For several seconds, I didn't speak.
Then I began explaining.
The temperature readings.
The unexpected heat concentration.
The way the material behaved differently from my model.
Dad listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he nodded.
“Sounds like you learned plenty.”
I stared.
Then I laughed.
He patted my shoulder.
“Failure is expensive only when you refuse to learn from it.”
That sentence stayed with me.
So did something else he said that afternoon.
“Naomi, if you ever build something that matters, make sure you understand who gets to decide how it's used.”
At seventeen, I thought he was talking about patents.
At twenty-eight, standing beside a dining table in Taipei, I finally understood he was talking about power.
My father died when I was nineteen.
A sudden heart attack.
No warning that prepared us.
No long goodbye.
One evening he was sitting in the kitchen discussing my university classes.
Three days later, my mother and I were choosing a funeral service.
Grief changed the rhythm of our house.
The garage became quiet.
Dad's tools remained exactly where he'd left them.
For months, I couldn't bring myself to touch the old workbench.
Mom didn't ask me to.
She understood that losing someone wasn't a problem you could solve by pretending to feel better.
I was studying mechanical engineering at the time.
For a while, I considered leaving school.
I wanted to work.
Help my mother with bills.
And stop feeling as though I was living a life that Dad should have been there to see.
One evening, Mom found me sitting at the kitchen table with withdrawal forms open on my laptop.
She looked at the screen.
Then sat beside me.
“Are you sure?”