Deployment Complete

Mikha’s POV

I used to know exactly how every key on my keyboard felt.

The A key had a tiny scratch near the lower corner from the time Diane borrowed my laptop during second year and somehow managed to drop it while sitting down. The space bar only worked properly when I pressed the middle, never the right side, because apparently even my keyboard had boundaries. The Enter key was louder than the others, a sharp little click that used to feel satisfying whenever I finally solved something after hours of chasing a bug through lines of code. There was a time I knew this machine like it was an extension of my hands. Every shortcut, every delay, every tiny quirk. I knew when the fan was about to whir too loudly, when the screen would flicker if I moved the hinge too far back, when the charger needed to be twisted at a very specific angle to stop pretending it was decorative.

Funny.

I still remembered all of that.

I just couldn’t remember the last time coding made me happy.

The loading circle on the browser had been spinning long enough for me to stop expecting it to finish. I watched the small blue ring chase itself around the screen over and over again, disappearing only to come back exactly where it started, as if even the website had decided that moving forward was overrated. Three dots appeared beneath the header, faded, then appeared again. The animation was supposed to be temporary, a polite little signal that something was working in the background. Instead, it had become the most relatable thing in the room.

“Same,” I muttered.

The loading circle kept spinning.

I leaned back in my chair and stared at it, waiting for the joke to feel funny. Three months ago, I would have laughed at myself. I would have opened Developer Tools, checked the console logs, found the broken request, fixed the database call, optimized the query, and sent the finished project back to the client before lunch. Three months ago, the moment something broke, something in me woke up. Problems used to excite me. Errors used to feel like invitations. A stubborn bug could ruin my sleep and still somehow make me feel alive.

Now, the bug was there.

The console was there.

The answer was probably there too.

I just stared at it like the screen was written in a language I had once loved and no longer knew how to speak.

The room around me was quiet except for the tired sound of the electric fan above the bed. It turned in slow, uneven circles, making more noise than wind, but after three months in that tiny rented room, I had learned to appreciate any appliance that tried its best. The apartment barely had enough space to separate where I slept from where I worked. My narrow bed was pushed against one wall, the bedsheet already wrinkled from the number of times I had sat on it while waiting for files to upload. A folding table stood by the window, crowded with my laptop, two notebooks, an old calculator, printed database diagrams, and a mug of coffee that had gone cold sometime between midnight and whatever hour this was now. Across the room, the refrigerator hummed with the confidence of something that had almost nothing to protect: two eggs, half a loaf of bread, a bottle of ketchup, and three sachets of instant coffee arranged like emergency supplies in a disaster movie with a very low budget.

I reached for the mug beside my laptop and took a sip without looking.

Cold. Of course.

“Perfect,” I whispered, because apparently this was who I was now. A woman who drank cold coffee at two in the morning and called it character development.

The client had sent another message an hour ago. I had seen the notification pop up, read the first few words, and then pretended I had not. It was not because I hated the client. They were actually nice, which made it worse. Nice clients always made you feel guilty for wanting to disappear. I clicked the chat window and read the message again.

Hi, Mikha! Just checking if the homepage animation can be a little smoother? Everything else looks amazing! 😊

I stared at the smiling emoji for a few seconds.

It stared back.

Old Mikha would have typed something dramatic to herself before replying. Something like, Kuya, gusto mo rin ba ako ipa-backflip habang inaayos ko ‘yan? Then I would have laughed, fixed the animation, and maybe rewarded myself with milk tea I could not afford but would buy anyway because joy used to win arguments against budgeting.

Present Mikha only opened the source file.

The animation delay was too heavy. The easing was wrong. One container was loading after the images, which made the whole homepage feel like it was arriving late to its own event. It was not a difficult fix. That almost made it worse. Difficult things at least gave you a reason to feel tired. Easy things only reminded you that something inside you had slowed down.

I adjusted two values, moved one script, cleared the cache, and refreshed the page. The animation flowed better this time. Not perfect, but clean enough for a client who wanted “smoother” without knowing what smoother meant. I attached the updated files, typed a polite reply, and read it twice before sending.

Hi! Already optimized the homepage animation and fixed the responsiveness as well. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like adjusted. Thank you!

The message looked professional. Friendly. Alive.

Good for her.

I sent it, closed the project folder, and immediately opened another one because stopping was dangerous. Stopping meant hearing the room. Stopping meant remembering that I had not eaten anything since the bread I toasted yesterday afternoon. Stopping meant counting the money left in my account and calculating how many more projects I needed before enrollment. Stopping meant giving my brain enough space to ask questions I did not want to answer.

The next folder loaded slowly.

Inventory Management System – Restaurant.

Deadline: tomorrow.

I stared at the file name until the words blurred. For a second, I forgot what I had opened it for. I knew the project. I had built half the database already. Products, suppliers, stock movements, daily sales, user roles, all arranged in clean little tables like a world that still believed everything had a place. I knew what needed to be done next. I had written it down in my notebook in neat bullet points because apparently even exhaustion could be organized if you were desperate enough.

But my hand stayed still on the trackpad.

The cursor blinked from the login screen.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

I used to think burnout looked dramatic. Crying in bathrooms. Screaming into pillows. Throwing your laptop across the room and then regretting it immediately because laptops were expensive and feelings were not covered by warranty. But most nights, burnout looked like this. It looked like a girl sitting in front of a half-finished system at two in the morning, unable to remember which button she had meant to press. It looked like rereading the same function four times and understanding every word while feeling absolutely nothing. It looked like a blinking cursor waiting for you to become someone you used to be.

I opened the database schema and watched the familiar tables appear one by one. Customers connected to Orders. Orders linked to Products. Inventory updated through stock movements while Suppliers quietly waited at the edge of the system until they were needed. Primary keys. Foreign keys. Dates. Quantities. Totals. Every relationship was exactly where it belonged, carefully woven together like a puzzle I had once enjoyed solving. There was a time I could stare at a database for hours and lose track of everything else around me. Now I only stared because I couldn’t remember what I had opened it for.

Everything was clean. Everything made sense. The relationships were correct. The logic was there. The numbers were all lined up, obedient and quiet, waiting for me to tell them what to become.

I stared at them.

Nothing.

The numbers didn’t blink anymore.

The thought settled in my chest so quietly that I almost missed it. There was no dramatic heartbreak attached to it, no sudden sob, no hand over mouth like people did in movies when they realized something irreversible had happened. It was just a sentence. Simple. Accurate. Terrifying.

The numbers didn’t blink anymore.

There was a time they did. I knew that sounded weird, but I never really knew how else to explain it. Numbers had never been just numbers to me. They moved. They rearranged themselves into patterns if I stared long enough. Equations had rhythm. Code had breath. Data had personality if you knew where to look. A badly designed system felt like a crowded hallway where everyone was bumping into each other, and fixing it felt like opening doors until the traffic finally flowed. I used to love that part. I used to love finding the one misplaced condition, the one missing comma, the one tiny mistake that made everything else collapse. It made me feel useful. Smart. Awake.

Aiah used to catch me smiling at my laptop and look at me like she had accidentally fallen in love with a very attractive malfunctioning calculator.

“Baby,” she would say, standing behind me with her arms crossed. “What are you smiling at?”

“Database normalization.”

Then she would stare at me for three full seconds.

“Mikha.”

“Ano?”

“Are you still normal?”

I would laugh so hard I’d almost fall off the chair, and she would pretend not to smile while quietly moving the coffee away from my elbow because she knew me too well.

I smiled at the memory, but it came with an ache now, soft and deep and mean in the way good memories could be mean when you were tired. I looked back at the screen. The same kind of tables were still there. The same logic. The same small universe waiting to be built. But the spark that used to jump in my chest whenever something clicked was gone. I still knew what to do. That was the cruel part. I could still solve the problem. I could still build the system. I could still make clients happy enough to pay on time.

I just couldn’t feel anything while doing it.

My phone vibrated somewhere beneath a stack of printed diagrams. I ignored it at first, assuming it was another client asking whether the blue button could be “slightly bluer” or if I could make the website load faster even though their internet connection had the emotional stability of a wet tissue. The screen lit up again a few seconds later, brighter this time in the dim room.

Application Status Update.

I stared at the notification for longer than I probably should have.

The funny thing about rejection was that eventually it stopped surprising you. Somewhere around the tenth email, hope quietly excused itself from the conversation and never really came back. By the fifteenth, you stopped opening them right away because you already knew how every sentence ended before reading the first word. By the twentieth, you started appreciating companies that rejected you quickly because at least they respected your time while ruining your day.

I reached for the phone, unlocked it, then set it down again.

I returned to the database, clicked on the products table, and pretended the email was not sitting there in my notifications like an unpaid bill. Five minutes passed. Then ten. I edited one function, renamed two variables, and forgot what I was doing halfway through the third. The notification stayed on the screen.

Application Status Update.

Fine.

I opened it.

Dear Ms. Cruz,

I exhaled through my nose.

There it was.

The beginning of every polite funeral.

I read the rest anyway because apparently I had not yet learned self-preservation.

We appreciate the time and effort you invested throughout our application process. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that we will not be moving forward with your application at this time.

I stopped reading there.

There were more sentences after that, probably something about keeping my resume on file or wishing me success in my future endeavors. Companies loved wishing you success after making sure it would not be with them. Very generous. Very thoughtful. Ten out of ten corporate hospitality.

I closed the email and dragged it into a folder I had created a month ago.

Hindi Ka Namin Gusto.

The number beside the folder changed from twenty three to twenty four.

I looked at it.

“Huh,” I said softly.

Only twenty-four.

It felt like more.

Maybe because I counted the scholarship applications separately.

Those deserved their own folder. I hadn’t named that one anything funny. I tried once. I typed a few joke titles, stared at them, and deleted every single one. Some things still hurt too much to be turned into a punchline.

The first grant rejection had arrived two weeks after everything happened with my mother. At the time, I thought it was an error. My grades were good. My requirements were complete. My recommendation letters were strong. I had built half my life around being good enough for scholarships because good enough was the only currency I had. I called the office. Sent follow-up emails. Asked politely. Asked again. Eventually someone replied with a careful explanation about review committees, eligibility reassessment, and institutional discretion.

Institutional discretion.

Ang ganda pakinggan.

Parang perfume.

Too bad it smelled like judgment.

After that, the others came faster. Private foundations. Corporate scholarships. Student assistance programs. Even the ones that used to send cheerful emails with subject lines like ‘We believe in your potential!’ suddenly believed in someone else’s potential more. Nobody wrote, ‘We cannot support the daughter of Melinda Cruz’. Nobody had to. The world had a way of saying things without leaving fingerprints.

I had delayed my final semester because of it.

One semester.

On paper, it looked small. Just a line in an academic record. Expected graduation moved. Completion deferred. Enrollment pending. People said one semester like it was a minor inconvenience, like missing one train and catching the next. But when you were the one left standing on the platform while everyone else moved forward, one semester felt like an entire lifetime wearing your old uniform.

Aiah would graduate on time.

Diane would graduate on time.

Cheska was leaving for Paris.

Everyone had somewhere to go.

I had a spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet was named Final Year Survival Plan, because apparently if I gave panic a formal title, it became financial planning. It had columns for tuition, rent, food, transportation, utilities, printing fees, emergency savings, and project income. It also had a row labeled Buffer, which made me laugh every time because the amount beside it was usually zero. Sometimes negative. My emergency fund had become a concept. A dream. A fictional character with potential.

I opened the spreadsheet now, more out of habit than necessity.

The numbers appeared in neat rows.

They made sense.

They just didn’t comfort me.

I calculated how many more projects I needed before enrollment. Then I recalculated because maybe I had been too pessimistic. Then I recalculated again because maybe I had been too optimistic. The final number did not change much. Life had become very committed to being annoying.

I closed the spreadsheet before I could start crying over cell formatting.

The room went quiet again.

Outside the window, a tricycle passed through the narrow street below, its engine coughing into the night before fading into the distance. Somewhere in the next unit, someone laughed at a television show. The sound slipped through the wall for a few seconds, warm and ordinary, then disappeared. I looked at the refrigerator because my stomach had started making opinions.

There were still two eggs.

One for breakfast.

One for emotional support.

I stood up slowly, and my back cracked loud enough to startle me. Twenty one years old and already making sound effects every time I moved. Very promising. Very future of the country. I walked to the sink and washed my mug under cold water, rubbing my thumb over the faint coffee stain near the rim. The kettle sat beside the stove, light and empty. I filled it just enough for another sachet of coffee because sleep was obviously no longer part of tonight’s agenda.

While waiting for the water to boil, I looked around the room.

It was not sad, exactly. That was what bothered me. The room was clean enough. Small, yes, but not unbearable. My clothes were folded in one plastic drawer. My books were stacked beside the bed. Aiah had helped me hang one curtain rod because the afternoon sun kept turning the place into an oven. Diane had brought a ridiculous blue pillow shaped like a whale and declared it my emotional support daughter. Cheska had dropped off a lamp and pretended she did not notice. I almost cried when she said it was extra from her studio.

People were trying to make the room feel less lonely.

The problem was that loneliness did not always depend on furniture.

Sometimes loneliness was sitting in a room full of things people gave you and still feeling like you had been left behind by yourself.

The kettle clicked.

I poured hot water into the mug, stirred the coffee, and brought it back to the table. The steam rose against my face, bitter and thin. I wrapped both hands around the cup and let the heat settle into my palms for a few seconds before returning to the laptop.

The inventory system was still waiting.

So was the cursor.

So were the numbers.

I sat down.

My phone vibrated again.

This time, the name on the screen changed the whole room.

Babe 💙

I smiled before I could stop myself.

That was how I knew I was still alive.

Not because of coding. Not because of grades. Not because another client had paid an invoice on time. Because her name still had the power to make something in me soften even when the rest of me felt like a badly maintained machine.

I opened the message.

Babe: Gising ka pa?

I looked at the clock.

3:14 AM.

Technically, yes.

Emotionally, debatable.

I typed back.

Me: Hindi na.

Her reply came almost immediately.

Babe: Liar.

A laugh escaped me before I could catch it. It was not loud. It did not echo through the room the way my laugh used to fill cafeterias and hallways and soccer fields. But it was real enough. Small, tired, but real.

Me: Konting revision na lang

Three dots appeared.

Babe: Nakatulog ka ba?

I stared at the question, then typed the safest possible lie.

Me: Power nap.

Another pause.

Babe: Mikha Cruz.

Ayun na. Full name. Delikado na.

I sighed and pressed call before she could type another message that would somehow make me feel guilty in twelve characters or less. She answered before the first ring finished, and for a moment neither of us spoke. I could hear the quiet on her end, the soft rustle of sheets, the faint hum of an air conditioner. She was probably in bed, hair messy, voice heavy with sleep, still stubborn enough to check on me at three in the morning because Aiah Ledesma had many talents and one of them was worrying like it was a full time job.

“Bakit gising ka pa?” I asked immediately.

Her sleepy laugh came through the line, low and familiar. “Why are you still up?”

“Tinatanong nga kita.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Babe, ang mature natin.”

“Very.”

I leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. The fan continued to turn slowly above me, chopping the warm air into uneven pieces. “May tinatapos lang ako.”

“The restaurant system?”

“Website muna. Tapos restaurant. Tapos maybe existential crisis after breakfast kung may time pa.”

“Mikha.”

“Joke lang.”

“Not funny.”

“Medyo funny.”

“Slight,” she admitted, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

That almost broke me.

There were days when I could handle rejection emails. Days when I could handle night classes, delayed graduation, unpaid invoices, stale bread, and the heavy knowledge that my mother’s name had become a locked door in every hallway I tried to enter. But kindness from Aiah always found the weakest part of me. It slipped past every joke and every sarcastic comment and every carefully organized folder labeled Hindi Ka Namin Gusto. It reached the part of me that was still trying so hard not to admit how tired I was.

“You finished it?” she asked softly.

“Isa.”

“Good.”

“Don’t sound proud. Homepage animation lang ‘yon.”

“I’m proud.”

I closed my eyes.

“Babe.”

“What?”

“Wag.”

“Why?”

“Kasi iiyak ako.”

The silence that followed was gentle. Not awkward. Not empty. Just Aiah being quiet because she knew when words would only make something heavier. I kept my eyes closed and listened to her breathing through the phone, slow and steady, the way I sometimes counted it when the world felt too loud.

After a while, she said, “I’ll go there later.”

“You have school.”

“I know.”

“You have requirements.”

“I know.”

“You need sleep.”

“I know.”

“Then bakit ang kulit mo?”

“Because I want to.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the laptop screen, at the unfinished system waiting under the wash of blue white light. “Babe, I’m okay.”

“You are.”

“Pwede ka ring umuwi agad after class mo.”

“I can.”

“Pwedeng hindi ka na pumunta dito.”

“I can.”

I waited. She took a breath.

“But I don’t want to. I wanna be there for you..”

There it was. No grand speech. No explanation dressed up as romance.

Just that.

Aiah had a way of making love sound like a decision already made.

I pressed my lips together and looked away from the screen even though no one was there to see me. “Ang unfair mo minsan.”

“Why?”

“Kasi paano ako mag-aargue sa ganyan?”

“You don’t.”

“Bossy.”

“Sleepy.”

“Still bossy.”

“Still tired.”

I laughed softly, and this time it lasted a little longer.

For a few seconds, the room did not feel as small. The refrigerator kept humming. The fan kept trying. The coffee steamed beside me. The unpaid bills were still on the table, and the rejection email was still in its folder, and the numbers on the screen still refused to become anything more than numbers. Nothing had been solved. Nothing had been fixed.

But Aiah was there on the other end of the line. Breathing. Staying.

“Baby,” she said after a while.

“Hmm?”

“Have you eaten?”

I looked at the refrigerator. The two eggs waited for their fate.

“Define kain.”

“Mikha.”

“Okay, hindi pa.”

“Please eat.”

“May egg pa ako.”

“One?”

“Dalawa. Grabe ka naman. Mayaman ako tonight.”

She sighed, but I could hear the tiny laugh underneath it. “Cook one now.”

“Ngayon?”

“Yes.”

“While on call?”

“Yes.”

“Supervising ka?”

“Yes.”

“Controlling.”

“Concerned.”

“Same department?”

“Different intention.”

I smiled into the mug before taking another sip. The coffee was still hot this time, bitter enough to remind me I had not completely floated away from my body. “Okay. I’ll cook.”

“Good.”

“Pero after this function.”

“Mikha.”

“One function lang.”

“You said that last night.”

“And I survived.”

“That’s not the goal.”

I looked at the screen again.

The cursor blinked.

I wanted to tell her that survival was the only goal I could afford right now. That graduation had become a bill I needed to pay. That dreams were expensive, and mine had been placed on hold until further notice. That I was scared if I stopped moving even for one night, everything I had been carrying would finally catch up and crush me quietly in this tiny room with the noisy fan and the two eggs and the laptop that still remembered how to be useful even when I did not.

But I did not say any of that.

Instead, I whispered, “Okay, babe.”

Because sometimes, love was not enough to fix the problem.

But sometimes, it was enough to make you stand up and cook one egg at three in the morning.

I set the phone on speaker, pushed my chair back, and walked toward the sink. Behind me, the laptop screen dimmed slightly, waiting for me to return. The numbers were still there, lined up in rows and columns, silent and unmoving.

They still did not blink.

But somewhere inside the quiet, I decided I would answer them anyway.

The first thing I noticed about attending night classes was how differently Ateneo breathed after sunset.

It wasn’t quieter in the way libraries were quiet, where silence was expected and everyone participated in it willingly. This kind of silence felt earned. It was the kind that only arrived after an entire day had already happened, after thousands of students had rushed from one classroom to another, after organizations had finished recruiting members beneath the trees, after professors had gone home carrying stacks of papers that somehow never seemed to get any lighter. By the time I arrived every evening, the campus felt like it had finally allowed itself to exhale.

The buildings looked exactly the same.

The same brick walls that had watched generations of students come and go. The same walkways lined with trees that refused to lose their leaves no matter how many storms threw at them. The same benches where students pretended to study while actually gossiping about everyone else around them.

Nothing about Ateneo had changed. And yet… Everything felt different.

I used to think places changed because time passed. Now I wondered if places simply waited while people became someone else.

The walk from the gate to my classroom had become strangely familiar over the past few months. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I arrived just before sunset carrying my laptop bag over one shoulder, the same bag that somehow felt heavier every week even though the only things inside it were my laptop, charger, two notebooks, and a water bottle that spent most of its life reminding me to drink more water than I actually did.

I wasn’t sure whether the bag had gotten heavier…or if I had simply gotten more tired.

The security guards eventually stopped asking for my identification.

The first few weeks, they checked my ID every single time I entered the campus. By the second month, they had already memorized my face.

“Good evening, Ma’am Mikha.”

“Good evening po.”

“Night class ulit?”

I smiled and adjusted the strap on my shoulder.

“Hanggang grumaduate po.”

The older guard chuckled.

“Kaya mo ‘yan.”

I thanked him before continuing toward the building, smiling to myself because somehow complete strangers had started believing in me more consistently than I believed in myself.

The pathways grew quieter the farther I walked.

A maintenance cart rolled slowly across one of the hallways, its wheels making soft squeaking sounds against the tiled floor before disappearing around the corner. Somewhere inside one of the buildings, a vacuum cleaner hummed faintly while classroom lights flickered on and off one floor at a time. The scent of freshly mopped corridors drifted through the evening air, mixing with the cool breeze that always arrived after sunset.

It was funny.

During the day, Ateneo belonged to students.

At night…It belonged to the people who quietly made sure there was still a university waiting for everyone the next morning.

Janitors cleaned classrooms that would be full again in a few hours.

Maintenance staff repaired broken chairs before anyone noticed they had been broken.

Security guards watched over buildings that looked almost peaceful without thousands of conversations bouncing off their walls.

I saw them so often now that they had become part of my routine.

One of the janitors smiled and moved his mop bucket aside when he noticed me approaching.

“Sorry po.”

“Okay lang, Ma’am.”

I thanked him before continuing down the hallway.

There was something comforting about seeing the same people every night.

Maybe because none of us ever asked why the others were still there.

We simply understood.

We were all working while everyone else slept.

I had developed a habit of arriving almost thirty minutes earlier than necessary. At first, I blamed traffic. Then I blamed my freelance schedule. Eventually, I admitted the truth.

I just wasn’t in a hurry anymore.

Maybe because hurrying only made sense when there was someone waiting for you at the finish line.

My feet naturally turned toward the soccer field.

It wasn’t a conscious decision.

I didn’t even realize where I was walking until the familiar stretch of grass slowly came into view between the trees.

Old habits survived longer than the reasons we formed them.

For a brief moment, I caught myself expecting to hear the sharp whistle of Coach from across the field. Maybe a few first years still finishing practice. Maybe someone chasing after a ball that had rolled too far toward the bleachers.

Instead the field greeted me with silence.

The floodlights had already been switched off, leaving only the warm yellow lamps from the nearby pathways to spill across patches of grass. The goalposts stood quietly beneath the evening sky, casting long shadows that stretched almost all the way to the running track. The bleachers, once occupied by noisy teammates, curious students, and one very intimidating Aiah Ledesma pretending she wasn’t waiting for me after practice, now sat completely empty.

I stopped walking.

The field looked smaller than I remembered.

Or maybe…it had always been this size. Maybe it only felt enormous before because every corner carried a memory.

I found myself staring at one particular patch of grass for longer than I intended.

I couldn’t even remember exactly what had happened there.

Maybe I tripped.

Maybe Diane embarrassed herself.

Maybe Aiah stood there with her arms crossed while pretending she wasn’t worried after another reckless tackle.

The details had started fading around the edges.

Only the feeling remained.

A smile slowly found its way onto my face.

“At least…” I whispered softly. “Wala nang madadapa.”

The joke slipped out so naturally that I instinctively waited for my own laughter.

I had always been embarrassingly easy to entertain.

Usually, the laugh came before I even finished the sentence. This time, it never did. The smile quietly disappeared before I realized it had been there.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt.

The kind of laugh that left tears in my eyes because Diane had somehow managed to turn a five minute conversation into complete chaos. The kind that made Chesca louder instead of quieter because apparently someone else’s laughter only encouraged her. The kind that earned us disapproving looks from professors while Aiah pretended she wasn’t associated with any of us.

Somewhere between freelance projects, rejection emails, delayed graduation, and figuring out exactly how many websites I needed to build just to afford one more semester…I had stopped laughing like that. Not because there wasn’t anything funny anymore. I just didn’t seem to have enough room for it.

The evening breeze picked up slightly, carrying with it the familiar scent of freshly cut grass.

I closed my eyes.

For just a second, I let myself remember what this place used to sound like.

The whistle from practice.

Running footsteps.

Diane complaining that soccer made absolutely no sense as a sport because “ba’t hindi na lang kasi damihan ang bola?”

Chesca insisting she would’ve been a better goalkeeper despite never actually playing.

Aiah standing quietly near the sidelines, pretending she had only happened to walk by while somehow arriving at exactly the same time every single practice ended.

The memories arrived so effortlessly that for one dangerous second, I almost expected to open my eyes and find all of them waiting exactly where I had left them.

But when I looked at the field again, only the wind moved.

Life had continued exactly the way it was supposed to.

Tomorrow morning, new students would run across the same grass. Organizations would recruit beneath the same trees. Professors would begin another day of lectures inside the same classrooms.

Ateneo hadn’t been waiting for me.

It had simply kept moving.

I was the one still trying to catch up.

I glanced at the time on my phone and realized I had barely fifteen minutes before class started.

Adjusting the strap of my laptop bag, I took one last look at the empty field before turning back toward the classroom building.

Maybe one day I’d find my way back here. Not because I missed soccer. Not because I wanted to relive college. But because I wanted to meet the version of myself who used to believe that every ending was simply another beginning.

Tonight, though… I still had one more class to attend.

And one more day to survive.

Blue Eagle Gym had always looked enormous whenever Ateneo held graduation ceremonies.

Back when I was a freshman, I used to sit somewhere near the back whenever professors encouraged us to attend graduation “for inspiration.” I never really paid attention to the speeches. Diane spent most of those ceremonies whispering commentary about everyone’s hairstyles while I tried to calculate how long it would take before security escorted us out for being public disturbances. Chesca always pretended she wasn’t listening, but somehow she remembered every insult Diane made afterward. Aiah, of course, listened properly. Back then, she took graduation seriously even when it wasn’t hers.

After every ceremony, we would walk out laughing, sweaty from the crowd and half deaf from the applause, making promises as if life had already signed the contract for us.

“Tayo rin,” Diane used to say.

“Four years lang,” I would answer.

Four years sounded so close back then. It sounded neat. Manageable. Almost guaranteed.

Funny how life could stretch one missing semester until it felt longer than the three years that came before it.

Today, I found myself sitting in almost the same section, holding three bouquets on my lap while the gym filled with families, professors, photographers, and graduates in blue. The only difference was that I was no longer imagining what it would feel like to cross that stage. I was watching everyone I loved arrive there without me.

I wasn’t bitter. That was the important part. I didn’t hate them for making it on time. I didn’t resent the togas, the medals, the proud parents taking too many photos, or the way the graduates kept looking at one another like they had survived something impossible together. If anything, I was proud enough to feel ridiculous about it. Diane had somehow graduated despite turning every group chat into a circus. Chesca was leaving for Paris with her diploma and her dreams tucked under one arm. Aiah had made it through everything her name demanded from her and everything love had cost her.

I was happy for them.

I really was.

It was just hard not to notice the empty space where I was supposed to be.

From where I sat, I could see the graduates lined up near the center aisle. Blue togas shifted like small waves whenever someone moved. Caps tilted. Tassels swung. Parents waved from the bleachers with phones raised high enough to block the view of everyone behind them. Somewhere near the front, a faculty marshal kept repeating instructions that absolutely no one was following.

Then I saw Diane. Of course I saw Diane first.

She was waving both arms above her head like she was directing airport traffic instead of participating in a formal graduation ceremony.

“Mikha!” she mouthed dramatically.

I pointed toward the stage and mouthed back, “Graduation mo, hindi akin!”

She pointed to herself, then to me, then made a heart with her hands.

The marshal beside her looked like she had aged five years in three seconds.

I laughed softly and shook my head.

Some things survived university.

Chesca stood a few people behind her, perfectly composed, her cap sitting at the exact angle that made it look effortless even though I knew she had probably adjusted it fifteen times before entering the gym. She caught Diane still waving, closed her eyes in visible secondhand embarrassment, and pulled Diane back by the sleeve before the entire ceremony could be delayed by one woman’s need for attention.

Then, a few seats away from them, I found Aiah.

Even beneath the graduation cap, Aiah Ledesma was impossible to miss. Some people carried attention by taking up space. Aiah carried quiet. She sat with her hands folded neatly on her lap while everyone else around her kept fixing their togas, taking selfies, or searching the audience for their families. Her posture was straight, her expression calm, her eyes focused on the marshal giving instructions. She was probably the only person in the entire row actually listening.

Then she looked up.

Our eyes met across the distance.

For a second, the noise inside Blue Eagle Gym thinned into something soft enough to hold.

She smiled.

Not the polite smile she gave professors. Not the small, controlled smile she used whenever people expected her to be presentable. This one was mine. Tiny. Almost hidden. Still enough to make the entire gym feel less crowded.

She mouthed, “Baby.”

I smiled back and pointed toward the stage.

“Graduate first,” I mouthed.

Even from that far, I knew exactly what her slight eye roll meant.

Bossy.

The ceremony began with the usual solemnity that lasted for approximately twelve minutes before the audience remembered that graduation was, technically, a socially acceptable excuse to scream inside a gymnasium. Names echoed through the speakers one after another. Every graduate walked across the stage carrying a private history no one in the audience would fully know. Some walked quickly, embarrassed by attention. Some slowed down just enough for their parents to take better photos. Some cried before they even reached the dean. Some laughed with the kind of relief that only came after surviving years of deadlines, terror professors, groupmates from hell, and the occasional existential crisis disguised as finals week.

I clapped for strangers too.

Maybe because I knew how hard it was to make it this far.

Maybe because a diploma looked the same from the audience no matter how much privilege, grief, luck, or stubbornness had carried someone toward it.

When Diane’s name finally rang through the speakers, half our section transformed into an illegal cheering squad.

Someone whistled. Someone screamed. Someone shouted her nickname so loudly that several parents turned around to check if a celebrity had entered. I refused to investigate who started it because I had a strong feeling it was Chesca, and knowing for sure would only make me responsible.

Diane, naturally, waved back.

To everyone.

Including people who were definitely not waving at her.

She crossed the stage with the kind of confidence usually reserved for pageant winners and people who had never doubted their own ability to make chaos look charming. When she accepted her diploma, she said something to the Dean that made him laugh. Of course she did. Diane could flirt with a deadline if given enough time.

I clapped until my palms stung.

“Ang yabang mo,” I whispered, smiling through the ache in my throat. “Buti na lang bagay.”

A few names later, Chesca was called.

This time I stood.

Chesca would hate that, which made standing feel morally correct.

“Francesca Isabella Maria Consuelo de los Reyes y Santillan III!” I shouted, earning a few startled looks from the family beside me.

Onstage, Chesca paused for half a second. Not enough for most people to notice. Enough for me.

She accepted her diploma with a composed smile, turned toward the camera, and looked every bit like the kind of woman who would soon belong in Paris, sketching clothes under better light, speaking to clients who pronounced fabric names with unnecessary intensity. But just before she stepped down, she glanced toward our section and shook her head.

I shrugged.

Then the announcer called, “Aiah Ledesma.”

The applause around me softened beneath the sound of my own heartbeat.

Aiah stood. Calm. Graceful. Controlled. Exactly the way she had walked through every impossible thing life placed in front of her.

But I knew better.

I knew the version of her that stayed awake past midnight because she could not stop thinking. I knew the version that held my hand under tables when she did not know how to say she was scared. I knew the version that had once believed her entire life had already been written by people who never asked what she wanted. I knew what it cost her to stand there not just as a brilliant student, not just as someone everyone expected to succeed, but as herself.

She crossed the stage. Accepted her diploma. Bowed politely. Then looked toward the audience.

Toward me.

I stood with everyone else and clapped until my hands hurt. Not because Aiah graduated but because she made it.

After the ceremony, Blue Eagle Gym dissolved into exactly the kind of chaos only graduation could justify. Families cried in clusters. Graduates were forced into the same photo fifteen different times because someone always blinked. Bouquets passed from hand to hand until everyone looked like they had either won a competition or opened a flower shop by accident. Professors were surrounded by students asking for final pictures, parents kept saying “one more” even after taking two hundred photos, and somewhere nearby, Diane was loudly insisting that her cap looked better before the ceremony ruined her aura.

I stood near one of the exits, balancing three bouquets against my hip while trying not to get hit by anyone’s diploma.

Diane reached me first. She didn’t walk. She launched herself.

“HINDI MO AKO SINALUBONG!”

“You literally ran away from your parents.”

“They understand my need for dramatic entrance.”

“They look confused.”

“They always look confused. That’s their brand.”

Before I could answer, she threw her arms around me so tightly that one bouquet nearly sacrificed itself between us. She smelled like perfume, sweat, and graduation excitement. Familiar and loud. Very Diane.

“I’m proud of you,” I whispered.

She pulled back just enough to look at me. For once, her smile softened.

“Next ka na.”

I nodded.

“Next ako.”

She squeezed my shoulder, then immediately turned when someone called her from across the gym.

“Wait lang! Family obligations,” she said, already backing away. “Wag kang aalis. Picture tayo later. Mandatory. Legally binding.”

“Go.”

She pointed at me. “Stay alive.”

“Trying.”

“Try harder.”

Then she disappeared into the crowd.

Aiah reached me next, walking toward me with her diploma held neatly in one hand and her cap still perfectly in place because of course it was. For a moment, we simply looked at each other while the world moved around us.

Then she stepped closer and rested her forehead against mine.

“We did it,” she whispered.

I smiled.

“You did.”

Her eyes opened immediately.

“We did.”

I could have argued. I almost did. But something in her gaze stopped me. Aiah had always been precise with language. If she said we, she meant it.

So I let her have it.

“We did,” I said.

Her hand found mine between the flowers and the noise. She held on for one quiet second before someone called her name from across the gym. I looked past her and saw faculty members, family friends, and people with the kind of posture that meant they were connected to the Ledesmas in some formal, complicated way.

Aiah looked at me apologetically.

“Go,” I said before she could ask. “I’ll be here.”

Her thumb brushed over my knuckles once.

“I’ll come back.”

“I know.”

She left reluctantly, which made me love her more and hurt a little at the same time.

I watched her disappear into the crowd. Not fully. Aiah never disappeared completely from me. Even in a gym full of people, I could find her by posture alone.

“Mikha.”

I turned.

Chesca stood beside me, diploma tucked beneath one arm, her bouquet held upside down like she had forgotten flowers had feelings.

“You’re holding that wrong,” I said.

She looked at the bouquet, then at me. “It’s a plant corpse wrapped in ribbon.”

“Romantic.”

“Accurate.”

I laughed.

She glanced toward the crowd, then toward the exit. “Walk?”

Of course.

Chesca never said she needed air. She simply removed herself from crowds and expected the right people to follow.

I adjusted the flowers in my arms and walked beside her out of Blue Eagle Gym. The noise softened as soon as we stepped into the corridor, though it still followed us through the open doors in waves of applause, laughter, and camera shutters. Outside, the afternoon light spread gold across the pavement. Graduates gathered beneath trees, posing with families and friends, their blue togas bright against the campus green.

For a while, Chesca and I walked without speaking.

That was one of the things I liked about her. She never treated silence like an emergency.

We stopped near one of the quieter pathways leading away from the gym. From there, we could still see people celebrating, but the noise was distant enough to feel like someone else’s life.

Chesca leaned against the low wall and looked at me.

“You okay?”

“Graduation mo, tapos ako ang tinatanong mo?”

“Yes.”

“Unfair.”

“Answer.”

I smiled faintly. “Okay lang.”

She gave me the look. The one that said, ‘Try lying to someone who has not known you for years’.

I sighed. “I’m happy for all of you.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

“I know.”

She waited.

I looked back toward Blue Eagle Gym, where Diane was now posing with both arms around her parents while somehow still talking. Aiah stood a few meters away from a group of faculty members, polite and composed, but her eyes kept drifting toward where I was.

“I’m really happy,” I said quietly. “Sobrang proud ako sa inyo. Kay Diane, kahit nakakainis siya. Sa’yo, kahit aalis ka na at iiwan mo kami for croissants and fashion people. Kay Aiah…” I paused, smiling despite the pressure behind my eyes. “Lalo na kay Aiah.”

Chesca said nothing.

I swallowed.

“Pero ang weird pala.”

“What is?”

“Watching everyone arrive somewhere you were supposed to arrive with them.”

The sentence sat between us. I regretted it immediately, not because it was untrue, but because saying it out loud made it heavier.

Chesca looked ahead. “You’re still arriving.”

“Delayed nga lang.”

“Delayed is not cancelled.”

I looked at her.

She shrugged, pretending the sentence did not mean anything.

“Wow,” I said softly. “May wisdom ka pala.”

“Don’t spread that. I have a reputation.”

I laughed, and the laugh came easier this time. Maybe because she never forced comfort into anything. She simply stood beside the wound and refused to make it uglier.

For another moment, we watched the crowd.

Then I said, “I know it was you.”

Her eyes shifted toward me.

“What?”

“The clients.”

She did not move.

I smiled. “Yung freelance clients.”

Her expression stayed calm, but I had known Chesca long enough to recognize the slight change in her face. The almost invisible tightening near her mouth. The way she suddenly looked too uninterested.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Chesca.”

“Mikha.”

“I put a hidden signature in all systems I create.”

That got her.

Her head turned fully. “You what?”

I grinned. “Hidden comments. Nothing obvious. Just tiny things in the backend.”

“What kind of things?”

“Depends on my mood.”

“Mikha.”

I adjusted the bouquet against my chest. “One of them says, ‘Built with enough coffee to violate several human rights.’”

For one second, Cheska only stared at me.

Then she laughed. A real laugh. Not her polite laugh. Not the dry little sound she made when Diane said something stupid. A full, startled laugh that made her bend forward slightly and cover her mouth like the sound had escaped without permission.

“You idiot,” she said.

“I prefer innovative.”

“You actually sign your systems with nonsense?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Why?”

“In case one day I become famous. Historians need material.”

“Historians will diagnose you.”

“Still counts as legacy.”

She shook her head, still laughing quietly.

I waited until her smile settled before continuing.

“One of your clients accidentally sent me an old project brief with the referral notes attached.”

Her smile faded slightly.

“My name was there?”

“Your initials.”

She looked away.

“And then the next client had almost the same format. Same tone. Same kind of brand. Then another. Then another.” I watched her carefully. “Fashion brands. Small studios. People who somehow already trusted me before we even had a meeting.”

She crossed her arms. “They hired you because your work is good.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t ask them to pity you.”

“I know.”

“I just told them if they needed a developer, I knew someone brilliant.”

“I know.”

“They paid you properly?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The word came out sharper than expected, like that had been the part she cared about most.

I smiled.

“Thank you.”

Chesca frowned, uncomfortable already. “Don’t.”

“Ches—”

“I said don’t.”

“Thank you,” I said again, softer this time. “For making me feel like I earned it.”

Her face changed. Not dramatically because Chesca never did anything dramatically unless Diane forced her into group pictures. But the silence around her softened. She looked down at the diploma tucked under her arm, then at the graduates still taking photos near the gym.

“I didn’t want you to feel like we were saving you,” she said quietly.

I swallowed.

“Yeah.”

“Because I know you.”

“Unfortunately.”

“You wouldn’t accept help if it looked like help.”

“That sounds like a character flaw.”

“It is.”

“Rude.”

“Accurate.”

I laughed softly. She looked at me then, really looked, and for once there was no sarcasm waiting behind her eyes.

“You were drowning, Mikha.”

The words landed without warning.

I looked away first.

The afternoon light blurred slightly around the edges.

Chesca continued, her voice even but gentler than usual. “You were still smiling. Still making jokes. Still pretending you were fine. Pero alam namin.”

I blinked quickly.

“Ches—”

“And I couldn’t fix it.” She shrugged, but the motion looked heavier than it should have. “I’m not Aiah. I don’t always know what to say. I’m not Diane. I can’t turn everything into noise until it feels less scary. But I know people. I know work. So I gave you what I could.”

A slow ache opened in my chest.

“Why?”

She looked at me like the answer should have been obvious.

“Because that’s what the adopted Rascal does.”

For a second, I could not speak.

The adopted Rascal.

She said it like a joke, the way we always did. Like she had not just taken years of friendship, chaos, teasing, late night breakdowns, shared meals, study sessions, and unspoken loyalty and placed all of it gently in my hands.

I had called her that so many times just to annoy her.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, she had accepted the title.

I stepped forward and hugged her before she could escape.

She stiffened for half a second, because Chesca did not enjoy surprise affection unless properly scheduled, then sighed and hugged me back with one arm.

“You’re dramatic,” she muttered.

“You’re leaving.”

“Paris is not another planet.”

“It’s another timezone.”

“Video call exists.”

“You hate video calls.”

“I’ll tolerate them.”

“For me?”

“For the Rascals.”

I pulled back and wiped under my eye before anything could embarrass me further. “Wow. Mahal mo kami.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Say it properly.”

“No.”

“Chesca.”

“Mikha.”

“Say you love us.”

“I will throw this diploma at you.”

“Violence on graduation day. Very classy.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

Then the smile changed.

“My flight is in three weeks.”

I knew that already. Diane had repeated it at least fifteen times in various stages of denial.

Still, hearing Cheska say it made the date feel real.

“Ang bilis,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Excited ka?”

She looked toward the trees lining the pathway. “Terrified.”

I blinked. “You?”

“Don’t sound so shocked.”

“Sorry. Akala ko kasi ikaw yung composed adult sa group.”

“I am. Composed adults can still be terrified. We just moisturize.”

I laughed.

She smiled, but it faded quickly.

“I want it,” she said. “Paris. Fashion. All of it. I’ve wanted it for so long that sometimes I’m scared I won’t know who I am if I get there and it doesn’t feel the way I imagined.”

The sentence felt too familiar. 

I held the flowers tighter against my chest.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Gets.”

We stood there quietly while the celebration continued around us. People walked past carrying balloons, diplomas, flowers, whole futures wrapped inside camera flashes. For a moment, it felt like the whole campus had become one long goodbye.

Chesca turned to me. “Don’t disappear while I’m gone.”

I tried to smile.

“Grabe. Paris ka lang. Parang mamamatay ako.”

“I’m serious.”

The smile slipped. She held my gaze.

“I finally got you. Ayokong mawala ka ulit.”

My throat tightened. There were things I could joke about because joking made them smaller. This was not one of them.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“No.”

She shook her head.

“Really try.”

I nodded, slower this time.

“I will.”

She studied me for another second, as if deciding whether to believe me. Then she reached out and straightened the ribbon on one of the bouquets I was holding.

“Good.”

“Bossy.”

“Someone has to be. Aiah can’t do all the work.”

I laughed again, and this time it hurt less.

From near the gym, Diane shouted Chesca’s name with the urgency of someone who had probably found another mandatory photo opportunity. She looked toward the sound and sighed like a woman being summoned to war.

“That’s my cue.”

“Good luck.”

“I survived four years with all of you. I can survive one more picture.”

She started walking, then stopped.

“Mikha.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re still arriving.”

I looked at her.

She nodded toward the gym, toward the stage, toward everything I had watched from the audience.

“Don’t confuse late with lost.”

Then she walked away before I could respond. Very Chesca. Drop emotional damage and leave the crime scene.

I stood there long after she returned to the crowd. I watched Diane throw an arm around her shoulders. I watched Aiah glance around until she found me again. I watched parents fix their children’s caps and friends take photos they would one day look back on with either nostalgia or horror depending on the angle.

The flowers in my arms smelled fresh and sweet. The gym slowly emptied behind me.

One chapter had ended for all of them. Mine was still waiting for me to finish it.

For the first time that afternoon, I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

Not home.

There was one more place on campus that had held me through almost every version of myself. The girl who laughed too loudly. The girl who fell in love. The girl who lost everything. The girl that’s still trying.

If Aling Nena was still at the cafeteria, she would probably have something warm waiting.

And somehow, that thought felt exactly like home.

The walk from Blue Eagle Gym to the cafeteria happened in a blur that I didn’t realize where I was headed until the familiar smell of sisig drifted through the afternoon air.

Maybe it had always been like that.

Whenever something good happened, or something terrible, or even something I didn’t quite know how to feel about, I somehow ended up in the same place. The cafeteria had quietly become the center of our college lives without any of us noticing. It was where deadlines were complained about over extra rice, where victories were celebrated with sisig, where heartbreaks were interrupted by Aling Nena insisting that no one was allowed to cry on an empty stomach. Somehow, every version of us had existed within those walls.

My feet followed the path almost on their own.

By the time I reached the cafeteria, most of the food stalls had already started closing for the day. Metal shutters were halfway down, utensils had been washed and stacked neatly on drying racks, and stall owners counted the day’s earnings before packing ingredients into plastic containers for tomorrow. The usual lunchtime chaos had long disappeared, leaving behind only the occasional footsteps of students cutting through the cafeteria on their way home.

Except for one corner.

The familiar scent of sizzling pork, onions, and calamansi greeted me before I even saw the stall.

I smiled almost immediately.

Some habits really did survive everything.

“Aling Nena.”

She looked up from the grill and immediately smiled.

“O anak.”

She wiped her hands on the towel hanging from her apron before looking me up and down.

“Nandito na pala ang delayed graduate.”

I dramatically placed one hand over my chest.

“Grabe ka naman po.”

“Totoo naman.”

“Sasaktan mo pa talaga ako?”

“Ano gusto mo? Bolahin kita?”

“Pwede naman.”

“Walang siopao dito.”

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

“Hay salamat andyan pa pala ang Mikha ko,” she said, pointing her spatula toward me. “Akala ko nawala na.”

“Hindi pa naman.”

“Hmm.”

She studied my face for a few seconds longer than usual. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Aling Nena had always looked at people as if she could somehow tell whether they had eaten, slept, or cried recently just by the way they stood.

Finally, she nodded toward one of the empty tables.

“Upo ka.”

I obeyed without thinking.

Nobody really argued with Aling Nena.

Not because she raised her voice.

Because somehow she always sounded like she already knew what was best for you.

I set my backpack on the chair beside me and watched her return to the grill. The familiar rhythm of her cooking filled the quiet cafeteria. The scrape of the spatula against the hot plate. The soft hiss whenever she squeezed calamansi over the meat. The quick, practiced movements she’d probably repeated thousands of times over the years.

It sounded like home.

A few minutes later, she walked toward my table carrying a sizzling plate of sisig and a cup of rice.

I frowned.

“Hindi po ako umorder.”

She looked genuinely offended.

“Sisingilin ba kita kung magbabayad ka?”

“Eh graduation nila.”

“Kaya nga.”

“But…” I pointed at myself. “Hindi naman ako graduate.”

She carefully placed the plate in front of me before crossing her arms.

“Eh graduate ba ang tiyan mo?”

I looked at her. Then at the sisig. Then back at her.

“Wala akong babayaran dito, no?”

“Wala.”

I laughed softly.

The sisig continued to crackle on the hot plate, tiny droplets of oil dancing across the surface while the smell of toasted onions, pepper, and calamansi immediately filled the space between us.

I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until that moment.

It smelled exactly the way it always had.

Exactly the same as the first time Diane dragged me here after class because she insisted no one was allowed to survive Ateneo without trying Aling Nena’s sisig. Exactly the same as every lunch break we spent arguing over who was paying. Exactly the same as every celebration, every heartbreak, every ordinary Tuesday that somehow became memorable simply because we were all together.

I picked up my spoon.

“Salamat po.”

“Wag.”

I looked up.

“Hm?”

“Mainit pa.”

“Ah.”

“Kung gusto mong hindi mapaso, hintayin mo munang lumamig ng unti yan bago kumain.”

I smiled sheepishly and placed the spoon back down.

“Opo.”

She nodded in satisfaction before sitting across from me.

For a while, neither of us spoke. The silence wasn’t awkward. It rarely was with Aling Nena.

She busied herself wiping the edge of the table while I watched the cafeteria around us.

The place felt… different. Not because anything had changed physically. The plastic chairs were still mismatched. The old electric fans still turned lazily overhead. The menu boards still displayed faded prices that everyone knew by heart.

It was the people. Or rather…the lack of them.

No Little Rascals occupying three tables when one would’ve been enough.

No Diane loudly negotiating for extra rice as if she were representing an entire nation in peace talks.

No Chesca pretending she didn’t know any of us whenever our conversations became too embarrassing.

No Aiah quietly reaching over to fix the way I held my spoon because apparently there was a proper way to eat everything.

Just…me and Aling Nena.

The realization settled quietly inside me. College really was ending.

I finally took my first bite.

The familiar flavors immediately spread across my tongue, warm and comforting in the way only food attached to memories could ever be.

I closed my eyes for a brief second.

“Grabe.”

“Sabi ko sa’yo.”

“Wala talagang tatalo.”

“Siyempre.”

I smiled.

Then, without thinking, I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Paano na ako pag nag-retire ka?”

The words had barely left my mouth when the smile on Aling Nena’s face softened.

She looked around the nearly empty cafeteria before quietly standing from her chair.

“Wait lang.”

Curious, I watched her walk back behind the stall.

Instead of reaching for another container of meat or a fresh batch of onions, Aling Nena crouched beneath the counter and opened one of the storage cabinets. I watched absentmindedly at first, expecting her to pull out another tray or maybe an extra stack of plates.

Instead, I saw cardboard boxes.

They weren’t the kind of boxes you hurriedly threw things into before moving. Each one had been neatly sealed with packing tape and carefully labeled in thick black marker. She closed the first cabinet and opened another.

More boxes.

My eyes slowly wandered across the rest of the stall, noticing details I should’ve seen the moment I walked in. The shelves that usually held extra plates and utensils looked strangely bare. The large pans she used every day had already been wrapped in old newspapers and tied together with twine. Even the bottles of seasoning that permanently occupied the corner of her workstation were gone, leaving behind faint circular marks on the stainless steel where they’d sat for years.

The entire stall looked… lighter.

As if someone had been quietly packing away pieces of it one day at a time, hoping nobody would notice until everything was finally ready to leave.

A strange feeling settled in my chest.

“Aling Nena?”

She closed the cabinet and looked back at me.

Her smile returned. Still warm. Still familiar. Just touched with something I couldn’t quite name.

“Last day ko na.”

For a moment, I honestly thought I had misheard her.

“Ano po?”

“Last day ko na.”

I blinked.

“Ha?”

She laughed softly.

“Papakasal na ako.”

“Ha?”

“Kay Douglas.”

I stared at her.

“Ha?!”

She burst into laughter.

“Akala mo talaga scammer siya.”

“Hindi naman po…”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Medyo.”

She shook her head, amused.

“Three months na lang.”

“Saan po?”

“America.”

The word hung quietly between us.

America. Not somewhere we could reach by bus if we missed each other enough.. Far enough that visiting someone became something you planned months in advance.

I slowly looked around the stall again.

The packed boxes.

The empty shelves.

The folded tablecloths.

The old sign that had watched generations of students line up for lunch.

“So…”

I swallowed.

“Wala nang sisig?”

She reached across the table and lightly flicked my forehead.

“Ayan talaga concern mo.”

“Eh importante po iyon.”

She laughed again, but this time there was something quieter underneath it.

“Kaya libre lahat ng graduate ngayon.”

I looked down at my untouched plate. Then back at her.

“Kaya pala.”

“Huling graduation ko na dito.”

Neither of us spoke after that.

Outside the cafeteria, another group of graduates erupted into cheers as someone successfully threw a graduation cap into the air without losing it to the wind. Parents laughed. Cameras clicked. Somewhere nearby, someone called a student’s name.

Life continued. Inside the cafeteria, however, everything suddenly felt suspended. As though another chapter had quietly ended without asking anyone’s permission. Aling Nena rested both hands on the table before looking at me.

“Ikaw.”

I looked up.

“Kumusta ka?”

The answer arrived automatically.

The same answer I’d been giving everyone for months.

“Okay lang po.”

She didn’t even blink.

“Sinungaling.”

The word wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t accusing. It was simply… true.

I looked away. The smile I’d worn since Blue Eagle Gym quietly disappeared. Not because she had caught me lying. Because I was suddenly too tired to pretend she hadn’t.

The only sound between us was the gentle crackling of the sisig slowly cooling on the hot plate.

I stared at it for a long moment before finally speaking.

“Hindi ko na po alam.”

“Hm?”

I let out a slow breath.

“Hindi ko na alam kung sino ako.”

The words surprised me almost as much as they surprised her.

“I don’t know what I want anymore. I don’t know if programming still makes me happy. I don’t know if I’m just tired…or if I already lost the person I used to be.”

A humorless laugh escaped me.

“I feel like everyone else has already graduated.”

I looked down at my hands.

“And I’m still trying to figure out how to become someone worth graduating.”

Aling Nena remained quiet. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t rush to comfort me.

Instead, she simply reached for the calamansi sitting beside the plate, squeezed it over the sisig, mixed everything together with practiced hands, and gently pushed the plate back toward me.

“Kain ka muna.”

I looked at her. She smiled.

“Walang magandang desisyon ang ginagawa pag gutom.”

Despite everything…I laughed. Small, tired but real.

She smiled too.

Despite everything that had happened that afternoon, a quiet laugh escaped me. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make the corners of her eyes crinkle with satisfaction.

“Yan,” she said. “Mas bagay sayo pag tumatawa.”

I picked up my spoon and took another bite. The familiar warmth spread through me almost immediately. Maybe it was the food. Maybe it was simply because someone had once again decided to take care of me before asking me to explain myself.

Aling Nena waited until I had swallowed before speaking again.

“Akala mo ba noong first year ka dito, programmer ka na talaga paglaki?”

I frowned.

“Hindi po.”

“Ano gusto mo noon?”

I couldn’t help smiling.

“Astronaut.”

She nodded as if that made perfect sense.

“O, programmer ka ngayon.”

“Parang hindi na nga po.”

She rested both elbows on the table and looked around the cafeteria, her eyes lingering on the empty chairs and half-closed stalls surrounding us.

“Nung edad mo ako,” she began, “gusto kong maging nurse.”

I blinked in surprise.

“Talaga?”

She laughed and gestured toward the stall behind her.

“Tingnan mo naman ako.”

I looked from her to the grill, the spatula still resting beside the hot plate, then back at her.

“Medyo malayo nga po.”

“Medyo?”

“Sige na… sobrang layo.”

She chuckled softly before shaking her head.

“Noong una, nalungkot ako.”

The smile remained on her face, but her voice grew quieter, carrying the weight of a memory she had already learned to live with.

“Akala ko kasi kapag hindi nangyari yung pangarap ko, ibig sabihin pumalpak na ako. Talo sa buhay ganun.”

She shrugged lightly.

“Tapos tumanda ako.”

I stayed quiet, letting her continue.

“Doon ko narealize na minsan pala, hindi ibig sabihin na pag nagbago ang pangarap mo, nagkamali ka na.”

She looked at me then, not with pity, but with the quiet certainty of someone who had lived long enough to stop fearing change.

“Minsan…” she said softly, “nag mature ka lang.”

The words settled somewhere deep inside me.

I stared at the plate between us, tracing the edge of it with my spoon.

“But what if…” I hesitated, unsure whether I even wanted to hear my own question. “What if I don’t know what I want anymore?”

She smiled.

“Aba.”

I looked up.

“Welcome.”

I frowned.

“Saan po?”

“Sa adulthood.”

I laughed through my nose.

“Akala ko kasi pag matanda na… alam niyo na ginagawa niyo.”

She let out a louder laugh this time.

“Naku, anak.”

She shook her head.

“Akala mo lang ‘yon.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Hindi?”

“Hindi.”

She pointed toward the open entrance of the cafeteria where graduates continued taking pictures beneath the afternoon sun while families gathered around them with flowers and balloons.

“Tingnan mo silang lahat.”

I followed her gaze.

“Akala nila ngayon nasa finish line na sila.” She smiled. “Hindi pa.Simula pa lang ‘yan. Mag babago pa sila ng trabaho. Mag-iiba ng pangarap. Yung iba lilipat ng bansa. Yung iba babalik dito. Yung iba iisipin nilang alam na nila gusto nila sa buhay.”

She chuckled.

“Tapos after ilang taon… iba na naman.” She looked back at me. “At okay lang iyon.”

I lowered my eyes.

“Hindi ko kasi kilala itong version ko.”

Without saying anything, Aling Nena reached across the table and gently rested her hand over mine.

“Eh di kilalanin mo.”

I looked up.

“Walang deadline ang pagkilala sa sarili.”

I swallowed hard.

“But I miss who I was.”

“Alam ko.”

“I miss being excited.”

“Alam ko.”

“I miss…” The words caught in my throat before I could stop them. “my mom.”

Silence settled gently between us. Not the uncomfortable kind. The kind that simply allowed grief to exist without demanding it explain itself. I laughed quietly, shaking my head.

“I know she did terrible things. I know what she did was wrong. But…” My voice cracked. “anak niya pa rin ako.”

The confession came out so quietly that I almost wished the wind would carry it away before anyone else heard.

“I still miss her. I still wish…” I stopped.

There was nothing left to add because the truth was simple. No matter what Melinda Cruz had become in the eyes of the world…She had once been my mother.

Aling Nena never interrupted. She never rushed to tell me everything would be okay. She simply stayed. Her hand remained over mine while I tried very hard not to cry over a plate of sisig in the middle of an almost empty cafeteria.

When I finally managed to steady my breathing, she spoke again.

“Nawala man ang iyong nanay.”

I nodded.

“Hindi ko man siya kayang palitan.”

Another nod.

“Walang sino man ang makakapagpalit sa kanya sa buhay mo.”

She gave my hand a gentle squeeze.

“Pero…” I slowly lifted my eyes to meet hers. “kung papayag ka…”

She smiled, almost shyly. “Pwede mo pa rin akong maging nanay.”

The words broke something open inside me. Not because she offered. Because she asked.

She didn’t assume she had earned that place. She gave me the choice.

The tears I had been holding back all afternoon finally escaped. I covered my face with one hand, laughing softly through the embarrassment.

“Aling Nena…”

“Hm?”

“Ang daya mo.”

“Bakit?”

“Pinapaiyak mo ‘ko.”

She laughed and shook her head.

“Hindi.” She pointed toward my untouched rice. “Tayong dalawa ang umiiyak.”

I couldn’t help laughing again. This time, it sounded a little more like me.

She slowly stood from her chair and disappeared behind the stall. I wiped my face with the back of my hand while pretending I suddenly found the tabletop very interesting.

A few moments later, she returned carrying a small white takeaway container. She placed it gently in front of me.

“Para may kainin ka sa bahay.”

I looked down at the warm container before looking back at her.

“Libre pa rin?”

She smiled.

“Huling graduation ko na ‘to.” Then she pushed it closer. “Tsaka…”

She tilted her head toward me.

“Hindi kita pwedeng pauwiin nang walang dalang pagkain…anak.”

I wrapped both hands around the container, feeling the warmth seep into my palms.

It was just sisig. Just dinner for later. Just another takeaway container like the hundreds she had handed to students over the years. But somehow…It felt heavier than that. Maybe because for the first time in months, I wasn’t leaving with another problem to solve. I was leaving with something warm. Something someone had prepared because they wanted to make sure I would be okay. Maybe that was what mothers did. They didn’t always have the right answers. Sometimes they simply made sure you never went home empty handed.

And somewhere between that plate of sisig and the quiet kindness of a woman who had fed generations of Ateneo students without ever asking for anything in return, I realized I had come to the right place.

I just didn’t know yet that this conversation would change the way I would spend the rest of my life looking at myself.

Time had a quiet way of continuing even when it felt like my own life had stopped.

The months that followed passed beneath the glow of my laptop screen, unfinished systems, night classes, and cups of instant coffee that somehow tasted exactly the same no matter how exhausted I was. Freelance projects slowly turned into tuition payments. Tuition payments slowly turned into completed requirements. One exam became another. One semester quietly became the last.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped counting how many rejection letters I had received.

I started counting how many requirements I had left instead.

It was easier that way.

The campus slowly changed around me. New students filled the hallways that had once belonged to us. Organizations recruited beneath the same trees where Diane used to loudly embarrass all of us. Freshmen hurried across walkways carrying the same nervous excitement I remembered feeling years ago. Ateneo had already welcomed a new chapter.

For the first time, I no longer felt left behind by it.

Eventually…My turn came.

The graduation ceremony was much smaller than the one I had watched months before. There were fewer graduates waiting backstage, fewer families filling the audience, fewer cameras flashing every few seconds in desperate attempts to capture the perfect photo.

Most of the people I had entered college with had already moved on.

Some were working.

Some had started building careers.

Some had left the country.

Life had continued exactly the way it was supposed to.

I simply arrived a little later than everyone else.

Standing backstage with my toga neatly pressed and my graduation cap balanced carefully on my head, I found myself smiling. Not because everything had worked out. 

It hadn’t.

I still didn’t know exactly who I wanted to become after this. I still wasn’t sure whether programming was something I loved or simply something I happened to be good at. There were still questions waiting for me outside these walls.

But for the first time in a long while…

Those questions didn’t scare me as much.

When my name echoed through the hall, I took a slow breath and stepped onto the stage.

The diploma felt surprisingly light in my hands.

Funny.

After everything it had taken to earn it, I expected it to weigh a little more.

The applause that greeted me was warm. Gentle. Exactly what every graduate deserved.

I smiled politely, shook the Dean’s hand, and posed for the customary photograph before making my way back down the steps. It wasn’t dramatic. There were no grand speeches waiting for me. No life-changing realization the moment I accepted my diploma.

It was simply the quiet satisfaction of reaching a finish line I had once been afraid I’d never cross.

The ceremony ended not long after.

Graduates slowly spilled out of the venue carrying bouquets, balloons, and diploma tubes while parents searched for better lighting to take another round of photos.

I stepped outside, blinking against the afternoon sun. Then I heard the cheering. Not polite applause. Not the respectful clapping reserved for graduation ceremonies.

Actual cheering. Loud didn’t even begin to describe it.

“AYAN NA ANG DELAYED GRADUATE!”

I turned just in time to see Diane waving both arms over her head as though she were trying to direct an airplane instead of getting my attention.

Beside her, Chesca immediately covered her face.

“I don’t know her,” she muttered loud enough for us to hear.

“Sinungaling,” Diane replied without missing a beat. “Pinagpractice mo pa ‘ko kagabi.”

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

Then my eyes found Aiah.

She stood quietly between them, holding a bouquet almost too large for her arms. The flowers were wrapped in deep blue paper tied together with a cream ribbon, simple and elegant in a way that somehow reminded me of her.

The moment our eyes met, she smiled.

The same smile.

The one she had given me across the field years ago.

The one that somehow still made every crowded place feel smaller.

The three of them continued clapping far louder than anyone else around us. People turned to stare. Diane waved at them too. Of course she did.

By the time I reached them, Diane had already thrown herself into a hug dramatic enough to nearly crush both my bouquet and diploma.

“Finally!”

“Grabe ka.”

“Sabi ko sayo eh. Gagraduate ka rin.”

“I never said hindi.”

“Pero ang tagal mo.”

I laughed.

“Sorry.”

She looked at me for a second before smiling more softly.

“Worth the wait.”

Before I could answer, Chesca gently nudged Diane aside.

“My turn.” She pulled me into a quick hug.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“You earned it.”

Those three words somehow meant more than the diploma still tucked beneath my arm.

Then she stepped back, giving the space beside her to the only person who hadn’t moved.

Aiah.

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.

The noise around us slowly faded into the background until all I could hear was the rustling of the trees overhead and the distant laughter of families celebrating nearby.

She walked toward me and carefully handed me the bouquet.

“Congratulations, baby.”

Her voice was quiet.

Almost as though this moment belonged only to us.

I accepted the flowers before looking back at her.

“I graduated.”

“You did.”

“I kept thinking…” I laughed softly through the tears already threatening to fall. “na baka hindi na dumating ito.”

Without saying anything, Aiah reached up and adjusted my graduation cap that had become slightly crooked during Diane’s attack.

“There.” She smiled. 

I looked at her for a long moment.

“I made you wait.”

She shook her head almost immediately.

“I was never waiting for your graduation.”

I frowned. She reached for my free hand, intertwining our fingers with the same quiet certainty she always carried.

“I was waiting for you.”

That was it. That was the moment everything inside me finally gave in.

The tears I had stubbornly held back throughout the entire ceremony slipped free before I could stop them. Not because I had finally graduated. Not because I was relieved. Not even because I had a diploma in my hands. I cried because they waited.

Life had continued moving while I struggled to catch up.

Careers had begun. Dreams had moved overseas. Entire lives had started without me. Yet somehow…The people who mattered most never made me feel like I had been left behind.

Aiah gently brushed a tear from my cheek before smiling that impossibly soft smile I had fallen in love with years ago.

“I told you.”

“Hm?”

“We’ll get there.”

I laughed through my tears.

“We did.”

She squeezed my hand.

“We did.”

Standing there between the people who had loved me through every version of myself. The loud ones, the quiet ones, and the woman who had chosen me every single day I realized something I hadn’t allowed myself to believe for months.

Maybe I hadn’t fallen behind after all.

Maybe I had simply taken the longer road home.

“One more stop,” Aiah said.

That was never a safe sentence coming from Aiah Ledesma.

I narrowed my eyes at her from the passenger seat, diploma resting across my lap, bouquet tucked awkwardly between my knees because Diane had insisted on buying flowers that looked like they had been stolen from a hotel lobby. “Babe, bakit parang may itinerary?”

Aiah kept her eyes on the road. “Because there is.”

“Of course there is.” I leaned back against the seat and turned to look at her properly. She was still wearing the cream blouse she had worn to my graduation, sleeves folded neatly at her elbows, hair tucked behind one ear, face calm in the exact way she always looked whenever she was hiding something. “Okay. Saan tayo pupunta?”

“Secret.”

“Kidnap ba ’to?”

“With consent.”

I pointed at her. “That is a very lawyer answer.”

She smiled, tiny and suspicious. “Thank you.”

“Hindi compliment ’yon.”

“I accepted it anyway.”

I stared at her for a few more seconds, trying to read her face, but Aiah had spent most of her life surviving boardrooms and family dinners with people who thought emotions were liabilities. If she wanted to look unreadable, she could become a wall with better cheekbones. The only thing giving her away was the way her fingers tightened slightly around the steering wheel every time I asked another question.

“Babe,” I said slowly.

“Hm?”

“Why are you nervous?”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You blinked six times.”

Her jaw tightened.

I gasped. “You are nervous.”

“I’m driving.”

“You blink like that kapag may ginagawa kang kalokohan.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Exactly. Kaya obvious.”

She turned into the next road without answering, which was basically a confession with turn signals.

The city had started softening into late afternoon by the time we reached the outskirts. Baguio light always looked different near sunset, as if the sky had been washed in something warmer before being laid gently over the pine trees. I expected a restaurant. Maybe a quiet cafe. Maybe one of those scenic places Aiah liked because they had good food and enough space between tables for her to pretend she was not listening to other people’s conversations.

Instead, she parked in front of an amusement park.

I stared through the windshield.

Bright gates. Colored lights beginning to flicker on. The distant sound of children screaming from a ride they had voluntarily lined up for.

I turned to Aiah.

She unbuckled her seatbelt with the calm of someone who had not just brought her emotionally unstable girlfriend to a place full of spinning machinery and sugar.

“Baby.”

“Yes?”

“Theme park ’to.”

“I know.”

“May rides.”

“Yes.”

“May bata.”

“Yes.”

“May overpriced cotton candy.”

“Probably.”

I squinted at her. “Are we meeting Diane?”

“No.”

“Chesca?”

“No.”

“Then bakit tayo nandito?”

Aiah looked at the entrance for a moment before glancing back at me. For once, her expression softened without warning, and the teasing question waiting on my tongue quietly lost its place.

“Because you graduated,” she said.

I looked away first because apparently I could survive rejection emails, delayed tuition, and an entire semester of night classes, but Aiah saying something gently remained my final boss. “People usually celebrate with dinner.”

“We can eat later.”

“At a theme park?”

“Yes.”

“Very questionable life choice, Miss Ledesma.”

She smiled. “Come on.”

The moment we stepped through the gates, the world became louder in the exact way I had forgotten I used to love. Music played from speakers hidden somewhere above the food stalls. Children ran past us carrying balloons, their parents following with the exhausted patience of people who had already spent too much money and would still spend more. The air smelled like popcorn, grilled hotdogs, sugar, and machine oil from rides that probably passed safety inspections through prayer. Lights blinked around booth signs, reflecting in Aiah’s eyes as she looked around with the focused seriousness of someone mentally categorizing fun.

I slipped my hand into hers.

She looked down at our joined hands, then at me.

“Baka mawala ka,” I said.

“I’m taller than most people here.”

“Baka mawala ako.”

“I’d find you.”

“Ang yabang.”

“Accurate.”

I squeezed her hand, smiling despite myself.

The first booth we stopped at was a basketball shooting game because I had the audacity to believe my athletic background meant something outside a soccer field. The attendant handed me three balls and pointed at the hoop, which looked normal enough until I actually threw the first one and missed so badly the ball hit the rim, bounced sideways, and nearly attacked a toddler.

The toddler laughed. Rude.

Aiah’s eyebrows lifted.

I pointed at her before she could speak. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought something.”

“I always think.”

“Not now.”

She pressed her lips together, but the amusement in her eyes was loud enough to be illegal.

My second shot missed too.

The third one somehow managed to go behind the backboard.

The attendant picked up the ball and politely pretended he had not witnessed whatever that was. Aiah, however, did not have the same mercy.

“Physics,” she said.

I turned slowly.

“Math,” she continued.

“Baby.”

“Statistics.”

“Babe.”

“Probability.”

“I’m warning you.”

“All missed.”

I stared at her while she smiled the smallest, most devastating smile.

“I don’t appreciate this energy,” I said.

“I’m simply observing.”

“You’re bullying your fresh graduate girlfriend.”

“My fresh graduate girlfriend just endangered a child with a basketball.”

“That child laughed at me. He deserved emotional consequences.”

Aiah laughed. The sound hit me in the chest so suddenly that I almost forgot to be offended. I looked at her, standing beneath cheap string lights, one hand covering her mouth as if she could still hide the laugh after it had already escaped, and something inside me loosened.

There she was.

My Aiah. Not the Ledesma heir. Not the girl who had fought boardrooms and families and expectations. Not the woman people expected to become untouchable.

Just my baby, laughing at my terrible aim in a theme park after graduation.

Grabe. Kung ito pala ang prize, okay lang pala matalo.

Unfortunately, Aiah then tried the shooting game next. She missed all three. Spectacularly.

Her first shot barely reached the target. Her second hit the booth’s wooden frame. Her third bounced off the edge and rolled back toward her feet like even the ball had given up and returned to sender.

I slowly turned to her. She looked straight ahead.

“Don’t say a word,” she said.

I blinked innocently. “Ako? Wala.”

“Mikha.” She closed her eyes.

“What?.”

“Mikha.”

“Wala akong sinasabi.”

“Stop.”

“Wala nga.”

She grabbed my wrist, but she was smiling. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“Babe, I have been unemployed, delayed, rejected countless times, and emotionally humbled by life. Let me have this.”

The attendant, probably out of pity or fear of witnessing a lovers’ quarrel beside stuffed animals, handed Aiah a tiny consolation prize. It was a keychain shaped like a bear with one eye slightly higher than the other.

I gasped.

“Babe.”

“No.”

“Binayaran mo ba siya?”

“No.”

“Why did you get a prize? You missed everything.”

“It’s a consolation prize.”

“Where was my consolation prize?”

“You almost hit a child.”

“Unfair to”

Aiah took the keychain and handed it to me. I stared at it.

“For you,” she said.

My teasing disappeared for half a second.

The bear was ugly. Objectively. One eye was fighting for independence. But Aiah looked at me like she had just handed me something precious, and suddenly the ugliest bear in the world became very important.

I clipped it to my bag.

“Okay,” I said, clearing my throat. “He’s cute.”

“He?”

“His name is Attorney Bear.”

Aiah looked at it. “Why attorney?”

“Because one eye is judging me and the other is gathering evidence.”

She laughed again, and I decided right there that Attorney Bear was family.

We moved from booth to booth with the kind of reckless confidence only two people with poor budgeting skills and post-graduation emotions could have. I tried ring toss and missed every single bottle despite crouching, squinting, and whispering calculations under my breath. Aiah stood beside me with her arms crossed, looking far too pleased.

“You’re calculating the numbers.” she asked.

“Union break.”

“Ah.”

“They filed for emotional leave.”

“Reasonable.”

Then Aiah tried the dart balloon game and somehow threw the dart with such controlled elegance that it missed the entire board. Not the balloon. The board. The attendant had to step aside.

I stared at her. She stared at the dart lying sadly on the floor.

“Babe,” I said gently.

“Don’t.”

“You almost assassinated kuya.”

“I miscalculated.”

“By a lot.”

She sighed. “Give me another dart.”

“Are we sure that’s legal?”

Her second dart popped a balloon. One out of five.

She looked at me immediately. I clapped with all the sincerity of a supportive girlfriend and all the disrespect of someone who would definitely bring this up later.

“Very good, babe. Growth mindset.”

She rolled her eyes, but the smile stayed.

By the time we reached the cotton candy stall, the sky had turned a soft shade of orange. Aiah bought one stick of cotton candy bigger than her head, because apparently we had entered a stage of life where Aiah Ledesma believed in excess sugar.

I took it from her and tore off a piece.

“Open,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“Babe, it’s cotton candy, not poison.”

“It’s sticky.”

“It’s fun.”

“Sticky fun is still sticky.”

“Open.”

She sighed like I had asked her to sign away company shares, then opened her mouth just enough for me to feed her the smallest piece.

The cotton candy melted immediately. Her eyes widened a little.

I grinned. “See?”

“It disappeared.”

“That’s the point.”

“That’s inefficient.”

“It’s candy.”

“It should have structure.”

“Babe, you are criticizing cotton candy for lack of structural integrity.”

“It has none.”

“Correct. That is why kids love it.”

She looked at the fluffy pink cloud, then tore off a piece herself and fed it to me.

I leaned forward, accepting it from her fingers. Her eyes stayed on my mouth for half a second too long.

Ah. Okay. The theme park suddenly became interesting. I smiled slowly.

“Babe.”

“Hm?”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m observing.”

“Sure.”

“Professionally.”

“At cotton candy?”

“At you.”

The sugar dissolved on my tongue. So did my ability to function. I looked away first, because apparently I could flirt aggressively for four years and still lose whenever Aiah said one direct thing with a straight face.

“Ang daya mo,” I muttered.

“What?”

“You know what.”

She smiled and took another piece of cotton candy.

We rode bumper cars next, which was where I discovered something very important about my girlfriend.

Aiah Ledesma was competitive. Not academically competitive. Not corporate competitive. Bumper car competitive.

The moment the ride started, she gripped the steering wheel with frightening focus, shoulders squared, eyes locked on me like I had betrayed her family. I barely had time to move before she slammed her car into mine with enough force to make me yelp.

“BABE!”

She reversed calmly.

“Come here.”

“AYOKO!”

I tried to escape. She chased me.

For three minutes, my entire life became me screaming while Aiah, the supposed composed love of my life, hunted me across a kid’s ride with the focus of a woman closing a billion peso deal.

When the ride ended, I stepped out dizzy, breathless, and emotionally betrayed.

“You targeted me.”

“Yes.”

“No denial talaga?”

“You were the only one I wanted to hit.”

I stared at her. Then unfortunately my heart did the stupid thing again.

Because of course.

Of course Aiah could say the most threatening sentence possible and somehow make it romantic.

“You’re insane,” I said.

“You love me.”

“Against my better judgment.”

She reached for my hand again, smiling like she knew exactly how much I meant it.

The haunted house was my idea.

This was a mistake.

I said I was not scared. I said this confidently. I said this while buying tickets and even made fun of Aiah for asking if I was sure. I said, “Babe, multo lang ’yan, hindi thesis adviser.” Very brave. Very loud. Very last words.

Five seconds inside, a plastic skeleton dropped from the ceiling and I grabbed Aiah’s arm so tightly she nearly lost circulation.

“Mikha.”

“I’m protecting you.”

“You’re hiding behind me.”

“Strategic defense.”

A person in a ghost costume appeared from behind a curtain.

I screamed. The ghost screamed too. Then apologized.

“Sorry po, ma’am.”

I clutched my chest. “Kuya, bakit parang ikaw pa natakot?”

Aiah, traitor of my heart, started laughing.

By the time we came out, I was holding onto her waist with both arms while insisting that the haunted house was cheap and predictable and not scary at all. Aiah only nodded with the kind of patience she used when humoring unstable people.

“You screamed at a curtain,” she said.

“It moved aggressively.”

“It was fabric.”

“With intent.”

We ended up on the carousel after that, mostly because Aiah said I needed to sit down and I said I would rather die than sit on a bench like a defeated adult. The carousel moved slowly beneath a canopy of lights, painted horses rising and falling in a gentle rhythm while kids laughed around us. I chose a white horse with a chipped blue saddle. Aiah chose the one beside mine, though she hesitated for a full three seconds before climbing on because apparently dignity had finally remembered her address.

I looked at her sitting perfectly upright on a carousel horse, hands carefully holding the pole, expression somewhere between serious and deeply inconvenienced.

I nearly cried laughing.

“Babe, relax ka naman. Hindi ito board meeting.”

“I am relaxed.”

“You look like you’re about to negotiate with the horse.”

She glanced at the painted horse’s face.

“It looks suspicious.”

“His name is probably Sparkle.”

“That makes it worse.”

The carousel turned. For a while, neither of us spoke.

The music played an old tune I vaguely remembered from childhood, something bright and tinny and sweet enough to hurt if you listened too closely. Around us, kids reached for their parents, parents took photos, and teenagers pretended they had outgrown the ride while secretly smiling when their horses rose.

I watched Aiah.

Her hair had loosened slightly from the wind, a few strands brushing her cheek. The lights moved across her face in soft gold, appearing and disappearing as the carousel rotated. She was smiling now. Not at me. Not at anything specific. Just smiling, small and quiet, as if she had allowed herself to be exactly where she was for once.

No Ledesma. No expectations. No next meeting. No family name waiting to collect her.

Just Aiah. On a carousel. Beside me. Something warm pressed against my ribs.

“Babe,” I said softly.

She looked at me.

“Masaya ka?”

Her expression changed. Just slightly but I saw it. She looked around at the lights, at the kids, at the ridiculous horses carrying us in circles, then back at me.

“Yes,” she said.

I smiled.

“Good.”

The ride ended too soon.

Or maybe moments like that always did.

By the time we reached the Ferris wheel, the sky had deepened into the kind of sunset that made everything look like it was about to be remembered forever. The lights of the amusement park had fully come alive below us, blinking in reds, yellows, blues, and warm whites. Kids ran past with prizes tucked under their arms. Someone cried because their balloon flew away. Someone else laughed too loudly near the food stalls. The world was ordinary in the most beautiful way.

Aiah stopped walking. I looked at the Ferris wheel, then at her.

“One last ride?” she asked.

I tilted my head. “Babe, bakit parang dramatic?”

“It’s a Ferris wheel.”

“Exactly. Very romcom.”

She blinked.

I pointed at her face. “There. Six times again.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“Mikha.”

“Are you nervous?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

She looked away. My smile widened.

Oh.

Very interesting.

Still, I let her lead me into the line.

For once, I didn’t ask another question.

The gondola swayed gently when we stepped inside. Aiah entered first, then held out her hand to help me even though I was perfectly capable of stepping into a slow moving metal cabin without dying. I took her hand anyway because I had graduated, survived, and earned the right to be dramatic.

The attendant locked the bar.

The Ferris wheel began to move.

Slowly, the ground drifted away beneath us.

At first, we could still hear everything clearly. The music. The laughter. The vendors calling people toward their booths. Then the wheel climbed higher, and the sounds softened until the whole amusement park became a glowing miniature beneath our feet.

Aiah sat beside me, quiet. Too quiet. I looked at her.

“Babe.”

“Hm?”

“Kung may sasabihin kang weird, sabihin mo na habang mababa pa tayo. Baka tumalon ako mamaya.”

She laughed under her breath. Then she reached for my hand.

Her palm was warm. Slightly trembling.

I stopped smiling.

“Aiah?”

She looked at me then, and suddenly all the noise of the world below us disappeared.

“Are you happy?” she asked.

I looked out over the lights, the rides, the kids still running across the paths, the cotton candy stall where Aiah had criticized sugar architecture, the bumper cars where she had tried to murder me with love, the carousel where she had smiled like she was finally allowed to rest.

Then I looked back at her.

“Ngayon lang ulit,” I said honestly.

Her eyes softened. For a moment, she looked like she might cry.

Then she reached into her bag.

My heart stopped.

“Babe…”

She pulled out a small velvet box while the ferris wheel kept rising and I forgot how to breathe.

Aiah held the small velvet box between both hands as if it weighed more than anything either of us had carried that day.

For a few seconds, I could not speak.

Which was rude, honestly, because I had spent years building a reputation as the person who always had something to say. I had commentary for bad coffee, suspicious groupmates, impossible professors, and the emotional violence of tuition fees. I could talk my way through awkward silences and terrifying situations with the misplaced confidence of someone who believed humor counted as a survival skill.

But there, inside a slowly rising ferris wheel, with the whole amusement park shrinking beneath us and Aiah looking at me like the rest of the world had already fallen away, I had nothing.

The box was small. Too small for the kind of panic it created inside my chest.

“Babe,” I whispered.

Aiah swallowed.

I had seen her face down professors, board members, family expectations, and people who used silence like weapons. I had seen her walk into rooms full of adults who thought they could decide her life for her. I had seen her stand perfectly still while the world tried to turn her into something useful.

I had never seen her hands tremble like this.

“Before you panic,” she said softly, “please let me explain.”

I blinked at her.

“Before I panic?”

“Yes.”

“Babe, you brought out a velvet box on a ferris wheel.”

“I know.”

“At sunset.”

“I know.”

“After a theme park date.”

“I know.”

“After I graduated.”

Her lips pressed together, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

“Baby.”

“I’m just saying, if this is not what I think it is, ang lala ng mixed signals mo.”

Aiah laughed under her breath, but it came out shaky. She looked down at the box, then back at me. The ferris wheel continued its slow climb, lifting us higher above the lights, higher above the noise, higher above the kind of ordinary world where people still bought popcorn and complained about long lines while my entire life sat between Aiah’s palms.

“It is,” she said.

The words were quiet. They still reached every part of me.

My breath caught.

Aiah opened the box.

Inside was a ring.

Not the kind I expected from someone with the last name Ledesma. It was not loud. It did not try to blind anyone with size or announce wealth from across a room. The band was delicate, old in the way heirlooms were old, its gold softened by time rather than polished into perfection. A small stone sat at the center, catching the sunset in a way that made it glow instead of glitter. Around it, tiny details had been carved so finely that I had to lean closer to see them.

It looked loved.

That was the first thing I thought.

Loved.

“Babe…” I breathed.

“This was my grandmother’s,” she said.

Her voice changed when she said it. Softer. Careful. Like she was opening a room inside herself that very few people had ever been allowed to enter.

I looked from the ring to her face.

“She gave it to you?”

Aiah nodded, her thumb brushing lightly along the edge of the box. “Before she passed away.”

The amusement park lights flickered below us as the ferris wheel climbed higher. From where we were, the booths looked small enough to fit in someone’s palm. The shooting game where Aiah almost assassinated kuya. The bumper cars where she revealed her violent tendencies. The carousel where she had smiled like she finally remembered how to rest.

All of it was beneath us now.

But Aiah was looking only at the ring.

“My grandmother was the only Ledesma I knew who married for love,” she said.

I stayed quiet.

“She was supposed to marry someone else. Someone chosen by the family. Someone useful.” Aiah’s smile appeared briefly, but there was sadness in it. “That was how they talked about people.”

I thought of all the rooms Aiah had been forced to sit in. All the conversations where love had been treated like a weakness and obedience like inheritance. My chest tightened.

“But she refused,” Aiah continued. “She chose my grandfather instead.”

“Were they angry?”

Aiah looked at me.

“They were furious.”

I let out a quiet laugh because of course they were. The Ledesmas did not strike me as the type of family who reacted kindly to someone choosing joy without asking permission first.

“She lost a lot because of it,” Aiah said. “Money. Position. Approval. People who used to invite her to everything suddenly stopped remembering her name. For years, my family treated her marriage like an unfortunate story they had to politely avoid during dinners.”

“Grabe.”

“She never regretted it.” Aiah’s voice softened even more. “Not once.”

The ferris wheel moved slowly, gently rocking our cabin as it climbed. I could hear the faint metal creak beneath us, the distant laughter of children below, the soft rush of wind pressing against the glass. But everything felt far away compared to the sound of Aiah’s voice.

“When I was younger, I used to ask her why she still wore the ring if everyone in the family treated it like proof of her disobedience.” Aiah looked down at the ring again. “She told me it was the only thing in her life that was chosen freely.”

My throat tightened.

“She said, ‘Aiah, every Ledesma inherits an empire.’”

Aiah’s eyes lifted to mine.

“‘Businesses. Land. Buildings. Responsibilities. Expectations. All of that belongs to the family name.’”

She paused.

Then she looked back at the ring.

“‘But this ring is not part of that empire.’”

The ferris wheel slowed as we neared the top.

My heartbeat slowed with it.

“She told me, ‘This belongs to the person you would choose over the empire.’”

For a long moment, neither of us spoke.

The sky beyond the window had turned gold at the edges, deepening into orange where the sun touched the mountains. The amusement park below glowed brighter as daylight faded, every ride outlined by small bulbs, every pathway filled with people moving like tiny sparks. It should have felt noisy. Crowded. Ordinary.

Instead, it felt like the whole world was holding its breath with me.

“I didn’t understand it when she gave it to me,” Aiah said. “I thought choosing love over everything else was irresponsible. Reckless. I thought life worked better when every decision made sense on paper.”

I smiled through the pressure building behind my eyes.

“Of course you did.”

She gave me a look.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re right.” She laughed softly, but her eyes were already shining. I continue to tease her.

“Mikha.”

“Sorry. Serious moment.”

Her smile lingered for a second before fading into something tender.

“I didn’t understand what she meant until I met you.”

My breath caught again.

Aiah held the box a little closer between us.

“At first, I thought you were a disruption.”

“Grabe.”

“You were.”

“Fair.”

“You were loud. Unpredictable. You kept appearing everywhere even when I clearly did not invite you.”

“Persistence.”

“Harassment.”

“Romantic persistence.”

She laughed, and the sound steadied me just enough to breathe.

“But then you stayed,” she said. “Even when I was difficult. Even when I pushed you away. Even when loving me meant standing too close to a life that kept trying to hurt you.”

“Aiah…”

She shook her head gently.

“Let me finish, baby.”

So I did.

Because her voice was trembling now.

Because I knew how much it cost her to say things without hiding behind control.

Because for once, Aiah Ledesma was not trying to be composed.

She was trying to be brave.

“I spent my whole life being taught that love was something you considered after duty. After family. After reputation. After the future had already been secured.” She looked at the ring, then back at me. “But you taught me that love is not what comes after life is finally stable.”

Her hand reached for mine.

“Love is the reason you keep choosing a life that is yours.”

I stared at her.

There were no jokes left in me now. No clever comment.No protective laugh.

Only Aiah. Only her hand holding mine. Only the ring glowing softly between us like a small piece of history being rewritten.

“I don’t want to be twenty one married to the corporate world,” she said.

Her voice broke slightly on the number, and somehow that made it hurt more.

“I want to be twenty one married to Mikha Cruz.”

The tears came before I could stop them. Immediate. Embarrassing. Aggressive.

Aiah’s eyes widened.

“No, wait.”

I let out a broken laugh. “Babe.”

“Don’t cry yet.”

“Don’t cry yet?” I repeated, already crying harder. “May schedule?”

“I’m not done.”

“You brought out a ring and then told me not to cry because you’re not done?”

“Yes.”

“Controlling even in a proposal.”

“I’m trying to be romantic.”

“You are. That’s the problem.”

Aiah laughed, but a tear slipped down her cheek too. She looked annoyed about it, which only made me cry more because of course my soon to be fiance would be offended by her own emotions for interrupting her plan.

She wiped my cheek with her thumb.

“Please,” she whispered. “Let me finish.”

I nodded, though I was not sure how she expected me to survive anything else.

The ferris wheel finally reached the top.

For one suspended moment, we stopped above everything.

The whole amusement park spread beneath us in lights and motion. The carousel turned slowly in the distance. Somewhere below, someone probably missed another basketball shot and emotionally recovered faster than I did.

Aiah looked around, then back at me.

“I know this is an odd place to do this,” she said.

I laughed weakly. “Medyo.”

“But I chose it because…” She took a breath. “I think we grew up too early.”

The laughter slowly faded from my mouth.

“I was taught how to become responsible before I learned how to rest,” she said. “You learned how to survive before you were allowed to dream without fear.”

My chest tightened.

“We both missed so much. The ordinary things. The silly things. The things kids are supposed to have without earning them first.” Her gaze moved briefly toward the lights below us. “The carousel. The arcade. Cotton candy. Bumper cars. Ferris wheels.”

“The haunted house where a ghost apologized to me,” I added, voice trembling.

Aiah smiled through her tears.

“Yes. Even that.”

I wiped my cheek, laughing softly.

“I wanted us to have this day,” she continued. “Not as a reward for surviving. Not because we earned it by suffering enough. I wanted us to have it because we deserved to be young too.”

The words entered me quietly. Then all at once. I thought of everything we had carried.

My mother’s name. Her family’s empire.

Expectations pressed into our backs before we even knew how to stand properly.

The childhoods we never got to keep.

The versions of ourselves we had been forced to become just to make it through.

And there we were. At the top of a ferris wheel. Holding cotton candy memories, ugly bear keychains, and the kind of laughter I had thought I had forgotten how to make.

Aiah squeezed my hand.

“We cannot go back,” she said. “I know that.”

Her voice grew steadier now.

“But we can decide what the next chapters of our lives will belong to.”

I held my breath.

“Not to what people expect from us.” She looked at me. “Not to our family names.”

Another tear slipped down her cheek.

“Not to what the world thinks we should become.”

She opened the ring box wider.

“To us.”

My hand was trembling in hers.

“I want to build a life with you,” she said. “Our own life. Our own home. Our own family, if someday we are brave enough to want that too.”

I pressed my free hand over my mouth.

She smiled, but her tears kept falling.

“I cannot promise that life will always be kind to us. I cannot promise that everything will go our way. I cannot promise that I will always know the right thing to say or that I will never make mistakes.” Her voice softened. “Knowing me, I will probably make several very organized mistakes.”

I laughed through my tears.

“But I can promise you this.”

She lifted my hand and held it against her chest, right over her heart.

“I will spend my whole life choosing you.”

The world blurred.

“When things are easy.”

Her thumb brushed over my knuckles.

“When things are difficult.”

The ferris wheel cabin swayed gently in the wind.

“When we are scared.”

Her eyes held mine.

“When we are tired.”

I could barely breathe.

“When we do not understand each other.”

She smiled sadly.

“When the world tells us we are impossible.”

A pause. Then, softer than anything else…

“Especially then.”

I broke.

There was no other word for it.

Whatever careful wall I had built around myself over the past months, around the delayed graduation, the rejection emails, the scholarships that disappeared, the quiet fear that maybe I no longer knew who I was, all of it cracked beneath the weight of Aiah looking at me like I was not someone to be rescued or pitied or fixed.

Like I was someone to be chosen.

She took the ring carefully from the box.

Inside the band, I noticed tiny engraved words.

I leaned closer, blinking through tears.

Come what may.

Aiah saw me reading it.

I touched the inside of the ring with one trembling finger.

“I thought I would change the ring slightly,” she admitted. “Make it ours.”

She laughed softly.

“But I couldn’t think of anything better.”

She looked at me then.

“Come what may, baby.”

The words had barely reached me before I started crying again. Definitely not in the way someone should cry when being proposed to at sunset. I was crying in the way you cried when the person you loved handed you a future and somehow made it feel safe enough to hold.

Aiah waited. Of course she did. She waited while I wiped my face with the back of my hand. She waited while I tried to laugh and failed. She waited while I looked at the ring, then at her, then at my own hands, suddenly too aware of everything I did not have.

No job.

No money.

No certainty.

No mother waiting proudly somewhere.

No grand future neatly waiting to unfold.

Only myself.

And lately, even that had felt like something unfinished.

“Babe,” I whispered.

“Hm?”

I let out a shaky breath.

“Wala akong maibibigay sa’yo.”

Aiah’s face changed. I tried to smile, but it broke halfway.

“Literal,” I added, because humor was still the only life jacket I knew how to grab. “As in, wala. Wala akong trabaho. Wala akong savings na hindi nakakahiya. Wala akong fancy family heirloom. Wala akong—”

“Meron.”

The answer came immediately. No hesitation. No space for doubt.

I stopped.

Aiah held my gaze.

“Meron,” she repeated softly.

Then she touched my cheek with the hand that was not holding the ring.

“You.”

The whole world went quiet.

I stared at her, and somehow that single word unraveled every fear I had been carrying for months.

I had spent so much time believing I needed to become the old version of myself again before I deserved to be loved. I kept waiting for the confident scholar to come back. For the athlete who could laugh without forcing it. For the programmer who used to see patterns and possibilities the moment numbers appeared on a screen. I thought I had to find that girl again before I could finally stand beside Aiah without feeling guilty for everything I had lost.

But Aiah wasn’t asking for the version of me that existed before life broke me.

She wasn’t waiting for me to become brilliant again. Or fearless. Or certain.

She was choosing the woman sitting in front of her.

The one who still didn’t have all the answers.

The one who was still learning how to put herself back together.

The one who wasn’t finished healing.

Somehow…She looked at all the pieces I thought had become too broken to recognize and she still saw me.

She still chose me.

And for the first time in a very long while, I wondered if maybe that was enough.

“You are not an investment,” Aiah said, her thumb brushing gently against my cheek. “You are not a plan I need to justify. You are not a future I am calculating.”

Her voice trembled.

“You are the person I love.”

I pressed my lips together, but another sob escaped anyway.

“Babe…”

“And if you do not know who you are right now,” she whispered, “then I will love you while you find out.”

That was unfair. Completely unfair. Illegal, probably.

I laughed through my tears because if I did not laugh, I would collapse inside the ferris wheel and then the attendant would have to explain to the news why two women got emotionally destroyed above a theme park.

Aiah smiled.

Then, as if remembering something important, her eyes widened slightly.

“So…”

I sniffed. “So?”

She looked suddenly nervous again.

“You have not answered.”

I blinked. Then I laughed. A real laugh. The kind that came from somewhere deep enough to hurt.

“Babe.”

“What?”

“Ginawa mo lahat yan tapos impatient ka pa rin?”

“I have waited four years.”

I laughed harder, wiping my cheeks.

“Four years?”

“Yes.”

“You counted?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you did.”

“Mikha.”

I looked at her, my chest full of too many things at once. Love. Fear. Joy. Grief. Hope. All of it tangled together until I could not tell where one ended and the other began.

But beneath all of that, there was one answer.

The only answer that had ever made sense.

I leaned forward and kissed her forehead first.

Aiah closed her eyes.

Then I whispered, “Oo.”

Her eyes opened.

“Yes?”

I smiled through my tears.

“Yes, babe. I will marry you.”

For a moment, Aiah simply looked at me. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She just stared, as though she needed to hear the word one more time before allowing herself to believe it was real.

Then I watched every ounce of tension quietly leave her body. Her shoulders relaxed. The nervous smile she had been trying so hard to hold together finally gave way to something softer, warmer, and infinitely more familiar. It was relief. It was joy. It was the look of someone who had been carrying the weight of a question for far longer than she had ever admitted.

“You said yes,” she whispered, almost to herself.

I laughed through my tears.

“Babe, ilang beses mo ba kailangan marinig?”

A small laugh escaped her as she carefully lifted the ring from the velvet box. Even then, her hands were still trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I practiced this so many times in my head. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

“Talaga?” I teased, holding out my left hand. “Kasama ba sa rehearsal na paiiyakin mo ako?”

She smiled, the kind of smile that always made me feel like I was the safest place in the world.

“Nope.”

With a tenderness that made my chest ache, she gently slid the ring onto my finger.

It fit perfectly.

I looked from the ring to Aiah, narrowing my eyes just enough to make her nervous.

“Babe…”

“Hm?”

“Paano mo nalaman size ko?”

She froze for the briefest second.

“Research.”

I laughed.

“Research?”

“I measured one of your rings.”

“Wala akong rings.”

“Then I estimated.”

“Madam Auring ka na?”

She covered her face with one hand, laughing in defeat.

“Please don’t ruin this.”

“Too late.”

I looked back down at my hand.

The ring caught the last rays of the setting sun, its gold glowing softly against my skin. It didn’t sparkle loudly or demand to be admired. It simply rested there, as though it had always known where it was meant to belong.

Somewhere, I hoped Aiah’s grandmother was smiling.

Because after all those years, after everything that both of us had survived, her ring had finally found another love story worth protecting.

“Ang mahal nito,” I whispered.

Aiah let out a broken laugh.

“Focus.”

“Sorry. Poor person reflex.”

“Mikha.”

“I love it.”

Her expression softened.

“I love you.”

I looked up.

“I love you too.”

Then she kissed me.

The ferris wheel began descending while we were still kissing, the world slowly returning beneath us in blurred lights and distant laughter. I felt her smile against my mouth. I laughed into the kiss. She laughed too, and the sound of it made my chest ache in the best way.

By the time we pulled apart, both of us were crying. Both of us were laughing. Both of us probably looked insane.

Perfectly imperfect.

Below us, the amusement park continued like nothing life changing had happened above it. The world did not stop for us.

It simply became kinder.

I rested my head against Aiah’s shoulder, still holding her hand, still staring at the ring on my finger. Her grandmother’s ring. A love story that had survived one generation. A promise handed to another.

“Babe,” I whispered.

“Hm?”

“Attorney Bear is our first child.”

Aiah was quiet for half a second.

Then she laughed so hard she had to cover her face.

And there it was.

The sound I wanted to keep forever.

The ferris wheel carried us back down slowly, but for once, I was not afraid of reaching the ground.

For the first time in a very long time, tomorrow did not scare me anymore. 

Because I guess as long as I am Aiah Ledesma’s wife, that’s all I will need to survive everyday.