"Hello?" the familiar mellow voice floated through the speaker of Felix's phone that he held up to his ears with slightly trembling hands. It brought back some fucked up nostalgic feeling in his heart when he heard his cousin's voice after so long and he had to exhale a little shakily to lodge those emotions out of his throat to speak up.
Bang Chan was his eldest first cousin from his mother's side, hence the different surnames because Felix's mother took his father's last name after getting married while aunt Haewon said 'fuck you' to traditions and kept her maiden name being wholeheartedly supported by her husband, uncle Jinwook.
They had shifted to Korea when Felix was young, just around 5-6yrs old, because uncle Jinwook wanted to get his kids closer to their authentic traditional roots as Korean while they were still all kids to learn and adjust better. It had been a really prissy decision that did not make sense to young Felix at all but all these years later, knowing how much the influence of the entertainment industries and modern thinkings had changed his uncle and aunt from the customary Asian mindset got him wishing he and his family had relocated to Korea too.
It was just another mess in their lives, the way his parents didn't let them reconnect to their culture much but also reprimanded them when they questioned some of the beliefs they were forced to follow as Koreans.
Despite it all, he and Chan had kept in contact all these years by being online gaming buddies and texting here and there, but that was before Chan got his internship at some entertainment company for being an assistant producer and he got a little too busy. It was granted though, Felix knew how hard he worked to snag his dream of becoming a producer and he would never hold it over his cousin's head for not replying to his texts until days later or not coming online to play anymore. What they had was an uncomplicated way of being each other's escape from reality perhaps. At least for Felix, who, after a day of constant arguments or disagreements, used to lock himself up in his room and turn on the pc to drown every single thought off his mind while in college.
It was easy to rant to Chan while taking out his frustration and anger on petty characters now that he was forbidden from pursuing taekwondo. Chan never judged him for being a coward, never told him to just man up and get his shit together, never hung up whenever Felix would break down on his bathroom floor and sob out all the hurt he felt from his parents words, never interrupted him even when he started re-running through his standard routined complains about his parents.
Sure, at some point, perhaps Chan telling him to straighten up would have actually been better to steel Felix's nerves and get him to speak up maybe, but that was on Felix rather than Chan. All this time that Felix had been crying over his life, it was all on him because deep down he knows he had never wanted help to begin with. He understood his parents and their intentions now, he hated it all, and yet he had always been a little too chicken for accepting and changing his life.
But that's ok, better late than never.
He was done with their shit now.
"Hey, Channie. How you doin' mate?" He tried for a cheery greeting before dropping the ultimate bomb but just his luck, Chan always knew him better than that.
"Felix? Hey, what's wrong?" the mellow voice immediately quietened down to a worried murmur, a bit muted as if the speaker was covered for a second. There was some shuffling and voices in the background but Chan didn't elaborate on anything on his end so Felix let it be.
"Nothing's wrong exactly. Why do you immediately assume something is wrong?" he laughed nervously, picking on his hoodie strings and gazing around his room dazedly, seeing all the mess of the cloths and books but not really processing anything except for the racing thrum under his veins.
