"You need to choose now, no, I'm not settling for ''I don't know'."   Mark, who had been pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed, stopped and finally took his stand. He looked rigid, raking his fingers through his dark hair in agitation. Outside, the wind was howling rather aggressively as if brewing the perfect storm, reflected in his clear brown eyes. He was rarely ever angry, rarely ever out of his element, but he just snapped. It was the final straw, she knew it. They both knew it, and there was no evading the conversation anymore.    Across from him was the walk-in wardrobe where his girlfriend had been going in and out for the past half hour. He has come from a lengthy flight from Malaysia for an event, came straight from what seemed like an endless drive from the airport just to see her only to find her bustling about her apartment, filling a luggage for the umpteenth time in the past three months. Though she has known all of that, she hasn't even pause for a second from what she was doing, throwing article after article into the suitcase on the floor, wide open as if mocking him. She did not even come out of her room even as he hollered from the door, announcing his arrival. Instead, she shouted a clipped, "Room," glanced at him once when he entered the very place in question, and continued with what she ha been busy with, way before he arrived, judging by the way her leather show luggage has already been packed and labeled at the corner of the room.   "I'm travelling back to Japan in three days," she told him as if the last two words in her statement was enough consolation for him as she would usually announce her departures either a day or even hours before her actual flight. When he commented on the number of things she had been throwing into her luggage, she said, "I won't be back soon," as if that was enough of an explanation.   She then went on what seemed to him a soliloquy on why she was packing again. It was like she was saying it more to herself than explaining it to Mark. Occasionally, she would throw in a, "Where's my red scarf?" or "Where did I put that goddamn thing?" obviously on edge and in a great hurry as if she is a fugitive whose house is about to get raided any minute now.   As to the reason for her departure, it was the usual - business, her father's side is in yet another state of chaos, her father who needed all the help he could get. He understood her at first despite the lack of details regarding the purpose of her visits to her father's home country. She hated it there, and did everything in the past to avoid ever flying in and having to face the possibility of being in the same breathing space as her paternal family, especially her grandmother. Now, it was like she made every single reason to be there. Mark did not know the real reason why she kept on being on her father's side. Sure, it was her respectability to be around and be involved in their business. She was, after all, the heir to everything after her father.He only knew what she told him. 'My dad needs me there. He can't count on anybody else.' That's what she always says, but for some reason, he had a feeling that it wasn't just that. There was something bigger she wasn't telling him.   "Can't you drop by the day before Christmas?" he asked her after she was done explaining, resuming on her packing. "I'm coming back from the Philippines by then."   "I saw that on your itinerary, but I'm afraid I've already booked a flight from Tokyo."   "Without asking me?"   "I can't make it back here on the week between my planned arrival from Japan and departure to Germany.  I'm going there straight from Tokyo."   "You could have told me that when we talked on the phone the other day. Why am I finding about this today?"   "Look, I already told you. I promised to spend the holidays with my mom."   "That's not the issue here." That's when he lost it. "Why is it that every single time you are going somewhere, it's like a bomb that explodes on my face? If you tell me, the possibility of the plan being changed is always around, what, a hundred and ten percent?"   "It's a day's difference. I don't see why that's such a big deal," she answered from the wardrobe, busy scanning the hanger racks for whatever clothing she wanted to bring on her trip.   Mark knew she wasn't having any of his rants either, but he continued anyway. "Yeah, and I actually ask you just like I tell you about my own schedule so that I'd know what to do and emotionally prepare myself for it. Those are your own words. I have extended the courtesy, why can't you?"   "It's not that I can't." She came out of the wardrobe