We Who Live in the Night

In this humid and gloomy southern city, a thirty-two-year-old man returned from studying in Japan, but he gradually sank between ideal and reality. He once regarded himself as an artist, but he repeatedly revised the drawings that no one cared about under the dim light bulbs of the rental house, and survived by odd part-time jobs and cheap beer. People around him come and go: similarly wandering migrant workers, lovers wandering in dilapidated alleys, friends burdened with family rifts... Their stories diffuse into the small room like smoke, reflecting souls who don't want to be seen. The novel does not pursue a dramatic climax, but records with an almost calm camera sense: daily quarrels, empty meals, the silence on the mother's phone, and lonely footsteps on the street late at night. Every trivial episode is like a dark brick, piling up the real dilemma of urban youth today - staggering forward among identity, desire and unsolvable life issues. This is a story about wandering and loss, and it is also a mirror that looks at reality: we once longed for the world to make way for us, but we learned to bow our heads in compromises again and again. The work attempts to uncover the illusion of happiness and dignity, leaving behind those unhealed wounds and unspeakable loneliness.