Packet Loss

The drizzle doesn’t stop, it learns my rhythm. Every drop seems to echo the delay between what I feel and what I can say. For a long moment after I whisper “I still remember,” the world stands very still like it’s waiting for confirmation. The rain ticks against the awning in quiet intervals, an imperfect metronome.

Mikha doesn’t move. She just looks at me, her hair clinging to her cheeks, jacket half-zipped, every breath of hers visible in the cold. She opens her mouth halfway with an inhale, a syllable maybe and then closes it again. I read the shape of the silence instead of the word.

It’s hesitation, not indifference. And I hate that I know the difference.

For years I’ve measured affection by consistency, by delivery receipts, messages sent, replies received, routines upheld. But she was never data I could control, she was latency. Unpredictable. Warm. Human.

The light from the library hallway spills onto the pavement, cutting through the rain. I could step back into it and return to silence, the safer signal. Instead, I move forward. She blinks, surprised, as I step out from under the awning. Rain kisses my hairline, traces a line down my neck. It’s cold enough to make me shiver.

“Wala kang payong,” she says softly, the words barely audible over the patter.

“I’ll manage.”

She unzips her jacket, holds it out. “Here. You’ll get sick.”

“I don’t need it.”

“You never do,” she answers, a half-smile ghosting across her lips. “You always say that, even when you’re already freezing.”

Her voice lands somewhere between teasing and remembering, and it unsettles me how easily she still sounds like home.

I take the jacket anyway not to wear it, but to stop her from insisting. Our fingers brush briefly. Contact, then retreat. The skin under my glove burns longer than it should.

“Walk with me?” she asks.

The question is quiet, careful like she’s afraid the rain might reject it.

I should say no. Logic lists the reasons instantly that it’s late, it’s raining, we’re not who we were, and I’ve built an entire life on pretending that distance equals peace. But logic has always lagged behind her voice.

So I nod.

We walk. Not toward anywhere, just through it.

The paths glisten like glass, and puddles mirror the lights in fractured patterns. I count lampposts to keep from staring at her. Four in, six out. Four in, six out. Breathing becomes a kind of negotiation. Neither of us speaks. The quiet isn’t heavy; it’s fragile, like it might collapse under the wrong word.

When she finally does speak, her voice is half-laugh, half-memory.

“Campus looks smaller than I remember.”

“Rain compresses space,” I say automatically. “Perspective shifts when light refracts through moisture.”

She chuckles softly. “You could’ve just said yes.”

I look straight ahead. “You asked a question. I answered it.”

“Still the same,” she murmurs. “You never let a moment stay simple.”

“I don’t believe in simple.”

“I noticed.” Her tone isn’t teasing. Just… aware.

The rain deepens, pattering through the acacia branches above us. We pass the covered walk near MVP. A flicker of light hits the puddles. I can feel the warmth of her shoulder, not touching mine, just close enough for my body to remember what closeness feels like.

It’s ridiculous how proximity can be so loud.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” she says.

“I like quiet.”

“I know. But not like this.”

I keep my gaze on the pavement. “Like what?”

“Like you’re trying to disappear into it.”

I flinch internally, but my expression doesn’t move. I’ve practiced neutrality for years; it fits like armor. “Maybe I’m just tired.”

“Or hiding.”

“Both,” I admit.

She doesn’t respond right away. Just nods slowly, her breath visible in the cold. “You always did that, hide in order.”

“That’s an unfair assessment.”

“Accurate, though.”

I want to argue, but the truth is she’s right. I’ve built a life out of precision, out of managing chaos before it happens. Because if I control everything, nothing can fall apart.

And yet, here she is, living proof that control doesn’t prevent loss. It just delays it.

“Do you still run?” I ask, desperate to redirect.

“When I can,” she says. “It clears my head.”

“Does it?”

“Not really,” she admits. “But it reminds me I still have one.”

A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. The sound feels foreign, like borrowing joy from a past life.

She smiles when she hears it. “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“Proof you’re still human.”

“I never said I wasn’t.”

“You didn’t have to.”

We pass under another tree. The lamplight catches the curve of her cheek, the small scar near her jawline. I remember it faintly but not its story. My brain tries to search its archive for the date, the file, the memory…nothing. Maybe I deleted it on purpose.

“Do you ever wonder,” she says suddenly, “what it would’ve been like if timing was kinder?”

I stop walking. Her voice is steady, but her eyes aren’t.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “Nothing. Just that some people meet too early. Or too late. I think we…” she trails off, searching, “…we didn’t meet wrong. We just didn’t meet ready.”

Her words hit something in me I’ve been avoiding for months, years, maybe. I inhale sharply, four in, six out, the pattern that always saves me.

“Readiness doesn’t guarantee permanence,” I say quietly. “It just delays the crash.”

She smiles sadly. “You’d know.”

There’s no accusation in it, but my chest tightens anyway.

We reach the edge of the amphitheater. Rain falls through the open roof in faint silver threads. She steps under it without hesitation, palms open, head tilted back.

“You’ll get drenched,” I say.

“So?”

“You’ll catch a cold.”

“Then I’ll heal,” she answers, eyes closed. “Not everything has to stay broken.”

It shouldn’t hurt to hear her sound so sure. But it does. Because I’m not.

She turns to me. Her voice softens. “I missed this, you know. Just talking. Without pretending I don’t care.”

“Pretending is easier.”

“For who?”

“For everyone involved.”

“Then stop involving everyone,” she says. “Just talk to me.”

Her directness burns through my practiced restraint. I force my voice steady. “Mikha…”

She waits.

I look at her, really look at her. The line of her jaw, the way her lashes catch the rain, the familiar slouch of someone who lives with ease even when she shouldn’t. Every detail is a reminder that I am not built to be unaffected.

“I remember,” I whisper. “But I still can’t.”

She doesn’t blink. “Can’t what?”

I inhale again, slowly, deliberately. “Can’t let myself believe we’re still the same people who started this.”

She tilts her head. “And what if we’re not? Maybe that’s the point.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“Trying,” she says simply.

There’s a kind of hope in her voice that terrifies me because it sounds so much like forgiveness. The rain softens again. A faint wind brushes my hair against my face, and for a second, the world feels too intimate. I pull back.

“I’m not ready,” I say. “Not for what this could become.”

She nods. No protest. No sigh. Just that patient quiet that’s somehow worse than pleading. “Then I’ll wait.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I know.”

She smiles, small and steady, like it costs her nothing. But I see the flicker in her eyes, the fraction of heartbreak she tries to hide. I look away. If I meet her gaze again, I’ll lose the argument I haven’t even spoken.

“Goodnight,” I manage.

She doesn’t say it back immediately. When she does, her voice sounds like a memory. “Goodnight, Aiah.”

I walk first. My shoes slap softly against the pavement, water splashing around the edges. Behind me, her footsteps fade. I resist the urge to look back. Halfway to the awning, I stop anyway. I turn. She’s still there. Standing in the drizzle, jacket in hand, face lifted toward the sky like she’s letting the rain do the remembering for her. It’s almost cruel how peaceful she looks. Like waiting doesn’t hurt her at all.

My chest aches with a kind of clarity I don’t want. This is what it means to know someone too well that even their silence sounds like a sentence you already memorized.

I whisper it to myself, a translation no one else will hear. “Handshake failed. Retrying indefinitely.”

Then I step back under the awning, the library light swallowing me whole. The rain continues, a soft, relentless rhythm that’s steady, patient, and unbearably familiar.

Mondays are supposed to be predictable. They’re supposed to snap the world back into order, the kind that holds, the kind that forgives nothing. The kind I can rely on.

The ISO cafeteria doors slide open, letting in the cling of early sunlight and the faint after-smell of last night’s drizzle. Moisture still clings to the pavements, and the air has that clean, metallic scent that always follows a long, honest rain. The tables aren’t full yet. The chatter hasn’t reached its peak. It's the closest the campus ever gets to quiet.

Perfect.

I go straight to my usual seat by the window that’s diagonal to the vending machine, perpendicular to the outlet. I know the geometry of this table better than I know the geometry of my own feelings.

Planner out.
Black ink.
Gridlines.
Breathe.

The ritual smooths the noise inside my head. At least, it used to. I’m halfway through filling in my Monday boxes when I see it. A small brown bag beside my coffee. Folded twice, clean edges, the faintest grease mark in the corner. And written across the front, in slanted handwriting that pulls slightly to the right:

For the student who hates empty squares.

My breath stops for one heartbeat. Then another. Then I exhale slowly, carefully, as if the air might spill something I’m not ready to name. There’s no signature. There never is. She never signs.

She doesn’t need to.

I would know Mikha Cruz’s handwriting anywhere. The slight slope, the way she presses harder on downward strokes, the confidence of someone who doesn’t erase when she makes mistakes. She just rewrites over the same line.

I stare at the note until the edges blur.

My mind whispers what it shouldn’t. She saw my planner.  She always sees the parts I try to keep controlled.

I close my eyes briefly. “Acts of kindness do not constitute evidence,” I whisper to myself. My self-imposed mantra. My firewall.

Meaning is something I assign, not something I receive.

Still…

I opened the bag. Inside are two pieces of yema. Perfectly soft, slightly sticky, the kind that tastes like it’s remembering warmth. Aling Nena’s signature fold, but not her handwriting. No cafeteria staff writes letters like this.

I lift one carefully between my fingers. Sugar clings to my skin.

I bite.

Sweetness blooms slowly and unapologetically. It embarrasses me how much I needed that. I eat half before remembering I’m not supposed to like sweets. Before remembering last Friday night. Before remembering the way I said ‘I still remember’ and immediately wished I could rewind it back into silence.

My chest tightens. My throat closes around sugar. The world should have gone back to normal after that. It should have. That’s how I planned it. Reality, however, seems immune to my plans lately.

I tuck the yema wrapper into the back pocket of my planner that’s right beside the thin brown envelope from the other night.

The photograph.
Me on bleachers, counting intervals.
Her mid-pass, runner #16, hair flying.

My own handwriting echoing in my head: Fieldnotes: Before You Remember.

No. No thinking about that. Not here. Not in public. Not when my guard isn’t assembled. I push the planner slightly away from me, like distance can dictate discipline. Then, because my self-control is clearly deteriorating, I unwrap the second yema, break it in half, and put only one piece back.

Compromise.

The cafeteria starts to fill. Freshmen clustering like flocks. Blockmates reviewing notes. Someone shrieking about their chem lab. The usual morning chaos but it’s louder today, maybe because my mind is quieter than usual.

My phone vibrates once.

I ignore it.

Then it vibrates again.

I glance at the screen.

A Tumblr notification. A username I refuse to admit I recognize instantly.

My thumb hovers. I shouldn’t open it. I really shouldn’t…I opened it.

Day #031: Error Budge

A photo of the ISO walkway at 6AM with empty tables, mist rising from the drain covers, faint sunlight cutting through tree branches.

It’s caption:
Systems fail when too many moments go unacknowledged, but failure isn’t always loss. Sometimes it’s just a delay. #ifAthenAlways

I blink. She posted that thirty minutes ago.

Before practice.
Before classes.
Before this brown bag appeared on my table.

The timing is too perfect. Coincidence is something mathematicians defend when they want simplicity. But I don’t like simple. I like exact. And this, this feels deliberate. I lock my phone. Flip it screen-down. Pretend my pulse isn’t uneven. 4 in. 6 out. Breathe through the illusion of control.

A tray clatters onto the table.

Diane.

“A!” she says, too loud for this hour. “Let me guess. Planner na naman bago breakfast?”

Chesca sits beside her, already sipping her milk tea. “She eats structure for breakfast.”

I tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s Monday.”

“‘It’s Monday’ is not a personality,” Chesca deadpans.

“For her, it is,” Diane counters.

Then she spots the brown bag.

“What’s this?” she asks, already reaching. “Give me chismis.”

“It’s just yema,” I say too quickly.

Diane gasps dramatically. “Yema with handwriting? Hindi ‘yan kay Aling Nena!”

Chesca leans closer, eyes widening. “You’re receiving anonymous carbohydrates again?”

“It’s not…” I start.

“No, no, no, don’t deny,” Diane interrupts. “This is Exhibit… what number are we on?”

“Thirty-one,” Chesca says, sipping thoughtfully. “Based on the Tumblr tags.”

My heart stops for a moment.

They know.

“Oh my God,” Diane breathes. “That’s right. The Tumblr. The postings. The metaphors. The running motif of literally running—”

“Stop,” I say sharply.

They freeze.

Chesca lifts both palms. “We’re not teasing to expose you. We’re teasing because you look like you’re suppressing a heart attack.”

I glare. “I am not.”

“Exactly,” Diane mutters. “That’s the problem.”

I exhale, long and slow. “Can we… not?”

Chesca softens, nodding. “Okay. But Aiah…” She nudges the brown bag toward me. “You don’t have to pretend it means nothing.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Sure,” they say in unison.

I pinch the yema wrapper between my fingers. The sugar catches the light, small but undeniable. I fold it once. Then again. Then tuck it deeper into my planner where no one will see.

Except I know the truth.
People hide what they value.
Not what they dismiss.

After they leave for class, the cafeteria empties slowly. The sun shifts, drawing long shadows across my table. I take another sip of coffee, lukewarm now, and stare at the empty seat across from me.

Mikha usually passes by at this hour after training. Sometimes she waves. Sometimes she leans over my table with sweat still drying in her hair, saying things like…

“Good morning, Snob Queen.”
“You eating?”
“You forgot your water bottle.”
“You okay?”

Always casual. Always dangerous. She doesn’t show up today. A strange disappointment twists low in my stomach.

I tell myself I’m relieved.

I tell myself the space is good.

I tell myself distance keeps things clean.

But the truth forms anyway, quiet and unwelcome. I got used to her showing up. And routine, my precious routine, is apparently not as strong as someone’s absence.

I check my planner again.

The Monday box is still messy from earlier. The words I wrote look different now.

Start again.

A command.
A promise.
A lie.

I close the planner softly, as if sound might break whatever stability I’m clinging to. Then, without meaning to, I whisper…

“Some people send care as noise. Others as code.”

The sweetness still lingers on my tongue.

Sweetness I didn’t ask for. Didn’t plan for. Didn’t want but didn’t reject either. I wiped a sugar grain from my fingertip. And for the first time in a long, long while…Monday doesn’t feel predictable at all.

By the time lunch is over, the day has already started to feel like a series of small, deliberate tests. I answer Chesca’s teasing with practiced neutrality. I dodge Diane’s theories with the efficiency of someone used to rerouting traffic. I even manage to get through my 11:30 class without thinking too long about brown paper bags, yema, or Tumblr posts that sound too much like confessions in disguise.

Structure.
Schedule.
Breath in fours and sixes.

The system holds barely. But afternoons are trickier. Mornings belong to routine. Afternoons belong to variables. And some variables refuse to stay at the margins.

I ended up at Rizal Library almost by instinct.

The library feels colder today.

Not because of the air-conditioning. Rizal’s chill is predictable, almost comforting in its obedience but because my pulse has been miscounting since morning. I try to blame it on lack of sleep, on lecture noise, on the half-yema I ate before walking here. But excuses are just prettier names for denial.

I take my usual seat in Row H, third carrel from the window. Routine keeps the world from unraveling. I arrange my things the way my mind demands: planner on the right, notes at center, pens in a neat line from darkest to lightest ink. My textbook is open to the chapter on performance resilience, though I have read the first paragraph four times and absorbed none of it.

I tell myself to focus. But the moment I lower my head to take notes, something shifts behind me. Not loud but just a small tug in the air, like gravity tightening its grip by a fraction.

A presence. Recognizable, familiar, far too practiced.

I stopped writing.

There it is again, the feeling of being watched. Or not watched exactly, but… noticed. A warmth pressing at the back of my neck, quiet but insistent. Like someone highlighted me without touching my skin.

I don’t turn around. Turning around is acknowledgement. And acknowledgment is the first step to admitting data I’m not ready to categorize.

I inhale for four seconds. Exhale for six. My breath steadies. But the awareness does not.

I try to read the next sentence, but the words dissolve. My focus slips toward the edge of my vision, drawn to the faint reflection on the glass pane beside me. It’s subtle, blurred by afternoon light, but unmistakable.

Two tables behind mine, half-hidden behind a stack of notes is Mikha Cruz.

Of course.

Of all the open seats in the library, she chose the one perfectly aligned with my peripheral blind spot. Not close enough to be obvious. Not far enough to be ignorable.

Just within range.

Her head is bent over a notebook, hair half-tied, shoulders relaxed in a way that should not hold this much attention. Her pen moves quickly across the page, tapping every few lines before continuing its frantic dance. I can’t see what she’s writing, but she looks absorbed. Focused. Comfortable.

My chest tightens.

I tell myself this is normal. Study hours overlap. Campus is small. Coincidences happen. But coincidence doesn’t explain what happens next. The quiet realignment of her breathing to match mine.

Four seconds in. Six seconds out. Perfect sync.

An involuntary shiver races down my spine.

I scribble a note in the margin of my textbook before I can stop myself.
Observed variable: breath synchronization. Uncontrolled. Possibly unconscious.

As if writing it clinically will make it less personal.

I am about to force my attention back when someone slides into the seat directly in front of my carrel. Liam. Overly friendly, always smiling, perpetually forgetting that libraries require quiet. He waves a little too eagerly, then scribbles on a yellow sticky note. Before I can pretend I don’t see it, he slips it under the edge of my book. His cheeks flush like he thinks this is charming.

“Liam,” I whisper warningly.

But before I can shove the note back, a hand sweeps in from the right.

“Hoy,” Chesca hisses, snatching the sticky like she’s confiscating contraband. “Library ‘to. Hindi ito lovers’ lane. Keep your side quests to yourself.”

Liam freezes. “Ay, hindi naman—”

“Exactly,” she cuts in, crumpling the note halfway. “Huwag mo nang ituloy.”

She hands the crumpled sticky back to him with the solemnity of a disappointed guidance counselor.

I should be annoyed.

I’m not.

“Sorry, Aiah,” Chesca whispers as Liam retreats. “Ayoko lang ng unnecessary notifications."

“I could’ve handled it,” I murmur.

“But why waste effort?” she replies with a shrug, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

The irony is she has no idea how much effort I am already wasting. I tried to read again. Fail again. My eyes drift to the window beside me. The late afternoon sunlight turns the glass into a faint mirror, hazy but revealing.

In its reflection, I see bookshelves. Lamplight. Students hunched over their notes.

And behind me is Mikha’s silhouette. Not sharp, not detailed. Just the soft shape of her leaning forward, her pen gliding across her notebook. Every now and then her head shifts, as if she’s checking something in her periphery.

My heart starts beating too loudly.

I look down, pretending to annotate. My hand shakes when I underline a sentence about “emotional load management.”

The irony almost makes me laugh.

I gather my things abruptly, careful not to look behind me. The chair squeaks, earning me a death glare from a guy studying law. Fair.

When I step into the aisle, I feel it.

A subtle shift.

Like she looked up.

Like she almost called out.

I don’t turn.

Some data, once read, cannot be unread.

And I am not ready to know what it looks like when Mikha Cruz watches me walk away.

Mornings are easier to manage. They belong to routine. To fixed routes and predictable noise. My body knows where to go before my mind finishes booting: ISO, then SEC, then whichever classroom has the least offensive fluorescent lighting.

By the time I reach the benches under the acacia, the sun is still kind enough to filter instead of scorch. The stone is cool. The air isn’t yet heavy with heat or panic. For a brief window of time, the world feels like a system I can still control.

I sit on the usual side of the bench. Back straight. Bag at my feet. Planner on my lap, open to Monday’s spread. The squares are mostly full with readings, quizzes, block meetings, training schedule reminders I don’t actually attend but write down anyway because knowing makes it easier to breathe.

I align my pen to the spine.

“Snob Queen, reporting for duty.”

Diane drops into the space beside me without warning, iced coffee already sweating dangerously close to my notes. Her energy arrives before her body does, loud and unapologetic.

“I told you not to call me that,” I say, without looking up.

“But the brand is strong,” she says, completely unrepentant. “Also, good morning. I dreamed last night you rejected a man using a flowchart.”

“That sounds efficient.”

“Exactly.” She nudges my planner with one finger. “Patch notes time.”

I close my eyes briefly. “I am refusing the premise.”

Too late.

Chesca appears on my other side, milk tea in hand, ribbon swinging like a metronome. “Did someone say patch notes?”

“No one said patch notes,” I answer.

Diane hops to the other side of the bench to face us fully, phone already out. “Introducing: Snob Queen OS v1.4. Stable build. Minor bug fixes, major delulu.”

Chesca snorts. “Changelog, please.”

Diane scrolls through something she’s clearly been workshopping. “Improved sun-blocking feature, increased emotional firewall by five percent, reduced visible teasing tolerance, and this new…yema plug-in persists between reboots.”

Chesca clutches her chest. “Long-term sweetness storage. Incredible tech.”

I press my lips together to hide the helpless curve. “I regret ever talking to both of you.”

“No you don’t,” Chesca says lightly. “You love us. On a trial period. With deliverables.”

I pretend to underline something in my planner.

The truth is, their noise has become part of my mornings. An add-on I didn’t ask for but haven’t uninstalled. It keeps the silence from becoming too loud.

Then the atmosphere shifts.

It’s subtle, but I feel it instinctively, the way sound tilts, the way conversations briefly reorient, the way the air under the acacia picks a new center of gravity.

Footsteps. Steady. Familiar.

I don’t need to look to know who it is.

“Good morning, chaos team.”

Her voice arrives first, warm and annoyingly precise.

Mikha steps into the shade, varsity duffel pulled over one shoulder, hair still damp from practice. There’s a faint flush across her cheeks, the leftover echo of exertion and wind. Sunlight catches on the edge of her jaw like someone adjusted brightness just for her.

Students passing by lift their hands.

“Uy, Mikha!”
“Nice game kahapon!”
“Practice later?”

She answers every greeting, easy and open.

“Uy, good morning.”
“Salamat, nakita mo pa ‘yon.”
“Oo, training later, five p.m. death o’clock.”

She talks to them, but her body keeps angling back toward our bench. Toward me. Every time her mouth turns to answer someone else, her feet and shoulders tilt a few degrees in my direction, like there’s an invisible axis she refuses to drift too far from.

Diane sees it. Of course she does.

“Micro orbit,” she mutters, almost gleeful. “Look at that. May sariling gravitational field.”

I keep my eyes on my planner. “Stop naming things.”

Chesca hides a grin behind her straw. “We name what we can measure, babes. That’s how science works.”

Mikha drops her duffel beside the bench and takes the spot directly in front of me, half-sitting on the backrest, long legs stretched out, ankles crossed like gravity is a suggestion rather than a rule.

“Status report,” she says, eyes flicking to my open planner. “Snob Queen OS running smoothly?”

I glare up. “If you don’t stop branding me like a product—”

“Sorry,” she says, not sorry at all. “System administrator, then.”

Diane wheezes. “Oh my God.”

Chesca points at me with her straw. “You started this. You let her near your planner. That’s practically granting admin rights.”

I should tell them to shut up. I don’t.

Instead, I look down at the neat grid of my planner. One of the squares: Thursday, 7–9 p.m. is blank. I hate it. I circle the box once in blue ink, like that will make it less offensive.

Mikha’s water bottle lands on the bench table with a soft thunk. Condensation blooms beneath it, a clear ring slowly creeping toward my notes.

I see it. She sees it. The others don’t.

Without a word, Mikha reaches for my notebook, lifting it out of harm’s way with one hand. With the other, she grabs the hem of her own shirt and wipes the water ring off the bench careful, slow, efficient. Only when the surface is dry again does she place my notebook back down in its exact original position.

She doesn’t make a joke. She doesn’t ask for credit. She just… does it.

Automatic. Practiced.

Like hundreds of other tiny things she does that nobody seems to notice until they string together into a pattern you can’t unsee.

Something in my chest stutters.

“Thank you,” I say, quieter than I mean to.

She shrugs lightly. “Of course.”

The words are simple, but they land with disproportionate weight.

Chesca watches the entire sequence, eyes flicking from the wiped ring to my face, then back to Mikha. “Exhibit E,” she says softly.

Diane leans in. “Ano na naman ‘yan?”

“Maintenance routine,” Chesca answers. “Small gestures that stabilize someone else’s system.”

I grip my pen tighter.

It’s too much.

I flip to a fresh page of my planner and pretend this is just any other observation day.

In the margin, I write: Observation 04. Her gravity has range.

My hand hovers over the last word before underlining it once. Sharp. Dark.

Range.

Because it’s not just proximity anymore. It’s not just when she’s sitting beside me, or in front of me, or walking me to class. It’s the way my pulse recalibrates when she enters a space. The way my stern logic starts making room for phrases like “micro orbit” even as I try to dismiss them.

“So,” Diane says, oblivious to my inner freefall. “Mga ma’am, have you seen the new meme?”

“If this is another edit of my face, I will report you to IT,” I warn.

“Relax,” she says, unlocking her phone. “Hindi lang mukha mo. Branding mo rin.”

She thrusts the screen in front of us. The edited BlueBoard post shows a mock app interface: Snob Queen OS v1.4. There’s a splash screen: a pixelated umbrella icon and a tiny field, with a status bar at the bottom.

Text below: Welcome, user: #16. System uptime: 29 days, 04 hours, 50 minutes, 18 seconds.

Chesca chokes on her milk tea. “Grabe ‘yung uptime counter. Ang sakit sa puso.”

Mikha leans over to see, hair falling forward, close enough that I can smell faint citrus and rain. “At least they got the icon right,” she says. “Umbrella angle matters.”

Diane raises an eyebrow. “Did you submit source material?”

Mikha shifts her weight, eyes on the ground. “People… notice things.”

“Yes,” Chesca says, too quickly. “They really do.”

The statement sits there for a moment, aimed in more than one direction.

Across the walkway, a small group of freshmen slow down as they pass. One of them nudges the other, whispering just soft enough to think we can’t hear.

“Si #16,” she says. “Tingnan mo, kahit ang dami nila diyan, kay Snob Queen siya nakatalikod.”

Her friend laughs under her breath. “Micro-orbit daw. Nakita mo sa thread? Naka-face kay Ate Aiah kahit kausap nung iba.”

Heat prickles at the back of my neck.

I force my shoulders to stay relaxed. I pretend they are talking about someone else. Anyone else.

“Fandom thrives on deltas,” Chesca murmurs, echoing her own words from another day. “They see the small differences.”

Mikha pretends not to hear, but her thumb traces absent circles on the strap of her duffel bag, like she’s looking for something to anchor her hands.

“So,” she says suddenly, eyes flicking to my planner. “Quiz later?”

“Yes,” I answer. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Stats. Two to four.”

“You’ll ace it.”

“I plan to.”

She smiles, softer now. “You always do.”

The certainty in her tone hits me harder than any compliment. Like it’s a given, not an opinion. Like she’s catalogued my patterns too.

I breathe in for four. Out for six.

The acacia leaves rustle, scattering small shadows over our laps. Diane starts ranting about an impossible Philosophy reading. Chesca debates whether milk tea counts as a food group. The world continues, loud and ordinary.

But my focus stays caught on the fading water ring that’s no longer there.

I should label it. Classify it. Reduce it to something I can write in my planner and forget.

So I try.

Next to Observation 04, I add in smaller handwriting: Classification: maintenance routine.

I stare at the words, waiting for them to feel true.

They don’t.

Because maintenance is impersonal. Routine is neutral. This isn’t either.

I tap the pen against the page once, then write beneath it in even smaller letters, so small only I will ever see it. Error: mislabelled.

I close the planner before anyone can read over my shoulder.

Mikha stands to leave a minute later, lifting her bag, stretching lazily. “I’ll see you all later,” she says. “Don’t die in your exams.”

“Wala akong balak,” Diane says.

“Wala akong choice,” Chesca adds.

Mikha’s eyes find mine one last time. There’s no joke there this time. No teasing. Just that same quiet, infuriating attention that makes me feel like a fixed point in a world that keeps shifting.

“Good luck,” she says.

“You too,” I reply, even though she doesn’t have any tests today.

She smiles, then walks away, the noise of the walkway folding around her.

I let myself watch her for exactly three seconds before looking back down at the closed planner on my lap.

Mornings are easier to manage.

But gravity, that’s a different problem.

The campus quiets differently at night.

Not suddenly, more like a slow fade, threads of laughter unraveling into wind, footsteps tapering off into echo, conversations dissolving into the cicadas humming like low-voltage static across the field.

I tell myself I’m only walking this way because it’s the shortest route to the condo. I tell myself I’m not retracing the exact path she always takes after practice. But my feet betray me long before my thoughts catch up.

The amphitheater steps are cool under the evening air. A lone floodlight buzzes overhead, throwing long shadows across the concrete. The acacia leaves above me whisper the same questions I’ve been avoiding all day.

I sit. Planner on my knees. A yema wrapper tucked between the pages like a bookmark I don’t know how to discard.

My chest aches in a way I have no algorithm for.

I thought the rain last night would dilute whatever stayed between us. That distance, sleep, and rationality would patch the bug in my system.

They didn’t.

If anything, the restart made the error louder.

I hear footsteps before I see her.

Slow. Uncertain. Like she’s approaching a border she’s crossed too many times before.

“Mikha,” I say before she speaks. My voice comes out too even.

She stops a few feet away, hands tucked into her jacket sleeves, hair still damp from another late practice. The field lights cast a glow behind her, turning her into a silhouette I shouldn’t still recognize from memory.

“You left in a hurry kanina,” she says softly.

“I had things to do.”

She doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t say it, but I feel the skepticism in the way her shoulders dip, in the way she shifts her weight, not forward, not back, just… waiting.

“You didn’t take the note,” she adds.

I look down. The sticky note she left for me in class, folded carefully, sits beside me on the steps, untouched.

#034/100. Don’t walk alone tonight.

A simple line. But I’ve learned that with her, simple things carry the heaviest weight.

“I saw it,” I say.

“And you didn’t reply.”

“It didn’t require a reply.”

“It did to me.”

Silence widens between us. Thin, fragile, the kind of silence that cracks if you breathe wrong.

“I thought…” she hesitates, swallowing the end of the sentence before trying again, “I thought you remember everything.”

The words hit harder than she means them to.

Remember everything.

Rain on concrete.
A track field.
A girl's laughter carried by wind.
A number pinned to a jersey.
A missed chance carved into years.
An old photograph someone should’ve thrown away but didn’t.

Remember everything.

I close my eyes for one breath. Two. My pulse stumbles.

When I finally speak, it’s quieter than the night around us.

“Remembering everything doesn’t mean it gives you the chance,” I say, voice steady but hollowing at the edges. “It doesn’t change the circumstances, Mikha.”

It feels like betrayal how easily the sentence leaves my mouth. How much it costs. Her jaw tightens. Not with anger. With something worse. Something like understanding. Or resignation.

“What circumstances?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper.

I didn't answer immediately.

Because the truth is a labyrinth I refuse to walk her into.

Because if I name it. What happened, what broke, what can be…I will never be able to untell it.

Because letting her close again will rewrite every rule I’ve set for myself.

I force myself to meet her eyes.

There it is again.

That soft brightness she saves only for me. That stupid, dangerous, devastating softness that the whole campus keeps noticing before I do.

I stand up. Too fast.

“I should go,” I say.

“Aiah—”

I take a step back, putting distance where my resolve keeps failing.

Her face flickers of hope, confusion, hurt. She hides them badly. She always has.

“I’m trying,” she says quietly. “I’m trying to make things right this time.”

“This time,” I repeat, the words sharp at the edges. “That’s the problem, Mikha. There isn’t a ‘this time.’”

She flinches. Just slightly. Enough that I see it.

Enough that I hate myself for being the cause.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she whispers. “You let me get close, then you shut down like I crossed a firewall I didn’t know was there.”

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe I do shut down.

Because letting her close feels like opening a door abandoned years ago, only to find the lights still on, the rooms still warm, her shadow still waiting.

I shake my head.

“Good night, Mikha.”

The words are polite. Final. Wrong.

I step past her.
Not touching.
Not looking back.

But as I pass, the wind shifts, carrying the faint scent of her shampoo…citrus, grass, memory.

My resolve wavers for a fraction of a heartbeat.

She doesn’t grab my arm. She doesn’t call after me.

She just says, almost too softly to hear:

“I’ll wait. Even if you pretend you don’t want me to.”

My steps falter but do not stop.

I walk.

I keep walking.

The night swallows the sound of her breathing, the scrape of her shoe on the concrete, the quiet devastation sitting between us like an unfinished sentence.

I don’t let myself turn around.

Because if I do… If I see her standing there in the half-light, waiting. I know I won’t be able to leave.

And I can’t afford that.

Not yet.

Not again.

Not when remembering everything hurts more than forgetting ever did.