The protagonist of <불편한 편의점> (The Uncanny Convenience Store in English, but literally, “uncomfortable/inconvenient convenience store”) is a middle-aged homeless man suffering from alcohol-induced amnesia. His memory is largely blank. But his monotonous, hand-to-mouth life marks a turning point when an old lady offers him a part-time job at her convenience store in return for his help getting her purse back. Initially, everyone shuns him because of his homeless background, but they also begin to change as they watch him quietly doing his work and attending to other people’s little needs. I had a wonderful journey following through a series of butterfly effects, from the old lady’s courage and generosity to hire a homeless person to the man’s coming out of his destructive habits to the neighbors’ transformed lives thanks to this man to the man’s determination to face his past errors and find meaning in life at last.

It was also intriguing how the recent social problems play roles within the characters’ lives. In the last scene, the old lady comes to the Seoul Train Station to see the man off, who, as a surgeon with his memory regained, goes to Daegu to volunteer for the COVID-19 pandemic response. She says, “People make a lot of noise, saying that masks are uncomfortable, that the COVID made everything inconvenient, that I’m gonna do whatever I want, and so on. But the world is like that. To live is to be inconvenient.”

To risk and accept being inconvenient/uncomfortable sometimes means carefully crossing the line that other people have drawn around themselves as a line of defense (not as an appropriate social decorum). Often, these walls are just waiting to be knocked on and taken down, and we need to take a gulp and extend a helping hand first. However, more frequently, it means crossing the line that we ourselves have established to protect our own tiny shells. However unsettling and painful it may be, we need to emerge out of our comfort zones, face our fears and prejudices, and be willing to form connections with others. Life, according to the author, is a network of relationships. Happiness lies not in attaining some measurable objectives in the distant future but in communicating from our hearts with people who are right next to us, right now. As for how exactly to embark on this daunting task, there’s food for thought: Do to your close ones as you would to your customers/clients/guests. “In a sense, aren’t your close ones one another’s guests that you encounter in your journey called life?” the author writes. I wonder how this mindset would alter the way I interact with people around me.