The Future of Adults (어른의 미래)

The Future of Adults is a short story collection by Pyeon Hye-young that examines adulthood not as a stable or authoritative state, but as a condition marked by fear, moral compromise, silence, and deferred responsibility. Across its stories, adults are repeatedly shown as unreliable, ethically ambiguous, or quietly desperate figures, while children and marginalized individuals bear the consequences of their failures. Rather than offering redemption or growth, the collection depicts adulthood as a prolonged process of containment—of grief, guilt, violence, and memory—where survival often replaces justice or care.

The collection opens with “Refrigerator”, a story that immediately establishes the emotional and ethical terrain of the book. The protagonist, Kim Mujin, is a middle school boy living with his dying grandfather, Kim Dong-hyun. Mujin’s daily life revolves around school baseball, which provides both structure and an escape from the suffocating reality of poverty and impending loss. His grandfather, who receives government assistance by concealing his deteriorating condition, repeatedly tells Mujin that “what will happen, will happen,” instilling in him a grim fatalism. When the grandfather finally dies, Mujin and his friend Jung Il-woo are left to confront the problem of what to do with the body. The refrigerator—emptied and cleaned beforehand—becomes a chillingly practical solution, symbolizing how death is reduced to logistics when no adult protection exists.

Compounding this horror is the presence of Mujin’s baseball coach, Choi Doyoung, a disgraced former athlete under investigation for sexual misconduct. Rather than acting as a guardian, Choi exploits Mujin’s vulnerability, pressuring him to forge his grandfather’s consent in order to save his own career. The story culminates in a scene where Choi opens the refrigerator, releasing a burst of cold air that replaces any explicit depiction of the corpse. The moment crystallizes the story’s central insight: adults use children to preserve their futures, while children are forced to shoulder unbearable realities alone. The refrigerator thus becomes a central metaphor for the entire collection—a sealed space where unpleasant truths are hidden so that life may continue on the surface.