so desperate to close a deal that she will force an insurance contract on others and be humiliated for it. While her stubbornness surely comes from the desire to help her children, it’s also undeniable that her behavior is driven by the need for self-validation as a middle-aged woman who feels unable to prove herself in any other way.

        The characters in my books are all trying to prove themselves, in some form or another. Even if that means shouting at their parents to get a divorce.

8.

As soon as we got home, Mom took the snacks from the table and ate them standing. It was a little after twelve.

        “Should we order something? What about jjajangmyeon?”

        I shook my head and went to my room. Lying on the bed, I thought back to what I’d witnessed. Mom had taken a big bag of freebies—disposable gloves, toothpaste—out of the trunk and gone back to that house. I stared at her from the passenger seat. She looked like she was ready to ring the doorbell and throw the bag right at the woman, but then she turned toward me. I squeezed my eyes shut.

        I don’t how much time passed before she was back in the car, turning the engine on.

        “Let’s go, I’m hungry,” she said casually.

        I didn’t want to cry, but I felt the tears pressing at the corner of my eyes. I bit down on my lips so hard I tasted the metallic tang of blood. Some vague thought swirled around in my head—something about life being sad, I think. I don’t remember exactly, but I distinctly recall feeling like the entire world was tainted.

        I fell asleep. Startled, I opened my eyes to find it was already past three in the afternoon. Mom was dozing off on the couch. A rerun of her weekday soap opera was on TV.

        “Why are you doing this? Are you really saying your son’s cheating is my fault? I did everything I could to save our marriage.”

        The dialogue was drowned out by Mom’s snoring. It got louder and louder until she startled herself awake. Her eyes opened for a second, then she swiftly went back to sleep. On the dining table lay a few Tupperware containers of half-eaten food.

        I opened the rice cooker. The rice had dried out after being left inside on the warm setting for too long. I helped myself to a generous serving and sat down at the table.

        My mom isn’t the person I believed she was.

        Out of nowhere, I thought this sentence ought to start my essay.

        I shoved a spoonful of rice in my mouth. There were times when I saw how tenacious Mom could be, but I never believed she could be so crude.

        I realized that unless I confessed how little I knew about my mother, the story wouldn’t move forward. I picked up the remote from the table and turned off the TV. Right on cue, Mom muttered, “Not sleeping.” She didn’t ask me to turn it on again.

The mother I knew wasn’t there with me.
 

        Surely the world needs texts that aim to educate the reader, but my books don’t belong in that category. Can you imagine how bad the situation must be for a child to wish their parents would divorce? I want to carefully delve deep into the hearts of children who harbor such desires. I want to bring to light the kids who worry they’re not normal because they don’t fit in the conventional scheme of boy-likes-girl or vice versa.

        Above all, I want to give individuality to those we just indiscriminately lump together as ‘ajummas’ or ‘students.’
 

I didn’t send the e-mail. A pop-up asked me if I wanted to save it as a draft. I clicked NO. My books should have already conveyed the message, and if they didn’t, then the fault lay with the writing—and ultimately, with me.

I had to accept that my perspective would never align with some readers. And if that meant failure, then choosing it willingly was my commitment as a writer.

9.

“. . . Her arms full of gifts, Mom tried to convince her clients to sign up for an insurance plan. She cursed at them and was cursed at in response. My mother is neither good nor bad; she’s just a weak person struggling to secure one more contract. When Mom walked back to that house with the freebies bag and couldn’t bring herself to ring the doorbell upon seeing me, I felt like a pair of shackles around her wrists. Mom probably never wanted to live that kind of life. Just as I don’t want to live like her. I can’t blindly judge her anymore—because the look in her eyes, trembling when they met mine as she knocked on the door, keeps haunting me.”

        I finished reading and sat down. No one said anything, not the teacher, not my classmates. A completely different reaction from what happened after the presentation before mine. There was no laughter, no mocking, no applause. Although I hadn’t received my score yet, the sudden desire to become a writer had already taken root in my mind.

For the first time I had a dream. It differed from what I’d been given by birth—my nationality, my gender, the fact that I was the second daughter of a working-class family. It was something I had chosen. I think it was then that I realized writing could touch on the most painful parts of oneself.

        At last, I heard my classmates talking among each other. Hyejeong tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Did your mom give you permission to read this? It’s a scary story.” Before I could ask what was scary about it, the teacher spoke up.

        “You know kids, I also didn’t want to be like my mother, but now when I look back, I wonder why I was so harsh toward her. Hearing Seonmin’s story reminds me of my mom.”

        In the end, I didn’t care about the score. I didn’t even care if my classmates realized that I’d won that writing competition out of sheer luck.

I challenged myself by submitting a short story to the annual spring literary contest, but I didn’t make it. The next year, I entered the Youth Literature Award, introduced to me by a friend, and I won. It was the first young adult novel I’d ever written. I thought I would go back to writing adult fiction, but even when the opportunity arose, I couldn’t. It felt like wearing clothes that never quite fit me. Since then, I’ve been writing children’s stories and young adult novels.

        As I wondered with what mindset I wrote my stories, I realized I’d never given a thought to my readers at all. The moment I started writing for the sake of getting good grades, the writing grabbed me by the neck and dragged me along.

        I wrote to dig into my own emotions, to console my younger self, to prove my own existence. I wrote what I believed to be the truth.

        How far or how close was I to the fourteen-year-old girl who wrote that essay about her mom? Whenever I write, it feels like I’m her all over again—the girl who chose who she wanted to be. If I had made a different choice back then, who would I be now? As I stand on the path I’ve chosen from many others, I wonder.

Translated by Giulia Macrí