The flip phone rested on the bedside table, almost fully charged. He was alone in the room, his roommate had gone to choir practice half an hour ago.
Juwon had been staring at the phone for exact twenty-three minutes while listening to the distant echo of the chapel bells and the soft scrape of snow that had begun to fall against the windowpanes.
Eventually, he picked it up and flipped it open, tapping the number pad up and down to find one of his very few contacts in the list.
‘아버지’
The dialling tone rang five times, then the phone connected.
“Yeoboseyo.”
His father’s voice, as always, cold and reserved.
“…Hello.”
There was short, awkward silence on the other end of the line.
“Who is this?”
Juwon’s breath stopped midway in his throat, only for a second.
“It’s me, abeoji.”, he replied quickly, both hands now gripping the phone in emotional stress. “It’s Juwon...”
Another, longer pause with only the faint rustling of paper in the background.
“...I see. You sound different, Juwon-ah.”
“I’ve been busy with exams, I couldn’t call earlier…”, Juwon explained, his voice deeper than usual, shy almost, as he was struggling to express himself correctly in Korean. “...and my voice is changing.”
“Yes, well. That happens.”, Kihwan answered, tapping something that sounded like a PC keyboard through the phone speaker.
Of course. He didn’t recognize his own son’s voice.
Juwon pressed his thumb into the edge of the phone until the knuckles whitened.
“I've received the midterm results.”, his father continued. “Your maths score dropped four points from last term.”
“It was an advanced paper.”
“You’re expected to adapt. You’ve had enough time.”
“…Yes, Father.”
Another rustle of pages filled the odd silence, then a faint tap on wood, probably from a glass or cup.
“About your music training...is it still ongoing?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let it interfere with your core subjects. Music is fine for appearances, but you’ll need to be more than just a talented pianist.”
With distant eyes, Juwon turned around and stared out the window where the snow was fluttering down harder now from the sky. A boy in his black college uniform below ran across the quad, leaving footprints on the powdered white cobblestones, a scarf flapping behind him like a little flag.
“I…understand.”
“Good. Don’t embarrass me.”
“I won’t.”
The line clicked with disconnection, without any goodbyes.
Juwon lowered the phone slowly with shaking hands. What did he even expect? Suddenly his chest felt hollow, like something had been scooped out of it, leaving the place where his heart was, empty.
He didn’t cry or frown, there was no reason to anymore. Just like his father had distanced himself from him, so had Juwon learned to deal with that distance. Not only the oversea distance - the emotional distance.
Adapt. His father told and taught him that.
Carefully Juwon put the phone down and checked the clicking radiator for some warmth. As always, winters in Eton weren’t warm enough to be cozy; but warmer than whoever was living thousands of kilometers away in Korea and called himself ‘father’.
Juwon now sat there in silence, his back on the radiator, warming up, flipping the text book open he had borrowed from the library earlier; Foundations of English Legal System.
This was good.
Law was clinically exact, full of rules and consequences. It made the world feel manageable for him and refilled that empty lot inside him. Reading it after being emotionally cut down by the person he looked up to, this was something he needed, to feel mature, to silence that weak, annoying child that was still hidden somewhere inside him.
I’ll make sure Father will acknowledge me. Time to get back to work.
