While I was reading, I felt a darkness and stillness, as if I was diving into the deepest ocean of my mind.
I don't like to be alone, lonely, and live differently from others. I used to be like that. I used to think that I was all alone in this big world. But I never said it out loud. There was no one to whom I could expose my weakness.
The closer you get to people, the more time you spend with them, the more likely you are to hurt each other. It takes some people many years to maintain the right distance from others. The friends from my school days that I still keep in touch with today have not been friends without a hitch. We have continued to mend our broken relationships, which is why we are here today. Without our love for each other, we would have drifted apart long ago.
Choi Eun-young is very good at portraying the subtleties of friendships that are just a step away from developing into romance, and brothers and sisters who are strangers but have a strong connection. Whether in Japan or Korea, what moves people, what they hate, regret, and love are the same. That's why books like "Watashi ni Mugai na Hito" (A Harmless Person for Me) can be read with empathy across our borders.
When she was a child, she thought that she would never become an adult who hurt people with insensitive words and caused them pain. She is a person who is very afraid that she might not become such an adult, or that she might hurt people with her writing.
“I want to be a harmless person."
I am sure that many Japanese people can relate to these words of the writer.