입속 지느러미 (A Mouth Full of Fins)

A Mouth Full of Fins is a horror novella about music, obsession, artistic failure, plagiarism, family inheritance and a mermaid whose song consumes everyone who hears it. The central character is Sunhyung Yoo, a former aspiring songwriter who has given up music after the collapse of her band and is trying to rebuild her life by becoming a low-ranking education-administration civil servant. The novel begins at the end: Sunhyung is looking at a severed head on a fishing boat in the West Sea. The head sits in a cooking pot like a fish head waiting to be prepared. Nearby are human bones stacked like Jenga pieces. On the dead man’s cheek Sunhyung sees a beautiful iridescent scale. This image unlocks the memory she has tried to seal away: an old aquarium in Seoul, her dead uncle Minyoung Kang, her former lover and bandmate Kyungju Lee, and the mermaid called Finny.

The story then moves backward. Sunhyung learns of Uncle Minyoung’s death just after completing her final interview for a national civil-service post. She travels from Ilsan to Buan for the funeral. On the train, she thinks about Kyungju, who used to be her friend, musical partner and lover. In college, she fell in love with him through his voice before she really knew him. He was wealthy, stylish, New York-raised, arrogant in the way of young people who believe taste is destiny, and he sang old Korean songs and obscure melancholy music in a voice that seemed to Sunhyung almost supernatural. She became obsessed with the idea that he must sing the songs she wrote. Together they formed an indie band called Indigo Wave.

For a while, music becomes Sunhyung’s whole life. She writes, manages, organizes, records, arranges, and devotes herself to Kyungju’s voice. But she eventually realizes that she and Kyungju do not stand on equal ground. He has money, family support, American education and the ability to start over. She has precariousness, student-level poverty and a family that wants her to stop dreaming and find a secure job. The band fails. Kyungju prepares to return to America to study cooking, leaving Sunhyung with bitterness and unfinished songs.