(Editor’s note: This article discusses the topic of suicide. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a trained listener, call 988. The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential.)
Lonely suicidal seniors. One isolated long-term care facility. Four suicide notes. Vampires.
These are the main ingredients in Seon-Ran Cheon’s second translated book, The Midnight Shift, where lonely dementia patients seem to be going so far as to fling themselves off of Cheolma Rehabilitation Hospital’s sixth floor to escape their wretched and solitary existence.
Loneliness and isolation seem to be the main culprits since most of these patients’ families have practically abandoned them. It doesn’t help that Cheolma is undergoing redevelopment, causing many business owners to shut down or relocate elsewhere. But Detective Suyeon can’t help feeling like something is amiss.
One glaring omission at the crime scenes is the lack of blood, and Suyeon can’t get rid of the suspicion that the suicide notes are staged. Chantae, her superior, simply believes the suicides were inevitable. As far as he’s concerned, the patients are feeling influenced by their surroundings and circumstances.
“In a place like this, it’s only a matter of time before people start killing themselves. And you know why they do? Because that’s their only way out. Unless someone comes to get them out of here, they’re all going to rot in this hospital,” he says to her after the third suicide.
Suyeon has a personal stake in the case because she cares about one of the hospital’s patients, Granny Eunshim. Though not her actual grandmother, Suyeon was fond of her since Granny Eunshim gave her the support she needed to move past some difficult stages in her life. Because of that, Suyeon visited Granny Eunshim regularly and was more like her child than Granny Eunshim’s son, who lived with his family abroad. Suyeon feared Granny Eunshim might become the next victim.
A mysterious woman named Violette, a Korean transracial adoptee who works as a vampire hunter, confirms Suyeon’s suspicions about the homicide but also lands a bombshell about the perpetrator, whom she claims is a vampire that sniffs out loneliness.
“They call it the ‘taste of lonely blood.’ There’s an astringency that can only be produced by those who are lonely and alone,” Violette says. “People who’ve lost their will to live don’t cry…If no tears are shed, then no moisture escapes the body. Extra moisture dilutes a person’s blood, just like aged wine. And since they are creatures with an inconceivably keen sense of smell, they can discern the scent of lonely blood.”
The Midnight Shift is a far cry from Cheon’s breakthrough novel A Thousand Blues, which won the Grand Prize in the 4th Korea Sci-Fi Literature Awards in 2019. Afterward, she wondered whether to stick with the sci-fi genre or write a horror story unique to her form of storytelling that “[dealt] with the issues I have always grappled with regarding human solitude or my personal outlook on life.”
“At first, I thought I wouldn’t be chosen by either side—by the fans of a certain genre or by those readers who enjoy literature dealing primarily with emotions,” she said in an interview with The Korea Society. “But this was what I could write. Even within a genre, what makes a character come to life are the emotions. So I decided to write focusing on emotions, and fortunately, it seems I didn’t lose everyone.”
Cheon self-describes her body of work as being vague and says it’s not meant to be a literary or artistic inspiration. She calls herself a vague person because she does not see herself as being exceptional and does not know herself completely.
“Since I am a vague person, my novel can’t be precise,” she said in the interview. “I wanted to write fiction, but since I don’t belong to any single genre or group, I won’t try to fit into any category. I’ll blend everything together, as if I’m the only one in the room. That’s what I mean when I describe my work as ‘vague.’ And now I am making ‘ambiguity’ my own genre.”
From a young age, mythical creatures such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, and even aliens interested her, but amongst the fray, vampires stood out to her as beautiful creatures. She said to The Korea Society that the inspiration for her novel was “the scene of this beautiful being visiting a lonesome person—that’s what came to me first.” This inspiration came to her while she was visiting her mother, who had been staying at a convalescent hospital.
“Of all the fictional creatures out there, I felt [the vampire] is probably the best one to detect loneliness,” she said. “The fact that he craves blood, it’s like a shark who can smell a few drops of blood in water, so I imagined this tribe to possess this additional trait – the ability to smell blood mixed with loneliness.”
Ultimately, Cheon wants to cement her identity as an author through her vague brand of storytelling.
“I want to write novels that are even more ambiguous. I want people to instantly recognize that this is a novel by Cheon Seon-Ran,” she said to The Korea Society. “No borders, no blocks—nonsensical, yet plausible. A story that must be unfolding somewhere out there; that’s what I want to write.”
