“My uncle once asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ when I was already 27 years old. From that moment, I started to be afraid of him. And a few days later, when he took me to a hotel outside the city, he leaned close to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, come up to my room…’”

Now he was sitting across from me, barely holding back his own tears.

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“So that’s why you were acting so strangely?”

He gave a quiet laugh.

“I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.”

Then I remembered something.

I looked at him.

“And why did you ask me if I was a virgin?”

His face immediately turned red.

For a moment, he looked completely embarrassed.

“I was trying to ask whether you were serious with someone, whether you were building your life around another person, whether you were making your own decisions.”

I stared at him.

“And somehow that became, ‘Are you a virgin?’”

Richard covered his face with one hand.

“I know. It may have been the worst question I’ve ever asked in my life.”

For the first time that day, I laughed.

That night, we stayed in Room 214 until almost midnight, opening my father’s letters one by one.