One afternoon, when the sky was overcast and the wind carried the scent of approaching rain, my mother showed me an old photograph kept inside an antique wooden box in their wardrobe—a box I had never dared to open before.
It was my parents' wedding photo, taken many years ago, when they were still young and filled with boundless hope for the future they believed they would share.
My mother looked very young and very beautiful in that photograph, wearing a traditional white wedding kimono that shimmered with delicate golden embroidery, a white veil draped over her hair with both elegance and sensual grace. Her eyes shone with pure happiness, with a joy untouched by the realities of married life. She smiled directly at the camera with the confidence of a young woman who believed her life would be perfect.
My father… my father looked serious in the photo, even somewhat sad. Even back then, he appeared like someone lost in distant thoughts. His eyes did not meet the camera with bright confidence, but drifted elsewhere, as if he were thinking of something far away—something more important or more compelling than this happy moment, a moment that should have been the pinnacle of a human life.
"Your father was very handsome back then," my mother said with a faint, sorrowful smile, her fingers gently touching my father's face in the photograph, as if a single touch might bend time itself. "Very handsome. Very intelligent. Full of dreams and ambition."
"Back then?" I asked, confused by her choice of words. In a child's mind, back then meant something that no longer existed. "Is Dad not handsome anymore? Is he not smart anymore?"
My mother laughed, but her laughter sounded like sadness disguised as joy—a sound filled with loss and regret.
"No, sweetheart. That's not what I mean… Your father is still handsome. Still intelligent. But he has changed. Work changed him. Work turns people into something different from who they truly are, taking away the softer parts of them and replacing them with something hard—something that can no longer be touched."