𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞 || 𝐌𝐡𝐚

5

"Reia!"

I turned around. Dropping my luggage, my hands flew to my mouth before I immediately ran over to my parents and lunged at them with a hug. They laughed as they buried their faces in my neck, peppering small kisses all over my face. I felt the warmth of their hands, their chuckles, and the happiness they radiated that made me feel warm inside.

My nose burned; my eyes stung, and I couldn't stop the sob that fell from my mouth.

"Mom! Dad!"

"Shh, shh, it's okay Reia," my dad said, the tone in his voice slightly wavering.

I wanted to say something. Anything. How I loved them. How I missed them. But all that could come out was more guttural cries as I tightened my grip on their bodies. I struggled to lift my head from their chests, but both of their hands slowly pushed my head back. My mom sighed.

"We know. We love you too, Reia."

And then she woke up. Arms tightly crossed into an 'x' over her chest, the tears didn't stop falling, even if the dream she was in wasn't her reality anymore. The woman's eyes were wide awake. She couldn't tell you the immeasurable amount of hurt she felt that moment. Because the only thing that she felt was despair.

A short whimper made its way out of her mouth before Reia covered it and cried softly into her hands. Seeing her parents again. It hurt. She hasn't even recovered from the past month, and yet her brain thought to taunt her. To give her a cruel reminder that they were actually gone.

Sniffling, Reia sat up and stared blankly at her bed. There was no way she was going back to sleep. Maybe it was because she's been thinking too much about what happened. Maybe it was really her parents visiting her from the grave. Either way, she didn't want to see them, not if it was going to remind her who she doesn't have anymore.

She checked the time, but she shook her head and got up.

If she was going to stay awake, she might as well use most of her time.

--

Reia didn't realize how much time she actually stayed up that night. She tried so hard to not focus on the details that haunted her at the back of her mind, and overall, she was successful in doing so. But it came with an unexpected result once she glanced at her phone when she heard her alarm.

It's been 5 hours. Of course, the staying up part for five hours didn't phase her as a whole. She was a surgeon, and the long hours she's had to stay up came with the job. The only thing that surprised her was the fact she was running on 30 minutes of sleep. She's definitively going to need a coffee later. Actually, she needed to buy some groceries now that she thought about it.

Shutting the book on her desk, Reia quietly exited her old room from when she was a child and slowly made her way downstairs. She was careful enough to not wake the older male in the living room with one of his students, and same goes for the two others that slept peacefully on the couches in the main room downstairs.

The one thing she wanted to do for now was to try and scavenge whatever she could from the house pantry. Thankfully, despite Reia not visiting for a whole month, James had taken it upon himself to try and fix everything up for her. He had emptied the fridge of any food that would have gone bad within the first week, as well as other things such as fresh fruits and vegetables. She remembered him asking her if he could take the stuff in the fridge to bring home.

"Just take it. I'm not going to use it," was the bland response that Reia had given him before hanging up.

Now that she remembered what happened, a small amount of guilt ate up her conscience. It's been a few weeks since that conversation, and it has since been the last interaction she's had with James for a while. She wasn't in her right mind, but then again, she wouldn't classify her current mindset stable either.