I didn’t know this while I was first writing the work that would become Love in the Big City, but the process of putting my stories together and revising them to write this novel was one that made me feel embarrassed for myself again and again. So much of this book leans on the past, both on my own personal history and that of many people around me.

As I kept thinking through my past, wanting to live as someone who was myself and myself alone, it was hard to accept that I was, indeed, the person that I was when I first wrote the words in this book. These contradictory feelings created a difficult situation for both me and the people around me. To have written a book about them with a title as fancy as Love in the Big City seems, I don’t know, a little less than conscientious . . . but what can I do. To all the people who bought me drinks and willingly gave me a part of their lives as well as their precious emotions (I was admittedly not the greatest person to receive them), I only want to say how sincerely grateful I am for such gifts, and for how we tried our best, even if we are no longer together.

There have been many changes during the year I spent editing this book. The Constitutional Court declared the statute criminalizing abortion to be unconstitutional, rendering the “crime” of abortion obsolete. HIV PrEP was approved by ­Korea’s authorities and our national health insurance began covering it for high-risk demographics. All writers are condemned to depict their worlds at least a step or two behind, which can be overwhelming, but for at least this citizen-writer, the fact that society changes faster than my writing can catch up is a joyful thing.

“Young,” who narrates the four stories in this book, is simultaneously the same person and different people. The person who is writing this now is perhaps someone very different from who I really am, a person who could be someone you know very well, even yourself, the one person you wanted to avoid at all costs because you’re feeling too overwhelmed. Way before I became a writer, I was just a young person in the Noughties trying to make it from day to day, and also a citizen of the Republic of Korea, and writing and speaking of the issues I write and speak about was a desperate act for me.

I was desperate enough to pour everything I had into this act.

As I tackled these sensitive issues head-on, I tried hard not to forget that I was also not free from these issues nor completely guiltless myself. It required a considerable amount of courage.