Love in the Big City

Sang Young Park

Chapters (9)

Love in the Big City

Title Page

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Grove Press

New York

Copyright

Jacket design by Michel Vrana

Jacket art: street scene © isaxar/iStock; fingers symbol © Andrii Koltun/iStock

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Originally published in Korea in 2019 as Daedosiui Sarangbeop by Changbi Publishers.

Simultaneously published in the United Kingdom by Tilted Axis Press.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: November 2021

This book is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-5878-9

eISBN 978-0-8021-5879-6

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

PART ONE

Jaehee

I took the elevator to the third floor of the hotel and went into the Emerald Hall. Had she said the guest list was four hundred people? It looked like a lot more than that. I sat down in my designated seat and looked around the table: my cohort of French majors, all of us aging at different speeds. How many of them were there? I guess this was the reward for Jaehee saying yes to every postgraduation bender and homecoming-day event. Moments like these made Jaehee’s social life seem to border on the grotesque. I was forced to acknowledge acquaintances I hadn’t talked to in five, even ten years. “Congratulations! I hear you’re a writer now.” “You should get in touch more often.” “Hey, there was a rumor that you’d died, but here you are!” “Where can I find your stories? I tried searching for them on the Internet.” “Wow, writing must be tough on you. Look at how much weight you’ve gained.” “Do you still drink as much as you used to?”