Sungmin Choi: Narrow Rooms

A romantic thriller exploring the dark corners of human desire and isolation with quiet eeriness

Is a fresh start truly possible? Or will society's strictures and your own impulses keep re-creating the same messed-up relationships in every narrow room you enter?

Choi Seongmin's Narrow Rooms follows a young woman who leaves her rural hometown to study in Seoul and seek self-improvement. But once there, she quickly becomes the target of unwanted attention from her teacher, and the whispers of other students only deepen her alienation. Living in a cramped, poorly soundproofed room, the suffocating atmosphere begins to further distort her boundaries and perceptions. Longing for escape, she fixates on a handsome new neighbor, her fascination spiraling into obsession: She secretly rummages through his mailbox, collects his discarded cigarette butts and teabags, and hoards his trash. But when she discovers something unsavory about the object of her desire, will she be forced to confront the morals of her own behavior?

With clean, uniform lines and milky colors reminiscent of glass paintings, Choi's cartooning heightens the story's sense of claustrophobia and unreality. Expertly translated from the Korean by Janet Hong and originally serialized as a Webtoon, Narrow Rooms has been praised for its raw, unsparing depiction of how human desires leak out when confined behind thin walls, emerging in unsettling, antisocial ways that no amount of self-control can fully contain.