System Overload

The walk home after I left her in the rain feels longer than it should.

Maybe it’s because the campus has quieted to that strange, breathless stillness that only happens after a downpour like the world is resetting itself without warning. Or maybe it’s because every step feels like stepping out of something I wanted far too much.

Her silhouette stays in my mind long after I’ve turned away. The way she stood there, jacket forgotten in her hand, rainwater carving soft lines down her cheeks like the night was grieving on her behalf.

“I thought I could forget the reality and just choose what I felt,” I told myself.

The moment the door to my condo clicks shut behind me, the echo comes back.

“But I still can’t.”

It lands in the dark like a confession I shouldn’t have said aloud.

The first thing I do is walk to my desk like muscle memory is steering me, not choice. My planner lies open, Monday’s schedule still cluttered with neat handwriting that looks nothing like the chaos inside me now.

Under the elastic strap sits the thin brown envelope.

I don’t pull it out.

I don’t have to.

Just the sight of that corner, the faded off-white paper, the faint crease running diagonally is enough to make something in my chest collapse inward.

“Don’t look,” I tell myself, though my hand betrays me, brushing lightly over the edge.

The memory it holds flickers behind my eyes anyway.

The memory inside the envelope flickers anyway: a track field bathed in late-afternoon sun, Mikha mid-stride, jersey number 16 half-tucked, hair flying behind her like a warning I never listened to. And me, sitting on the bleachers, pen in hand, counting seconds as if cataloguing her ever mattered to anyone but me.

I press a palm against my forehead and breathe out slowly. “We were always a delay,” I whisper, though the emptiness of the room swallows the words almost immediately. Saying them doesn’t make them less true.

My breath slips into its usual pattern: four counts in, six counts out but tonight the rhythm falters. Nothing settles. Not the pulse in my throat. Not the memory of the rain on her hair. Not the weight of the jacket she offered, or the softness in her voice when she said my name like she was relearning it.

“I remember everything,” I murmur, voice barely steady. “And remembering hurts more than forgetting ever did.”

The admission leaves my mouth like a confession I should’ve buried.

So I do what I’ve always done best. I retreat.

The next morning, I rebuild my routine from scratch.
Earlier alarms.
Earlier walks.
Earlier classes.

Distance becomes my new architecture.

I leave ISO long before her practice ends. I take the long route around SEC instead of cutting through the courtyard. I eat during off-hours when the cafeteria is mostly empty, sitting in corners where her laugh cannot find me. I avoid the bench under the acacia because its shade remembers us too well.

I even change entrances, switching from CTC to the side door near Rizal, to minimize the chances of running into her. It is ridiculous. It is excessive. But it works, or at least it works enough that I can pretend the tightening in my chest is because of the weather, not her absence.

In class, I choose a seat two rows from the back, close to the window, where glare shields my expression. She still sits in the center like she always does. Radiant. Loud. Impossible. She still answers questions too confidently and laughs at whispers I can’t hear. And every now and then, too often for coincidence, she glances toward my side of the room, searching, scanning, maybe hoping.

I do not look back. I cannot.

It feels cruel, but I tell myself it is necessary.

Distance should keep things clean.
Distance should restore order.
Distance should silence whatever was starting to grow between us.

But the universe must have a cruel sense of humor, because even when I stay away, she finds ways to get through.

A coffee cup left beside my planner one morning.
A photocopy of handouts she somehow knew I forgot.
A small umbrella leaning beside my chair when the sky burst into an unexpected storm.
A note slipped beneath my textbook: ‘You missed this. Thought you’d need it.’

No signature. Never a name.

She never writes her name because she knows I’ll recognize her anyway.

She doesn’t chase anymore.
She doesn’t press.
She doesn’t corner me with jokes or questions.

She just… shows up.
In ways that don’t demand anything.
In ways I cannot rationalize.
In ways that make distance feel like a lie I’ve forced on both of us.

I try to pretend it’s nothing. But it isn’t nothing.

Nothing doesn’t make my heart twist when I pass by the practice field and hear her laughing with her teammates.
Nothing doesn’t explain why my eyes keep finding the back of her head in a crowded hallway.
Nothing doesn’t account for the way my fingers tremble slightly when I tuck away another piece of her quiet persistence, another proof that she hasn’t left even when I asked her to.

“Distance works until it doesn’t,” I whisper one night, staring at the old yema wrapper still tucked in the back of my planner.

And I know, the moment I say it, that it never worked at all.

Weeks turn into months in the way time does when you try to outrun a feeling, you notice every day and none of them at the same time. The silence between us doesn’t clear; it accumulates. Small memories pile up in the corners of my mind like dust, fine enough to ignore but impossible to forget.

I fill my days with equations and deadlines and color-coded tasks. I overwork my planner until the ink bleeds through the pages. I force myself into study groups. I attend extra lectures. I keep my world tight, structured, controlled.

But she is everywhere in the periphery.

Her voice in the ISO lobby.
Her laughter spilling down the hall.
The echo of her footsteps behind me before I turn a corner.
The faint citrus scent of her shampoo lingering on a bench she vacated minutes before I passed.

Her presence stays like a shadow that’s soft, familiar, impossible to unsee once noticed.

Some nights, when the wind shifts, the world feels too much like that walk in the rain. Quiet, fragile, full of something I refuse to touch.

And then, one late afternoon, I find myself walking toward the Rizal Library without thinking. The glass doors slide open, releasing that familiar cold wave of air-conditioning sharp, sterile, and predictable. Except now the cold feels different. It is not comforting. It is honest. It makes me shiver for reasons I don’t want to name.

I choose Row H again.

I don’t know why.

I sit in the third carrel from the window.
The same spot.
The same view.
The same faint reflection in the glass.

For a moment, I let myself breathe.

Silence shouldn’t feel like returning to an old ache.
But somehow, as I stare at the empty space two tables behind me where she once sat, half-hidden behind her notes, it does.

And I realize, with a quiet ache that settles deep into my ribs:

This isn’t over.
Not the memory.
Not the longing.
Not the thing between us that refuses to die just because I tried to kill it.

I close my planner gently, fingers trembling at the corners.

Somewhere on campus, she might be laughing again.
Somewhere else, she might be looking for me.

And for the first time in months…
I allow myself to wonder what would happen if I finally stopped running.

Some memories don’t ask for permission before resurfacing. They just rise quietly, relentlessly until they flood the present like a glitch you can’t fix. And as I sit in the third carrel of Row H, staring at a page I’ve read seven times without absorbing anything, the silence shifts. The kind that feels less like quiet, and more like a doorway cracking open.

Because this isn’t the first time my heart has miscounted inside this library.

Once, months ago this same spot had been a battleground I pretended not to notice.

It starts with footsteps. Light, familiar, impatient. The kind that don’t belong in a place designed for whispers.

Of course. I don’t have to look up to know.

The next second, a book drops onto my desk not hard enough to be rude, but loud enough to be undeniable. I keep my eyes on my notes, refusing the bait. The wood of the table dips as someone leans against it, tilting toward me like gravity personally requested it.

Then, in a voice absolutely not appropriate for library silence.

“Hindi mo ba talaga ako type, Aiah? Ilang beses mo na ako binabasted, ah.”

Her tone is full whining, full drama, full Mikha Cruz. Half the row looks up. I don’t. Because if I look up, it’s over. I grip my pen tighter, maintaining the façade of calm. I stare at my neatly drawn graph like it contains the secrets of the universe. Like I didn’t hear the smile hidden in her voice.

“I don’t,” I say flatly. “I don’t like perky girls.”

There. Clean. Controlled.

But Mikha laughs softly, and that alone cracks my composure.

“Pero consistent,” she counters, tilting her head, her shadow crossing my page. “Alam mo naman ako. Hindi ako sumusuko.”

The window behind her casts bright afternoon light around her silhouette. Messy hair from rushing between classes, varsity jacket shrugged off one shoulder, a faint sunbeam catching the edge of her grin. She looks annoyingly alive. Like the world moves for her and she barely notices.

I try to ignore the way her presence fills the tiny study space. I try to ignore the warmth creeping up the back of my neck. I try to ignore… her.

But Mikha Cruz is impossible to ignore.

She taps her fingers lightly against the desk. “Sige na. Sabihin mo nalang. Miss mo na akong sungitan, ‘di ba?”

I inhale sharply, keeping my gaze firmly on my notebook. “Five minutes kang hindi nagsasalita,” she adds, lowering her voice playfully. “Hindi ka sanay. Hinihintay mo lang talaga ako kausapin ka ulit.”

“No.” I say, too quickly.

Her smile widens. I feel it without looking.

“Sure ka?”

I swallow.

No.

I’m not sure of anything when she’s standing this close.

The truth presses against my ribs, unwelcome and warm.

Ever since I first saw her loud, unapologetic, too alive for my carefully measured world, I knew.
I liked having her close.
Liked the noise she made.
Liked the way she filled the silence I pretended didn’t scare me.
Liked the way she waited for me even when I pushed her away.
And maybe… maybe I’d been hers long before I admitted it, even to myself.

I force my voice calm. “Mikha, please. I’m studying.”

“Same,” she says, absolutely not studying. “Studying your face. Kasi kanina pa seryoso—”

I finally look up to glare at her.

Mistake.

Her eyes meet mine instantly, bright and warm and stupidly sincere, like she wasn’t expecting a victory but secretly hoping for it anyway. And in that moment, I feel my pulse stutter, betraying me without hesitation.

She softens when she sees it.
Just a little.
Just enough to undo me.

“Hi,” she whispers, as if greeting me for the first time again.

God. She doesn’t play fair.

I snap my gaze back down to my notes, but the damage is done. My cheeks are warm, my throat tight, and my focus completely destroyed. She lingers a moment longer, humming some nonsense tune, waiting for me to do something, anything but I stay still, hoping stillness will protect me.

Finally, she pushes off the table, the wood creaking softly.

“Okay. Pagod ka na siguro tiisin ako today,” she sighs dramatically. “Break muna ako. Pero babalik ako later. Don’t miss me too much.”

“I won’t,” I lie.

“You will,” she answers, far too sure, before she turns and walks away.

I don’t watch her.

Not directly.

But my eyes betray me in the glass reflection beside me, where her figure moves down the aisle, hair bouncing, bag slung over one shoulder. She pauses by the door when someone calls her name outside, someone whose voice I don’t recognize.

A laugh floats back into the library. Not her playful laugh, the one she uses when teasing me. This one is lighter. Freer. Unconstrained by the walls I keep building between us.

Something in my chest pulls tight.

I force myself back to my notes, but the numbers blur. I press my pen harder, too hard, until ink pools into a dark blotch on the page.

I don’t know why it bothers me.
I don’t know why hearing her laugh with someone else feels like a small cut where I didn’t expect to bleed.
I don’t know why my jaw clenches when I see her leaning against the railing outside talking to them close, animated, alive in a way I’ve only let myself be with her.

But I do know the truth, heavy and unwelcome, settling beneath my sternum:

It mattered. More than I wanted it to. More than I allowed myself to admit.

She disappears from view a moment later, swallowed by afternoon light.

And for the first time that day, I realized that… Silence is not as safe as I thought it was. Not when she’s the one who leaves it behind.

Campus noise changes in texture when you’re trying not to look for someone.

Footsteps blur into static. Laughter sharpens at the edges. Even sunlight feels like it’s pointing at the wrong places or the same place, repeatedly until your eyes start recognizing patterns you shouldn’t be memorizing.

For weeks, I told myself I was stabilizing. New routines. New routes. New ways of pretending she wasn’t slipping through every blind spot I tried to create. But data has a way of finding you when you don’t want it.

And Mikha Cruz… she was always data I couldn’t filter.

Jealousy doesn’t arrive like a storm. It arrives like humidity that’s building slowly, quietly, until the air feels heavier than it should.

It started on a Wednesday.

The kind of day that looked harmless at first glance: clean sky, soft sun, campus noise humming at its usual frequency. I was crossing the SEC walkway with Diane and Chesca, mentally cataloging the tasks I needed to finish before midterms, when I saw her.

Not intentionally. My eyes simply found her, the way they always did, even then.

Mikha Cruz.

She was carrying a stack of org posters with someone I vaguely recognized from Engineering. Theo. Tall, neat, polite. One of those boys teachers loved to recommend for committees.

He said something I couldn’t hear, and Mikha laughed loud, bright, unfiltered. The kind of laugh that used to hit me like a shove. She shifted the posters against her hip, nudged him lightly with her elbow, and the movement looked easy. Familiar.

I didn’t stop walking, but my feet hesitated. A glitch in movement that Diane caught instantly.

“Uy,” she said, lowering her voice as she leaned close. “Naglo-load ka na naman. Sino nag-trigger? ‘Yung boy?”

Chesca lifted her milk tea with a sigh. “Or ‘yung girl na ‘hindi mo type’ daw?”

I kept my eyes straight ahead. “I’m not triggered. I’m just… assessing campus noise.”

“Noise?” Chesca snorted. “Sure. Kasi every time si Mikha tumawa, biglang nagkaka-interference sa system mo.”

Diane grinned. “CPU temperature rising.”

I exhaled slowly. “I’m not jealous.”

They exchanged a look, one of those silent friend-translations that mean ‘you’re lying to yourself and we’re giving you five minutes to admit it’.

I didn’t.

Because admitting it meant confronting something I wasn’t ready to measure.

But the campus was small, and patterns were relentless.

I saw them again two days later, this time near the MVP steps. Mikha was showing Theo something on her phone, probably a meme, judging by the way he leaned in to squint at the screen, shoulder brushing hers. She didn’t move away. She tilted her chin toward the light, laughed again softer this time but still enough to find me from halfway across the courtyard like radio frequency.

My chest tightened before I could reason myself out of it.

I hated the feeling. It’s sharp, intrusive, irrational. I forced my eyes to my planner, to the neat lines and predictable boxes, but the laughter pulled my attention like gravity.

Diane nudged me lightly. “Ayan na naman. Third freeze sa isang araw.”

Chesca leaned over to inspect my face like she was checking for symptoms. “Jealousy corruption sa data mo. Critical level.”

“I’m not jealous,” I repeated because the script was easier than the truth.

“Then bakit ka nakatigil?” Diane asked.

I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t know.

The worst moment came the following week.

I was walking past the practice courts after my elective when I saw her again. Hair tied messily, jersey half-tucked, wiping sweat from her jaw with the hem of her shirt. Theo was there too, holding a towel out to her like it was a reflex. She took it, smiled tiredly, said something I couldn’t decipher from where I stood.

He laughed.

She laughed back.

And something inside me twisted so tightly I felt the air leave my lungs.

I told myself it didn’t matter.
That Mikha was friendly with everyone.
That Theo was probably harmless.
That I didn’t care who she spent her energy on.

But none of those explanations accounted for the way my fingers curled into my palm, or the way my pulse stuttered out of rhythm.

It was small. Insignificant. A moment too ordinary to hurt.

And yet it did.

Quietly. Deeply. Without permission.

“Every laugh she gave someone else felt like losing something I never claimed,” I thought, swallowing hard, “but somehow believed was mine.”

I hated that realization more than the jealousy itself. Diane and Chesca didn’t help. They appeared beside me like twin alarms.

“Uy,” Diane whispered. “Aiah, bakit ka parang nasapian?”

Chesca squinted at me. “Oh no. System failure. Nagka-lag si Snob Queen.”

I kept my voice level. “Can you two stop? I’m just observing.”

“Exactly,” Chesca said. “Observing with feelings.”

“I do not have feelings,” I snapped.

Diane placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “Girl, kung wala kang feelings, bakit ka puyat sa pag-iwas?”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but the words didn’t fit.

Because I was avoiding her.

Her routes.
Her timing.
Her noise.
Her gravity.

And every time I succeeded, I felt something tug in my chest. The same ache I had tried so hard to ignore.

Jealousy didn’t make me irrational. It made me honest. It forced me to acknowledge the things I didn’t want to see:

That my eyes tracked her automatically. That my chest reacted to her laughter before my brain did. That some part of me waited for her even when I told myself I didn’t want her near me anymore. And that Theo…harmless, polite, ordinary Theo somehow made everything feel more real.

More threatening.

More clear.

By the time the canteen scene arrived, the pressure had built to a point I couldn’t contain.
My restraint was thinning.
My logic was failing.
My composure was one breath away from cracking.

And that was the day everything finally fractured.

But that comes next.

Because jealousy didn’t explode all at once.

It degraded quietly, steadily like a system wearing down from too many ignored warnings.

Silence should have been easy for me. It always had been. Silence meant control. Silence meant order. Silence meant distance I could quantify and regulate. But after weeks of trying to outrun the jealousy I refused to name. Weeks of telling myself that everything I was feeling was temporary, irrational, a misfired response from a system I should have updated years ago. Silence felt different.

It felt heavier.
It felt personal.

I entered the canteen early, still pretending I could reset myself with routine. The hum of trays and metal chairs was familiar background noise, a pattern I had long mastered. I chose my usual corner table near the window, the one tucked safely behind a column where people rarely approached unless they had a reason.

And for months, Mikha Cruz always had a reason.

I sat down, unfolded my napkin with a precision that didn’t match the tremor in my hand, and arranged my lunch tray into its usual geometry. Rice at the center, sisig on the right, spoon on the upper edge. A reflex, something solid to anchor myself with.

Because for months, Mikha always had a reason to come to me. She always arrived loud, glowing, too alive for the corners of this school, always peeling away from her friends to drop into the seat across from mine with two trays and a joke I pretended not to like.

So I listened for her.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until the doors slid open.

Her laugh arrived before she did.

My chest tightened instantly, like it recognized her before my head could.

She walked in surrounded by two teammates and Theo from engineering. The boy who hovered around her like he had a claim he didn’t earn. Mikha’s hair was slightly messy, half-tied and falling over her cheek in a way that made something in my chest pull taut.

I waited for the moment she’d look around. Find me. Peel away. But she didn’t.

She walked straight past my table without hesitation, dropped into a seat three tables away, and laughed at something Theo said.

Too loud.
Too bright.
Too easy.

The chair across from me stayed empty.
The air around me went still.
My appetite dissolved instantly.

Her laughter rose again, threading through the canteen like a memory that refused to fade.

And that’s when I heard her.

“Hay naku, hindi kayo nagkatabi ngayon?”

Aling Nena appeared at my table like she had teleported, balancing a tray of glasses with one hand and judgment with the other.

I straightened slightly, composure snapping into place. “Good morning po, ’Nay.”

“Good morning din, anak,” she said, eyes traveling from my untouched food…to Mikha’s table…to me again. The conclusion hit her so fast she didn’t even try to hide it. “Ay. Ayan pala siya. Kasama yung mga kaibigan.”

I kept my face neutral. “Yeah. She’s busy.”

“Busy sa iba?” she asked, voice dropping conspiratorially, eyebrows lifting in a way that made my jaw clench.

“Nay—”

“Ano ba yan,” she muttered, shaking her head as if I had personally wronged romance. “Sayang naman. Mas bagay kayong magkatabi kaysa d’yan sa isang mukhang hindi pa naliligo.”

“Nay…” I warned, heat rising in my cheeks.

She leaned closer, whispering like she was delivering state secrets. “Anak, pag ganyan umiwas yung tinitingnan mo, ibig sabihin gusto ka pa rin niya. Nagpapapansin lang sa ibang tao.”

“I’m eating,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

“Eh ‘di kumain ka,” she said, tapping my tray. “Baka tamis ang kailangan mo.” Then she pulled a single yema from her apron pocket. God knows from which dimension she conjured it and placed it in front of me. “Para sa pikon.”

I blinked. “I’m not—”

“Pikon,” she declared, already spinning away toward another table.

I stared at the yema. Then at Mikha, laughing again across the room.

I didn’t eat the yema. I left it there like a confession.

My chest felt tight, too tight for something so simple. I forced myself to take a slow sip of water, but it didn’t settle anything. The noise of the canteen blurred, sharpening only whenever her voice rose.

This was supposed to be fine.
This distance.
This silence.

I told myself I wanted it.

I repeated the lie so many times it almost sounded like the truth. But every laugh she aimed at someone else felt like losing something I never claimed but always believed was mine.

I tried to focus on my notes, but the words dissolved. My spoon stayed untouched. The edges of my vision kept drifting toward the table where she sat. Bright, alive, unaware of the way she was dismantling everything I’d controlled for months.

When Theo leaned in to show her something on his phone too close, too familiar my fingers curled reflexively around my pen.

I wasn’t jealous.
That’s what I told myself.
This was just… data. Observation. Noise.

But jealousy has a way of announcing itself quietly, like a background process you never authorized but can’t shut down no matter how many times you pretend you don’t notice the lag. It hums beneath the surface, subtle at first, then insistent—an irritation that grows teeth. I felt it then, sharp and unwelcome, threading into my pulse each time I heard her laugh at something I wasn’t part of.

I pushed my tray away before I even realized I’d stopped eating. The metal legs of my chair scraped against the floor as I stood too quickly, the sound slicing through the noise around me. A few heads turned, but not hers. Not once. She didn’t glance up. Didn’t search the room. Didn’t track my movement like she used to without meaning to. She was still there, still laughing, still leaning in just a little too close to someone who wasn’t me.

The hallway outside felt too bright, too cold, as if I’d stepped into a world that wasn’t calibrated for my breathing. I tried to anchor myself the way I always do four seconds in, six seconds out but even that familiar cadence felt corrupted, off-beat, like my lungs were syncing to a rhythm someone else controlled.

Still, her laughter followed me. It slipped under the door as I walked out, threaded through the corridor, lingered behind me like a shadow refusing to detach. It didn’t matter how many steps I put between us; the sound lodged itself under my ribs, an ache I couldn’t swallow or explain.

By the third day of this… her distance, my denial, the silence that wasn’t silence at all, I cracked.

Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for something small and frighteningly honest to slip through the seams of my composure. A truth quiet enough to whisper but heavy enough to tilt my entire system off balance.

Distance only works until the person you want close finally stops trying.

By the third day of her pulling away, something in me finally split.

It wasn’t a dramatic shatter. No sound, no spectacle, no gasp. Just a quiet, breaking-point exhale that didn’t sound like my own. A thread loosening at the base of my throat. A thought I couldn’t swallow anymore. I’d told myself distance was good. Necessary. Logical.

But logic never stood a chance against the sight in front of me.

Mikha was on the quad steps with knees bent, elbows resting casually on them, talking to Theo. Her laugh drifted across the lawn like it always did, unfiltered and warm, carried by a breeze that had no right to deliver it to me.

Theo leaned in closer.

Too close.

His arm brushed hers, and she didn’t move away.

She didn’t even blink.

I stopped walking.

The afternoon light poured over her, turning the edges of her hair into soft gold. She tilted her head back laughing at something he said, the sunlight catching against her smile the way it always did when she was fully present, fully alive.

And God, my body reacted before my mind did.

My grip tightened on my books until the spines bit into my palm. My jaw locked. My shoulders pulled tight, like bracing for impact.

But inside?

Inside I was burning.

A slow, concentrated burn. The kind you don’t notice until it’s already eaten through your ribs.

That laugh used to be mine.

Not in ownership. Not in possession.

But in direction.

She used to aim it at me. Every morning, every break, every stupid moment I pretended I didn’t care about.

Even when I pushed her away.
Even when I told her to stop.
Especially when I told her to stop.

Now, that laugh was going somewhere else.

Worse, it was being received by someone else.

Theo smiled back at her, too easily, like he didn’t know he was trespassing. Like he had any right to stand in the radius I’d once memorized.

That should’ve been mine. It had always been mine.

I forced myself to look away. Hard. My steps quickened even though I wasn’t heading anywhere in particular. Just away from her, away from the sound of that laugh echoing behind me.

But her laughter followed me anyway.

Across the grass.
Through the walkway.
Into my bloodstream.

It pulsed there long after the sound faded.

The next day was worse. In class, the seat beside me stayed empty. She slid into the back row this time chatting with someone else, doodling on their notebook like she used to scribble tiny stars on mine whenever she thought I wasn’t looking.

I didn’t stare. Not directly. Just enough to see her head tilt to listen to someone who wasn’t me.

At the org booth, I tried to pass by quickly, but I still caught the tail-end of a moment. Mikha held a poster steady while another girl pinned it up, their shoulders brushing, their laughter overlapping.

My stomach twisted.Sharp. Sour. Immediate.

Everywhere I went, she existed.

Her voice in a hallway.
Her laugh near the vending machine.
Her energy filling a space like it always did…bright, unrestrained, unbearably alive.

But none of it was mine.

And she looked fine.
That was the worst part.

She looked okay.
Unaffected.
Like not orbiting me didn’t hurt her at all.
Like I was the only one left unraveling.

By the fourth day, I couldn’t pretend anymore.

The sun was sinking low, washing the bleachers in a warm, impossible gold. The court below echoed with bouncing basketballs, sneakers scraping against the concrete, boys shouting half-finished plays at each other. Dust floated lazily in the light like slow-moving static, turning the whole scene into something softer than reality should allow.

And she was there.

Alone.

Mikha Cruz sat halfway up the bleachers, slouched deep into her seat, backpack collapsed beside her like even it had given up. She looked… smaller somehow. Like the day had pressed its weight onto her shoulders until even breathing required effort. A loose strand of hair clung to her cheek, and she didn’t bother to tuck it away.

Something in my chest pulled tight. Too tight.

“Mikha.”

Her head lifted at the sound of her name.

And for one fragile second, just one, her entire face opened. Like she’d been holding her breath all afternoon and finally, finally inhaled. Like hope had flickered back to life because I said her name.

But then she caught herself.

Her expression shuttered.
Her shoulders straightened.
Her smile dimmed into something practiced and painfully neutral.

“Oh. Hey.”

Two words. Careless. Quiet. But somehow sharper than any rejection I’d ever thrown at her.

I climbed the steps and sat beside her. Not close enough to touch, not far enough to pretend I didn’t want to. Just close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her shoulder. Close enough to smell that faint citrus in her hair, the shampoo I’d pretended never to memorize.

She didn’t move away.

And that… that felt like mercy I didn’t deserve.

Silence stretched between us thick, heavy, trembling. The field echoed with distant sounds of cleats scraping against cement, shouts from teammates packing up their gear, the soft thud of a ball being tossed into a duffel bag. Ordinary sounds.

But between us, nothing was ordinary.

My breath felt uneven.
My pulse erratic.
My hands curled into fists on my knees, nails digging crescents into my skin just to stop myself from reaching for her.

Finally, the words tore out of me, rough and cracked around the edges.

“Do you like him?”

Her brows knit. “Sino?”

“The guy from engineering.” I swallowed hard. “You were laughing with him.”

Her silence made something collapse inside me, so I pushed harder, too hard.

“It looked like you were enjoying yourself.”

The words sliced like glass leaving my mouth, jagged and ugly. I hated them immediately. Hated how jealousy made me sound raw and unguarded. But I couldn’t take them back. She stared for a beat, surprised. Then she let out a soft, bitter laugh, the kind that didn’t touch her eyes.

“Wow,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “After months of me chasing you, itatanong mo pa talaga kung sino gusto ko?”

Heat flared up my neck. Shame tightened around my ribs.

“That’s not what I—”

“Aiah, don’t.”

Two words. Firm. Final. Her voice cracked, just slightly, but her eyes stayed steady, steady enough to land exactly where it hurt.

“I’m tired, Aiah.”

Impact. Simple. Quiet. Devastating.

And inside those words, I heard everything she didn’t say:

Tired of chasing.
Tired of waiting.
Tired of me.

She looked away, toward the soccer field where the last few players were gathering their water bottles and calling out goodbyes. She didn’t look at me.

And somehow, that hurt more than anything she’d said aloud.

This was the cost of my silence.

All the walls I built.
Every cold look.
Every dismissal.
Every time I pushed her away and still expected her to stay.

My throat closed around the truth I’d kept buried for too long.

She rested her elbows on her knees, chin in her palms. The sinking light traced her profile in gold. The curve of her cheek, the softness under her eyes, the way her hair caught the sunlight in strands she didn’t bother fixing.

She looked tired. But steady. Resigned. And something in me panicked. The quiet stretched too long, stretching like wire pulled to its breaking point.

And finally, it snapped.

“I like you.”

The words broke out of me raw, unfiltered, too loud against the hush of evening. My chest seized the moment they escaped, but it was too late to swallow them back.

Her head snapped toward me, eyes wide. “What?”

I swallowed, voice trembling.

“I like you,” I repeated, my voice thinner now, frayed at the edges, but no less desperate. The words felt like they’d been scraped raw on their way out too tender, too late, too heavy. “I think I’ve liked you since the first day I saw you. And I kept pushing you away because… because you scared me.”

Her brows lifted slowly, her breath stilled in her chest. The fading sunlight caught the side of her face, softening everything I was afraid of losing. I felt exposed under her gaze, like every shield I’d built was paper-thin against the quiet patience in her eyes.

“You scared me,” I whispered, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. “Because you were loud and alive and you took up space in my life without permission. And if I let you in… you could wreck me.” My voice wavered on the last syllable, like admitting the truth was enough to undo me.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. She just stared at me open, vulnerable, almost afraid to believe that I meant what I said. Her silence stretched but it wasn’t empty. It was full of questions she didn’t know how to voice, full of hope she couldn’t afford to hold.

“And when you stopped chasing me,” I continued, my voice breaking under the weight of all the things I should’ve said sooner, “I hated it. I hated seeing you laugh at anyone else. I wanted that for me. Only me.” The admission trembled out of me, the jealousy and longing twisting into something that left my chest aching.

The confession hung between us, trembling like it might shatter if either of us moved. The entire world seemed to narrow, collapsing into the small space where our hands rested on the wooden bench not touching but unbearably close.

And then she laughed. A soft, uneven, trembling sound. Not mocking. Not cruel. Just… overwhelmed. The kind of laugh someone makes when a weight they’ve carried for too long finally shifts.

“Aiah…” Her voice cracked on my name, splitting open something inside me. “Do you even know how long I’ve been waiting to hear that?”

The sound gutted me. Because I did know. I’d always known. I’d seen it in every coffee she brought me. Every grin she shot like a dare. Every time she hovered in my orbit even when I pushed her out. Every time she refused to leave, even when I told her to.

I had known. And still, I made her wait.

My fingers trembled as I reached for her hand—barely, gently—my fingertips brushing hers like a question I didn’t know how to ask. It felt like stepping off a ledge, trusting she’d catch me. The contact was light, fragile, but electric.

She didn’t pull away.

Relief surged through me so fast it nearly stole my breath. I inhaled sharply, grounding myself before I unravelled completely.

“I don’t deserve you,” I whispered, the words scraping out like a confession I’d spent months refusing to admit. “But I want to try. I want you.”

For a heartbeat, she stayed still—so still I thought the moment might slip through my fingers and dissolve into nothing. But then she smiled. Small. Tired. Real. The kind of smile that felt like sunlight cracking through a storm after days of rain.

She squeezed my hand, warm and certain.

“About time, babe.”

And just like that, the world shifted.

Colors sharpened.
Air thickened.
Light softened.

Everything in me rose. Hope, fear, longing all at once, like a tide I’d spent months trying to hold back.

“Babe?” I echoed, trying to sound flat and unimpressed, but failing miserably. My pulse betrayed me anyway, loud and reckless.

“Mm-hm.” She leaned back with that impossible confidence, our fingers still tangled. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Eventually.”

I groaned, dragging my free hand over my face to hide the flush I could feel creeping up my neck. “Don’t remind me.”

“Oh no,” she said, smugness dripping from every syllable, eyes sparkling in the last sliver of sunlight. “I will remind you forever. Aiah Ledesma, Snob Queen ng Block A, secretly kinikilig all this time… for me.”

I shoved her shoulder, more instinct than annoyance. She only laughed, tipping back slightly with a trust so casual it nearly undone me. She knew I’d steady her if she fell. She didn’t even question it.

“Shut up,” I muttered, but my voice betrayed me, softer than I meant it to be.

“Make me.”

God, she was impossible.
Ridiculous.
Unstoppable.

And maybe that was exactly why I like her.

I stood from the bleachers slowly, careful not to break the fragile softness still holding the air between us. The confession lingered on my skin like heat, like light. For a moment I didn’t trust my legs to carry me. They felt too unsteady, too full of something that wasn’t fear for the first time in a long time.

When I finally turned away, the sky was already shifting into evening. The last gold of the sun bled into violet, settling over the field like a promise I didn’t know how to name. I told myself to breathe. To take this moment apart and place it into the correct box. To regain order.

But order didn’t follow me down the steps.

I took three, four, five steps across the grass before I paused and looked back. Just a glance, just a quick check, just to make sure she was heading home safely. At least, that was the lie I handed myself.

The truth sat quietly under my ribs.

When I turned, Mikha was still there.

Hands stuffed into her pockets. Shoulders tucked low, but in a relaxed way, not a defeated one. Her head tilted slightly toward the sky as if replaying something she didn’t want to forget. And on her face that’s soft, unguarded was a smile.

Not a grin.
Not a smirk.
Just… a smile.

A small one.
A private one.
A smile meant for no one and nothing except the moment we had just shared.

It hit me harder than anything she said.

My chest tugged, light and warm and terrifying.

I felt my own lips twitch, an involuntary echo. Not big enough to call a smile. Just a small pull at the corner. Barely-there. But real. Too real.

I looked away quickly as if the grass might tell on me.

The air felt different now. Lighter, like something inside me was untangling itself slowly, finally, tenderly. The space between my breaths felt new. Dangerous. Hopeful.

Maybe I wanted this now.

The thought flickered before I could stop it.

Maybe I wanted… more.

I tried to smother the feeling, but it stayed quiet, persistent, like the warmth left on my palm where her hand had been moments ago.

I should’ve been studying.

My desk lamp cast a pool of light on my open notebook, the same paragraph of cognitive load theory staring back at me for the past hour. My pen tapped too fast against the page betraying the chaos I insisted wasn’t there. The air felt too thin. My pulse kept skipping, like it hadn’t decided which rhythm to follow.

I exhaled and leaned back in my chair.

Every moment replayed. Without permission. Without mercy.

Her voice when she said she had waited.
Her hand squeezing mine.
The tremble in her laugh.
The way “babe” slipped from her lips like it had always belonged between us.

I closed my eyes, and the field rushed back. Gold light, warm air, her smile that looked like forgiveness. My chest tightened, but this time, not from restraint… but from something that felt alarmingly like hope.

I didn’t understand the full shape of it yet.
Only that it was new.
And that I didn’t want to shut the door this time.

My heart wasn’t quiet, but it wasn’t frightened either. It was something in between. Uneasy but drawn to the possibility that maybe, after everything, timing might finally be kind.

A thought I’d buried for months nudged up gently, like a seed pressing through soil.

Maybe I want to know her…
Not from the corner of my eye.
Not from controlled distance.
But up close.

The very idea made my breath catch.

Against every rule I had ever set for myself, I reached for my phone. My thumb hovered over the familiar icon, hesitation tightening around my chest like a warning I’d rehearsed for months. Memory tugged at me. Logic scolded me. Restraint whispered all the reasons I shouldn’t open that app again. And still, my thumb tapped the screen anyway.

My dashboard refreshed in a soft upward pull.

At the top of the feed sat a new post, time-stamped barely an hour after I walked away from the field.

#064/100 — She likes me.

The world seemed to narrow.

A photo accompanied the caption—blurry, grainy, almost dreamlike. The court lights glowed in soft halos, diffused by fading dusk and distance. The field stretched out empty except for one lone silhouette walking across the grass, shoulders stiff, head bowed, steps small and cautious.

The angle was unmistakable.

It was me. Walking away from her.

My breath stuttered. A tiny, involuntary sound escaped me, something between a gasp and a laugh, too fragile to name.

She took this.
She watched me walk away.
She stayed long after I was gone.
And she understood exactly what that moment meant.

The caption sat under the photo. Simple, devastating in its certainty.

She likes me.

Not a question.
Not a hope.
A fact.

The words landed square in the center of my chest, hitting with the force and softness of a heartbeat finally acknowledged. I swallowed, trying to steady myself as my fingers trembled around the phone. Something warm curled deep inside me, quiet but unmistakable, an ember I had refused to let burn for too long.

She wasn’t guessing.
She knew.

I set my phone down slowly, almost reverently, as though the moment might shatter if I moved too fast. Outside my dorm room, the hallway hummed with the usual nighttime soundtrack. Doors shutting, muffled footsteps, a burst of laughter rolling past. Ordinary noise. Familiar noise.

But inside, everything felt still.

The air held a different kind of quiet. One that didn’t demand distance, one that didn’t press heavy against my chest. It simply… lingered. Gentle. Waiting.

I closed my eyes and let myself breathe.
Let the warmth settle beneath my ribs, subtle but insistent.
Let the truth arrive without resistance this time.

For once, I didn’t push it away.

A line rose to the surface, unbidden, a whisper escaping into the soft dark before I could stop it.

“Maybe I want to know her… the way she’s always known me.”

And the world felt like it exhaled with me.