I hadn't been around for quite some time, not since I graduated. Everything in the house reminded me of my hatred, and so I'd spent many years trying desperately to get away.

I'd hated him for being nonexistent. When parents would show up in the annual sports day, father's day, or any family gatherings the school could come up with, my mother would always come on her own. Sometime my teachers, in their misguided sympathy, would try to talk to us, and there was nothing more humiliating than telling your teachers and classmates that your father was technically around but not.

I'd hated him for his dismal income, leaving it to mother to make them all manageable for a family of three. She'd worked so hard the skin of her palms turned rugged, her face sagged with weight, but he wouldn't so much help her ease the burden. Perhaps at this point I should just be grateful he even worked at the very least, because once mother's humble home cooking business flourished, he stopped. From then on, I would see all the neighbors more often than I would see him. A rural village teacher wouldn't make much, and I resented him because I knew he could have done some more in his career if he would just make an effort.

He'd had everything.

Born to a privileged family, furnished with education to the highest degree, and what did he do? Why should we go through all that hardship for him?

The drawer was locked. I thought of what he might store in there, and my best guess was another set of mathematical journals. He had these delivered every few months. I never knew who paid for the subscriptions, and for the love of gods I sure hope it wasn't mother. I snorted, giving the handle one last shake. It rattled in a different way, so I took another look. The drawer wasn't locked like I thought it was. It was simply stuck, and the lock was a toy lock, the cheap kind you could buy in a one-dollar hardware store. Technically you're supposed to enter four digit password in, but its plastic hinges wouldn't hold more force than a kid could muster. I couldn't remember his birthday, so I entered mine as a joke. I could just break it off anyway.

To my surprise, it opened. Perhaps the shoddy mechanism was so old it would just open no matter what combination I keyed in.

The contents of the drawer spilled out once I pulled out the box that had made it stuck. They were not math journals as I had expected. Instead, an avalanche of recreational mathematics puzzlebooks entered my view, crowded occasionally by children picture books. I nearly laughed. This was what that old man kept? Doing this all day in and out, that's almost sad.

I picked a few, noting Sam Loyd and Martin Gardner among those I could recognize. However, what welcomed me in those pages weren't his handwriting, annoyingly flowy and hard to read, but untidy child's scribbles. Those books weren't his. Those were mine. I had forgotten that back, way way back, he used to bring me these books to pass evening by, laughing in amusement whenever I encountered particularly difficult problems.

"What's so good about mathematics, anyway?"

"Hmm. It's a world on its own, I must say. A beast to be tamed."

"They look confusing."

"They're just like your puzzles. You like them, don't you?"

"I do. Do you know how to solve this one?"

"I can give you a hint..."

...Was that scene real, or unreal?

All this time I'd thought that he's always been trapped among the rationals and irrationals, wandering between the finite and infinite.

He used to make me puzzles, I heard the back of my mind whispering betrayals. Drawings of all kinds of geometrical shapes.

I stood up, dizzy.

"Can you see them, the stars?"

"Yeah."

"They're beautiful, aren't they?"

"I don't know you like stars, dad. You're always cooped up in your study."

"Ahaha, I suppose I am. I feel sorry for your mom, she has it rough."

"Well, good that you're aware!"

"To think that you're already old enough to scold me. You grow up fast."

"Why are you looking at me like that, dad? It gives me the creeps."

"Ah, sorry. It's just... Sometime... I'm afraid that... if I look away, suddenly I won't know you anymore."

"Well, maybe if you would just look at me more often..."

A jolt. A chilling breeze down my spine. I had fallen asleep, though if my watch were to trust, I passed out for a mere fifteen minutes. The puzzle books scattered around me. They must have escaped my clutch when I lost consciousness. Old as they were, some of the hinges gave way and the loose pages hung limply on their sides. I had no idea why that particular memory would resurface. I must be pretty young then, because I couldn't remember the two of us talking past sixth grade. He'd been totally gone by then, deep in the dark well of his obsession.

Now, I realized the purpose of my return to this house.

I had never asked my mother everything I had always wanted to ask, and I needed closure.