Excerpt from Tailbone by Che Yeun, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
Tailbone

War had saved the city of Seoul. That's what we were told growing up, whenever we were shown old black-and-white photographs of blown-up roads, blown-up homes, blown-up fields of cabbage and cereal grains. How little was left, how close we had come to losing it all to the colonizers, to the communists, to the Americans, to the dictators—all the powers that had once stunk up our rivers. A city rebuilt by the military because they were the cheapest workforce available. A workforce that already knew how to demolish ruins, follow directions, carry heavy things across great distances.

Decades later, parts of the city still looked flung together. Like we were still trying to erase a war. Chipped concrete blocks, chipped bricks, unfinished grouting, crooked doorways and window frames that leaned one way or the other, nothing was to last.

I took the train into one of these ghost neighborhoods. Only fifteen subway stations away from my childhood, and yet an unrecognizable world. Where I could peel off the skin of my birth. Unplug from my matrix. I found a cheap tangle of alleyways to hide me.

I passed building after building of red brick. Long ago, they would have each housed a single family. But now they got broken into six smothering rooms, or ten, or maybe a dozen. As I walked, I could hear every sound of life happening within those flimsy walls. Arguments on the phone, arguments face-to-face, faucets running, dishes getting piled on a rack to dry, TV reruns. The buildings, as frail as they were, somehow contained it all.

And they had also somehow adapted to the gear of modern life. Their signs advertised free air-conditioning, free internet, free hot water, refurbished communal kitchens, breakfast every day.

I wondered if anyone inside was listening to me, my unsteady steps, the loose wheels of my suitcase rolling over the cracks in the paving.

I stopped at a redbrick building, as old and ugly as the others. But there was a sign on the rooftop. I had to take a few steps back to read: women only. With a phone number splashed under it. A tacky yellow sign, just a flimsy sheet stretched out on a billboard, but it was enormous, spanning the entire rooftop. It even came with a spotlight that lit up the words from below.

Sweat prickled my eyes. Rolled into my ears, down my back, under my T-shirt. I examined the windows of the building, one small square for each room. A window just big enough for my shoulders and hips to squeeze through. Some of the windows were lit up and I thought I saw people moving inside, girls as small as me. I called the number on the sign.

A woman answered.

"When do you need the room?" she asked.

"I'm standing outside," I replied. "But I can come back tomorrow in the morning."

"Stay right there." She hung up.

I waited and rearranged my hair, my shirt, my jeans, hoping to look reliable. Soon, the door opened. A woman squinted at me and my suitcase.

"Do you work?" she asked. Her voice was even rougher in person.

"Yes," I lied.

"Real work?"

"I'm training to be a flight attendant. I'll be taking classes all day so I just need a place to crash at night."

"You already finished high school?"

"Yes," I lied again.

She looked me up and down, scanning the plainness of my shoes, the sweat stains on my clothes. But I knew she was only pretending to be discerning, I knew she would say yes, because over her shoulder I could sense how often the units turned over, I saw the rows of rusted mailboxes, the names crossed out again and again.

"Do you smoke?" was all she asked. "This is a smoke-free facility."

"I don't even know how to smoke."

"Good. Nothing uglier than a girl who smokes."

She led me upstairs to my room. Up a stairwell littered with super-slim cigarettes. The stairs and walls were bare cement, with the white markings from construction still on them. A lone light bulb dangled from the very top, three floors above.

Excerpted from Tailbone by Che Yeun. Copyright © 2026 by Che Yeun. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.