비평

My translator friend once told me: "There's a word in Korean, 서운하다, that isn't quite sad and isn't quite angry—it's the ache of being let down by someone you love, without blame." I spent a week trying to write it into English and kept failing, because English wants me to choose a side: hurt or resentment, victim or accuser. Then I stopped translating and just wrote a woman standing in a doorway, waiting a beat too long before she says it's fine. The feeling arrived anyway, homeless, without its name. Maybe that's the job—not to carry the word across, but to build it a new house on the other shore.