Bora Chung

From time to time, her husband came home a little earlier than usual and the two of them spent a quiet evening together, but they had never had a fiery romance to begin with or had much in terms of memories to fall back on. They had spent too much of their marriage in a state of emotional detachment to really start making an effort to be affectionate now. They usually ate dinner in silence, watched some television in silence, and her husband would go to bed first in silence.

“Să vorbesc româneşte acum.”

“Bine, hai.”

“Cum te simţi azi?”

“Sunt bine. Mersi.”

Parents who destroy their children’s lives, who suck the life out of their children’s futures, not only for the sake of maintaining their own illusions but also to zealously expand them into the lives of their children—such parents can almost be understood from the perspective of obsession.

Following the words “Be grateful I raised you” is the implied clause “instead of killing you or leaving you for dead.” They probably mean it, too. My parents and their parents’ generations, after surviving the Korean War, had always, just like the generation that survived World War II, set their purpose not to live a human life but to have an animal’s instinct for survival.

For some people, their lives are ruled by one shocking event reverberating through their survival instincts.

Life shrinks into a trap made up of a shimmering moment in the past, a trap where they endlessly repeat that singular moment when they were surest of being alive.

Those who stare for too long at the sun are bound to go blind

But distinguishing between the three is now meaningless. Seth, Derek, and Model 1 are now synchronized. Their memories and thoughts are completely congruent, and they’re even physically connected to each other

That was the first time he sobbed in earnest. Not the cries of someone driven mad with fear, but the tears of someone who understood and was saddened by their own loneliness—the tears of a human being

It was beautiful. He couldn’t help thinking so when, for the first time, he could clearly see It by the light of the sun. It was truly, monstrously beautiful