When I write—or when I’m going about my day—I sometimes feel as vague and uncertain as if I’m all alone wandering through a cloud of dust, but sometimes I feel a warmth, like my hands have touched something. I want to call that something love. I know all too well how this emotion called love, how the word itself, can easily crumble into nothing, but all I can do is tightly grip this tiny bit of warmth and embrace it with all my might. Just so I can live on as myself. Just so I can live this life as myself and myself alone.

Summer 2019

From Seoul, the big city that I love,

Sang Young Park

* The engineering student’s text message in “Jaehee” is a line taken from 2da’s Uncut and Unlimited Play (Random House Korea, 2008).

* The HIV PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) scene in “Late Rainy Season Vacation” was written using information from “Truvada for PrEP Fact Sheet: Ensuring Safe and Proper Use” (FDA, 2012) and “Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV Prevention” (CDC, 2014). It is also said to have been proven that the same pill taken within seventy-two hours of “high-risk sexual behavior” followed by a daily twenty-eight-day regimen is effective in preventing HIV infection (consultant: Kim Wu-yong, preventive medicine specialist).

* While the geographic locations of this work are based in fact, all characters and incidents are fiction.

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