The fog was already swallowing the campus when the orange jeepney coughed to a stop at the University of Baguio gate. I stepped down, boots hitting wet concrete, and pulled my hoodie up over my ears. The air smelled like damp pine needles and exhaust—familiar, heavy, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and stays there. I didn't mind it. It matched the way everything else felt inside me.
Twenty years old. Third-year Business Administration. Same schedule every day: wake up before dawn, walk the two kilometers from our house on the hillside, sit in the back row of every lecture hall, take notes in silence, leave before anyone can try to talk to me. No clubs. No group projects if I could help it. No small talk. It was safer that way.
The quadrangle was already alive with students despite the mist. Laughter bounced off the concrete walls of the main building. Someone was blasting OPM from a phone speaker near the canteen. A couple of guys from the engineering block were kicking a deflated soccer ball back and forth—normal college stuff.
I kept my eyes on the ground—cracked pavement, scattered cigarette butts, the occasional pine cone—and walked straight through the middle like I always did. People moved. Not dramatically. Just a half-step to the side, a quick turn of the head, a sudden interest in their phones. I'd gotten used to the space they left around me. It was like walking through water; the current parted, then closed again behind me.
I was almost to the Business and Accountancy building when I noticed her.
She stood alone near the big bulletin board plastered with club posters and lost-and-found notices. Backpack over one shoulder, arms crossed against the chill, staring up at a faded flyer for the upcoming Accounting Society fair like it held the secrets of the universe. She didn't look like she belonged here—not in the way most of us did, with our worn-out university jackets and scuffed rubber shoes. Her clothes were too neat: slim black jeans, a cream-colored coat that looked expensive, white sneakers that hadn't yet met Baguio mud. Her hair was long, straight, and very black, falling past her shoulders in a way that caught the weak morning light.
New. Definitely new.
She turned her head just as I passed.
Our eyes locked.
It wasn't one of those quick, accidental glances. She held it—two, three seconds—head tilted slightly, like she was studying a puzzle she hadn't expected to find. I felt heat crawl up the back of my neck. I looked away first and kept walking faster.
But then—
"Hey."
Her voice cut through the fog, soft but clear.
I didn't stop.
"Hey—wait up!"
Footsteps. Quick, determined. She caught up in less than ten seconds, falling into step beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You're Laevathan Guanzon, right?" she asked.
My stomach dropped. Full name. Not Levi. Not the half-name people sometimes used before they learned it wasn't worth the trouble.
I slowed but didn't look at her. "Who's asking?"
"I'm Kathriene," she said. "Kathriene Wang. Just transferred in from Manila. I asked around at the registrar's office this morning—someone pointed you out. Said the tall guy in the black hoodie usually sits alone in BA 301."
I finally glanced at her. Up close, her eyes were darker than I'd thought—almost black, sharp, as she could see straight through skin. There was a small scar, thin and pale, just above her left eyebrow. Old. Faded. But there.
"Why?" I asked. My voice came out rougher than I meant.
She shrugged, casual. "Because I hate eating lunch by myself. And the cafeteria's that way." She nodded toward the path that curved past the library. "Unless you've got somewhere better to be."
I stared at her.
A few students on the covered walkway had stopped pretending not to watch. One girl—someone from my Marketing class—shook her head slowly, lips pressed tight. Another guy muttered something to his friend. I caught the word "cursed" even from here.
Kathriene noticed them too. She glanced over, then back at me. "They're staring because I'm talking to you."
I didn't deny it.
She rolled her eyes—just a flicker. "Let them. I've had worse things said about me."
I didn't know what to say to that. No one ever talked to me like this—like the rumors were background noise, not the main event.
"Come on," she said, already turning toward the cafeteria. "I'm buying. Call it a welcome-to-Baguio tax. Or the pity-the-new-girl tax. Whatever works."
I stood there, hands shoved deep in my pockets, heart thudding too hard.
She stopped after five steps and looked back over her shoulder. "You coming, or do I have to drag you?"
There was no pity in her voice. No fear. Just… stubbornness. As if she'd already made up her mind, and the rest of the world could deal.
I exhaled through my nose, long and slow.
Then—against every instinct that had kept me alive and invisible for the last five years—I started walking.
She fell back into step beside me. Not too close. Not too far. Just right there.
The fog curled around our legs as we moved down the path. Pine needles crunched under our shoes. Somewhere in the distance, the university bell rang—sharp, lonely, signaling the end of first period.
She didn't ask why people avoided me.
Not yet.
But I could feel the question hanging between us, heavy as the mist.
I remembered the stories my neighbors whispered as a child—about the mountains around Baguio, and how the spirits of the forest watched everything. Some said if a family spilled blood, the fog carried their guilt back to them. Others said the spirits of the mist could sense who was honest and who wasn't—and that they punished lies in ways people never saw coming.
I had been told these stories to scare me when I was a boy.
Now I understand. The whispers were right.
The fog remembers.
The mountains remember.
And I carried my family's sins like stones in my chest.
I didn't look at her as we walked. I didn't want her to see the weight she was stepping into.
But for the first time in years, I felt something almost dangerous—something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in a long time.
Hope.
The kind that comes when the world is gray, and the fog is thick, and yet someone reaches out anyway.
I swallowed the tight knot in my throat.
And I walked beside her, knowing that the fog would follow us both.