“Happy End” drawn by writer Lee Ju-ran who captures sparkling moments with care

A heartwarming novel that embraces the time of hurt, so that the heart doesn’t end in sadness

“Ki-ju” suddenly receives a message asking where she lives now from her friend “Wonkyung”, who was once her best friend but is now estranged. It has been two and a half

years since they had an argument. In the past, Won-kyung was a friend with whom she could share even the things she wanted to hide because of her deficiency or lack, and it has been painful for Ki-ju for a long time to realize that Won-kyung had disappeared from her life. Thinking back to their first encounter, the moment they argued, and the people who were watching them argue, she decides to go meet Won-kyung.

It turns out that Won-kyung runs a café quite far away from Ki-ju lives. Aside from her lover, “Sang-woo”, Ki-ju is not particularly close to anyone. The surprising person who accompanies her travel is her coworker, “Chief Jang”. Even at work, Ki-ju has the habit of being silent when she’s in trouble, and although Jang doesn’t talk to Ki-ju, she always asks how she is and is always curious about Ki-ju. To Jang—who accidentally washed all her summer clothes and comes to work in winter pants even in sweltering weather, but also takes care of the factory dog “Gani”—Ki-ju asks to accompany her on her trip, because she thinks she will be “afraid on the way there and lonely on the way back”. Jang, who runs a small YouTube channel, asks if they can vlog the trip, and Ki-ju agrees, thus their short journey begins. The two stop by Chief Jang’s grandparents’ house, run into some of Jang’s subscribers at a restaurant, and eventually make their way to Won-kyung’s café. When they arrive, the first person they see is not Won-kyung, but her mother, and Ki-ju receives unexpected news from her.

As we follow Ki-ju’s daily lives, we suddenly realize that the scenes she encounters are not so different from our own. The small gestures of kindness from our neighbors, the

kindness of strangers, and the rare comfort from others are all present in our lives. Lee Ju-ran captures these scenes of life that are easy to overlook and carefully places a magnifying glass on them to observe them in detail with a gaze that considers even the birds’ hearts, and with a heart that warmly depicts the scene of a well-washed soup bowl given by a neighbor. Therefore, when the hearts of the characters in Lee’s novel, which they thought were very small, reach us through Ki-ju, their temperature is bound to be felt many times larger. Those hearts, which warmed the lukewarm hearts of Ki-ju, spread into warmth, and by the time we encounter the ending of this novel, we may naturally think that what we—holding this story in our hands—are facing is the “happy end”.

Support from Changbi Publishers