“For some reason, I wanted to honor his face as the symbol of those left behind.

Not the face trying to forget with all one’s might,

but the face trying to remember with all one’s heart.”

Stories of people who continue to live even after losing their loved ones

A duet between the dead and the living transcending the boundary of life and death

This is the first short story collection by Kim Hyun, a poet praised for “pushing forward his own poetic world while faithfully fulfilling his poetic mission of advocating for the minorities” (Shin Dong-yeop Literary Award) and “expressing rich human life, emotions, and stories as well as social consciousness in a unique manner.” (Kim Joon-sung Literary Award) Kim has been portraying the sentiments of queers living in Korean society with a delicate and affectionate point of view while also actively working as a human rights activist. He has been diligently joining the “304 Reading,” which remembers the 304 people who could not return from the Sewol Ferry and moderated at the October 29 Itaewon Tragedy Memorial Literary Festival. Every month, he holds a “Duet Reading” with another poet at a café. As an extension of his activities inside and out of poetry, Ghost Duet uses the supernatural (ghosts and apparitions) and topics from science fiction (holograms and virtual reality) to pursue a solid connection between the living and the dead and the past and the present, portraying the lives of those who survived social disasters and nerve-wracking love stories of young and adolescent queers. The eleven works have become a single book in this meaningful collection over five years, in which the characters’ individual stories come together as duets and choruses to create a genuine wave of mourning and change.

“They showed off how alive they are as much as they could for each other”

Those who endure being alive and rely on the smallest of wishes,

Eleven short stories in which happiness answers unhappiness, so to speak

In Kim’s stories, the dead have a place in this world for one reason or another; a mother who has already crossed the passage from life to death pays a surprise visit to her daughter and her lover in the middle of the night, having drinks with the neighbors, (Water Moon) and a character who died in a car accident appears in front of her lover via a holographic player to read her first short story collection. (Ghost Duet)

As the title of the collection suggests, Ghost Duet takes for granted the connection and solidarity between the dead and the dead, the dead and the living, and the living and the living. Such a tendency is especially apparent in the eponymous story Ghost Duet and Virtual Tour, which use technological elements often found in works of science fiction. If Ghost Duet affirms the existence of ghosts and enables lovers to meet across the river of death with holographic technology, Virtual Tour introduces a world where virtual reality tours have become common. On one of those virtual tours, the narrator encounters a procession of the dead protesting for the rights of citizens and minorities.

Ghost Duet doesn’t stop at simply overlapping life and death but points out the social and historical causes of death and suggests gathering small happiness and wishes to move forward despite a myriad of misfortunes. For example, Suyeong in Swimming accesses the metaverse platform “Wild” and creates a completely new identity called “Swimming,” rewriting the story of the real “life of Swimming” instead of the “life of Suyeong, who survived by herself.” Cheolhee, in Angeles Come with Nice Weather, writes a novel where a group of teenagers, modeled after his club friends, fight against a monstrous creature that appears with a blue mist. He initially plans to kill everyone in the end but eventually decides to make all of them survive. Kim captures the weak yet vibrant ripples of hope with his delicate expressions and senses the possibilities of changes right then and there. He raises a poignant question to us with his fictional imagination: how should we, as those who happen to survive, live on after a disaster?

“Rather than staying by his side for a long time, I just wanted to stay with him”

An ardent, heart-wrenching, and sweet love story, an invitation to a narrative of broader love

Ghost Duet is also a collection of love stories that spans across generations, classes, genders, and sexual orientations. Middle-aged lesbian couples and young and poor gay couples meet each other at rallies for a freer world, in bars and food joints where people whisper love and minds, and in fiction writing classes, burning hot in love and then breaking up coldly. In Sample Generation, Seungnam and Youngsoo, a couple in a relationship for nine years, climb up a hill in the middle of winter to view a sample rental house. Seungnam has spent a few hard months searching for information and preparing and submitting documents, but Youngsoo doesn’t like any of the rental houses they see, and their feelings for each other start to fall apart; their troubles over house-hunting and arguments are not unfamiliar to us. Angeles Come with Nice Weather portrays young love and acutely depicts how the shadow of social disaster creeps into queer relationships. The Cheolhee and Suho pair, who are reluctant to show their love for each other, end up confessing their feelings to each other in the face of the very real fear of not knowing when and how they might die. The romance between queer couples can be unique in that it is so universal yet so close to death, and Ghost Duet also clearly demonstrates this point and stresses the power of love. As author Cho Haejin said, the collection “conveys the message that we are still left with love with a delicate yet tenacious voice.” Because we have love, we are still alive, and we remain human.

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