My mother keeps on asking me why I have decided to embark on this journey across the ocean, into the vast unknown beyond the Great Wave. As if asking several times will change the outcome of my response.

I’ll admit, though explaining this to you is the main purpose of my letter, I’ve been a bit roundabout with the subject so far. You see, I have something of a condition…

Yearning for distant worlds runs in the family.

It all started with my father. He’s a pilot, you see. Long before I was born he had already set his mind on his profession, and studied rigorously. Eyes trained on the skies, he would embark on practice flight after practice flight, circling the city from above in the company of my mother. It’s no surprise they ended up together, with views like that on every date.

“A raise?” one of the councilmen slammed his hands on the table. “People out there are dying, and you come here asking for a raise?”

“Precisely because they are dying is why I demand a raise,” the doctor said.

The ominous child came to be on April 13 of the year 2013, at 4:13pm.

“That’s what you get for going against our wishes and running off with that witch,” his grandmother told his father over the phone upon hearing the news. “A cursed child. Ha, you’ll need all the luck you can get, raising that little demon.”

“My boat came to our shores, and three days have passed since. You know that is the most I could wait. What’s important now is that we celebrate together while we can.”

On the year she turned seven, her mother brought home a fig tree sapling.

“It’s a baby tree,” her mother said. “If we take good care of it, it will grow very big one day. Come on, why don’t we plant it together?”

I only got to know him at the final stage of his life: wrinkled with age, clouded with cataracts, hobbling around on a crippled leg yet refusing to rely on a walking stick. Some would call him pitiful in that condition, but knowing a small part of his life’s story, I can only call him admirable.

Four best friends—teenagers all—tinkered with their BB guns on a deserted hill. Up on their meeting spot and precious little secret, the air was colder, but the night sky seemed to shine more vividly than anywhere else in town.

“Attention all passengers of flight HM1344, destination Los Angeles. Our technicians are still working hard to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen complications, there will be an additional delay of three hours—”

The group of people stuck at the terminal let out a collective groan that momentarily overwhelmed the announcement.

“A flamenco show?” I finally asked after processing the paper that was crudely glued onto the wood. “Could we look any more like tourists right now?”

“Well, we could order a sangría,” she replied with a chuckle, already pushing open the doors and making her way inside, greeting some strangers along the way.

I was left no choice but to go in with her.

“Determined, perseverant, committed, call it what you want,” the woman said, bringing her towel to the drying rack. “The fact still remains that you do the exact same thing every single day. Don’t your friends tease you enough?”

The man waved a hand in the air dismissively. “That’s hardly important. Summer won’t last forever, so I have to make the most of it.”

“Made up your mind, yet?” Asked the man who sat on the other side of the table, smugly holding his own set of cards. He glanced down at the burning cigarette that lay forgotten between them on a glass ashtray of intricate design. “The longer you take, the more the smoke will obscure your thoughts, you know.”