Sketch (2)
Jay was dying inside.
He understood this was the work of making kimchi. His American adoptive parents had always made a point of including it in his meals so he would never forget his nationality.
He had no idea what he was doing wrong, yet every time he worked the seasoning into the cabbage leaves, the grandmother’s incomprehensible scolding rained down on him like bombs. Of course he couldn’t understand a word of it, but he got the message that he had messed something up.
“Ha, how on earth did I end up in a complete stranger’s house making kimchi?”
“What kind of gibberish are you mumbling now? Do it like that and every leaf’ll tear clean through. Mix it gentle, will you?”
Just then the wind chime at the front door tinkled, and a young woman stepped inside.
Is this the grandmother’s family?
Hoping someone might finally understand him, he tried English.
“…Hello. My name is Jay. We couldn’t really communicate, so things ended up like this.”
“Are you a foreigner?”
The answer that came back to Nari was welcome English.
“Oh! You speak English.”
Today Jay had set out boldly in a strange country, only to have his bicycle stolen, hitch a ride in a stranger’s car, and wind up seasoning cabbage leaves while getting thoroughly scolded. To a man in that state, the English pouring from the young woman’s mouth was an oasis in the desert, rain after long drought.
He explained everything that had happened so far and managed to borrow a charger; his phone was thankfully charging now. Nari glanced at the guitar propped against one wall of the living room, then looked at Jay.
“Jay, you play guitar?”
“Ah, I’m a composer. I came to Korea to work.”
“Huh? Really? I do music too.”
So it really was her?
From the moment she first walked in, Jay had thought she resembled the singer he’d seen at the festival.
“By any chance, are you the one from the indie festival…?”
“Eh? That’s right!”
“What a crazy coincidence.”
Nari’s excitement shot up; she grabbed Jay’s arm and shook it.
“Jay, Jay! Will you listen to the music I made? My studio’s over that way—well, it’s kind of embarrassing to even call it a studio, but…”
When Jay nodded, a delighted Nari seized him and dragged him into the room. Once inside, he found it surprisingly well-equipped. The ceiling was covered in glow-in-the-dark stars, the kind a child might have stuck up years ago.
“The décor’s pretty.”
“Ah, these are just ones I put up when I was little and never bothered taking down… Anyway, let me play you some music!”
Nari played several of the songs she had written. Before he knew it, Jay’s expression had shifted into a professional’s; he listened with complete seriousness.
“Hmm.”
He nodded along to some passages and tilted his head at others. Beside him Nari stood rigid, as tense as a child waiting for homework to be graded. When the three songs finally ended she looked at him with a faintly anxious face.
“So… how is it?”
Jay stroked his chin, considered, then met her eyes.
“It’s good. You’ve got talent.”
“Hwat! Really?”
At the praise she covered her face with both small hands and stumbled back several steps. Watching her, Jay walked over to the studio computer.
“If we tweak a few spots, the quality could climb even higher…”
He pointed at the machine; Nari nodded hard.
“Please. You can tear the whole thing apart if you want. I know it got messy from me poking around self-taught!”
“It’s not messy.”
He gave a small smile and sat down. The two of them leaned in toward the monitor, fingers flying over a complicated program; the footage cut rapidly through their work.
“Wow, that’s amazing. So that’s how you use it.”
“Hmm, for this section, dropping in real guitar might sound better. You have an audio interface?”
“I’ll hook it up right now!”
While Nari bustled about connecting an electric guitar, Jay went to the living room and fetched his own acoustic. Before they recorded he loosened his fingers, lifting the instrument and lightly playing a piece he always warmed up with.
“Hmm?”
Nari cocked her head at the familiar melody and began to sing.
“The snail crawls along. Today again without rest, forward. Today again without rest, forward.”
Jay smiled faintly at her voice.
“Did you just improvise that to my playing?”
“Eh? This is a famous Korean children’s song. Snail. Umm, in English it’s… snail? But Jay, you’re American—how do you know this song?”
At her words Jay’s face went blank, as if he had been struck. The melody had floated in his head since childhood; he had always assumed he simply hummed it into existence and composed it himself. In fact he had believed it was the very first piece he ever wrote. Suddenly a fierce old memory flooded back.
“Mom, I’m cold.”
“Ji-hoon, come here. Stick close and you’ll warm up soon. Mommy will sing you a lullaby. Red snail. Blue snail. The snail crawls along. Today again without rest, forward.”
Nari waved a hand in front of the dazed Jay.
“Jay? Are you okay?”
Startled by the sudden memory, he shook himself free and shook his head.
“…Ah, I’m fine.”
A week had passed since Jay’s accidental visit to Nari’s house. In that time the two of them had grown quite close.
“Jay!”
Nari, in uniform and scooping ice cream, waved brightly.
“I get off in ten minutes—just sit and wait a bit.”
Jay smiled, nodded, and took a seat. The coworker beside Nari jabbed her in the side.
“Who’s that? Got yourself a boyfriend? He’s totally handsome.”
“Come on, it’s nothing like that. Just a friend I got close with recently while doing music.”
The coworker smirked and added,
“Nothing like that, huh? Your whole face is blooming with smiles. Next thing you know the friend turns into a dad.”
“I-it’s not like that!”
Jay, who understood not a single word of Korean, had no idea he had almost become a father without knowing it; he simply sat there staring blankly.
Her shift ended. She changed into street clothes and came out.
“Sorry for the wait. Shall we start today too? Already the third time.”
“Yeah, good. You got permission, right?”
“Yep!”
Today they were headed to a campsite on the outskirts for busking. Ever since they had become friends, Jay had been lightly polishing the songs Nari wrote and the two of them had begun performing together; this would be their third time.
Jay walked with his guitar slung over his shoulder under the warm sunlight, Nari chattering and laughing beside him. Even on the bus out of the city they sat in the very back; Jay played and Nari sang.
Waaah!
Clap clap clap!
The handful of older passengers on the bus gave light applause, and Nari, smiling brightly, launched into the next song. The fresh visual beauty that carried both freedom and youth at once made the audience inside Berlin’s Theater am Potsdamer Platz smile without even realizing it.
“Instead of just busking like this, should we film it and upload it online?”
At Jay’s suggestion Nari turned to look at him.
“Online?”
“Yeah. If we shoot it as video and put it up, we can keep a record—and who knows, maybe someone will see it and like the songs.”
At the words “video” and “record” her face darkened for an instant; she shook her head vigorously, then nodded.
“Okay! Let’s upload it. But can you appear too, Jay? I don’t want to be in it alone.”
“Hmm?”
He had only been planning to accompany her; the singing, the lyrics, the composition—everything was Nari’s—so he had never intended to appear on camera. He stroked his chin.
“Hmm… sure. Why not.”
When he nodded, Nari clenched a fist.
“Atsari!”
“What’s ‘atsari’? Korea sure has a lot of unique exclamations.”
Before long they arrived at the campsite where they had planned to busk. An announcement went out, and campers nearby who wanted to listen began to gather.
“Ugh, more people than I expected?”
“Still fewer than the indie festival, though.”
Jay and Nari set up the microphone and speaker and began. First song, second song. Only when they reached the last number did the tension finally leave her; she sang with enough ease to glance around at the audience. Couples holding each other tightly, families sitting cozily together—all of them entered her view.
“Mom, give it to me too! I wanna do it!”
Across from her, among a family, a little girl with her hair in neat pigtails kept jumping, trying to snatch the smartphone from her mother’s hand. The mother finally gave in and handed it over; the child lifted the phone, switched on the camera, and pointed it at her mother.
“Mom’s moving.”
“I don’t even have makeup on—why are you filming Mom? Oh my, it’s video.”
Ah…
Singing while she watched the scene, Nari felt a sudden surge of emotion rise in her chest; her throat closed and she could no longer continue the song. Seeing her lower her head mid-performance and begin to cry, the audience murmured. Jay, standing right beside her, was just as startled.
“Nari, what’s wrong? Does something hurt?”
The sudden tears ended the busking. The campers, not knowing the reason for the singer’s tears, offered warm applause of comfort and encouragement.
They packed the equipment and sat on the bank of the little stream beside the campsite. Jay stayed silent, waiting for Nari to speak first. Before long the sun was setting and the world turned red. Light from the sun traveled farther through the atmosphere than it did at midday; the short-wavelength visible rays all scattered, leaving only the long red wavelengths to paint everything. Sunset lasts only a fleeting span of the day, and its light is so different from the colors of ordinary hours that it sets the heart trembling.
For a long while she simply watched the stream and the crimson sky. Then Nari opened her mouth. It was a story she had never once told even her grandmother after her mother died.
“Jay, my mom really loved it when I sang.”
Jay looked at her and quietly nodded. She continued.
“Even when I skipped school to go to singing contests, Mom always came with me and filmed everything on an old camcorder. After every performance she would say our daughter sang the best, our daughter was the prettiest.”
She looked back at the flowing water, sighed, and went on.
“But after Mom died suddenly in a traffic accident, and I was living with Grandma, it was only a few months later that I remembered the camcorder she always carried. So I connected it to the computer… and there were two hundred six videos of me in the media folder.”
Jay gazed at her for a moment, then spoke.
“She must have been really proud of you singing.”
“Yeah. Seems so.”
Nari drew her knees up and buried her face against them.
“But you know what’s funny? On the camcorder, on my phone—nowhere was there a single video of Mom. Why didn’t I ever film her even once? I regret that so much.”
She wiped the tears with her sleeve; Jay took a handkerchief from his inner pocket and held it out. She accepted it, dabbed her eyes, and continued.
“My mom’s face is gradually hardening in my mind into the smiling look in the memorial photo. As time passes the other expressions fade more and more. It’s only been four years and her voice is already hazy. Will I not even remember the voice later? If only I’d filmed just one video…”
What she regretted was not anything else—only that she had not a single video of her mother’s face. That was why, whenever she had free time, she filmed her grandmother.
Jay listened and nodded.
So that’s why she didn’t want to appear alone in the video we upload online—why she asked me to be in it with her.
He too looked at the setting sun and spoke.
“I was adopted to America when I was seven. The children’s song I played to warm up the first day at your house was a melody that had always stayed in my head from childhood, so I thought I had made it up myself. That’s how I got interested in composition, and I’ve walked this path ever since.”
Nari, who had been crying with her face buried, lifted her head gently at Jay’s words.