Page 8 of Heart and Seoul (Seoul 1)

“That’s not true. You sound like a Korean when you say ottoke and ppalli ppalli.”

“‘What to do’ and ‘hurry up’ and ‘hello.’ I feel like I could navigate the whole of Seoul,” I joke.

Boyoung giggles, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth.

“How’s class?” I ask as we wait for our pizza to arrive. Pizza is Boyoung’s favorite American food, yet she only likes it from this Korean restaurant that serves the most amazing fried chicken around as well as super-cheesy oven-baked pizza. They don’t make it in Korea like they do here, she’s said repeatedly. In the months that I’ve known Boyoung, the girl has eaten pizza here every week and it’s always the same—cheese with pineapple and ham.

“Great. I am almost done with my fellowship paper.” Boyoung is part of a cultural educational exchange at the local college. It was a new graduate school program that started this spring and my Korean friend was one of the first participants.

I feel like some proud mother whenever Boyoung talks about her project. She picked a college here! In the Midwest! All the way from Korea! Boyoung fascinates me. I don’t know many Koreans. There is the couple that run one of the three Asian groceries in town. I’m a little abashed to go in there because I don’t know what half of the items on the shelves are for. I’ve used the internet to decipher what I could about the things that Mom made at home when I was younger like the vermicelli noodle dish with the dried mushrooms and the kimchi jjigae, with a broth made out of dried anchovies and seaweed, which sounds terrible but is one of my favorite dishes ever. I took Boyoung there and she explained a bunch of things to me and even bought a few ingredients for me to try. A certain type of ramen was the best and had I tried cheese in it? No, never, and it was shockingly good. Microwave rice beats instant rice by the length of a marathon or three. Curry vegetables out of the refrigerated section weren’t half bad.

She’s also introduced me to Korean dramas. I mainlined the shows Kingdom and Signal like they were Grade A drugs. I guess they were in their own way. With each minute I spent with Boyoung, I regretted how I acted when I was younger, immature, and, well, stupid.

When I was little, Mom took me to Korean cultural programs in Minneapolis—“dragged” is a more accurate word. I hated attending them and for the entire five hours or so that it took to get there, I pretended that counting the cows was more interesting than any of my mom’s attempts at conversation. I was a real brat. The music they played sounded odd and foreign. The smell of the food seemed to cling to my clothes for days after. If a schoolmate asked me where I spent the weekend, I’d lie and say I was home sick.

The sad thing was that those visits were the only time I was surrounded by people who looked like me. I should’ve been more comfortable, but it served to remind me how different I was from my friends. Eventually, Mom stopped forcing me to go.

I’d intentionally closed my eyes and ears and now I was paying for it. If I’d continued to attend those programs, perhaps I’d have learned a little Korean and I wouldn’t be forced to ask Boyoung for help today.

But that wasn’t my story, so I reach inside my pocket and pull out the printout that I made today. It’s a new one. The copy I’ve been carrying around has been creased so much that some of the Hangul is indecipherable. It doesn’t matter to me because I have it memorized, but Boyoung needs to see all the characters correctly. It’s important that the translation be perfect. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course.” She smiles and gestures for me to continue.

I take a big breath and lay the sheet in front of her. I don’t know why I’m nervous but I’m glad I haven’t had any of the pizza yet. It’d be in my throat right now. “It’s a translation request. I looked it up online but you’ve said I can’t trust machine translations, so . . . would you mind?”

“Yes, yes.” She takes the paper and scans the contents.

The email is short—a few sentences. I recite the machine translation to myself as Boyoung reads it to herself. I can tell she’s finished because her jaw drops and her dark brown eyes grow wide.

Strangely, I find this shock reassuring. It means my own translation wasn’t that far off. “It’s from my father—my biological one, isn’t it?”

My friend nods slowly and her words stumble out. “How did you— Where did you— When?”

She sounds as confused and as surprised as I felt the first time I read the email.

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