It’s Hwang Sok-yong’s The Evening Star. I first read this book in my second year of high school. By chance, I picked just one book from the many in the library, and it was The Evening Star. I was thinking a lot about my future at the time, so the main character, Yu Jun, felt just like me. There’s a scene like this in the novel. While talking with a friend about not knowing why everyone lives so fiercely, Yu Jun says, “I’m an asteroid that has left its orbit. I’m going to go my own way.” And he really does live that way. I wasn’t always a fully diligent high school student either, and the anxiety I felt then — “What if things go wrong?” “What if it doesn’t work out?” — was so similar that I think it comforted me. I’ve read this book more than five times. Now, even when I don’t read the whole book, I remember many passages and pull it out to read the parts I need.
