Sunday morning came with none of the anger she had felt the night before.
If anything, she felt unusually calm.
The apartment listing was still open on her phone.
₱5,000 a month.
It was a small unit in a quiet residential area, close enough to work that her commute wouldn't be difficult. She had already exchanged a few messages with the owner the night before and asked if she could see it that morning.
By ten, she was on her way.
The landlady was a woman who looked to be in her late fifties. She showed her around the unit and explained the basic terms.
The apartment was small and plain, but clean. There was enough space for one person, a small kitchen area, a bathroom, and a window that let in a decent amount of light. The water and electricity had their own meters, which she liked. At least she would know exactly what she was paying for every month.
For ₱5,000, it was good enough for her.
The move-in requirement was one month in advance and one month as a deposit.
₱10,000.
She had some money saved. Not nearly as much as she thought she should have after almost a decade of working, but saving had never been easy when there was always tuition, groceries, bills, emergencies, or someone who needed help.
Ten thousand wasn't a small amount to her, especially when she still had to buy everything she needed for the apartment.
She knew that.
She paid anyway.
After everything was settled, the landlady gave her a copy of the contract and the key.
By lunchtime, she had an apartment.
---
She returned home that afternoon without telling anyone where she had been.
Nothing about the house had changed.
Her father was watching television. Her mother was doing something in the kitchen. Someone's phone was playing loudly from another room.
She went straight to her bedroom.
The key was still inside her bag.
She took it out and held it for a moment.
It felt strange that something so small could open the door to a place that was now hers.
Then she pulled out her duffel bag.
She started with the things she knew she would need: work clothes, casual clothes, underwear, toiletries, chargers, important documents, and a few pairs of shoes. Her laptop would go into her backpack in the morning.
She didn't try to pack everything.
She couldn't.
And she didn't want anyone noticing.
Anything she couldn't bring tomorrow could stay for now. She could figure out the rest later.
When she finished, she pushed the duffel bag somewhere it wouldn't immediately be noticed.
Her eyes moved around the room.
She had lived here for years.
Yet leaving didn't seem to require very much.
That realization sat strangely with her.
Her eyes eventually landed on the flowers beside the window.
They were beginning to wilt.
She would take those too.
---
That evening went on as if nothing had happened.
She ate at home. She heard the television from the living room. Someone asked her something ordinary and she answered normally.
Nobody knew there was an apartment key inside her bag.
Nobody knew that most of what she needed had already been packed.
And she didn't tell them.
Part of her knew that wasn't fair.
She was thirty. She didn't need permission to leave, but telling them would have been the reasonable thing to do.
She simply couldn't bring herself to have that conversation yet.
She knew what would happen.
There would be questions.
Why?
Where?
How much was the rent?
Why waste money renting when she already had a home?
What about the bills here?
What about them? What about the rent of that house?
And after years of being unable to say no without feeling guilty, she didn't trust herself to sit through all of that and still leave the next morning.
So she chose the easier way.
Leave first.
Explain later.
That night, she lay in bed longer than usual.
Her room looked exactly as it always had.
Tomorrow, it wouldn't be her room anymore.
But tomorrow night, she wouldn't be sleeping in it.
She turned toward the flowers near the window.
For the first time since deciding to move, nervousness finally settled in.
She had spent ₱10,000 that morning.
She had signed a contract.
She had a key.
There was no reason she couldn't change her mind.
That was almost the problem.
She could still stay.
She closed her eyes.
---
Monday morning looked like every other workday.
The house was unusually quiet. Her mother's bedroom door was still closed, her younger sibling wasn't home, and there was no one in the living room.
For once, she didn't hear anyone call her name as she moved through the house.
She went back to her room.
The duffel bag she had packed the night before was exactly where she had left it. She added the last few things she needed, checked her backpack, and made sure her documents, old laptop, chargers, and apartment key were all there.
Then she looked around the room one more time.
She wasn't taking everything.
Most of her clothes would stay for now, along with old books, things she rarely used, and everything she couldn't fit into two bags. She could come back for them another time.
Maybe that was why two bags seemed enough.
She opened her phone and booked a car to the new apartment.
The driver was twelve minutes away.
That was when the nervousness started.
She sat on the edge of her bed and watched the little car move across the map.
Ten minutes.
Seven.
She could still cancel.
The thought came so naturally that she almost laughed.
After everything—the argument, the apartment viewing, the ₱10,000 she had already paid, the contract, the key—some part of her was still looking for permission to change her mind.
Her phone notified her that the driver had arrived.
She stood, pulled her backpack over one shoulder, and picked up the duffel bag.
Then she noticed the flowers.
They had already started to wilt, but she picked them up anyway.
She quietly opened her bedroom door.
The house was still silent.
Nobody saw her carry the bags outside.
Nobody asked where she was going.
The driver helped put her duffel bag in the trunk while she kept her backpack and flowers with her.
She climbed into the back seat.
When the car started moving, she looked at the house through the window.
She had imagined leaving home many times over the years.
In some versions, there was an argument. In others, she announced it weeks beforehand, packed boxes, bought furniture, and said goodbye properly.
Apparently, this was how it actually happened.
On an ordinary Monday morning, while nobody was watching.
She knew she should have told them.
But if she had, there would have been questions she wasn't ready to answer and guilt she wasn't sure she could withstand.
So she had chosen to leave first.
She would tell them once she was already gone.
The house disappeared from view.
She turned forward and rested the flowers carefully on her lap.
---
She stopped by the apartment before work.
There wasn't time to do much. She left her duffel bag inside, placed the flowers near the window, and stood there for a moment with the key still in her hand.
Then she locked the door and went to work.
The rest of the morning passed almost normally.
Emails. Meetings. Deadlines. The usual conversations happening around her.
Nobody at the office knew that she had moved out that morning.
Even she wasn't sure it had fully registered yet.
Sometime before lunch, Mika stopped by her desk and placed a piece of chocolate beside her keyboard.
She looked at it, then at Mika.
"What's this?"
"For you."
"Why?"
Mika shrugged. "I don't want it."
She looked at the chocolate again. "So I'm your disposal?"
Mika laughed. "Just take it."
She smiled. "Okay. Thank you."
"Welcome."
Mika walked away as casually as she had arrived.
She shook her head slightly and went back to work.
She had never really understood Mika.
They had worked in the same company for years without being particularly close. She was always polite whenever Mika spoke to her, just as she was with everyone else. She simply wasn't very social. She rarely started conversations, rarely joined plans outside work, and almost never shared anything personal unless someone asked.
Mika, for some reason, kept talking to her anyway.
Lately, even more so.
What she didn't know was that Mika had a reason.
---
Mika had been seventeen the first time they met.
Neither of them had known the other's name. More than a decade later, neither would have been able to recognize the other from memory alone.
That night, Mika had been out with friends somewhere she probably shouldn't have been at seventeen. She was used to being around people older than her, and by then, attention from men wasn't exactly new.
She liked it.
Especially when the man was older.
It made her feel attractive. Mature. Different from girls her age.
The man she met that night had been somewhere in his early forties.
Well dressed. Confident. Charming enough that Mika had spent most of the night talking to him and enjoying every second of it.
He bought her drinks. Made her laugh. Listened when she spoke.
And when he told her she didn't seem seventeen, she had taken it as a compliment.
By the time they stepped outside together, Mika already liked him.
His car was parked nearby.
"My condo's not far," he told her.
"Really?"
"Ten minutes."
Mika knew what he meant.
She wasn't hesitant about it either.
At seventeen, she thought knowing what was going to happen meant she understood everything about the situation.
They were still talking when a young woman walking along the sidewalk passed them.
Mika barely noticed her.
"How old did you think I was when you approached me?" Mika asked.
"Twenty-one, maybe."
She laughed. "I told you already. I'm seventeen."
"Shh. I know."
The woman slowed.
"You're still coming, aren't you?" the man asked.
"Maybe."
"Come on. I'll drive you home after."
Mika smiled. "I already have a driver coming." She paused. "But I could cancel."
The woman stopped.
She had already walked several steps past them before turning around.
"Miss."
Mika looked over.
So did the man.
"Huwag kang sumama sa kanya." Don't go with him.
Mika stared at her. "What?"
The woman walked closer. She looked young herself, though the exhaustion on her face made it difficult to tell. Probably somewhere in her early twenties.
"You said you're seventeen?"
"Yeah?"
"Alam niya?" He knows?
"Yes."
"Then don't get in his car."
Mika immediately felt annoyed.
"I'm fine naman."
"I know."
"Then why are you telling me what to do?"
The man laughed under his breath. "She's fine. Mind your own business."
The woman looked at him for the first time.
"Ilang taon ka na ba? Forty?" How old are you, anyway? Forty?
His expression hardened. "What does my age have to do with you?"
"Wala." Nothing.
She looked back at Mika.
"But it should have something to do with her."
Mika felt her face grow hot.
"I said I'm fine."
"Okay."
The woman stepped aside.
Mika thought she was finally going to leave.
She didn't.
"Why are you still here?"
"Hihintayin ko 'yung sundo mo." I'll wait for your ride.
"I'm going with him."
"Please, don't."
That was enough.
"Why do you even care ba?" Mika snapped. "You don't even know me."
"Yeah... Hindi." Yeah... No.
"Then stop acting like you do."
The woman looked at her for a moment.
"Kasi matanda na siya. He should know better." Because he's old enough to know better.
Mika rolled her eyes.
"He's not forcing me naman."
"I know."
That answer caught her off guard.
The woman wasn't treating her like she was stupid. She wasn't saying Mika had been tricked into standing there.
Instead, she looked at the man.
"Baka kasi hindi niya mauto mga ka-age niya, kaya mas bata ang inuuto niya." He probably can't fool women his own age, so he's trying it with someone half his age
"Watch your fucking mouth," he snapped.
Mika stepped closer to him almost instinctively.
"You don't know him."
"You're right."
"So stop judging him."
"Hindi siya ang jina-judge ko. 'Yung ginagawa niya." I'm not judging him. I'm judging what he's doing.
The woman sighed and looked at Mika again.
"Hindi ko naman sinasabing huwag ka nang kumausap ng mas matanda sa 'yo." I'm not saying you should never talk to older men. "Just be careful kapag may lalaking kasing-edad na ng tatay mo tapos gusto kang dalhin somewhere na kayong dalawa lang." Just be careful when a man old enough to be your father, then wants to take you somewhere alone.
"He said I am mature."
"Maybe you are."
The woman shrugged.
"Pero forty pa rin siya." But he's still forty.
Mika hated how simple she made it sound.
"I can make my own decisions, okay?"
"Okay."
"Then leave."
"Parating na ba 'yung driver mo?" Is your driver coming?
Mika hesitated. "Yeah."
"Sige. Aalis ako pag nakasakay ka na." Fine. I'll leave once you're in the car.
"You're seriously so annoying."
"I've been told worse."
Mika rolled her eyes and turned back to the man.
"Come on."
They started toward his car.
The woman followed.
Mika stopped after a few steps and looked back. "Seriously?"
"What?"
"Why are you following us?"
The woman glanced toward the parked cars. "I'm making sure you get to your driver."
"I told you I'm going with him."
"You won't."
The man was clearly getting irritated now.
"Are we going or not?" he asked Mika.
Mika looked at him. "I-"
"Hindi siya sasama sa 'yo." She's not going with you, the woman said.
The woman was looking directly at him now.
His head snapped toward her. "She already told you she wants to come with me."
"Yeah. Narinig ko." I heard her.
"Then fuck off."
His voice was loud enough that a few people nearby looked over.
The woman noticed.
So did he.
A couple stood near the entrance waiting for their ride. A few other people lingered outside the bar, and two security guards were talking several meters away. One of them had already glanced in their direction.
The man lowered his voice.
"This has nothing to do with you."
"Okay."
"Then leave."
She looked at him.
"Gusto mong lakasan ko?" Do you want me to say it louder?
His jaw tightened.
Mika frowned. "Say what?"
The woman didn't take her eyes off him.
"Na forty-something ka, alam mong seventeen siya, tapos gusto mo siyang dalhin mag-isa sa condo mo?" That you're forty-something, you know she's seventeen, and you still want to take her alone to your condo?
"What the hell?"
The woman glanced toward the security guards.
"Pwede rin nating tanungin 'yung guards kung tingin nila okay lang 'yon." We can ask the guards if they think that's okay too.
One of the guards looked over again.
For the first time, the man's confidence seemed to slip.
He looked around.
At the people near the entrance.
At the guards.
At the woman who clearly wasn't going anywhere.
Then at Mika.
"You know what?" He stepped away from her. "I don't need this shit."
Mika stared at him. "Seriously?"
Mika's stomach dropped.
"Wait—"
"Call me when you don't have someone following you around like a fucking crazy."
He opened his car door.
The woman spoke before he could get in.
"Or don't."
He shot her a look.
"Fuck you."
Then he got into the car and drove away.
Mika watched his taillights disappear into traffic.
For a few seconds, she said nothing.
Then she turned.
"You ruined that."
"Probably."
"I actually liked him, you know."
The woman nodded.
"You don't even care."
"I care that you're seventeen."
"My age isn't, like, my whole personality."
"I know."
The woman adjusted the bag hanging from her shoulder.
"Pero magiging twenty-one ka rin. Twenty-five. Thirty." But someday you'll be twenty-one. Twenty-five. Thirty.
Mika frowned. "So?"
"Ma-ge-gets mo rin kung bakit mali 'to tingnan." Then you'll understand why this looks wrong.
Mika didn't. Not then.
When her family's car arrived a few minutes later, the woman waited until Mika's driver stepped out before walking away.
Mika didn't ask her name.
She didn't thank her.
She got into the car still angry.
Before the driver pulled away, Mika spotted the woman farther down the sidewalk.
Still irritated, she pulled out her phone and took a quick picture through the window, mostly so she could send it to her friends.
this is the girl ruined my day 💀
It wasn't a good photo.
The woman had turned slightly at the exact moment Mika took it, catching part of her face in profile. The street was dark, the car window didn't help, and the picture came out slightly blurry.
But it caught enough.
Part of her profile.
The bag hanging from her shoulder.
And a small crocheted charm attached to it.
Mika sent the picture and forgot about it.
For a long time, she remembered the stranger only as the woman who had ruined her night.
But years had a strange way of changing old memories.
At twenty-one, seventeen already seemed younger than Mika remembered feeling at that age.
At twenty-five, the thought of a forty-year-old man knowingly trying to take a seventeen-year-old girl home made her uncomfortable in a way it hadn't before.
And by twenty-nine, seventeen-year-olds looked exactly like what they were.
Teenagers. So young, so naive.
The man hadn't mistaken her for an adult.
She had told him her age.
He had known.
That was the part Mika could no longer excuse.
Sometimes she thought about that night and wondered what would have happened if the stranger had kept walking.
She would never know.
She was grateful for that.
By then, she couldn't remember the woman's face anymore. There had been no name to remember either.
So when Mika eventually found herself working in the same company as her, she didn't recognize her.
Not for a long time.
Until a few weeks ago.
There had been a company event, and a woman from another team had been dealing with a man who wouldn't leave her alone.
Mika hadn't been paying much attention until she noticed someone quietly step into the conversation.
Her quiet coworker.
She didn't make a scene or turn it into an argument. She simply moved beside the woman and gave her an easy way out.
The man didn't take it well.
He kept trying to follow the conversation, even after the woman made it clear she wasn't interested. And when she finally rejected him outright, whatever embarrassment he felt seemed to turn into resentment.
Suddenly, the same woman he'd spent the evening trying to impress was too old, too picky, too full of herself. He made comments about her nearing thirty, about women having an expiration date, about how she wouldn't have so many choices for much longer.
The usual things men like him seemed to say when a woman they wanted made it clear she didn't want them back.
Her coworker tried to shut it down.
Mika eventually did too.
She couldn't remember exactly what she'd said anymore, only that she'd turned his own logic back on him so neatly that a few people nearby laughed.
The man left not long after that.
It was completely different from what had happened to Mika years ago.
Everyone involved was an adult. Nobody was trying to take a teenager home.
Still, something about watching her coworker quietly place herself between a woman and a man who refused to leave her alone had brought the memory back. Something about it felt familiar.
The way she noticed. The way she stepped in without waiting to be asked. The way her attention stayed on the woman instead of the man.
Mika couldn't stop thinking about it afterward. She knew that feeling. She just couldn't remember from where.
A few days later, Mika was standing beside her desk when something hanging from her bag caught her attention.
A small crocheted charm.
She stared at it.
It was old. The thread had faded with time, and one side looked slightly worn. The bag itself was different, but there was something about that little charm that bothered her.
She had seen it before.
She was almost sure of it.
That evening, curiosity got the better of her.
She went through her old photos.
It took longer than she expected. Years of screenshots, vacations, parties, selfies, food pictures, and things she didn't even remember taking passed across her screen.
Then she found it.
The picture from that night.
Mika sat up.
She had forgotten she'd even taken it.
The image was darker and blurrier than she remembered, but there she was.
The woman was caught partly in profile, walking away from the car.
Mika zoomed in.
First, the bag.
Different from the one her coworker carried now.
Then the charm.
The same one.
Back then, the thread had been brighter and the shape less worn, but Mika recognized it immediately.
Her eyes moved back to the woman's face.
She zoomed in again.
The picture lost even more detail.
Still, there was enough.
The shape of her nose.
Her jaw.
The side of her face.
Mika stared at it.
Then she opened a photo from a recent company event.
Back to the old picture.
Then the recent one.
Old.
Recent.
"No fucking way."
More than a decade had passed. Different hair. Different clothes. Older features.
But now that Mika knew what she was looking for, she could see it.
It was her.
The woman Mika had hated for ruining her night.
The same woman she had spent years wishing she could find again just so she could finally say thank you.
And apparently, she had been working around her without either of them knowing.
The next morning, Mika found herself watching her a little more closely.
Not in a creepy way.
At least, she hoped not.
Now that she knew, other little things seemed familiar too.
Her voice.
The way she tilted her head slightly when she listened.
The calm expression she'd worn that night while Mika had been furious with her.
Mika considered telling her.
Several times.
But how exactly was she supposed to start that conversation?
Hey, remember when I was seventeen and you stopped me from going home with a forty-year-old man, so I secretly took a picture of you because I hated you?
Absolutely not.
So she didn't.
Instead, she started talking to her more.
Nothing dramatic.
A conversation when there was an easy reason.
Lunch when their schedules happened to match.
A work reel every now and then.
GIFs when she had nothing worth saying but wanted to send something anyway.
At first, Mika had simply wanted to know the woman she'd spent years remembering.
But somewhere along the way, that stopped being the reason.
She genuinely liked her.
She wasn't rude or cold like someone might assume from a distance. She was simply quiet and private. If Mika approached her, she talked. She laughed. Sometimes she even became unexpectedly funny once she was comfortable enough.
She just rarely made the first move herself.
So Mika kept making it.
She never told her why.
Not yet.
Maybe someday.
For now, the fact that she had started sending Mika things first every once in a while already felt like progress.
---
Near the end of the day, she caught herself thinking about what she needed to buy on the way home.
Rice.
Her father's medicine.
Then she remembered.
She wasn't going there.
The realization stopped her for a moment.
For years, leaving work had meant going back to the same house. Sometimes with groceries. Sometimes with medicine. Sometimes with whatever someone had messaged her to buy on the way.
Today, she only needed to think about herself.
She wasn't used to that.
---
By the time she reached the apartment that evening, she was exhausted.
She unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The unit looked even emptier than she remembered.
Her duffel bag was exactly where she had left it that morning. The flowers sat near the window, slightly wilted but still there.
She closed the door behind her.
Silence.
No television from another room. No conversations. No footsteps outside her bedroom door.
No one calling, "Ate."
Just her.
She looked around the nearly empty space and let out a quiet breath.
She didn't have much yet. She needed a mattress, basic kitchen things, groceries, hangers, cleaning supplies, and several other things she hadn't thought about.
She would figure it out.
For tonight, she ordered something cheap for dinner and made a list of what she needed to buy first.
Her phone vibrated inside her bag.
She looked toward it but didn't reach for it immediately.
Sooner or later, someone at home would notice.
Maybe they already had.
For the moment, she sat down on the tiled floor beside her duffel bag.
She had spent nearly a decade helping keep a household running.
Now she had a household of one.
She wasn't sure yet whether that thought was comforting or terrifying.
Probably both.