Description A story that traveled from great-grandmother, to grandmother, to mother, and finally arrived at me— Just as life was passed down to me this way, could I, in turn, reach them? Just as countless past versions of myself gathered to create who I am now, could the present me go back to meet all those past selves? At thirty-two, Jiyeon leaves her life in Seoul behind and moves to the town of Huiryeong. She had seen a job posting for a researcher position at the Huiryeong Observatory about a month after divorcing her unfaithful husband. Still reeling from the shock of her husband's betrayal, Jiyeon decides on the move almost as an escape. Huiryeong, a small seaside town, is a place she has never visited—except once, at age ten, to see her grandmother. During a time when she "couldn't easily answer yes to the question, 'Am I getting better?'" (p. 15), Jiyeon continues her new life in Huiryeong. One weekend, on the hill leading back to her apartment, she runs into an elderly woman—someone from the same apartment complex who always seemed pleased to see her in passing. On a hill overlooking a sea sparkling in the afternoon sun, with a gentle breeze blowing, the old woman says something unexpected. "Miss, you look just like my granddaughter. I haven't seen her since she was ten. She's my daughter's daughter." The old woman pauses and looks at me quietly. "My granddaughter's name is Jiyeon. Lee Jiyeon. My daughter's name is Gil Miseon." I look closely at the old woman's face. She had just said my name, and my mother's name. (...) We stand awkwardly on the hill, looking at each other. A playful expression crosses her face, and I realize she must have recognized me from the very start. "Grandmother," I say. She nods. "It's been a long time." (pp. 20-21) For reasons unknown, the grandmother and Jiyeon's mother had grown estranged, and grandmother and granddaughter had not seen each other in over twenty years—until this chance encounter. Awkward and uncertain in this reunion, Jiyeon is nonetheless surprised to feel "a thin but real affection lying beneath all those complicated emotions" (p. 23). This meeting leads Jiyeon to visit her grandmother's home, where, amid a careful yet warm atmosphere, they talk—and Jiyeon is handed an old photograph. In the photo, two women in white jeogori and black skirts are smiling; one of them bears a striking resemblance to Jiyeon herself. Pointing to the woman, the grandmother says: this is my mother. And so she begins to tell the story of how Jiyeon's great-grandmother—born the daughter of a butcher in Samcheon, Hwanghae Province, and long persecuted for it—came to meet Jiyeon's great-grandfather, the son of a commoner family, and how her life eventually led her here, to Huiryeong. From there, Bright Night unfolds by weaving together two timelines: the present-day story of Jiyeon building a new life in Huiryeong, and the past, as told to her by her grandmother. What makes this narrative structure special is that the past is not simply relayed directly through the grandmother's voice—it is reconstructed by Jiyeon herself, based on what she has heard. In other words, this is a story that Jiyeon herself stitches together across nearly a century, beginning with her great-grandmother's life in the 1930s and reaching all the way to her own present. In this way, Bright Night moves fluidly between two timelines, bringing back to life people who once existed only in photographs and memory, rendering them as vivid, fully realized characters once again in the present. "Love touched a place in the heart that even insult or injury could not reach." Tracing the path that led to who I am now, discovering the origins of love Unlike her ex-husband's belief that "time is not a flowing river but a frozen one," so that "past, present, and future all exist simultaneously" (p. 173), the story reconstructed through Jiyeon does not remain fixed as either past or present—it gently blends into itself. The moment when the great-grandmother, born the daughter of a butcher and welcomed by no one, first forms a friendship with 'Saebi Auntie,' flows out of the 1930s and into the dark days that Jiyeon is now living through in the present...