“I have watched you from afar, Aina. I stood outside your school on your first day of Form 1. I saw you win the district badminton tournament – I was the man in the grey cap who clapped too loudly. Every achievement, every smile, I have treasured from a distance. I know this does not excuse my absence. But I need you to know: you were never the reason I left. You were the only reason I kept living.”

My hands trembled. The rain seemed to grow louder, drowning out the world. I read on.

He passed away a week later. But in that week, we had seven days of laughter, of stories, of silence that was not empty but full. He taught me how to play chess. I showed him my SPM notes. He told me he was proud of me. And I finally said the words: “I love you, Abah.”

The letter that arrived on that rainy Tuesday would change everything. I remember the sound of the postman’s motorbike struggling through the puddles outside our kampung house, and the dull thud of an envelope slipping through the rusted letterbox. The rain was relentless, hammering on our tin roof like a thousand tiny drums. Little did I know that this ordinary, grey afternoon would carve a permanent scar into my memory.

My mother found me on the floor, the letter crushed in my fist. I expected her to curse his name, to snatch the paper away. Instead, she sat beside me, her own eyes red. “He called every month,” she whispered. “He asked about your grades, your health. I never told you because I was bitter. But a daughter deserves to know.”

I was seventeen, preoccupied with SPM trials and the petty grievances of teenage life. My father had left us when I was ten, and the memory of his departure had turned into a cold, hard stone in my chest. He was a shadow, a name my mother refused to speak. So, when I saw the familiar, shaky handwriting on the envelope – a handwriting I had almost forgotten – my first instinct was to tear it into pieces.

That night, I made a decision. The next morning, I took a bus to Penang. The journey was seven hours of turmoil – doubt, anger, fear, and a fragile, desperate hope. When I finally arrived at the hospice, the nurse led me to a small, sunlit room. The man on the bed was a ghost of the father I remembered – thin, pale, his hair gone grey. But his eyes – those same warm, brown eyes – lit up the moment he saw me.