My Stubborn Seoul

Chapter Three: The Boy Who Sings

Emeka had a morning routine and he was not willing to compromise it for anyone.

Six forty-five — alarm. Six forty-six — snooze. Six fifty-five — actual alarm. Seven o'clock — out of bed, stretch, three minutes of just existing before the world was allowed to demand anything from him. Then bathroom, then breakfast, then whatever the day wanted.

It was a good system. It had served him well for years.

What it had not accounted for was a roommate who apparently did not sleep like a normal human being.

On the first morning Emeka woke up at six fifty-five to find Jihan's bed already made, his side of the room already immaculate, and the man himself nowhere to be found. No alarm had gone off. No movement had woken him. Jihan had simply ceased to exist from the room at some point in the night like a very organized ghost.

Emeka stared at the empty bed for a moment.

"Okay," he said to the ceiling.

He found out where Jihan went on the third day by accident.

He had woken up earlier than usual — four in the morning, jet lag making itself known like an unwanted guest and lay in the dark staring at the ceiling for twenty minutes before accepting that sleep was not returning. He got up quietly, pulled on a hoodie, and decided to explore the campus while it was still empty.

The practice building was unlocked. He hadn't expected that but he wasn't complaining. He pushed through the heavy doors into the cool corridor, following the numbered rooms until he found an empty one he could sit in and work through the melody that had been living in his head since the flight over.

He was halfway down the corridor when he heard it.

Piano first. Clean and precise, each note placed with the kind of deliberate care that came from years of discipline. And then — voice.

Emeka stopped walking.

He knew good voices. It was literally his area of study, the thing he had spent his entire life chasing and analyzing and pulling apart. He knew the difference between technical skill and something that came from a different place entirely — something that bypassed the brain and went straight to the chest.

This was the second kind.

Low and controlled, with something underneath it that sounded like a door being held almost shut. Like whoever was singing had a great deal more feeling than they were currently allowing out and the restraint itself was part of the sound.

He moved toward it before he made the decision to.

The door to practice room seven had a small glass panel. He stopped in front of it and looked through.

Jihan sat at the piano, back straight, sheet music open in front of him though he wasn't looking at it. His eyes were closed. His hands moved across the keys with the same precision he applied to everything — careful, controlled, nothing wasted.

But his face was different.

In the room, in the early morning dark with no one watching, Jihan's face was completely open. Whatever wall he maintained during daylight hours was simply gone. He looked younger. He looked like someone who was not performing anything for anyone, who had found the one place where he didn't have to.

Emeka stood in the corridor and felt something he hadn't expected.

Recognition.

Because he knew that feeling. The way music became the room where you were allowed to be the full version of yourself. The way a melody could hold everything that wouldn't fit into regular conversation. He knew it in his own chest and he could see it, plainly and privately, in Jihan's.

He stayed for two more minutes. Then he made himself walk away before Jihan opened his eyes and caught him standing there like a person with no boundaries whatsoever.

He found an empty practice room four doors down, sat at the upright piano inside, and tried to focus on his own work.

He mostly succeeded.

Mostly.

Orientation began properly that week. Classes were divided by discipline — voice students in one block, instrumentalists in another, composition across both. Emeka found his schedule full enough to be satisfying and challenging enough to be worth it.

He also found that a music school full of passionate people was significantly louder than he had anticipated, which he loved immediately and completely.

Soyeon attached herself to him by the second day in the way that certain people do when they have decided you are going to be friends and are simply waiting for you to catch up. She introduced him to two others — Min, a tall gentle guitarist from Seoul who laughed at everything, and Riko, a Japanese vocalist with perfect pitch and strong opinions about breakfast food.

They became a unit with very little discussion. That was how it worked sometimes — the right people found each other fast and held on.

"Your roommate is Seo Jihan," Soyeon said at lunch on Wednesday, eyes wide like she was delivering news of international importance.

"Yes," Emeka said.

"Seo Jihan," she repeated.

"I heard you the first time."

"Do you know who he is?"

Emeka looked up from his food. "A person who owns one bag and has never heard of small talk?"

Soyeon stared at him. "He's the top student in the composition program. Full marks every semester for two years. Professor Ahn called him the most naturally gifted student he'd taught in twenty years."

Emeka was quiet for a moment.

"Hm," he said.

"He also," Soyeon continued, leaning forward, "does not talk to people. Like. At all. People have tried. He's not mean exactly he just — doesn't engage."

"He talks to me," Emeka said.

Soyeon looked at him like he had said something remarkable. "He does?"

"Mostly to tell me not to touch his things."

"That's more than most people get."

Emeka thought about the practice room. About the open face and the held-back voice and the hands moving across keys at four in the morning when nobody was supposed to be watching.

"He's not what he looks like," Emeka said without thinking.

Soyeon tilted her head. "What does he look like?"

"Cold." Emeka picked up his chopsticks. "He's not cold. He's just — contained."

There was a pause. Then Riko said from across the table, without looking up from her phone, "You've been here four days and you're already defending your roommate's personality to people. That's either very fast friendship or the beginning of something much more complicated."

"It's neither," Emeka said.

"Sure," said Riko.

"I'm serious."

"Mhm."

Emeka pointed a chopstick at her. She didn't look up.

That evening he came back to the room to find Jihan at his desk, headphones around his neck, surrounded by sheet music. He was writing something — pencil moving in short precise strokes, pausing, listening to something internal, writing again.

Emeka dropped his bag, sat on his bed, and watched him for a moment.

"You were in practice room seven this morning," he said.

Jihan's hand stilled. A small pause. Then continued writing.

"Four in the morning is early," Emeka said.

"It's quiet," Jihan said. "Nobody else is there."

"Except me apparently."

Jihan looked up then. Something passed through his expression — not quite alarm, more like the careful assessment of someone calculating how much had been seen.

"You heard me," he said. It wasn't a question.

"You're good," Emeka said simply. "Really good. The voice especially."

Jihan looked at him for a long moment. Emeka met it without flinching because he meant what he said and he wasn't in the habit of apologizing for honesty.

Something shifted in Jihan's expression. Too small to name but there.

He looked back down at his sheet music.

"Don't come to room seven in the mornings," he said quietly.

"Why not?"

A pause.

"Because that room is mine."

Emeka was quiet for a moment. He understood that. He understood it in the particular way that one musician understands another — the need for a space that belongs only to you and your sound.

"Okay," he said. "I'll use room four."

Jihan nodded once. Went back to writing.

Emeka lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

From across the room, after a long silence, Jihan said — so quietly Emeka almost missed it:

"Your voice is good too."

Emeka smiled at the ceiling.

"I know," he said.

And for the first time since they had met, from across the room, Emeka heard something that might have been the beginning of a laugh. Small and quickly swallowed. But there.

It was a start.