ODYSSEY /  PRELUDE, THE DAWN OF MY RETURN.

The lights are dimmed, and papers are scattered everywhere. You sat in front of your father, and no words were said. The silence was harrowing. He sat there as well, but the silence is worse. This is how he's always been with you.  It isn't that he doesn't love you or care for you; it's just that there was nothing he could say to you.  There is so much you don't know yet.

Your father asked you if you wanted an orange and you'd share it under the glimmering
light of the room from his window. A bond of your own, no words were needed to express the love. He never says enough, but every little thing he does makes up for it.

A father and a daughter, a mirror of each other's worst versions. Your father sees himself in you and he doesn't like it. He's sad, and you don't understand. You're four, and the world was good.

You're growing up. You're starting to look like your father more and more. Blue eyes made of promises no longer match each other. A mirror of your own self you can no longer recognise. Your father is sad. There is so much you don't understand yet.

Father was always busy at work, there was no one to talk to. The home had become a haunted house. The smell of your father's expensive cologne still lingers in the air when you wake up in the morning to an empty house. No more notes. No more forehead kisses. The only thing that awaits you in the morning is the cold plate of your favourite meal and a glass of warm mango juice.

Your father knows so much about you without communicating, and you'd cry because you don't even know his favourite colour. There was something haunting about being a daughter, and that was it.

The lack of communication haunts this home but the little things like sharing an orange or eating dinner at the table after a long day make up for everything. Your father loves you a lot, but he can't help but be sad when he looks at you.

A better version of himself, everything he could've been laid inside of you. The hauntings of you becoming like him makes him sad. You wish you could understand this sadness that every father holds, but you're too young and you have the whole world at your feet. You're just like him, and he was just like you. He was once in your position, the best version of his own father and his father cannot help but be sad. It was haunting seeing yourself in someone and them deciding who they want to become when they grow up.

Will they want to become a firefighter, an astronaut, or a teacher? So many choices and yet they all wanted to become you.

Being a father was haunting and being a daughter offers you the question: mum or dad? Who will you want to become? So many questions, so many opportunities, so little time. You do not want to be either. You do not want to become a mother who cooks three meals a day. You do not want to become a father who comes home after a long day at work with a headache.

You do not want to be anything, but that was impossible. You always become someone. You always become mum or dad. It was inevitable.

You always become someone. There is so much you don't understand yet.

Conversations were no longer spoken in the hallways. The only thing that remains is the drawings on the wall, scattered everywhere. Your father never bothered to clean it up. Always busy, no more time for you.

Always busy, you felt unwanted. A little girl with a father. You do not need to say anything to know it was haunting. Wretched mirrors of each other, so much of him is in you. So much of the person he is is in you and that was what made everything go wrong. Your father runs away when he cannot fix something, and he should've known better.

You ran. A little girl with a father. Nothing more haunting. A little girl with the world at her feet. Nothing more haunting. A little girl with a choice to become mum or dad. Nothing more haunting. A little girl who will end up being something. Nothing for haunting.

So much hauntings, you hope it would not reach your next life if there ever was one.

Every corner of home was haunted. Every corner was made of the what-ifs.

What if you become dad? a man who comes home after a long day at work. What if you become mum? forever bound to the kitchen cooking three meals a day.

What if, what if, what if you're not good at either. You do not want to become them. A daughter and a father. A daughter and a mother who was never there. There were so many what-ifs to utter, and there is so little time to become the person you do not know what to be.

You don't want to be anything. You do not want to be bound by a single title for the rest of your life and after.

So much of your life, you were always known as Kielman's daughter. Not your own name, but your father's.

Kielman's daughter. Kielman's little girl. Kielman. Kielman. Kielman. All your life you were already someone before you knew what becoming someone meant.

Kielman's daughter who ran away. Kielman's missing girl. Those were your titles. That is who you are. You had become your father, and that made him sad. You had become your father. There was nothing more haunting than wretched mirrors talking back to each other.

Missing posters. frantic searchings. You were long gone. An ache you can never mend. A decision you can never take back. Home was so far away now, and your father was a grieving man.

He had become his daughter. Ellis was made of so much, and a part of who he was was his daughter. So much had happened. He had been so much in his life. He had become so many people.

He had had so many titles. Kielman's son. Detective Kielman. Kielman's case. He had lost count of the people he had carved himself to be and lost himself in the foundation that was already collapsing.

He had become his daughter. Rain's father. That missing girl's father. Her poor father. It was haunting. He had felt like a little boy in the kitchen of his home along with mother once again, waiting for dinner to be cooked while singing her favourite song.

Ellis Kielman always left the porch light on and the door unlocked in case you come back. So much of him lives in pain, and so much time had passed since you left. He changed the lightbulbs. He had lost count. Door left unlocked, so much break-ins.

This was home. This was your home. So much of you had been left inside the very walls of your childhood. Your room was left untouched, dust had found its way to your things. Your father never put down any of your stuff. Your drawings are still proudly displayed on the fridge door. Your shoes still messily laid atop one another from the entrance of the home, waiting for you to come back and use them once again.

An empty chair in front of your father. Oranges are left in the bowl of his study. Your favourite snacks collecting dust in the pantry. This was home, and your father is waiting by the front door.

So much time had passed, and Ellis is still waiting. After all this time. After these years, the porch light is still on. Someone is home. Someone is waiting for you to come home but you can never bring yourself to come back.

There is something haunting about being a daughter, and this was it. Wretched mirrors of each other. The lack of communication. The little things. The front porch light.

It has been a decade. You are gone. You are no longer bound to the same place you grew up in.

You miss everything, and you do not have the heart to go back home no matter what. This was haunting. This was so haunting. Is your father still waiting for you? Does he still remember your favourite food? does he know you are sorry?

Is he eating dinner alone? You hope not. Your father deserves more than that. No one deserves that kind of loneliness.

So much time had passed, he must've moved on. A decade had torn you apart. You were surely different people now.

Did your father know you were sorry? Does he think you are dead? Does he still remember the little things?

There is so much you don't understand yet.

There is something haunting about being a father with a daughter. A better version of yourself. Nothing more haunting. Someone you could've been. Nothing more haunting.

Home had become haunted with the what-ifs, and there are so much questions left unanswered.

The porch light is on for you, Rain. Come home. The door is open.

It's been ten years. There was nothing more haunting.

He had changed the lightbulb once again. There was nothing more haunting about being a father with a daughter.

We all become somebody in the end or in the beginning before we even know what we wanted to be.

When you had become someone and you were ready to come back home, will the front door still be unlocked? Is the extra key still under the flowerpot?

Will your father welcome you home?

Will the walls of your childhood empire stay still and wait for you by the other side of the door?

Will your father still be there?

Did he change the locks?

Did he give up on you?

An Odysseus of the modern times. A 10-year-old struggle to return home. Penelope and Telemachus were there to welcome him back. You wonder if your father will be there, on the steps of your porch with a peeled orange in his hand and a glass of mango juice, patiently waiting to welcome you home too.