Winter 2021, during the pandemic. Eun-woo encounters a boy in nothing but a school uniform, his fingers red with cold, at the local police station. Pretending to be his cousin, she takes him home. Hours later, she finds him collapsed in the snow outside her building. His name is Nam, and he claims to be a 21-year-old traveler from a hundred years in the future who lost his way on a school trip. Though she struggles to believe him, the scars covering his body persuade her to give him shelter for a few days. Grateful, Nam helps Eun-woo with work and chores, gradually seeping into the life of a woman who has always kept love at arm’s length out of fear of abandonment. Then tragedy strikes: Eun-woo’s beloved two-year-old niece is infected with COVID-19 and may not survive. Nam holds her as she crumbles, whispers a way to save the child, and tells her to endure two more years—before vanishing like foam. Miraculously, the child recovers, and two years later the pandemic ends. Yet Eun-woo cannot shake the ghost of Nam. One day, he reappears exactly as he was before, standing before her once more. “Did you… forget me?”

A modern-day Little Mermaid story of loving under the shadow of vanishing. Eun-woo fears love because it might end in abandonment; Nam speaks of the future because he loves, even though it will cost him everything. Nam’s Time-Slip is a poignant and heartrending romance about two people standing before inevitable loss. Author Choi Goo sil, who previously won the Kyobo Story Contest and secured a drama deal with her debut novel, once again delivers gripping, cinematic storytelling designed for both international publication and screen adaptation.