I see the notification while I’m at work, arranging a stack of handouts for my first class. The message says: I have some news. Let me know if you have a chance to call some time today. For a rare moment, my best friend and I are both online. I check the time—it’s nearing 8:30 a.m. in Masan, early evening in Providence, Rhode Island. I want to make the call now, but I type a rushed reply instead: Are you all right?? The answer says, It’s fine. It can wait. All day, I try to guess the news. I imagine new relationships forming as I eat tasteless rice in the school cafeteria, perhaps a marriage proposal taking place at the exact moment I am peeling the skin off a tangerine with my fingernails. When the day ends, I rush through dinner and up to my room, cradling my phone in my hands until the call comes around 10 p.m. The news is this: our friend died. When I hear his name, I don’t need to ask how. “It was a suicide,” comes the answer anyway, and the guilt of having already known is sharper than the shock of hearing it said aloud. “He sent some of us a text to tip us off, but we didn’t see it until the next morning. Couldn’t do anything until it was too late.” “Oh my God,” I say. “Oh my God.” I’m not religious anymore, haven’t talked to any gods since my last Mass in Catholic high school, but that night, my head hums with a litany of thoughts that feel a lot like prayers. Please don’t let it be real. Please not him. Please not this. Please. ~ I watch as you get farther and farther away, becoming a small dot and then disappearing. Will all of this fade after some time? I think about the old days. I think about you. — “If You,” Big Bang Low score: 63 points. ~ My high school girls are learning about American geography and slang this week. When I pull up a big, colorful map of the U.S. on the TV screen, the hurt hits me all over again. None of my classes notice. For that, I feel both sullen and grateful. I think about maps a lot, about how I must be a cartographic error. I shouldn’t be here. I should be in Providence, mourning with my friends. I should be in California at the funeral. In the days that follow, I often find I don’t know where I should be. So I end up going to the one place that feels familiar. The CoinSinger singing room sits on the top floor of Changwon’s City7 Mall. Once I’ve made the trek up two mall escalators, a flashing sign with the singing room franchise’s name in 한글  ushers me in through the automatic doors. When I step inside, there are no questions asked. I already know what to do. I take a package of shrink-wrapped microphone covers from the front desk and find an empty room. I peel a single ₩1,000 bill from my wallet and insert it into the singing room machine to start. This is how the ritual begins. I first discovered singing rooms in New York City’s Koreatown, a tiny patch of imitation Seoul in midtown Manhattan. Growing up adjacent to the city, I had always seen New York as a shiny escape. Within that escape came another getaway in the form of the $10-per-hour karaoke room shared with friends. We made our first pilgrimages to the singing rooms as middle schoolers, when we grew restless but found ourselves too old for arcades and playgrounds. We would catch a subway into the city, get off at 33rd Street and just start walking until we found one—a nameless 노래방  sandwiched between restaurants and discount stores. For an hour or two we’d pass around the thick tome of song selections, queuing our favorites. When we gathered there, all four or six or eight of us clamoring for the sticky remote control pad, we lined up a playlist featuring everyone from Beyoncé to Big Bang, Selena to Utada, songs in all the languages we’d grown up with. We sang solos and duets, main parts and backing vocals. We sang beautifully and horribly with total abandon, like we had no troubles in the world. Most rooms at the CoinSinger in City7 are tiny, intimate spaces, designed for a maximum of two singers. Stepping inside one now, I feel like I’m entering a confessional booth where I become anonymous—or as anonymous as one can be in a semi-soundproof box with a large, glass window on the door. For me, though, after the unrelenting show I’ve made of smiling and laughing and holding light conversation with hundreds of students and co-workers, even this amount of solitude is a dream. With a steady stream of ₩1,000 bills I have saved up for this moment, I lay claim to an hour, two hours, three. I take my time choosing. I make sure each song counts. * * * My co-workers say I seem to be shrinking, losing weight and talking less in the weeks after. I try to explain it as simply as I can. “My friend died. And I miss home a little these days.” But none of this seems to translate the way I need it to. “I lost my mom a few years ago,” my co-teacher replies easily. “It’s even harder to lose a parent than a friend. You just have to keep going.” Another teacher adds, “If you look sad, people will think you’re not trying to enjoy your life in Korea. You have to stop looking so sad.” I start to wonder if something is wrong with me, start to think myself a riddle with box braids and brown skin that no one in Changwon can decipher. When I try to open up to anyone, I feel the words jamming my throat, the way … Continue reading Nights at the 노래방