Jay‑jay
It started like any other morning.
Drake made tea — always two sugars, no milk — while humming some hopelessly romantic tune. Mia shouted through the kitchen doorway that Eli was late again, and Clara just smiled, quiet as ever. It was normal. Easy.
And then I got the email.
The subject line read: Section E Reunion.
It shouldn't have meant anything.
I stared at the name of the sender — Aries — and for a while I couldn't decide whether to delete it or throw my laptop out the window.
"You okay, love?" Drake asked gently, brushing my shoulder.
I forced a smile. "Yeah. Uni mail."
He kissed my hair, completely unaware that his fiancée's pulse had just spiked hard enough to drown out the kettle whistle.
When Drake left for his internship, I finally opened the message.
Hey, Jay. Heard about London. Everyone misses you. We're planning something for next month — to honor Section E's graduation. You don't have to come, but we thought you should know. Keifer's been different since you left. – Aries.
Keifer.
Just his name made the room tilt.
Whatever "different" meant, I didn't care. The last thing I wanted was to think about him, much less hear that my absence changed him. He didn't deserve that kind of power anymore.
But reading that name still pulled something deep and ugly to the surface — the rain, the lies, the sheer betrayal of someone saying "I used you" with a straight face.
I slammed the laptop shut.
Mia(roommate and best friend) looked up from the couch.
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah," I said too fast. "Just… spam."
She frowned. "Spam makes you look like you've seen a ghost."
If only she knew.
Keifer
Ten months.
Everyone says time heals, but it feels more like it just learned how to torture quietly.
Section E isn't Section E anymore.
Ci‑N doesn't joke. Kit barely shows up to class. Eman blames me out loud while the rest hate me silently. Maybe they're right. Jay‑jay's absence hollowed us out. Every time her name comes up, the room tightens.
Aries keeps asking if I'd talk to her again. I keep telling him no.
"She hates you," he said last night.
"Good."
He didn't understand — none of them did. Hate was safer than love for someone like me. My family's shadow was still long, still dangerous. If Jay‑jay's name slipped into their circles, it wouldn't end well.
But some nights — when I drive past the empty lot where we used to eat street food, when I hit the same intersections where she used to laugh — I wonder if she still thinks of Manila at all.
And if she does, what version of me lives in her memory now: the monster or the boy who couldn't stay?
Jay‑jay
That night, Mia decided we all needed a "stress detox." She dragged me, Drake, Eli, and Clara to a small pub near the university. Loud. Warm. Safe.
"Cheers!" Eli yelled, clinking glasses. "To surviving another semester."
Mia grinned. "And to Jay for scoring that internship in June!"
Everyone cheered, and even I smiled.
For a moment, the noise drowned out Manila.
Then my phone buzzed on the table.
Unknown number.
+63 country code.
Philippines.
The message:
Jay, it's Ci‑N. I'm sorry.
My heart stopped for a second.
Mia noticed the color leave my face. "Who's that?"
I stared at the screen until the notification disappeared, then turned it face‑down. "No one."
But deep inside, I knew it wasn't no one.
It was the part of my life I'd buried — clawing its way back through oceans, trying to remind me that hate doesn't erase history.
Keifer
Ci‑N told me this morning he reached out. I told him he shouldn't have.
He said,
"She deserves to know the truth, Keif. She deserved it ten months ago."
He doesn't get that truth can still ruin her. It's what kept me lying then. It's what keeps me silent now.
But when I looked at him — at the way his eyes were reddened, broken — I knew something inside him had finally snapped.
Maybe inside me, too.
Jay‑jay
That night, I didn't sleep. I kept staring at my phone until the battery died.
I didn't reply.
I wouldn't.
Not to him, not to any of them.
I'd chosen London. I'd chosen Drake. I'd chosen peace.
And I wasn't going to let ghosts rewrite that.
At least, that's what I told myself until I opened the window — and felt the same kind of rain I'd left behind in Manila.