I took a breath. “Annyeonghaseyo!” I shouted into the mic, and we launched into our set.

I hadn’t believed in a god since I was about ten and still envisioned Mr. Rogers when I prayed, but the years that followed my mother’s passing were suspiciously charmed. I had been playing in bands since I was sixteen, dreamt of succeeding as an artist practically my whole life, and as an American, I felt entitled to it in spite of my mother’s aggrieved forewarnings. I had fought for that dream thanklessly for eight long years, and only after she died did things, as if magically, begin to happen.

If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way. That if we had to be ripped apart right at our turning point, just when things were really starting to get good, the least god could do was make a few of her daughter’s pipe dreams come true.

She would have been so tickled to have seen the past few years, me dressed up and shot for a fashion magazine, watching the first South Korean director win an Academy Award, YouTube channels with millions of views dedicated to fifteen-step skin-care regimens. And though it felt contrary to my beliefs, I had to believe that she could. And that she was glad I had finally found a place where I belonged.

Before our last song, I thanked my aunt and uncle for coming, looking up at them on the balcony. “Emo, welcome to my hoesa,” I said, extending an arm to the crowd. Welcome to my office. The band posed for a picture with our fingers in the heart pose Nami taught us, the sold-out crowd in the background. Dozens of kids left the venue with sleeves of vinyl held under their arms, fanning out into the city streets, my mother’s face on the cover, her hand reaching toward the camera like she’s just let go of the hand of someone below.

* * *

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AFTERWARD, Jon and Koki invited us all out to a vinyl bar called Gopchang Jeongol to celebrate. The name translates to offal stew, but that was nowhere to be found on the menu. Instead, we ordered a variety of anju. Impeccable golbaengi muchim—sea snails mixed with a red pepper and vinegar sauce served on top of cold somen noodles, tofu with kimchi and dried filefish jerky with peanuts.

The bar was dimly lit with Christmas lights and blue-tinted LEDs that danced around the walls. It had vaulted ceilings and exposed brick that made it feel like some kind of underground loft. In the front was a stage with two turntables and a DJ playing ’60s Korean rock, pop, and folk music in front of ten-foot-high shelves filled with records. Seated at wooden tables, our fellow patrons would burst into song at the sound of a familiar track.

Craig and Deven learned the respected drinking customs—never pour your own drink, pour for your elders with both hands—and Jon taught us games like Titanic, in which an empty shot glass is balanced in a cup full of beer and you take turns pouring small amounts of soju in, until it sinks and the loser has to shoot it back. This deadly combination of soju and maekju, the Korean word for beer, is called somaek, a common culprit for the Korean hangover.

We drank cold Cass beer from miniature glasses and poured out green bottle after green bottle of soju, sending shots all around and to Jon in particular, trying to lure him out of his shell. Late into the night, we finally made some headway and he began to talk about music.

As Jon got on to the Korean rock scene in the ’60s, I listened with rapt attention. My mom never talked much about the music she listened to growing up. In fact, I didn’t know much about Korean music in general, aside from a handful of K-pop bands that were gaining traction in the United States and a girl group called Fin.K.L that Seong Young exposed me to in the late ’90s.

When the bar died down, Jon played us a song by Shin Jung-hyeon, a sort of Korean Phil Spector type who produced sugary hooks and psychedelic riffs for girl groups of the era. The song was called “Haennim,” written for the singer Kim Jung Mi. It was a sprawling, six-minute folk song that started on finger-picked acoustic guitar and swelled with melancholy strings as it went on. We listened in silence. None of us could understand the lyrics, but it had a sound that was captivating and timeless and we were drunk and somber and moved.

* * *

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HEADS POUNDING, Peter and I woke the next day to say goodbye to our bandmates and move from our hotel to the apartment where we’d stay for the next few weeks. We would spend some time with my aunt and uncle, and I would do some writing about Korean culture and the food we ate, how it summoned the memories of my mother I wanted to keep closest.

Nami spoiled us the way only she knew how. She knew where to get the best of everything—the freshest seafood, the highest-quality meat, the quickest chicken delivery, the coldest beer on tap, the spiciest soft tofu stew, the top dentist, optometrist, acupuncturist. You name it, she had a guy. It could be dim sum on the top floor of a luxury skyscraper or naengmyeon down a back alley to some damp patio where a squatting ajumma rinsed her noodles over a drain in the cement; she was always quick to slip them a tip beforehand and ensure we got the best product and service.

In Myeongdong, she took us to my mother’s favorite kalguksu restaurant, which served knife-cut noodles in beef broth, fat pork and vegetable steamed dumplings, and piquant, raw kimchi infamous for being exceptionally heavy-handed with the garlic, leaving you with pungent breath that cast a good three-foot radius of odor.

At Gangnam Terminal, an underground shopping center connected to one of Seoul’s major subway stations, we browsed the wares together. I was reminded of all the times my mother and I went shopping, the unique form of encouragement she gave me that I so sorely missed when I went shopping alone. I wondered if the shopkeepers thought that Nami was my mother. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Each of us was role-playing in a way, soft substitutes for the dead we wanted so desperately to revive. Anything I paused to examine, Nami insisted I let her buy for me. An apron with a flower pattern and red straps, a pair of house slippers with little faces on the toes. She called Peter over to carry the bags.

“Porter!” she said. We broke out in laughter. She’d surprise us occasionally like that, employing the type of words you’d hear on a period-piece miniseries on the BBC. Outdated words like convoy or barbarian that she’d probably picked up from a required vocabulary list decades ago, pocketed away somewhere in the corners of her mind.

“Nami, have you heard of Shin Jung-hyeon?” Peter asked, collecting our shopping bags.

“Shin Jung-hyeon? How you know Shin Jung-hyeon?” Nami asked in disbelief. Peter explained that Jon had told us about him at Gopchang Jeongol.

“Your mommy and me, we love Pearl Sisters. This one Shin Jung-hyeon! ‘Coffee Hanjan’!”

Nami pulled up a YouTube video of the track and played it from her phone. The album cover was bright yellow with the two sisters posing in matching green polka-dotted minidresses. Shin Jung-hyeon recorded it in the late ’60s with the sister duo who performed as the Pearl Sisters. It was their favorite song growing up, Nami explained. When they were kids, she and my mother used to perform it at my grandfather’s parties. They would wear their own matching outfits and, since they didn’t have go-go boots, improvised with their rubber rain galoshes.

* * *

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