Don't freeze, don't die, you will fall in love.
This is a story that breaks down the boundaries between the world of fiction and reality,
reviving love in this pessimistic and crisis-ridden world.

The full-color imagination that overturns the world – Kwon Hye-young's first full-length novel
A story that will become a classic of the "Regression·Possession·Reincarnation" era.

Wielding a wide range of references spanning classics and subculture with ease, author Kwon Hye-young leads readers into the world of "pure love" with her unique perspective. Her first full-length novel has been published by Ginkgo Tree Publishing House under the "Series N" imprint. Bearing a title that boldly pays homage to the classic film Don't Freeze, Don't Die, You Will Rise Again, this novel places "resurrection" and "love" on equal footing, as if to proclaim the revival of "true love" in a modern society exposed to fragmented and sensational forms of love. However, the path Kwon Hye-young chooses is unique. The novel's protagonists are a woman in her 30s, an office worker who, after dying from overwork, finds herself possessed by a character in an adult webtoon, and the female webtoon artist who draws that very webtoon to make a living. The webtoon world, rife with physical love, and the real world, where all love for life's goals has gone cold, intersect throughout the novel. The two characters each struggle to overcome their given situations, but the circumstances they face are always "19+"—dangerous and crisis-ridden. Can they break through the boundaries of their worlds and resurrect "love" in this pessimistic and crisis-ridden world?

As novelist Park Seo-ryun puts it in her recommendation—"a work that will become a classic of the 'Regression·Possession·Reincarnation' era"—this novel cleverly utilizes the most fundamental desires and characteristics of the genre while subtly twisting the narrative direction. The protagonist becomes a member of an "office harem story where she is not the main character." A person who died from overwork is given the life of an office worker once again and becomes entangled in an unwanted romantic relationship. This seems to imply that a dramatic change in our lives—even if we were to die and come back—is virtually impossible. But by simultaneously showing the world outside the webtoon, the novel hints at another development. It shows how the story of a life that has stalled, like a discontinued webtoon, can flow on, thereby opening a space for resurrection—and for love—in a reality where one cannot truly be reborn. The author's skill in thoroughly grasping and breaking through genre conventions is particularly striking here.

The novel's interplay between the created work and its creator, the appearance of a colleague from comic school, and its affection for the medium of comics, may bring to mind Tatsuki Fujimoto's hugely popular Look Back. However, this novel does not conclude with a late-arriving comfort. Rather, by grafting the inside and outside of the creative work, it brings before our eyes the things we love and have loved. In the voyeuristic adult webtoon world overflowing with love, Inuri struggles to live a life where she won't die from overwork and won't have to use household products emitting carcinogens, while also re-examining and caring for the life of her former self who died from overwork. She breaks through the stage of love that modern society most urgently needs to invent—the love of confronting oneself—through the story within the story. Meanwhile, in a world where the things she loved have wounded her and left her with no strength to love anything at all, Han Soyeon begins to observe the love of others. She meets a friend still striving in the world of comics, encounters a real reader whose existence was unknown due to a complete lack of traces, and meets people who are making an effort to continue loving the things they cherish in their own worlds. Ultimately, both characters arrive at an experience where their respective worlds expand and are grafted beyond their boundaries. In this way, the novel confronts a small but unmistakable will to live, restoring a solid love for oneself and for those around us. It makes us embrace life fully, even in moments of pain. And it tells us that this is what can be called "pure love." Thus, the refrain that remains with us is this: we will fall in love. And so, the novel summons love once again, right here.

Kwon Hye-young
She began her literary career by winning the Silcheon Munhak (Practice Literature) New Writer's Award. In 2021, her debut work, What You Expect Is Not Here, was selected for Munhak-gwa Jiseongsa's "Novel of This Season." She is the author of the short story collection Eating Love and the short story Love Delusion, among others.