XOXO

by Axie Oh

  Finally he taps the songbook with his good hand. “All right. I’ll play your game. But you’re about to be disappointed. I’m actually decent at singing.”

  From the smirk on his face, I can tell he’s already planning his hour of squatter-living. Little does he know that though I might not have the best voice, karaoke machines score on pitch, and mine is perfect.

  He starts to push the songbook across the table.

  “I won’t be needing that.” I pick up the controller and look up the artist by name, plugging in my selection. The instrumentals for Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” begin to play.

  I stand, microphone in hand, then proceed to belt out the song. I mostly chose this one because of the fast pace. I have no time to think or doubt myself when I’m trying to breathe. It doesn’t hurt that it also has lyrics like “Walk out the door” and “You’re not welcome anymore.”

  When it’s over, I collapse onto the couch. My score appears on the screen: 95.

  The boy taps his good hand on the table in a slow clap. “That was . . . something else.”

  I’m breathless; my cheeks are flushed. “We only have eight minutes on the clock. Hurry, pick a song.”

  I look up to find his eyes on me. “You choose for me.”

  “Are you sure?” I pick up the book and turn to the back where all the recent songs have been added. “You’re going to regret this.” There aren’t many choices for American songs, but the Korean songs fill up two pages. I read the artist names aloud.

  “XOXO? What kind of name is that?” I laugh.

  He scowls. “Seven minutes.”

  There are so many possibilities. I’m almost gleeful with power. “Do you prefer a song in English or Korean?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I mean, we’re at a noraebang, you might as well sing a Korean song. I just don’t know many.”

  “Really? Not even, like, the anthem?”

  I’m about to answer with a snarky comeback, when I hesitate, remembering. “I know one . . .”

  “What’s it called?”

  “I don’t know the title.” I hum the melody by memory, but it’s been so long since I last heard it. “Sorry.” I shake my head, feeling silly for having brought it up.

  “Gohae.”

  I blink, startled. “What?”

  “‘Confession.’ That’s the title of the song. It’s famous.”

  I stare at him. I can’t believe he knows it, and just from a few bars of melody. “It was one of my dad’s favorites.”

  “It was mine too,” he says.

  I frown. “It was your favorite song?”

  “My father’s.”

  There’s a beat of silence between us as we both recognize we’re speaking of our fathers as if they’re no longer here.

  Reaching out, he takes the controller, and with one hand, switches the language from English to Hangeul and plugs in the numbers, his fingers quick and sure.

  When the instrumentals begin to play, I feel everything inside me go still. This is the song. I recognize the melody and the distinctive sound of a keyboard, then the boy starts to sing, and I forget to breathe.

  I never paid attention to the lyrics before, but now they wrap around me like silk.

  He sings about daring to love someone though the world would stand against them.

  His voice is far from perfect, rough and not always on pitch, and yet there’s a rawness and vulnerability to every phrase, every word.

  A memory washes over me, from five years ago, sitting cross-legged at the foot of my father’s hospital bed. We were playing cards on the blanket, and this song was playing in the background. And we were laughing. So hard that there were tears in our eyes, and I remembered thinking, I’m so happy. I never want this feeling to end. I want it to last forever.

  But nothing ever does.

  On the screen, a score appears: 86.

  The time runs out on the machine. The boy gets to his feet, adjusting his cast. I instinctively stand to face him.

  “Thank you,” he says, hesitantly. He then bows, and I bow back, which should be weird but for some reason isn’t.

  I want to tell him that he should have won, that any judge would have scored his singing above mine. After all, a true musician doesn’t just perform a song but makes you feel something. And it’s clear with how my heart aches from the memory and the music, he has the spark. I want to ask him where it comes from, and how can I find it for myself.

  But I say nothing and he quietly leaves the room, the door clicking shut behind him.

  Three

  In the foyer, I find Bomi pulling a UCLA sweatshirt over her head. “Hey, Jenny,” she says, catching sight of me. “Are you going home?” She stuffs her sweatshirt and the rest of her belongings behind the bar. “Avoid Olympic and Normandie on your way out. There’s some sort of Korean festival going on and the streets are blocked.”

  Uncle Jay sweeps back the curtain to the kitchens, holding a tray with a plate of kimchi fried rice topped with an egg.

  Bomi doesn’t look up from where she’s exchanging her bag for mine. “Boss . . .” she begins, handing me mine across the counter, “can I get off early on Sunday? I have to study for an Econ final.”

  “Sure, sure. I am nothing if not accommodating.” He glances at me. “Don’t forget to take your leftovers from the fridge.”

  “It’s banchan, not leftovers,” I correct.

  “Man,” Bomi laments, “I wish someone would give me side dishes. Instead I’m stuck with making ramen out of a rice cooker.”

  Uncle Jay and I both stare at her. “Why don’t you use a stove?” I ask.

  Bomi shrugs. “I’d rather not leave my room if I can help it.”

  Uncle Jay hands her the tray. “So glad you could honor us with coming to work.”

  I shake my head with a smile and lean down to retrieve Mrs. Kim’s banchan from the fridge. Standing, I hold the plastic bag of Tupperware to my chest. This is probably the best time to make my exit, but I linger behind the bar. Bomi switches the monitor to an indie rock playlist—her favorite genre of K-pop—before heading off down the hall to deliver the kimchi fried rice. At one of the tables in the foyer, four college-aged students hit their shot glasses together, celebrating the weekend.

  I feel a tightness in my chest. Maybe Uncle Jay and Bomi need some help. I don’t have to leave. I need to wake up early for my cello lesson tomorrow, but maybe I could stay.

  “Jenny, you’re still here?” Uncle Jay appears beside me, this time carrying a watermelon on a tray, halved and hollowed and filled with a mixture of watermelon, soju, and lime-soda. “You’ll miss the bus if you don’t head out soon.” He walks from behind the counter, calling over his shoulder. “Text me when you get home!”

  I’ve been dismissed. Sighing, I adjust the strap of my tote higher on my shoulder and head toward the front door, pushing it open. Cool air washes over my face.

  It’s almost ten o’clock and yet it’s as bright as day with all the neon lights issuing from the signboards of most businesses on the block. Sookie’s Hair Emporium is closed, but in the Boba Land 2, a pigtailed shopgirl chews bubblegum as she scrolls through the messages on her phone. On the corner, the Korean BBQ restaurant is hopping, groups of college students and business types chatting while they cook meat over charcoal grills.

  I notice the bus parked at the curb, letting on passengers, and I hurry to the end of the line. After paying, I shuffle down the aisle, adjusting Mrs. Kim’s banchan as I reach up to take the handrail. I brace myself as the bus jerks forward and my bag hits the person sitting in one of the single passenger seats.

  “Sorry!” I wince. The guy looks up.

  It’s him. The boy from the karaoke bar.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurt out. Though the answer is pretty obvious; he’s riding a bus. “I mean, I thought you said you didn’t have any money.”

  He holds up a single-ride bus ticket. “What about you? Did you get off
work?” He pauses, and then a small smirk forms on his perfect lips. “Or did you follow me here?”

  I sputter. “I didn’t—”

  “Are you going to take that seat?” A woman taps my shoulder, pointing to the seat behind him.

  “Oh, no.” I move back so she can sit down, and now I’m just hovering here awkwardly over both of them. Turning around, I move to the other side of the bus, cheeks flushed from embarrassment.

  The bus slows as it nears West 8th Street, letting on a bunch of college students and an elderly Korean grandmother, easily identifiable with her short gray hair in a perm. The students must have just come from a bar because their voices are loud and they smell like chicken and beer. Without a place to sit, they block up most of the aisle, chatting in groups as they hang onto the railings. They’re so preoccupied with one another, they don’t notice the grandmother trying to squeeze past them.

  The bus pulls away from the curb. A look of fear flits across the grandmother’s face as she tries once more to get past the students. She looks up, but the handrail is too high for her to reach. The wheels hit a pothole and she stumbles.

  “Watch out—” I lurch forward.

  The boy from the karaoke bar catches her by the arm. “Halmeoni,” he addresses her in Korean. Her lips tremble at the sight of him. “Are you all right?” She nods that she’s okay. He leads her to the seat by the window, the one he’d previously occupied. “Please sit,” he says, indicating for her to take it. As she settles, she pats his arm, praising him in Korean.

  I tear my gaze away. My heart is racing. She could have fallen. If he hadn’t noticed her and already made the choice to give her his seat, if he hadn’t had the quick reflexes to catch her, she would have.

  The handrail to my right creaks as someone grabs hold of it.

  I stare forward out the window as the bus takes a detour around a coned-off street lined with market stalls.

  Beside me, the boy from the karaoke room leans forward, peering out the window. “What’s going on?”

  I’m feeling generous toward him after that whole saving the halmeoni thing. “LA’s annual Korean festival. Apparently they blocked off some of the roads.” A crease forms between his brows and I realize that if he’s not from around here, he might not know the streets. “Where are you trying to go?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m in the middle of running away.”

  I wait for him to crack a smile, but his face is serious and a little sad.

  “From gangsters?” I deadpan.

  I feel a sense of satisfaction when he smiles.

  “From . . .” His smile fades marginally. “Chaegim-kam. What’s the word in English?”

  “Responsibility.” A word that could mean so many things, at least in the Korean community, from taking out the trash to behaving in a way that won’t bring shame to your family. Studying his reflection in the window, I wonder what responsibility he’s referring to.

  I think back to earlier tonight, when I first entered the room in the karaoke bar. At that point, he’d been alone in there for an hour, maybe two. And now he’s on a bus without a destination in mind. A part of me—a large part—is curious about what he’s running away from, about why he felt like had to. But the other part remembers what it’s like, when the only way to escape the enormous feelings inside you is . . . to run.

  “For what it’s worth,” I say, “I think it’s important to take time for yourself, even with responsibilities. You can’t be there for other people if you’re not first there for yourself.”

  It feels weird giving advice to someone my age, but these are words I need to hear too. Luckily he doesn’t seem put off, mulling them over; his mouth has a contemplative edge to it. His eyes search mine and there’s an intensity to his gaze that does strange things to my heart.

  “It’s not easy for me to believe something like that,” he says. Standing this close to each other I can see the color of his eyes, a rich, warm brown. “But I want to.”

  Someone bumps into him from behind and he winces, letting out a soft curse. Moving slightly closer to me, he adjusts his cast. The guy who bumped into him—one of the university students—is joking around with his friends.

  “Hey,” I say, annoyed at both this incident and earlier with the grandmother, “Can’t you see his arm is broken? Give him more space.”

  Outside, the bus approaches the Olympic stop. The doors open behind us and a few passengers exit. The university student, clearly inebriated, looks confused why I’ve spoken to him. Then he sneers. “It’s a free country.”

  “That’s right,” I shoot back. “You’re free to be a considerate human being or you’re free to be an asshole.”

  Shocked silence follows this statement. The university student’s face starts to turn a peculiar shade of red. Oh, shit.

  The boy and I make eye contact. He reaches for my hand. I don’t have to think twice. I grab it, and together we jump through the closing doors.

  Four

  We’ve landed in the middle of the festival. A banner hanging above the street reads LA Korean Festival, and in smaller print across the bottom: Celebrating the Cultural Diversity of Los Angeles for over Fifty Years. Lining the sides of the street are food carts serving traditional Korean food, tteok-bokki simmering in vats of gochujang and eomuk skewered and collected in hot anchovy broth, and more fusion-style food, scallops grilled with mozzarella and cheddar and hot dogs coated in batter, then deep fried.

  I look down to find the boy from the karaoke bar and I are still holding hands so I quickly let go.

  “Sorry,” I say, turning away from him to hide my flushed cheeks. “About getting us kicked off the bus.” Well, technically we jumped off. But the results are the same.

  I feel bad, though. He might not have had a destination in mind, but I’m sure it wasn’t here, a few blocks from Jay’s Karaoke.

  “This place seems as good as any to wind up,” he says glancing up at the banner.

  “Do you . . . want to take a look around?” I gesture vaguely at the festival. “We’re already here.”

  His eyes return to me, and again I feel that odd feeling in my chest.

  “I’d like that.”

  We start to walk down the street lined with food carts. It doesn’t escape me that I could just go home. Earlier in the karaoke bar, with the competition results churning in my pocket, I’d felt this urge to do something, and I sort of acted on impulse. But challenging him to a karaoke battle wasn’t exactly practical experience. Realistically, I should go home and practice tonight to prepare for my lesson tomorrow morning.

  The only thing is . . . I don’t want to go home.

  I’m having more fun than I’ve had in a long time, and it can’t hurt to indulge these feelings, at least for one night.

  “My name’s Jenny, by the way.”

  “Mine is . . .” He hesitates. “Jaewoo.”

  I’m about to tease him for having apparently forgotten his name when I catch sight of someone I vaguely recognize down the street, but then she enters a tent, disappearing from view.

  “Is Jenny also your Korean name?” Jaewoo asks.

  “My Korean name is Jooyoung.”

  “Jooyoung.” He pronounces the syllables slowly. “Joo. Young. Jooyoung-ah.”

  “Okay, but no one ever calls me that.” I’m feeling a little warm, so I accept a plastic fan someone’s handing out and start fanning myself.

  This festival seems to be comprised of booths advertising different kinds of businesses; that and a ton of food carts. We pass one selling dakkochi. A man wearing giant gloves flips skewers over a grill with one hand while alternatively coating the chicken with a thick sauce using a basting brush. He then blowtorches them to get the charred crispiness. I watch as two girls approach the stand.

  In an impressive display of ambidexterity, the man takes a twenty-dollar bill from one of the girls and gives her change with one hand,
while transferring a skewer onto a plate and passing it over to her friend with the other.

  “I feel like I’m back in Seoul,” Jaewoo says deadpan.

  I laugh, then add thoughtfully, “I’ve actually never been to Korea.”

  “Really?” He glances at me. “You don’t have family there?”

  “My grandmother on my mom’s side, but I’ve never met her. She and my mom have a strained relationship.” Honestly, I never really thought about their relationship or that I don’t have one with her. My grandparents on my dad’s side are like super grandparents, always sending me presents on holidays, money at New Year’s. One of the reasons my mom thinks I should apply to schools in New York City is to be closer to where they live in New Jersey.

  If Jaewoo thinks it odd that I’ve never met my grandmother in Korea, he doesn’t say anything.

  “So you live in Korea?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I’m originally from Busan, but I go to school in Seoul.” He pauses. “A performing arts school.”

  “I knew it!” I shout, and he grins. “Decent at singing. Please.”

  As we’ve been walking I’ve noticed that Jaewoo keeps eyeing the food carts. Catching his attention, I point to a small tented area where an older woman is serving traditional Korean street food to a few customers seated on low stools. “How does second dinner sound to you?”

  His eyes light up and dimples appear in his cheeks. “Like you’ve read my mind.”

  We head over and he holds back the tarp of the tent so that I can step inside.

  “Eoseo oseyo!” The tent cart owner welcomes us in a loud voice, gesturing for us to take stools side by side across the counter from her. “What would you like?”

  Jaewoo looks at me, seeing as I’m the one with the money. “Get whatever you want,” I tell him. “I like everything.”

  As he places the order, I unknot Mrs. Kim’s plastic bag of side dishes. Inside are five small plastic containers. I put them on the counter between us and take the cover off each one.