Symon walked home shamefully and hobbled through the door, admittedly glad he was released from duty and not trying to hold down his lunch on a bumpy moving train. He had turned the knob of the front door quietly, not wanting to let his family know he was home early. However, this effort was in vain, as his mother was in the midst of cleaning up breakfast when she saw him. 

“Symon?” She asked. “Are you back already? It's hardly been an hour!”

“I…” He started, unsure if he wanted to admit he had gotten sick at the train station. “I’m not feeling well, so I was sent home.” 

His mother immediately threw off her dish gloves and walked over, pressing a hand against her son’s pallid face. 

“Symon, sweety you are burning up. Oh why didn’t you say you were ill? It's all of that staying up late that's done it, almost certainly.” She noted with a frown. “You should go upstairs and rest.” 

“That was the plan.” He said, heading up to his room, but was stopped by his father who loomed nearby with a disapproving scowl on his face.

“Woah woah. What’s this I hear about you coming back from work early?” His father pressed. 

Symon froze. He knew that tone of his fathers, it never meant good news. He could feel the man's cold stare from across the room. He clutched his bag and stared at his feet like a scolded child. 

“Dear, he’s sick. He had to come home.” His mother quickly defended, also having an idea of where this conversation was about to go, and clearly not in the mood to be the mediator of another one of Oman Cantillo’s famous rants.

“Sick? A real man doesn’t leave work because he’s sick,” He said, flabbergasted. He turned to Symon, puffing out his chest and looming over him, despite them being nearly the same height nowadays. Oman was a large man, with a heavy build that made him just as imposing as he was when he was a kid. Even if he was getting to the age where he'd grumble and groan attempting to lift himself out of his armchair, and then wobble over. Perhaps anyone else would not have found this aging man all that much of a threat, but Symon had long experienced what this man is capable of, and instinctually tensed up.  “Listen here! When I was working, I worked through colds, flus, injuries, you name it. Why? Because a man is valued by his work ethic.” 

“Oman please, go easy on the boy.” His mother insisted.

“Farah, you can’t keep coddling him like this. You give him an inch, he’ll take a mile. He needs to learn to grow up and stop being such a sensitive dandy!” His father continued to rant. “And I heard he was late for work this morning. You know back when I ran my store that'd be grounds for getting fired.”

Symon just stood there and took the abuse with his head hung low. He was used to his father yelling, and his harsh insults whenever Symon did something wrong. At least when he turned 18, he stopped coming away from the altercations with bruises, but he always kept an eye on his father’s fist. He found that in times like this, the best course of action was to not apologize, explain himself, or argue with the man. No, the only thing that would suffice was remaining stone faced.

“I was sent home by my boss. You can take it up with him if you'd like.” Symon replied with an almost uncanny dullness in his voice.

“Maybe I will!” He huffed. “Someone ought to teach that con man how to run a real business!”

“Please…” One could practically hear the eye roll from Farah despite her facing the sink, washing dishes. “You'll just get the poor boy in trouble, and after it took him ages to get a job he liked.”

‘Liked’ was stretching it a bit, mom.

“Now sit down, Oman!” All this shouting is going to spike your blood pressure, and I swear to the gods if we have to call the physician again, you can be the one to tell him why.” 

His wife's chastising caused the large man to deflate a bit and plop back into his chair. There Farah was the only one who could stand up to Oman and snuff out the fiery tirades. But that was only when they happened to disagree. It was when those two teamed up that it was like hell risen. Thankfully, Symon got off easy.

“Go ahead and go upstairs, dear.” She told Symon.

“Yes mother.” He mumbled, heading up the stairs. 

He threw his satchel and briefcase to the floor and kicked off his shoes. He wished to plop into bed immediately but his sheets were still blood stained from this morning. He pulled them off to put them in the wash, and grabbed some spare throw blankets that he used to lie on the small sofa in his room. His head throbbed and his stomach protested. He stared at his miniature piece with longing. All the extra time to work on it and he could barely sit up long enough to do it. He could only lie there in pain and discomfort while trying to get some sleep.

It was dead quiet in his room, allowing him to hear his parents speaking downstairs. 

“How could he be so irresponsible, getting sick like that during market season.” His father's voice practically vibrated through the house. “We have bills to pay, not to mention at this rate we're not going to have extra money for our vacation.”

His mother said nothing, letting his father rant and rave until he got it out of his system.

“Sleeping away on a productive day. The boy is lucky we even still let him live here at his age. If he weren't so inept.”

“He helps us with the bills, love.” She'd argue. “And as long as he keeps that up, that's all that matters.”

Symon covered his ears to drown out the noise. His fathers shouts made them ache. He tried not to take his fathers words to heart. He knew times were changing. It isn't  as easy to live on your own these days as it was when his father was a young man. Finding enough money to put down a deposit on a house was hard enough when he wasn't splitting his checks to pay for his family's needs.

After all, his parents no longer worked themselves, with their issues. His mother had weak lungs, and couldn't do a lot of intense labor, and his father was getting old and fat, developing arthritis. That, and he never quite got over losing the shop that owned for twenty years of his life. That had been years ago at this point. 

At first, he'd stayed just to help them keep their family home. They used to be so grateful to see that check come in every week, so proud that he was becoming a responsible young man. His mother also enjoyed being able to keep an eye on him, always a little too worried that living on his own would be too overwhelming. As the years would go on, however, that pride and excitement dwindled. Nothing in particular changed, though maybe that in itself was the problem.

 Symon was almost 30 now, and he was stuck. Maybe his parents could see that too. He’d just keep his head down, not cause trouble, and once Izzah was old enough to live on her own, only then would he make his move. Only then he would quit his job, find better opportunities and move somewhere quiet and alone.

 Which reminded him…

He sat up from his bed and rummaged through his briefcase. He pulled out a small envelope. Inside was a handful of paper bills, about 48 pesos, which was all he made a week with Raja insisting he be paid on commission. It wasn't a very fair deal, but it was all he could get. He pulled out a few bills from the envelope and closed it back up, leaving it on his desk. Most of that money would go to the family. But the bills he pulled out, about 8 pesos in total, took with him as he moved towards his closet. 

The tiny closet was crammed with stuff, his coats hung from the racks, neatly and orderly, and behind them, there was a large shelf that housed the dioramas he’d completed in the past. A few of them were pre-made kits, some of the first he'd ever done, but his most recent ones were hand crafted and based on real places, like a book nook that resembled the exterior of one of the townhouses downtown. His pride and joy was a project that he'd finished last year. A scale replica of his home, cut out so you could see each of the rooms. It was complete with the main room/kitchen, the master bedroom, the foyer, his sisters room, and his own room at the very top. Sitting in the tiny fake version of his room was a clay figure of himself, who was rather cartoony and poorly rendered compared to his surroundings. Symon was always better at inanimate objects.

But what he was looking for was none of that. He instead crouched onto the floor and pried open a small square of floorboard. Underneath it, there was a shoebox hidden inside. The box was filled with bills and coins, a secret savings pool that Symon had been keeping for years. He felt bad for keeping such money a secret from his family, but he knew if they knew about it, if they he had extra money laying around, that they'd certainly start asking him to spend it on their needs. But his goal was to eventually save enough money to move out. It was a lofty goal, but every day spent in the house reminded him that someday, he would have to leave. And every little bit added up eventually. He tucked the bills into the shoebox and closed up the floorboards once more. The movement made his stomach churn again, and he hobbled back to the couch.

He had to focus on resting; not just to ease his aching gut, but to recover as soon as possible. Sleep was an issue in itself. He would drift off to sleep only to be woken with sharp cramps throughout his body. His arms and legs burned. Whenever he did find sleep, he’d have nightmares of maggots crawling under his skin. He didn’t eat much during the day as he couldn’t keep anything down, and in the middle of the night, he’d had to rush to the bathroom to be sick again. Then he’d have to redo his bandages, as blood was soaking through them. 

The dizziness and stomach problems he could chalk up to a flu, but what he didn’t understand was why more thick hairs grew on his arm every time he changed his bandages, or why the skin on his fingertips were beginning to change color and texture. He also noticed two pimple-like red bumps on his forehead, symmetrically apart from each other. They were tender and zapped his nerves when he tried to pop them.