Jooheon entered the room roughly fifteen minutes later looking preoccupied and slightly distressed, neither of which suited him.
"How'd it go?" Minhyuk asked, and Jooheon looked up, a frown on his face.
***
Jooheon sat down in the chair across the glass from his mother. Despite the institution's best attempts to make the place seem inviting and welcoming, the place still functioned like a prison in most aspects, but Jooheon had grown used to it.
His mother had not.
She eyed the glass with distrusting eyes before picking up the phone on her side of the glass. Jooheon picked his up and met her eyes through the glass, waiting for her to say the first words.
"Jooheon," she said.
He waited.
"How have you been?" she asked, biting her lip, her eyes shifting away from him.
"Fine," he said, wanting to skip past the small talk. "What's wrong? You're hiding something."
She sighed, meeting his eyes once more, disappointed. "Can't we just- can't we just talk for a little bit first? Have a nice conversation?"
Jooheon snorted. "When do we ever have nice conversations? Last time you were here was to tell me that you wanted me to consider my options for college even though you doubt any colleges will want to accept me because this whole thing will be on my record and my grades suck."
She exhaled, pinching her nose with her left hand, the one not holding the phone up to her right ear. "I was just encouraging you to think about your future-"
"What you implied was that I better fix my behavior so I could-"
"Jooheon-"
"-go out into the world to make you and him proud-"'
"Jooheon-"
"-even though we all know that you aren't-"
"Your father died."
Jooheon stopped talking.
"Two days ago," she hurried on, biting her lip once more and adjusting herself in her chair on the other side of the glass. "They said it was a heart attack." She played with the cord connecting the phone to the wall, avoiding his eyes. "I know you two didn't-"
"He's gone?" Jooheon asked, holding his breath.
"Yes," she replied succinctly. "He's gone."
"Good," Jooheon said, and she looked up, pain in her eyes.
"I know you two weren't close and you didn't get along-"
"It was more than not getting along, Mom! He hit me! More than once! And when I got strong enough to start fighting back, suddenly that's a problem, suddenly I'm labeled as violent and aggressive and a hazard to others' safety! He was a hazard to my safety! You expect me to what, cry for him? Did he ever cry for me? I end up in a mental institution for breaking his arm and that's fine, but when he has himself a heart attack because he drinks and smokes and eats like every supper is his last supper, then I'm supposed to feel bad?"
Jooheon curled his lip up in disgust at the petite woman sitting on the other side of the glass. It wasn't that he didn't like his mom; he did, in a lot of ways. She'd never stood up for him, but he didn't really blame her. Her husband would have snapped her like a twig. She was obedient like she was supposed to be, and she did what he told her to do. There were times when Jooheon wished that she would have been stronger, for him, for herself, but at the end of the day, she was the mom he had, and he loved her.
At the end of the day, Jooheon's dad was the dad he had, and he loved him too in a way, but a different way, a way that he would never express, a way that Jooheon didn't even realize until he knew that his dad was gone.
He missed him, and he wasn't sure why.
Jooheon waited for her to say something, but she was still staring at him half-hopefully, as though she wanted him to say something about his dad that didn't sound petty and unforgiving.
But the words wouldn't come, and their nice little conversation ended as Jooheon slammed the phone back on its rack and kicked back the chair, leaving the room.
***
"My dad's dead," Jooheon said, his voice flat, his eyes a little larger than normal, disbelieving in their vague gaze.
"Isn't that what you wanted?" Kihyun asked from the back of the room, not in his normal snide tone.
"Yeah," Jooheon said, but his real thoughts were, That's what I thought I wanted.
He didn't know anymore, but it was too late to change that. Now, there was a goodbye trapped in his throat, one he wouldn't get to deliver.
