「Sketch」 (2)
Jay was dying.
I understood that this was the work of making kimchi.
Because my adoptive parents in the United States used to put kimchi in their diet on purpose, telling Jay not to forget about nationality.
I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but whenever I rubbed seasoning on the cabbage, my grandmother’s incomprehensible nagging fell like a bomb.
Of course I didn’t understand, but I know I’m doing something wrong.
“Hey, how the hell did you come to the house of someone you don’t know and make kimchi?”
“What did you say again and again? If you do, the cabbage leaves will all tear Kai.
Then a wind chime was heard from the front door and a young woman entered.
‘Is this grandmother’s family?’
I spoke to him in English, hoping that I might be able to communicate.
“···Hello. My name is Jay.
“Are you a foreigner?”
The answer that came back to Nari was welcome English.
“Oh! You speak English.”
Today, Jay started out in an unfamiliar country with enthusiasm, got his bike stolen and got into a stranger’s car, and came home.
For him, the welcome English that came out of the woman’s mouth was like an oasis in the desert, like rain from a drought.
***
I explained the situation so far, and fortunately, the smartphone received a charger and is charging.
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Nari looks at Jay with a guitar parked on the other side of the living room.
“Jay, do you play the guitar?”
“Ah, I’m a composer. I came to Korea to work.”
“Huh? Really? I do music too.”
Is that right too?
From the moment Nari first entered, Jay thought that she resembled the singer she had seen at the festival.
“Has he ever appeared at an indie festival…?”
“Eh? That’s right!”
“It’s a wonderful coincidence.”
As if Nari was welcome, the tension rose and he waved Jay’s arm.
“J.J! Will you listen to the music I made? There’s my studio over there? In fact, it’s embarrassing to call it a studio.”
When Jay nodded, Nari, excited, grabbed Jay and dragged him to the studio.
When I entered the studio, I had a lot more variety than I expected.
The ceiling was full of luminous stars, which must have been pasted as a child.
“The interior is beautiful.”
“Ah, these are just things I put on when I was young, but I’m too lazy to take them off… I’ll listen to the music first!”
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Nari plays some of the songs she’s composed.
Jay suddenly turned into an expert in his eyes and listened to music seriously.
“Hmm.”
Jay nodded and listened, and in some parts he tilted his head.
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Next to him, Na-ri stood nervously, like a child getting her homework checked.
After all three songs, Nari looks at Jay with a slightly anxious expression.
“Uh, how are you?”
Jay stroked his chin and looked at Na-ri and opened his mouth.
“Good. Do you have any talent?”
“Huh! Really?”
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Nari took a few steps back, covering her face with a small hand in response to Jay’s praise.
Looking at Nari like that, Jay walked to the computer in the studio.
“If I make a few corrections in some parts, I think the quality will go up…”
When Jay asked, pointing at the computer, Nari nodded strongly.
“Please. You can fix everything. I know I’ve become sloppy by self-taught!”
“It’s not sloppy.”
With a grin, Jay sat down, and the images of the two of them poking their heads in front of the monitor and manipulating a complex program were quickly edited and flowed by.
“Wow, that’s great. You’re using it like this.”
“Well, I think this part would be better if you put the guitar sound yourself. Do you have an audio interface?”
“I’ll connect you right away!”
Jay brought his own acoustic guitar from the living room while Nari was busy hooking up the electric guitar.
Before recording, Jay picks up his guitar to relax his hands and plays a light tune.
“yes?”
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Nari shook her head at the familiar melody and opened her mouth.
“The snail is crawling. Today without rest, forward without rest today.”
Jay listens to Nari’s song and smiles slightly.
“Did you just improvise to my performance?”
“Eh? This is a famous Korean nursery rhyme. Snail. Umm, what is it in English. Snail? By the way, Jay is American, how do you know this song?”
Hearing Nari’s words, Jay made a blank expression as if he had been hit by something.
It’s a melody that has been in my head since I was a child, so I just hummed it, so I thought I composed it naturally. In fact, I thought it was the first song I wrote.
In an instant, a strong old memory returned to Jay’s mind.
“Mom, it’s cold.”
“Jihoon, come here. If we stick together, it will become warm soon. Mom will sing a lullaby. Red snail. Blue snail. The snail is crawling. Today, without rest, forward.”
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Nari waved her hand in front of Jay’s, looking at Jay who was standing blankly.
“Jay? Are you okay?”
Bewildered by the sudden memory, Jay came to his senses and shook his head.
“…Ah, it’s fine.”
***
A week has passed since Jay happened to visit Na-ri’s house.
The two have become quite close during this time.
“Jay!”
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Nari, who was wearing a uniform and scraping ice cream with a scoop, waved her hand warmly.
“I’ll get off work in 10 minutes, so sit down and wait.”
As Jay smiled and nodded his head, a colleague who was working next to him poked Nari in the side and asked.
“Who are you? Do you have a boyfriend? He’s really handsome.”
“Ah, it’s not like that. These days, we’re friends who happened to be friends while playing music.”
A colleague who looks at Nari like that and adds a smile.
“No, you had a smile on your face. Somehow, you became a friend and a father.”
“Well, it’s not like that!”
Jay, who could not understand Korean at all, was just staring blankly, not knowing that he almost became a father without me knowing.
After working hours, Nari changes into plain clothes and goes out.
“I’ve been waiting for a long time. Shall we start today? It’s already the third time.”
“Okay, okay. Did you get permission?”
“yes!”
Today, I am going to go busking at a nearby campground.
After we got to know each other, Jay slightly modified the songs made by Nari and started busking together, but this is the third time.
Jay walks with his guitar in the warm sunlight and Nari laughs while chatting next to him.
Even on the bus heading to the suburbs, sitting in the back seat, Jay played the guitar and Nari sang.
wow!
clap clap!
The few older passengers in the bus clapped lightly and smiled brightly, starting the next song.
A smile naturally appeared on the lips of the audience inside the Potsdamer Platz Theater in Berlin, with the lush visual beauty of freedom and youth at the same time.
“It’s not like this when we busking, shall we take a picture and upload it to the internet?”
At Jay’s suggestion, Nari turned her head and looked at her.
“Internet?”
“Yeah, if you take a video and upload it, you can record it and it’s good. Maybe someone will see it and like the song.”
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Nari, whose face was slightly darkened for a moment at the words of video and recording, shook her head and then nodded.
“Yeah! Let’s upload it. By the way, can you come out too? I don’t like going out alone.”
“Well?”
Jay, who had no intention of appearing in the video, stroked his chin because he only accompanied, and Nari did everything from singing to writing and composing.
“Hmm, yes. It’s going to come out.”
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Nari clenched her fists as Jay allowed her to nod and clench her fists.
“Aww!”
“What’s wrong. There are many unusual exclamations in Korea.”
I arrived at the campsite where I was supposed to do busking, and through the announcement, people who wanted to hear busking from those camping nearby flocked in.
“Oh, there are more than you think?”
“Still, it’s less compared to indie festivals.”
Jay and Nari installed mics and speakers and started busking.
First song, second song.
After singing one after the other, it was not until the last song that Nari was able to afford to look at the surrounding audience while singing as if she had completely relaxed.
From a couple hugging and appreciating each other, to a family sitting together, Na-ri caught my eye.
“Mom, give me too. I’ll do it.”
A young lady, with her hair cut in two, among the family sitting across from Na-ri, jumped with a small body to take her mother’s smartphone.
When her mother handed it to her as if she couldn’t win, she picked up her smartphone, turned on the camera, and took a picture of her.
“Mom is moving.”
“I didn’t even wear makeup, but what if I take a picture of my mom. Oh, it’s a video.”
‘Ahh···.’
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Na-ri, who watched the scene while singing, was choked by the emotions that suddenly rose in her chest and could not continue singing anymore.
The audience murmured as they saw Na-ri suddenly bowed her head and shed tears while singing.
Surprisingly, Jay was next to him as well.
“Nari, why are you doing this? Where does it hurt?”
The busking ended with the sudden burst of tears, and the campsite guests gave applause of comfort and encouragement to the singer’s tears for an unknown reason.
The two of them put their gear together and sat on the bank of a small creek next to the campsite.
Jay sat quietly until Nari spoke first.
The sun went down and the world was dyed red.
Light from the sun passed through the atmosphere longer than during the day, and all visible rays with short wavelengths were scattered, leaving only red light with long wavelengths to illuminate the world.
The time the sunset illuminates is a very short time in the day, and the light is so different from the colors of the world we usually see, it makes our emotions fluctuate.
After quietly looking at the stream flowing by the creek and the red-tinted sunset for a while, Na-ri opened her mouth.
It is a story that I never told my grandmother even after her mother passed away.
“Jay, my mom really liked to sing.”
Jay looked at Nari and quietly nodded.
Then Nari speaks again.
“Even if I missed school and went to singing contests, my mother always went with me and took pictures with my old camcorder. My daughter always said that she sang the best when it was over, and that my daughter was the prettiest.”
Then Na-ri looked at the flowing stream again, sighed and continued.
“By the way, my mother died suddenly in a car accident, and after living with my grandmother for a few months, I remembered the camcorder that my mother always carried. “
Jay looked at Nari and opened his mouth.
“You must have been really proud of your singing.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
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Nari pulled her knees together and buried her head.
“By the way, you know what’s funny? There was no video of her on the camcorder, on my smartphone, or anywhere. Why didn’t she ever take a video of her?
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Na-ri wiped the tears from her sleeve, and Jay handed a handkerchief from her inner pocket.
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Na-ri, who took the handkerchief, wiped her tears and continued.
“My mother’s face gradually hardens in my head as the smiling figure in the portrait photo. As time goes by, I can’t think of other faces more and more, and it’s only been 4 years, but my voice is fuzzy. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just one video…”
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Nari was so regretful that there was not a single video of her mother, not anything else.
So whenever I had time, I would leave a video of my grandmother.
Jay heard that and nodded.
‘That’s why I didn’t want to upload a video to the Internet alone, so I asked him to come out together.’
Jay also opened his mouth while watching the sunset.
“I was adopted to the United States when I was 7 years old. The nursery rhyme I played with my hands on the first day I went to your house was a melody that always remained in my mind when I was young, so I thought I had made it up in my head. So I became interested in composing, and I You’ve been down the road.”
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Nari, who had her head buried in tears, heard Jay’s words and gently raised her head.
