About a year after Peter and I moved to Brooklyn, the little record I had written in the cottage at the bottom of my parents’ property started to receive a surprising amount of attention. Funny enough, I released the album under the moniker Japanese Breakfast, a name I’d come up with years ago, up late one night browsing photographs of neat wooden trays set with perfectly grilled salmon fillets, miso, and white rice. A small label based in Frostburg, Maryland, offered to put it out on vinyl. My mother’s image graced the cover, an old photograph of her in her twenties in Seoul, wearing a white blazer and a ruffled shirt, posing with an old friend. I had two of her watercolors printed on the paper centers of the vinyl disc, the songs I’d written in her memory revolving about their poles.

It came out in April and that summer I was offered a five-week tour opening for Mitski across the United States. At the same time, an essay I had written over the course of a few weeks in the evenings after work, titled “Love, Loss, and Kimchi,” was selected as Glamour magazine’s essay of the year. The prizes included publication in the magazine, a meeting with a literary agent, and five thousand dollars. I had moved to New York to put my creative ambitions aside and focus my energy on climbing the corporate ladder, but all signs seemed to indicate it wasn’t quite time to hang up my hat.

I left my job at the advertising company, and the buzz around Psychopomp continued to swell, allowing me to pursue music full-time for the first time in my adult life. I put together a band and we drove down I-95 along the East Coast, across the long stretch of I-10 from the marshes of Louisiana through the empty deserts of West Texas and Arizona, up I-5 along the majestic cliffs and mountains of the Pacific shore, and back through the misty valleys of Oregon, where I left flowers on my mother’s grave, the headstone corrected and finally reading LOVELY. We played to a full room at the WOW Hall and, later that year, at the legendary Crystal Ballroom, where sixteen-year-old girls beamed at me the same way I had beamed at the musicians I’d idolized. We opened for bigger acts, and then we began to headline ourselves, out for long stretches of the year, crisscrossing the country.

After the shows, I’d sell shirts and copies of the record, oftentimes to other mixed kids and Asian Americans who, like me, struggled to find artists who looked like them, or kids who had lost their parents who would tell me how the songs had helped them in some way, what my story meant to them.

When the band had enough momentum for it to be financially feasible, Peter joined on lead guitar, rounding out the group with Craig on drums and Deven back on the bass. We played Coachella in California. We played Bonnaroo in Tennessee. We traveled to London, Paris, Berlin, and Glasgow. We had a hospitality rider and stayed at Holiday Inns. After a year of shows in North America and three tours through Europe, our booking agent called me with an offer for a two-week tour through Asia. Naturally, we’d finish in Seoul.

I messaged Nami on Kakao to let her know we’d be visiting at the end of December.

We’d kept in touch over the past year, but the language barrier made it difficult to get specific. Most of the time we just wrote “I love you” and “I miss you” accompanied by various emojis and photos of my Korean cooking efforts. I tried to explain that things were going well, that the band was experiencing some success, but I’m not sure she really understood or truly believed me until I informed her that we had a concert in Seoul booked for the second week of December.

A moment later I got a call.

“Hello, Michelle, how are you? This is Esther.”

Esther was Emo Boo’s daughter from his first marriage. She was five years older than me and had gone to law school at NYU. She was visiting from China, where she now lived with her husband and one-year-old daughter.

“Nami just told me that you’re going to play a show here in a few weeks? Is that true?”

“It’s true! We are doing a two-week tour all over Asia and our last show is in Seoul. Peter and I are planning on renting an apartment for a few weeks afterward. In Hongdae, maybe.”

“Oh, Hongdae is a fun place. Lots of young artists there, like Brooklyn.” She paused and I could hear Nami saying something in the background. “We…we are just confused. Is there some kind of office?”

“An office?”

“Well…I guess we are just wondering, who is it that pays you?”

I laughed. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been asked to explain it, and after years of pay-to-play DIY touring I often had a hard time believing it myself. “Well, there is a promoter that books the show, and then we get paid by the people who buy tickets.”

“Ah…I see,” she said, though I had a feeling she didn’t. “Well, I really wish I could see your concert but I’ll be going back to China before then. Nami says her and my dad are very excited.”

* * *

—

THE TOUR STARTED in Hong Kong and would take us to Taipei, Bangkok, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Osaka before finishing in Seoul. Each night we played for three to five hundred people. The promoters of each show would pick us up from the airport and guide us through their cities, pointing out the landmarks as we headed to the club, translating the input lists to local stage crews. Most important, they’d show us the best things to eat.

It was a stark contrast to what we usually ate on tour in North America, the long drives fueled by gas station snacks and fast-food chains. In Taipei we had oyster omelets and stinky tofu at Shilin Night Market and discovered what is arguably the world’s greatest noodle soup, Taiwanese beef noodle, chewy flour noodles served with hefty chunks of stewed shank and a meaty broth so rich it’s practically a gravy. In Beijing we trekked a mile in six inches of snow to eat spicy hot pot, dipping thin slivers of lamb, porous wheels of crunchy lotus root, and earthy stems of watercress into bubbling, nuclear broth packed with chiles and Sichuan peppercorns. In Shanghai we devoured towers of bamboo steamers full of soup dumplings, addicted to the taste of the savory broth gushing forth from soft, gelatinous skins. In Japan we slurped decadent tonkotsu ramen, bit cautiously into steaming takoyaki topped with dancing bonito flakes, and got hammered on whisky highballs.

The tour drew to a close. We flew into Incheon and tracked down our guitars at the oversized claim. In the arrivals hall we were greeted by our local liaison, Jon. Jon had arranged our show in Seoul at a club in Hongdae, the same neighborhood where he ran a small record shop called Gimbab Records. It was named after his cat, who was himself named after the Korean rice rolls that my mother had made when it was her turn to feed the Hangul Hakkyo. He was tall and slim, clean-cut, dressed plainly and conservatively in black slacks and a peacoat. He looked more like a salaryman than a promoter and owner of a cool vinyl shop.

Jon took us out for a late dinner, where we met his associate Koki, a sweet Japanese man with a goofball grin who spoke fluent Korean and English. Koki was forthcoming and earnest, the perfect complement to Jon, whom we struggled to get a read on over kimchijeon and many mugs of Kloud clanked in celebration of my return to the homeland.

The next day we loaded in for the show at V Hall, a club capped at a little over four hundred people. Our greenroom was filled with Korean snacks from my childhood, shrimp chips and Chang Gu honey crackers, sweet potato twigs and banana puffs, slices of chamoe melon and even a small box of Korean fried chicken. Jon made sure that Nami and Emo Boo had a spot reserved on the balcony overlooking the stage. The two of them arrived early with flowers. We embraced and took photos together. Nami taught us the latest trend of posing with your index finger and thumb diagonally crossed in the shape of a heart.

When we got onstage, I took a moment to take in the room. Even at the height of my ambitions I had never imagined I’d be able to play a concert in my mother’s native country, in the city where I was born. I wished that my mother could see me, could be proud of the woman I’d become and the career I’d built, the realization of something she worried for so long would never happen. Conscious that the success we experienced revolved around her death, that the songs I sang memorialized her, I wished more than anything and through all contradiction that she could be there.