"Thank you," I told Brandon with a polite smile. "By the way, before you continue, could you not say it like I am truly the woman in your dream?""Even if you look exactly like her except that you"re wearing modern clothes?" Brandon countered with a hint of childish petulance.
I nodded.
"I"m certain that you"re her. Even your actual name seems to match her looks," he crossed his arms on his chest stubbornly.
"We only look similar but who knows if I"m really her," I told him, a bit uncomfortable with his insistence. "Now, about your dream…?"
"Oh, right. Like I said, it was always the same dream," he said, his eyes downcast and his demeanor a bit shy now. "I am always transported to olden time j.a.pan. In that dream, I am dressed in a silk robe and my hair is long like it is right now. After I finished talking to a man in fluent j.a.panese, the man would then respectfully bow down towards me and leave. I"ve always tried to remember what we talked about but failed."
"That"s too bad," I said with a frown.
"It"s frustrating!" he ran his fingers through his l.u.s.trous hair, affording me a whiff of his shampoo. It smelled nice.
"What happened next?"
"Well, uhh," his cheeks reddened once more. "I would then hurry to where the woman who looked like you was… And that"s it."
"Thank you for leaving the rest of the details out," I told him, slightly embarra.s.sed myself. What happened next was so obvious, what else would his flushed cheeks mean?
"Even if you didn"t threaten me with reporting me to the flight crew, I still would not have not told you the rest of my dream," he cleared his throat while scratching his earlobe.
"Yeah," I looked down and twiddled with my thumbs, not knowing what else to say.
"Anyway, that"s it. I grew up having it over and over again. In fact, I don"t remember having other dreams aside from that one. When I told my parents about it, they immediately brought me to a shrink. It bothered them that a six-year-old boy dreamt of something so vivid over and over again. Unfortunately, the shrinks we visited couldn"t give us a conclusive explanation. It was unnerving for everyone at first but as time went by I considered it as a natural occurrence."
"So did you look for that woman?"
"Always! The feeling I get in my dream whenever we"re together is something I have never felt with any of the women I"ve been with. I travel to j.a.pan whenever I can in the hopes of finding her. But who would"ve thought that she lives in the same country I lived in?" he replied with a fond smile.
"Oh," my heart skipped a beat when I saw his smile, subconsciously making me grip my chest.
"Are you alright?" he looked at me worriedly.
"No, I"m fine," I looked away and reached for my water bottle to take a sip.
Just then, the cabin crew announced that they will be serving our meals. I secretly breathed a huge sigh of relief. There was something about his smile that shook my heart…
Brandon and I talked for the entire trip back home. When the plane landed in Manila, he gave me his business card.
"I hope this won"t be the last time we"ll see each other," he said shyly. "I really want to get to know you better, Hinata."
"I"ll call you," I said, although I didn"t know when that will be or if I ever will. It"s still too early, my heart still belongs to Kaname and our children.
"That will be great!" he said with a hopeful smile.
"Anyway, I"ll get going. My mum is picking me up," I said when I saw my red luggage bag emerge from the carousel"s flaps. I hurriedly grabbed it and nodded at him.
"Oh, okay," Brandon said half-heartedly. "I hope you"ll call me soon."
"Take care," I said, not wanting to make a commitment. "It was nice meeting you."
~~~
The evening air was muggy, the familiar lights and noise of my homeland reminded me once more that I was no longer with my beloved family. Suddenly, a tear fell from my eye without my realizing it. I heard a honk and saw my car with mum behind the wheel. Seeing my mother"s warm and smiling face made me burst into a full-on cry.
"Mum!" I ran towards her, ignoring the stinging on my knee.
"Hina," she said while hugging me.
When I broke our hug, she gingerly wiped my tear-stained cheeks. "We"ve only been apart for a couple of days and you"re crying this much," she said teasingly.
"I just missed you so much!" I also feel so guilty, I continued in my head. I rarely thought of you all those years.
"Silly girl!" she took my hand carry luggage and entwined our arms. "Let"s go, we can"t park the car here for long."
~~~
Entering my room and seeing my waiting cat again hit me with another wave of happiness and sadness.
"My Panpan!" I ran to the bed and hugged my senior cat. "I missed you, baby boy."
He meowed and started to purr, his inky tail swinging contentedly. I rolled to my side while still hugging him, when I saw his odd eyes, Kaname"s beautiful smiling face popped in my head. This separation hurt more than anything else in the world. The pain I felt when Tyler cheated on me was like a scratch compared to this one. It feels like a huge part of me died and there"s no way I"ll be able to move on. Will this pain ever pa.s.s? Why did I have to travel through time if I can"t even be with them for the rest of my life?
"Kaname," I fished out my phone from my purse to look at the photo I downloaded last night. "My babies… My family."
Now that I"m looking at the photo properly, I noticed that my husband"s smile didn"t reach his eyes and there was also only a hint of his comforting warmth in them. He looked like he only forced himself to appear happy.
"Anata, you did well," I whispered as the tears continued to fall. "You single-handedly raised our children into the respected and accomplished adults we always wanted them to be. I"m sorry I wasn"t with you during those years, I would give anything to be with you and the children for the rest of my life. I love you so much, you know that right?"
I looked at the smiling faces of my twins and my no-longer-little Riku. They all looked happy, the complete opposite of how they looked like yesterday as I vanished before their very eyes. My Touya grew up to be his father"s younger version, his smile could definitely disarm any woman he meets while my Miyako reminded me of my adolescent self with her aura of confidence; Riku, on the other hand, was the perfect combination of his mother and of Kaname. His kind smile could a.s.sure any troubled heart.
"My cute little rice b.a.l.l.s, did you miss mama too much?" I ran my thumb on their smiling faces. "It"s only been hours but mama already miss you so much she feels like she won"t be able to endure it."