Mia dragged her exhausted body back home to find the living room steeped in darkness. She trudged up the stairs toward her room, her footsteps echoing in the silence. The hallway light cast a faint glow, and she knew her father, Michael, was still awake.
She found him in his study, surrounded by scattered documents, sitting alone on the carpet by the floor-to-ceiling windows with a glass of whiskey in his hand.
When Mia saw his hunched back and the strands of gray in his hair that she hadn't noticed before, her heart clenched.
'What have I been doing these past two years? Why didn't I visit him even once? How did I not realize he was getting old?' She was overwhelmed with guilt.
"Dad, are you alright?" She still remembered him as the strong figure from her childhood, invincible like Po
