A black Maybach waits outside the airport of The Holy City.
Seeing Paula Rouco leaving the airport with her suitcase and a black 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.
Paula Rouco slipped into her father’s arms and they hugged tightly.
“Papa.”
“Paulita, welcome 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 Paula Rouco: “Let’s go home, your grandfather and mother are at home waiting for you to come back for dinner.”
Paula Rouco nodded, “Okay.”
Once in the car, Adam Rouco drove.
Paula Rouco and Lucio Rouco sit in the back of the car.
Paula Rouco asked, “Dad, why did you come 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 to come 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 slave 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 glanced 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?”
Paula 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 plane, 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.”
Paula Rouco casually tackles a couple of bites.
Adam Rouco wanted to ask her about her plans 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.
…
Black Maybach entering La Villa Rouco.
Roberto Rouco saw the car entering the courtyard from the living room and got up from the sofa excited: “Paulita is back”.
Estrella Berrocal also saw it and laughed, “Dad, take it easy, watch out for hypertension, I’ll pick them up in the yard.”
“Go on, go on.”
Paula Rouco had just gotten out of the car when she was hugged tightly by Estrella 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?”
Estrella Berrocal smiled and glared 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 Estrella Berrocal who walks across the lawn towards the chalet with Paulita in her arms, somewhat contemplative.
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 uncomfortable.”
Adam Rouco gave him a sidelong glance, “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 Paula 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.
Estrella 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 Estrella.”
Estrella 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 Estrella Berrocal had left, Paula 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?”
Paula Rouco looked at the news, and at the mature man on the front page of the news, calm and composed 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 successful.
She had always known he was good.
Putting the phone aside, she lay back in the tub, closing her eyes and relaxing her body.
Say to himself, Paula Rouco, stop thinking about what’s there and what’s not there, that person has nothing to do with you.
…
Late at night, Paula 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 Philadelphia.
It was like when she went to Philadelphia 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 Philadelphia, a foreign country with few Chinese around, and going through a breakup at the time, loneliness came over her.
In Philadelphia there were no friends and no one to talk to, so she got into the habit of doing so.
Unable to sleep, Paula Rouco simply sits down, turns on her phone camera and records a video of herself.
“Today is day two thousand five hundred and ninety-one since I broke up with him, and I’ve come 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 relapse as long as I keep it up. But lately 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 play 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.”
…
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.