Yuna Inspired: Our Virtual Family

058

"This is important?" The elderly man eyed the food on the table. It had been a long time since he had seen, smell, and eaten anything other than convenience store-bought foods because of his career. He had other things to worry about, such as the germs he and his lab mates had kept in a petri dish in a warm-temperature room. "I'll give you ten minutes before I leave."

The elderly lady across from him forced a smile. "About thirty years ago, you would've given me all the time in the world."

"That was thirty years ago." He cleared his throat in discomfort. He disliked talking about the past because he was all about the future and how to fix it. That was what he did for a living anyway—making the future a better place. "We're not getting any younger, and our time only gets shorter with each day."

"Exactly," she butted in, "we're not getting younger anymore." She let out a hopeless laugh and looked at her husband for the first time in all these years that they had been distant due to their jobs. "That's why I'm quitting my job. I'm going to devote my last years with you...and..." Although her mouth was opened, she didn't finish what she said because she knew what she wanted to say would make the mood even sour than now. But she couldn't choose. She was no longer a traveling journalist. That life had ended. She was going to focus on what she was supposed to do since the beginning of her parenthood. "I want my sons back," she confidently and proudly finished.

His icy glare showed he wasn't impressed. "What?"

"Dear, look at us! Look at—" She desperately tried to find a family around their table and found one at a corner behind her. "At them! I can't miss that because I never had that. And now that I want it, I can't have it because we pushed our sons away."

"They're all grown up. They can take care of themselves."

"Thank you for trusting our children," she sarcastically snapped back. "But don't you ever miss them? You're always surrounded by four walls with only a door out to the outside, and even when you do go outside, it's only to do laundry or get something from home." She took a deep breath and composed herself before continuing. "I do the same too, so we're no different, and I'm not going to reprimand you for something we both are wrong about."

"Wrong? How are we wrong? We're the parents. We can't be wrong." He reached for his glass cup of water and held it. "Our children grew up fine. They don't need our help and if they did, they would've asked." He put the cup to his lip and took a sip to clear his thirst. When he finished, he put the cup back down and fixed his shirt. "It seems that you've called me out for something trivial as this and nothing else, so I'm going to say do as you please. We may be married, but we have our own lives to deal with. I can't stop you, and I won't." He stood up, ready to leave.

"Dear," she whispered, eyeing his empty seat and trying to hold back her tears. "Did you love me?"

"What?" He found the question absurd. "Of course, I did. That's why I married you."

"Then," she lifted her gaze to him, "do you still love me now?"

He awkwardly looked around. "We're not young anymore, so don't—"

"Do you?" she persisted.

He paused, not because he was hesitant or unsure. But the look in her eyes and her composure told him that no matter how honest he was going to be, she would still doubt him. Believing so, he turned around and said, "I'll be leaving first."

"I met our grandson." Her hasty confession halted her husband from leaving. She shifted her eyes from his back to the window on her right, which showed the lit-up sky. "It's been a year, you know, and he's grown so fine."