Readers, this is from fifteen days ago. I went out hearing a ghost’s gibberish in my sleep, and there, a frozen blonde girl was growing old without a sound. She moved her mouth noiselessly, Mister, I’m on my way to silence. Can you let me have a sip of words? For some reason, I wasn’t surprised and invited the hunchbacked girl into my mouth and pressed a bowl of words and a berry of adverbs into her hand, telling her to drop by whenever she passes through. The girl, who grew even older in that moment, cried as she departed and said, Thank you, Mister. I just want to tell you, if a beautiful girl who looks like neither a human nor a ghost comes to you tomorrow at this hour and asks you to lend her words, tell her to go check another house because you ran out. Please, please do so. While listening to the story of the girl who had aged suddenly, I summoned back my half-gone spirit, and found myself to be asleep. The girl was nowhere to be seen, and the bowl of missing words and the seeds of adverbs were watching me blankly. Suddenly, I recalled a few light words that didn’t exist. I fished them out and recited the words that I’d recalled and sailed into the vast sea of sleep. A few moments later, I finished reciting them and opened my eyes. The dreams were gone and the words had stopped existing again, and three and a half days had passed. I was hungry. So I came out of my mouth. I was determined to buy paper and a brush. Come to think of it, that was long ago. I strolled past the salivary glands. To my delight, Lord Nikolai, (2) who had eleven children by different wives and had yet another child in yet another woman’s belly; and old man Lai O Ming, (3) who had twelve wives; and Karlos (4) the bachelor, who had tied the knot twice with six wives, had all lost their words and had set out their big bats and were haphazardly wandering around the glands like mute ghosts. At that time, there happened to be a reckless madam (5) among the ghosts, so I opened my mouth, and she grumbled without saying a word. Look at this person growing old. What’s the big deal about a living person losing words? I’ve lost my words. It wasn’t that I didn’t know anything about silence. Silence had been turning over in my mouth for a long time. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t forget the blonde girl or blondie’s story, so I bought paper and a brush and aimlessly did whatever, until I ended up writing you a letter, readers. I’d like you to come by any time, it doesn’t matter when. Just signal your presence, and I’ll comfort the silent ghosts and send them to you as soon as tomorrow night, so please come with them in fifteen nights. Look into their situation on the sly. For the time being, I’ll try to make a list of the sunken words. Who knows—this might be the key to solving the case of the missing words.

 

 

NOTES

 

1) On the title: This was inspired by Korea’s first epistolary detective novel, ____. ____has no fixed characters, events or backgrounds, so there are many different versions of it. For this reason, I will indicate all the titles as ____ andpass it on to the readers.

2) Nikolai, who starts to appear in ____, is killed by his twelfth wife in ____and continues wandering as a ghost until he reaches ____.

3) Lai O Ming is abandoned by his twelve concubines in ____, but continues to mooch off his twelve legal wives until ____.

4) Karlos, who started disappearing from ____ spent two wedding nights with each of his six wives, but is depicted as an unfortunate figure who has never not been a bachelor, who has survived relentlessly so far without cumming.

5) The reckless madam who disappeared after ____, reappears in ____ as a single woman who lost her two daughters to three village libertines she throws the story into confusion by jumping between detective and criminal, human and ghost. The confusion is still unfailingly passed down to the readers of today.