Lemon

by Kwon Yeo-Sun

Rather than try to find the real culprit, the detective would have considered whom he could—or should—crush and turn into the culprit. And that’s exactly what he tried to do.

Some lives are unfair for no apparent reason, but we carry on, completely unaware, like miserable vermin.

“Death carves a clear line between the dead and the living,” she said in a solemn tone. “The dead are over there and the rest of us are over here. When someone dies, no matter how great they were, it’s like drawing a permanent line between that person and the rest of humanity. If birth means begging to join the side of the living, then death has the power to kick everyone out.

I still can’t help but wonder, do our lives truly hold no meaning? Even if you try desperately to find it, to contrive some kind of meaning, is it true that what’s not there isn’t there? Does life leave only misery behind? Could the fact that we’re alive—the fact that we’re in this life where joy and terror and peace and danger mingle—couldn’t that itself be the meaning of life?