A ck Maybach waits outside the airport of The Holy City.
Seeing Pa Rouco leaving the airport with her suitcase and a ck baseball cap, Adam Rouco opens the car door and steps out of the car.
Lucio Rouco gets out of the back seat with the car door open.
“Sister, over here!”
Adam Rouco approached his daughter, looked at her earnestly, smiled warmly and opened his arms.
In those seven years, he rarely returned home and saw less of his family, but his thoughts of them continued to grow.
Everything changes, but blood and kinship do not.
Pa Rouco slipped into her father’s arms and they hugged tightly.
“Papa.”
“Paulita, wee home.”
Adam Rouco patted his daughter on the back and said with a slight smile, “Lucio, help your sister carry the luggage to the car.”
Then to Pa Rouco: “Let’s go home, your grandfather and mother are at home waiting for you toe back for dinner.”
Pa Rouco nodded, “Okay.”
Once in the car, Adam Rouco drove.
Pa Rouco and Lucio Rouco sit in the back of the car.
Pa Rouco asked, “Dad, why did youe to pick me up yourself, it would have been nice if Uncle Liu picked me up.”
“This time you are fine back home, so of course I had toe pick you up myself.”
No matter how old Paulita was, whether she was an adult or a minor, Adam Rouco, her father, always adored her.
Lucio Rouco raised an eyebrow, “It’s not the first day you know that our father is a ve to his daughter, at home, you’re the baby and I’m the trash.”
Adam Rouco cackled, “Lucio Rouco, speak to your conscience, when have I ever treated you like garbage?”
“You see, at home I’m the one who takes out the garbage, I’m the one who carries my sister’s luggage, my sister has been abroad for seven years and doesn’t bother you and my mother in her happy life, so you two put the joy of living on me, I walk every day in front of your eyes, right, and you’re tired of me. am I not trash?”
Adam Rouco said amused, “You’re a boy, of course you have to take charge.”
The atmosphere was warm as father and son bickered.
Adam Rouco, however, noticed that Paulita’s words were sparse and nced at her in the rearview mirror and saw her looking out the window with a somewhat pale look on her face.
Adam Rouco says, “Paulita, La Ciudad Santa has changed quite a bit in the years you’ve been studying abroad, hasn’t it?”
Pa Rouco said, “Yes, it has changed a lot of the scenery from the airport to the way back home.”
“Lucio, there is yogurt and bread in the car, your sister must be hungry right after the ne, take it to your sister to fill her tummy.”
Lucio Rouco obediently took the yogurt and bread out of the car seat drawer, “Sis, have some.”
Pa Rouco casually tackles a couple of bites.
Adam Rouco wanted to ask her about her ns for this return, but looking in the rearview mirror he saw that she looked a bit tired, so he didn’t bother her anymore and let her rest for a while.
…
ck Maybach entering La Vi Rouco.
Roberto Rouco saw the car entering the courtyard from the living room and got up from the sofa excited: “Paulita is back”.
Estre Berrocal also saw it andughed, “Dad, take it easy, watch out for hypertension, I’ll pick them up in the yard.”
“Go on, go on.”
Pa Rouco had just gotten out of the car when she was hugged tightly by Estre Berrocal who approached her.
“Mama.”
“Paulita, you’re finally back, do you know how much mommy missed you?”
Lucio Rouco, a tall man, stood next to the car, holding the roof, “Mama, sis, have you had enough hugs, Grandpa is dying of anxiety in the living room?”
Estre Berrocal smiled and red at her son with her eyes, took Paulita’s hand and said, “Then let’s hurry home, your grandfather misses you too.”
Adam Rouco closes the car door and looks back at Estre Berrocal who walks across thewn towards the chalet with Paulita in her arms, somewhat contemtive.
Lucio Rouco walks up and casually tosses out, “Dad, have you also noticed that there’s something wrong with my sister?”
“There are fewer words than before.”
“Is it a little less? She used to crush me when we first met, but now why is she suddenly so quiet, I feel strangely ufortable.”
Adam Rouco gave him a sidelong nce, “Do you want your sister to beat you that badly?”
“Heh, she used to hold me down and beat me on the bed, now she seems like a different person.”
Father and son entered the chalet together and Adam Rouco indicated, “Pay more attention to your sister.”
“That is, after all, she is my own sister.”
Adam Rouco’s lips curved with satisfaction; this bastard boy, he knew something.
…
When we got home, the house was full of heat.
But that’s probably because Pa Rouco is used to being alone all these years, and it takes a lot to adjust to life in a group when you’re used to being alone.
Estre Berrocal helped her pack and said, “Yesterday I had the maids wash your bedspread and quilts and such and take them out to the patio to dry, and I sent someone to clean your house.”
“Thank you Estre.”
Estre Berrocal touched her face and said, “You just got back, so take a hot bath tonight and get a good night’s sleep. I’ve put essential oils in the bath, so you can use whatever drops you want.”
“Good.”
When Estre Berrocal had left, Pa Rouco took a hot bath and almost fell asleep.
She was lying on her back next to the bathtub, fiddling with her phone, when she received an international business news.
“Severo Laris, president of the M. O Group, has announced his intention to enter the domestic market this year…. Once M. O makes a big move, will it have a knock-on effect on the domestic market in the same sector?”
Pa Rouco looked at the news, and at the mature man on the front page of the news, calm andposed in his white shirt, slightly puzzled.
For the past seven years, she had tried to block out news about him, but more or less, consciously or unconsciously, she would know something of his recent history.
She had been very sessful.
She had always known he was good.
Putting the phone aside, shey back in the tub, closing her eyes and rxing her body.
Say to himself, Pa Rouco, stop thinking about what’s there and what’s not there, that person has nothing to do with you.
…
Late at night, Pa Rouco is lying in bed, tossing and turning, probably because she’s not quite ready to return to The Holy City from her home in Phdelphia.
It was like when she went to Phdelphia from The Holy City, where she lost sleep all night after studying across the ocean for the first time.
That’s not the same as going to college at Imperial.
Being in Phdelphia, a foreign country with few Chinese around, and going through a breakup at the time, loneliness came over her.
In Phdelphia there were no friends and no one to talk to, so she got into the habit of doing so.
Unable to sleep, Pa Rouco simply sits down, turns on her phone camera and records a video of herself.
“Today is day two thousand five hundred and ny-one since I broke up with him, and I’vee home, home.”
“When I see news about him again, I don’t feel as bad as I did at first and I can be calm and not think about it anymore. But I keep losing sleep.”
“It’s one o’clock at night and I can’t sleep.”
“I’ve been off the medication for a while now and my condition is good, and my doctor has told me that I shouldn’t rpse as long as I keep it up. Buttely I’ve been feeling that involuntary low that has started again.”
“But I don’t want to take the pills because they make the reactions slower than normal and I won’t y the piano well.”
“I didn’t tell my family that I had depression and was taking the medication because I was afraid they would worry.”
…Property of N?)(velDr(a)ma.Org.
Talk to yourself.
This is the fifteen hundredth video you’ve recorded in seven years.
On average, I record four or five times a week, whenever I lose sleep.
In these 2. 000 days, you have had very few days of good sleep.