Han Kang

We Do Not Part

Saima

I slipped on a pair of trainers and opened the front door for the first time in two months. The summer sun flooded the west-facing corridor; the afternoon light was a revelation. 

It can be dificult to distinguish for- bearance from resignation, sorrow from partial reconciliation, fortitude from loneliness. I thought about how difficult it can be to tell these emotions apart on the basis of facial expressions and gestures, about how the person in question may struggle to distinguish these feelings in themselves

Nate

That day, she came to understand something clearly. That when people died, their bodies went cold. Snow remained on their cheeks, and a thin layer of bloody ice set over their faces.

Inseon had told me to address older people here as samchun. Only outsiders say ajossi or ajumoni, halmoni or haraboji, she said. Ifyou start off by calling them samchun, even if you can't string together a sentence in Jeju-mal, theyre likely to be less guarded, thinking you’ve lived on the island for a good while.

It started with those research folk. There weren't many who saw it with their own eyes, they said, and asked me to tell them, said if I didn't get it off my chest before I died, no one would ever know. I figured that wasn't wrong, so I told them that very day. That was the first time. Once I did though, others kept coming. They’d get me talking, then they'd leave, and I’d be turned inside out for days of course. I knew what it'd do to me, and stil, as much as I could, I did as they asked.

Past the reach of the light from the water's surface.

Past the point where gravity overtakes buoyancy.

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