After the Line Went Dead

The call wasn't long. Jia ended it and shot me a quick sidelong glance. I was doing everything I could to keep my face blank, but something must have shown anyway, because she didn't look particularly happy either.

"Your mom?"

"Yeah. She called to ask when I'd be back."

"Right..."

I already knew. What was the point of asking? The feeling sat wrong in me, and still I couldn't make the words stop.

"Is your mom doing all right?"

It was obvious that pressing any further would only sour the air. I asked anyway.

"She's fine. Not much different from before. She's getting along."

Before. When was that supposed to mean? Before I left?

No.

I really shouldn't be thinking like this.

It kept surfacing anyway. My head felt faintly light.

"Well, she'd worry. You came all this way on your own."

"Come on, what's there to worry about? I'm old enough to live by myself now."

"You were a high school student until just the other day."

"Isn't high school already grown? Legally I'm an adult."

"People still tell me I look young when I go out, and at twenty you're a green kid."

"I bet you didn't think that when you were twenty."

Even so, the talk never quite turned awkward. It found its way along without too much strain.

And so that was that. Jia and I finished the meal, and before long she headed home.

"I'll see you next time, Dad."

"Yeah. Get home safe, Jia."

I saw her off, and then I headed home myself.

The moment I stepped into the room, a strange quiet seemed to hang in it — still, in a way it usually wasn't. It was the same place as always. Maybe it only felt like this because my daughter had come and gone.

I had the restless sense that I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Come to think of it, I'd meant to play a game today. The thought that I'd regret it if I didn't sat on me like a duty, so I moved to sit down at the computer. But the moment I was actually in front of the screen, I couldn't stir up any interest, and I threw myself onto the bed beside it instead.

Lying there, I thought I might at least look at my phone, but that didn't pull at me either. So I stayed on my back in the quiet and tried, once, to picture Jia as she had been.

She had grown even past the last time I'd seen her. Just as she'd said, you could call her a grown woman and not be wrong. The college entrance exam — as close as this country comes to a coming-of-age — was behind her, and she had reached the age of starting university and beginning, properly, to live out her youth.

And what, in all of that, had I ever given her? Nothing but a father who did nothing except shout at Yuna and then run out the door. Irresponsible. That was all.

No — I wasn't someone who could be called a father to begin with. I kept slipping, mixing it up, calling Jia my daughter, but I wasn't even her real father.

I knew all of it. I had decided not to dwell on the fact, and to go on with Jia the way we always had.

And still, every time I turned it over again, a sigh came out of me on its own.

Don't start having strange thoughts now. It wasn't as if knowing changed anything, or opened some other way.

Bzzzz.

The phone was ringing. Who could it be? It was already past the time Jia would have gotten home.

Thinking that, I picked up the phone I'd tossed onto the bed. And when I saw the name on the screen, I didn't trust my own eyes.

"Hah..."

Why now, all of a sudden? That was the first thought — but if I looked for a reason, it wasn't impossible to guess.

I put on as much bluntness as I could fake, and spoke to the woman on the other end of the line.

Maybe she hadn't expected me to be the one to speak first. The person who had called me couldn't answer right away.

Came to mind, so she called.

That couldn't be it.

She must have more or less caught on that Jia had been here and gone.

She was playing along with the joke, so it seemed things weren't as bad as they used to be.

Better to talk easily than to wreck the mood for nothing.

It wasn't much different ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from what I'd already said to Jia. It wasn't a meaningful conversation, not really. Still, hearing my ex-wife's voice after so long eased something in me a little. A bright voice was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠better than one that sounded like she was having a hard time.

Only now did she speak as if she'd finally reached the point.

I hesitated a moment over what to say. There was no need to lie, so I decided to tell her straight.

She answered in a different tone.

Hearing her say it, I had to admit she was right. If Jia had been accepted, then she'd been accepted. If there was some event, she'd come for that. There was no reason to travel this far, with nothing behind it, just to take a look around a campus.

From the start, Jia had come all this way to see me.

All at once I felt a guilt rising toward her — she had made that hard trip, and I hadn't even understood why. Why hadn't I noticed something that simple?

…

That wasn't what mattered right now. It wouldn't change anything even if it did.

She heard me, and for a moment she couldn't pick the thread back up.

She seemed to think I would find taking Jia on a nuisance.

…That might not have been entirely wrong. From Yuna's side, she was the ex-wife, and Jia had become, completely, someone else's daughter. That was how she would see it. And if you looked at it that way, well, it was also true.

A rush of thoughts crowded in all at once. Feeling my mind wear thin, I spoke to her.

It was a thing that might have sounded cold. But right now I wanted the call over, even if this was how I got there.

There was a strange sadness in her voice. I didn't want to hear any more of it.

As she spoke, the strength drained out of her voice. She sounded like someone who knew she shouldn't be saying it.

At first she had seemed all right, so I'd thought it would be fine. Apparently things still weren't much different from when we had split.

I sighed, if only on the inside, and answered her with something bitter in it.

When she heard that, Yuna left behind a quiet yeah...

The call ended soon after.

The moment the phone signaled that the line was dead, I tossed it roughly into a corner of the bed. Then I let out the sigh I had been holding and stood blankly in the room. It felt as if I were being made, too late, to think about the things I hadn't wanted to think about.

In a fit of temper I took a bottle of soju out of the fridge. I didn't even bother with anything to eat alongside it. I poured a cup in the kitchen and knocked it straight back.

My head went dull, and for a moment the stray thoughts seemed to lift clear off.

Why had Yuna said that, right at the end? It was a promise that obviously wouldn't be kept. Even so, there are lines you're supposed to hold. Irritation climbed. I almost called her back in anger to have it out with her, then caught myself — what the hell am I doing — and let it go.

Yuna knows I can't hold my liquor worth a damn. She also knows how my voice changes when I drink. If I got fixated on a phone call that meant nothing, and she found out I'd been drinking when I never drink, it might stir up some strange misunderstanding.

In a movie I would have been draining the bottle and cursing until I felt clean. All I managed was a protest this small. A man without a scrap of manliness in him.

Why did Yuna, of all things, have to meet some other man and give birth to Jia? Gentle by nature, and after we married, so true in her heart that she looked only at me for the rest of her life. So how, back in high school, had she ended up in bed with a man she only happened to meet?

Was I supposed to feel wretched about that, as a man? Or was the wretchedness meant for my own pathetic self — the one who couldn't even take that single fact properly, who waved divorce papers around like a threat, who brushed his wife's strange fixation off as nothing and took a kind of pleasure in it?

It was hard to say.

One bottle of soju, at most. Even that was enough to send me halfway out of my mind, until I couldn't hold my feelings in place. A sorry excuse for a human being. I was spilling myself out as if I were the unhappiest man alive, and in truth I was a pathetic man who didn't dare drink a drop more than this, because he was afraid of having to go to work tomorrow.

That was me.