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It was three years ago when Soo’s husband died. He was on his way to court to finalize his divorce with her. 

Soo was waiting for her husband in front of the court building and was able to witness the whole accident better than anyone else. 

An unimaginable future was tailing her husband’s car. 

Those coming days were dark and foreboding, vague and unidentifiable in shape, but came at a ferocious speed. 

When Soo covered her suddenly blurry eyes with her hands and then opened them again after a couple of deep breaths, she was able to see her husband’s torso that had crashed through the windshield laying on top of the car bonnet along with windshield shards. 

수의 남편이 죽은 것은, 3년 전.

그녀와의 결별을 결정짓기 위해 이혼법정으로 가던 길에서였다.

법원 정문에서 남편을 기다리고 있던 수는 누구보다 정확히 사고의 현장을 목격할 수 있었다.

남편의 차 뒤꽁무니에 

그녀로서는 도저히 상상할 수 없는 앞날의 시간들이 매달려 달려오고 있었다.

수가 침침한 듯한 눈을 두 손으로 가리고,

두어 번 심호흡을 하고 다시 눈을 떴을 때,

수는 차창을 뚫고 나와 차창의 파편과 함께 보닛에 얹혀 있는 남편의 상체를 볼 수 있었다.

She woke up at the hospital after passing out at the accident site and screamed in despair after finding out that he was really dead. 

After being discharged from the hospital, she came to live with her parents who ran a stationery store. 

Just as he expected, inside her secret file were her journal entries and scribbles. 

He has forgotten about half of it by now, but he can still remember one sentence that repeatedly appeared in her journal and scribbles. 

‘One day I disappeared.’

Maybe that was why he had not noticed her all those years. What he had seen over the years may have been the traces or montages of her after she had disappeared. 

Just as her stationery store had existed right across from his store, the woman had always existed beyond his windows. But maybe she hadn’t really existed there after all. 

여자의 비밀파일에는 예상했던 대로 일기와 낙서 따위들이 입력되어 있었다.

아직도 기억에 남아 있는 것은 일기와 낙서 속에 반복되어 있던

하나의 문장이었다.

‘어느 날 나는 사라져 버렸다’ 

그가 지난 세월동안 그 여자를 발견할 수 없었던 이유는, 그래서였던가.

지난 세월 동안 그 여자는 그의 가게 바로 앞에 문방구가 존재하는 것과 똑같은 사실로

그의 창문 너머에 늘 존재했지만,

그러나 실제로 그 여자는

거기에 존재하지 않았던 것일지도 모를 일이었다.

Interview by SNU Korean Lit. Professor Bang Min-ho

What it means to disappear in this story is like the death a person from his or her social network. In the past, Soo had her husband, her in-laws, and her parents within her social network. But, with her husband’s death, her place in life, even her role in the combative relationship with her husband, had disappeared. That is different from death of a body. That’s a disappearance of her place within a social network. What grounded her life had disappeared and only her meaningless and repetitive life in a stationery store in front of an elementary school remained. That’s what she meant by “One day I disappeared.”

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Kim In-suk (Born in Seoul, 1963)

: Debuted with “The Season of Loss” in 1983

Won the 12th Hwang Sun-won Literary Prize in 2012, etc.