The phone rang at exactly nine o'clock at night. Not in the morning, not in the afternoon when I came home from school, but always at nine in the evening—when my mother and I sat in the living room watching television with the volume turned very low to save electricity.
That was the scheduled time when my father called—every Tuesday night and every Friday night, with the precision of an atomic clock. I had memorized that rhythm since I was six years old. A rhythm of absence. A rhythm of loyalty that felt strange and painful.
My mother suddenly moved faster, like someone responding to an alarm she had been waiting for. An energy I never saw at any other time surged through her body. She rose quickly from the sofa, as if sitting for even a second longer might cause her to miss the call. She picked up the phone before the third ring finished, her movements practiced and automatic.
Her voice changed instantly—becoming brighter, livelier, more… artificial. It was not her real voice, but a voice she adopted for my father, the voice she believed he wanted to hear—the voice of a happy wife rather than a lonely one.
"Hello! How are you? I miss you so much."
I listened from my narrow bedroom or from my place in the corner of the living room, pretending not to listen while being unable to stop myself from hearing every word. My mother talked about my days in meticulous detail—about school, about my teachers, about my friends, about what I ate for lunch, about the good grades I received on my tests.
My father rarely said anything about himself. He only listened from the other end, his distant voice replying with short, vague words I could barely hear.
"Yes."
"That's good."
"I'm glad to hear that."
Simple words that revealed nothing about him—nothing about his life, nothing about whether he missed us too.
The conversation was always the same—my mother talking endlessly in an attempt to fill the silence, my father listening, and the silence itself filled with everything they could not say, with emotions that could not pass through the humming telephone line.
After fifteen minutes, with painful precision, my mother would say in a voice that tried to sound normal,
"Alright, Hiroshi. Take care of yourself. Eat well. Get enough rest. We love you."
Then the call would end with a quiet click. The line would go dead. And the silence would return—heavier than before, like the pressure in the air after a storm had passed.