Eun Kim’s Reviews > Violets > Status Update

“As she thinks how she can’t go back to who she was yesterday, or who she was that morning, her body finally begins to feel like it belongs to her.”

“The flowers she had planted one by one have been turned over in a single moment and are gone. Ahh – ak – Her screams echo against the pikes of earth and the walls of the art museum, resounding through the trees along the street; but no one hears. Only San herself, as it bounces against the museum and comes back to her in the dark.”

“…San’s attraction did not originate this summer, but rather, it has lain in wait for millennia before bursting forth all at once. Holding that desire to her breast, her earlobes red with heat, she cries long and hard inside the flower shop.”

“But now crying engulfs her. This desire grew slowly, stronger and stronger, but it never had any place to escape except for into sorrow. It has caused her to choose neglect. It has refused to be sublimated, but instead reappeared as a fresh green sadness.”

“When I called her name, she fled. Then she turned back, ran up to me, and punched the side of my face with all her might. At the end of that soft joy, this pain…”

“Ever since her unrelenting desire for the man began, the observing San that had considered every move of the corporal San had disappeared. The San who was sorrowful and yet would occasionally burst into laughter is also no more. And her will to communicate with the man by any means necessary has dissipated.”

“… The landlady had lived thinking, I want my children to turn out right so I’m going to hold off on divorce. I’ll leave when the kids grow up – but not she kept thinking, I’ve wounded my daughter in a way she’ll never recover from, and this made her cry constant, silent tears.”

“More than her husband destroying the piano, what really tortured her was the fact that her own daughter had called the police on her father.”

“…The words make not San but the people sitting on nearby benches react with surprise. They watch, waiting for her to reply.
The man lets go of her hand and stands up.
‘Let’s go to the ocean sometime.’
He bends over and kisses her on the cheek, and walks away past the fountain. It all happens in a moment.”

“How much time has passed?
‘I have to go,’ says San as she rises, and he grabs her hand.
‘May I love you?’
The sudden question drowns out the swish of the fountain’s water, only to be replaced by the claxon of traffic. Not everyone can say such things so baldly. Such words can only be said by someone who has never known pain.”