The last days of October. While preparations for the Cultural Festival were safely coming to an end, Glenn's health was rapidly deteriorating. He kept counting the times he coughed up blood and took pills, and lately he'd been vomiting blood every other day, so he thought he was about to give up the ghost. Of course, he might have been exaggerating, for he knew as much about the illness as he did about his remaining time.
On one school day Glenn began to bleed internally twice. Each new time he rinsed his mouth thoroughly, so that no one would know of his condition: the young man wanted to stay behind the scenes of what was happening. But he could waste no more of his precious time, so he decided to end the affair that had haunted him for three years.
Upon returning home, Glenn pulled his keys out of his pocket. After unscrewing the front door to his apartment with the key once, he reached for the doorknob, but the door wouldn't open. This confused him, for when locking the door the teenager always scrolled once and checked, which led him to believe there could be no mistaking it. After unscrewing the key a second time, the door finally opened, and as he entered the hallway, he noticed the bedroom light was on. Someone had come home before Glenn. Giving himself a subdued look, he took off his shoes and walked over to the sleeping room.
There were two people sitting quietly on the bed. A woman, who looked to be in her forties but had lost none of her youthful beauty, had long, dark hair, and her good-natured look, coupled with her Asian appearance, was directed at the girl sitting next to her. The girl's blond hair and her European appearance stuck in Glenn's mind, causing the boy to open his mouth slightly. The girl immediately responded to him, reassuming a cold look, and fell silent. The woman followed her eyes and looked back at Glenn.
"Hello, son," the mother said in German.
"Mom," the boy replied, and held out a brief pause. "You haven't been home in six months."
Humble as Glenn was, the girl's lips finally quirked:
"Hello, dear brother."
The girl made a bow of her head, saying hello in Japanese.
"Lilia…"
The color of the woman's and the girl's eyes was the same, a brown color that suited their appearance in such a way that Glenn was ready to tell how perfect their looks were.
"While I was away in Japan," the mother clarified, switching to Japanese, thus interrupting her son's indecision toward her daughter, "I finished my duties in Germany. I'll tell you later, when we sit down at the table. In the meantime, let's eat, come on!"
"Yes. I'd forgotten how marvelous your cooking is, Mother."
Lilia refused in a soft voice, saying that she was already full of food. The girl preferred a minimalist style of dress, which is why she had only such clothes in her closet, and had a nice taste in color choices — she wore dull-colored city pants and a black woolen sweater with a collar.
"In that case, Lilia, I ask to participate in our conversation."
"I don't mind, dear brother, for I haven't seen you all year. Is it all right if Hoshi joins us?"
Her mother agreed, and then Lilia got to her feet, putting her head under the bed. She pulled a locked pet cage from the bed.
"Hoshi will be glad when he gets back to his aquarium."
And so, the family was finally fully assembled sitting around the table. The boy stared nonchalantly at Lilia, a meter-long white snake crawling across her frail neck and slender body. The snake's noble blue eyes did not leave Glenn alone, and Lilia, for her part, playfully fondled the creature with her hands. Hoshi was two years old, and the teen wondered how a snake at that age could have a crystal-clear appearance.
"Lilia has already started fifth grade," her mother declared, "and all the teachers love her."
A red blush appeared on the girl's face, and she was slightly confused as she awaited Glenn's reaction. His brother, on the other hand, marveled as he came to the realization that Lilia was eleven years old and had managed to grow a lot in the past year
"After working in Germany for a long time, I decided to take Lilia with me to Tokyo for a while."
There was no response from Glenn. He hesitated uncertainly, and the mother felt that her son wasn't interested in Lilia's situation.
"All right," she said, lowering her eyes in regret. Lilia closed in on herself, too.
Folding her arms, the mother added: "During the time I was in Germany, son, I was offered a new job there. This job is closely related to my industry and is also built on charitable assistance to victims from all over the world. I was called to serve at Caritas, a Catholic charity."
"Mother…"
"Son," my mother looked at him with bitter eyes, "I was finally able to achieve what your father wanted for me…"
"That's great, isn't it?"
"I don't think I could refuse their offer, but then I would have to leave the service in Japan. I'm truly sorry, son, but it had to happen sometime. I think you should forget the legacy of the past, because with your new job I'm sure you can fulfill the dream you've been longing for."
A sadness showed on the dark-eyed man's face, which gripped his slender body as he remembered about Germany. The lad still had unpleasant memories in that country, and those reminders gave him an inner resentment for his own mother, who, in her own case, could understand his feelings perfectly.
"Please, if you do not wish to think about it now, do not trouble yourself, and give your answer when you are ready. I will wait, for I want to be able to protect you."
She pulled an envelope from her leather purse. This envelope was from Glenn's work, provided for packing a cash bonus from the company for a successfully completed questionnaire. Mom placed the empty and already opened envelope on the food table, and Glenn realized that she was wondering what he had been doing while he was home alone.
"Son, did you find yourself a job?"
"Yes," Glenn replied, figuring out how he should lie to dampen his mother's interest in his job.
"I never saw an envelope like that before, when I was still in Tokyo. What does that mean: have you been hiding it from me all this time, or have you just recently taken a job?"
Glenn didn't answer, and then his mother asked a question that sent shivers running through his body, dulling his senses:
"It's a welfare job, right?"
"No. I got a short-term job to go outside of school."
"But why, son? Wasn't the money I discounted for you every month enough for you? It couldn't be."
"Brother," the humble Lilia interjected, "do you want to help people?"
"I wasn't going to help anyone at all," Glenn rose quietly, about to leave. "I'm saving money to make life easier."
Short-term work wasn't enough to save for the future. Although her mother guessed that Glenn was hiding something important from her and Lilia that he couldn't tell his own family about, it was annoying to see her son's nonchalant face. And yet, back in Tokyo, she wanted to see him happy.
As Glenn left the great living room, Lilia uttered: "Why doesn't my brother want to talk to us?"
"That's not true, he wants to, but for some reason he can't right now. He probably thinks it's not the right time."
"Not the right time…?"
"I'm sure your brother just isn't in the mood 0 he's in the middle of puberty. When you're alone with him, talk to him, and he'll probably be glad to talk to you."
"Talk… to my dear brother?"
Hoshi suddenly stopped crawling and looked intently at the frozen girl. Soon their gazes met, and with every second spent gazing into the snake's sparkling blue eyes, an inner calm returned to Lilia, and she realized that Hoshi was the best creature she had ever seen in her life.
Having overheard their last conversation behind the wall, Glenn finally entered his room. Mindlessly lying on the bed, he pondered what the family had said, and nervously biting his tongue, he closed his eyes to sleep.
***
At an early age, he often ran around with his peers. He was living in Germany at the time. He had a weekend ritual of always coming home at 6 p.m. to watch his father go about his business. One day, when it was raining outside, Glenn, though he made it home in time, still got soaked. Upon entering the house, he listened as his mother, angry at her son's stupidity, wondered why he had walked until he was soaked to the boot.
Glenn always answered such questions with a childish distortion of the truth, but he dared not lie to his mother, somehow regretting his action. In response, however, his mother patted him on the head and told him not to do it again. After changing into his new clothes, he refused to eat and ran to his father's room, which stunned his mother to the core.
Glenn's apartment at the time was plain, with faux dark wood inserts on the walls. As he entered the dark, warm room of his father, who usually worked there on weekends, the boy noticed his hair, bright and shiny from the rays of the big monitor, the screen of which simulated an artificial fireplace, and he realized that his father was busy with important work. Clad in warm, homemade clothes, his father sat at his desk, filling out paperwork.
Quietly sneaking up behind him so as not to disturb his work, Glenn stood beside him, and his father, turning his attention to him, showed his beautiful and easy smile, the sincerity of which delighted his son every time. Soon Glenn was sitting in the chair next to his father, watching as he continued to fill out the sheet with his pen.
"Father, how much longer can you fill out the worksheets if you work at the hospital?"
"My job requires," pronounced his father's gentle, brutal voice, scratching his smooth, short hair with confusion, "that after every work week I engage in writing worksheets (reports) about summarizing my work."
Glenn always listened to his father, never missing a phrase — it was a symbol of filial admiration for a parent he rightly considered an object to emulate.
"Glenn, you can read German letters, can't you?" his father asked when his son took a closer look at his report card.
"Yes, I learned!"
"What a nice boy, and I still can't learn Japanese, your mother's native language."
"That's no good, Father. You must learn, even if it is a difficult language for you!"
His father chuckled, agreeing with Glenn, and then asked if his son liked his job. Glenn immediately nodded, with eyes that were brighter than a shining star in those days.
"I want to be just like you, Father!"
Upon hearing this, the father expressed a bitter smile, "Do you want me to tell you how my work went this week?
I didn't have to wait for my son to answer, as Glenn shook his head up and down, like a dog, as if to express a nod. This was how their family weekend went. Before bed, as Glenn lay with his head on his father's slender legs, he muttered: "I want to be just like you, Father," and fell asleep. The happiness on his father's face was not to be missed. As soon as her mother quietly opened the door to the room, she saw them both stretched out in deep sleep on the same couch. She knew it was better not to interrupt their evening.