Chapter Text
A young lady sits up in her bed. It just so happens that today, Sunday, the 22nd of February, 2015, is exactly one week before her birthday. Though it's almost been 16 years since she was first given life, it is only today that she will be given a name!
What will the name of this young woman be?
> Enter name:
The author did a double take as he saw those words pop into his terminal. The last thing he expected was for a certain webcomic to attempt to recreate itself there; perhaps furiously mashing those arrow keys earlier ended up with him accidentally running some script he’d cURL’d a while back instead of simply just opening his work. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to do this in the terminal, I guess.
He sighed. His attempts to mash Ctrl+C in an attempt to stop the program were null and void, and so he felt that he may as well play along. And in a faithful fashion as well, I’d say, he told himself.
The author’s hands took their places on the keyboard, and fumbled “Rainbow Boulder” into the prompt, unsure if his actions were motivated by boredom or something else. He yawned, and whacked the key with dramatic flair—
TRY AGAIN, SMARTASS
Well that was a damn letdown, he mentally grumbled. Maybe this’ll work…
But before he could even put into play what he’d planned
ERROR 4: INSUFFICIENT PERMISSIONS TO WRITE TO 4TH WALL
The terminal closed, and in its place opened the author’s file browser. Somehow, all that was left of that Homestuck-recreating script was a markdown file with a dump of the above output, and another file which seemed to be an incomplete variant of the work you now read. Opting to edit the dump before sticking it into the actual proper fic, he opened the file, copied its contents, and worked from there. Without any external programs twisting him into a certain style of narration, the author soon was off to work…
“CATHERINE JOYCE PORTILLO!” a particularly brash screech came from the bottom floor. The summons smacked with all the vitriol and hatred of someone with a particularly harsh upbringing in Manila’s poorer sectors, where not even parental kindness (or food, for that matter) could be taken for granted.
With a groan, Cathy went off to open the door before her mom suspected her of any foul play, even if it didn’t matter that much. She never really could tell what exactly her mother wanted of her, especially when she would get this pissed off. Sometimes, she’d be let off the hook, and sometimes she’d experience the most scathing verbal beatdown of her life—such was her life in the Portillo household.
In any case, there was a decent chance she’d get away with anything she was doing anyway, and she somewhat took this for granted. One wouldn’t even need to ask her to learn how much of her doings had passed under her folks’ noses; after all, her magnum opus, practically her life’s work, sat under the nearby couch: a veritable library of all sorts of yaoi and yuri, kept hidden from them for months now. Some were bought, some passed to her by Sofia Rubio since they’d grown closer, and some she’d even downloaded, printed, and bound herself. If she could keep that many at once, surely there was no way she’d ever be caught, right?
With that reassurance in her mind, Cathy went out of her way to at least make sure she’d be finished with everything she’d need to do before her mom inevitably told her to go to church that day.
First of all, she changed out of her pajamas. Somehow, the very thought of wearing light clothes somewhat filled her with an unexplainable dread. A few moments later, and she was all ready to go—pajamas rather hastily chucked into the hamper, and her standard-issue combo of red sweater and blue overalls all set up.
With that out the way, Cathy continued on, even as her mother’s torrent of abuses continued to flood from downstairs. She cracked open her computer, and began readying her assignments for tomorrow’s deadlines. The week before had been productive, with her completing the lion’s share of the work over the earlier parts of the weekend. All she had to do was simply look over her work one last time, making sure everything was decently error-free and properly formatted. Better to at least put in the work now, she thought. Who knows what my folks might do if they hear my scores dipped somewhat?
The task actually didn’t take much effort, either, and in just several minutes the last of the files were already done and dusted. Hehe, that didn’t take very long, Cathy thought, smiling to herself. Now with that out of the way…
With seemingly renewed zest, the girl’s cursor practically warped to the Interweb Surveyor icon on her taskbar as she scrambled to check out the latest news from her Bloggr feed—another decently-kept secret of hers, and one so well-kept in fact even some of her closest friends didn’t know about it. Just a few more seconds, and she was already well-engrossed in it, checking others’ reactions to her posts and checking on her favorite posters. Her attention soon turned to one in particular: formatdiskIII, the creator of some of her most favorite works in her collection. Apparently, they’d recently been working on a video game adaptation of “Temporally, Astrally Lost”, the comic that sat in 3rd place for her in her hierarchy of favorites. Just seeing Franz and Zack’s awkward attempts at chatting each other up was enough to make her swoon, as much as she refused to acknowledge it—
A tap on her shoulder. “Catherine Joyce, mag-simba na tayo,” came the dreaded gruff voice from behind. “You’re already ready, so—”
O, ’sus naku! she cursed under her breath. Before Cathy had comprehended that thought, her hand had already leaped on the keyboard and keyed in an Alt+F4. She wheeled her seat around with a strange cross between a smile and a terrified expression, fully expecting her parents to already be waiting right behind her—
But Andrew was there, his facial expression softening as he looked at her. Although he did want her to hurry, especially when their parents would go crazy the moment they were a few minutes late for Mass, just seeing the look on her face was enough to tell him not to press the matter. “Oh, sorry ’sis,” he said. “I should’ve at least told you I was there.”
Cathy was still trying to contort her face into some kind of normal expression. “I- It’s fine, it’s fine. Thought that was already mom and dad.”
“Fair,” her brother answered with a nod. “Come on now, get your socks on and let’s get going before they REALLY get up here.”
Wordlessly, Cathy got a pair of socks from her closet, and headed out her room. As she made her way down the stairs, she thanked whoever was out there, whether God or the stars or whatever, that it was Andrew who’d gotten her attention. If Mom and Dad even so much as saw that for a second…
She didn’t want to imagine them ridiculing her for ages. She hurried to the bottom of the stairs, and managed to get her shoes on before her folks had even just changed.
“Ang pagkatamad mo, Catherine”, her mother growled. Although the family had returned from church, the peace of the Lord had done little to bring peace into their home. The required liturgies had already taken quite a bit out of her, and yet here was her mother, practically tearing Cathy’s ear off with how much she was ranting in her child’s face.
Mrs. Portillo quickly brought up the list of everything Cathy needed to do that day, her patience draining with each extra requirement she thought of. “You need to go print your assignments, you need to clean your room, and you’ll still have to go sweep the rest of the house afterwards. Hurry up with all of those, and then you can go do whatever you want,” she scoffed, “since you have no respect for me at all.”
Her daughter quietly scoffed at that mention of respect. For all she knew, that was a code word for “complete and utter servitude”, and that was the last thing she wanted in her already subpar life.
Before her mom could whine to her face any further, Cathy quickly packed up, getting her computer and her wallet ready to go. Perhaps spending some distance from her at the print shop before coming back would put her in better spirits, she thought. Holding back the vitriol that pooled up in her mind, she quickly looked over her things one last time, and headed out, half-heartedly telling her mother she was heading out to the print shop to do exactly what she was asked.
With a scoff, her mother accepted Cathy’s excuse, and slammed the door behind her, looking over the mildly messy spot that was her child’s room.
Despite the relatively ordered state it was in, she still took offense at its somewhat disorderly state. “Messes like these are places for the devil, and he’s already constantly tempting her.” Hoping that fixing the room would magically bend her child to her will, she got to work, sweeping the parts of the room Cathy had missed, tidying away some of the clothes she’d left around, and scanning the room for whatever new godless thing her daughter had stupidly started obsessing over.
Despite her efforts, though, nothing seemed to be out of place, just as always. The only messes she could find were physical ones. The patches of dust that were there were small enough to be cleaned with only a towel, and Cathy’s messiest piles of clothes were moreso poorly folded rather than strewn about.
Having already spent most of her mental reserves on her paranoid thought processes, her mother took in a deep breath, and plopped down on the couch, hoping to relax for some time before her disgraceful daughter returned—
Mrs. Portillo paused. There was some hard, square object sticking at her rear end at the back of the couch.
She got up, and looked back at the couch. Nothing was there, or so it seemed. She stuck her hand a bit deeper into the couch, though…
and out came a book, “Temporally, Astrally Lost”, by some “formatdiskIII”.
Her mind was in full alarm now, and without further thought she promptly pulled out the cushion, revealing all of Cathy’s secret reading materials at once.
So they have been keeping these books… Now, why would they be hiding these?
Taking the book she’d gotten first, she flipped to a random page, and decided to have a look. From the looks of it, it seemed to be some kind of graphic novel—already a bad sign. Some teacher on Nookface did say those books reduce your comprehension. Who knows what could happen to their grades?
You wait for him to touch you...
Why do you have to wait? Why do you have to wait? Why do you have to wait?The scene panned over to the apparent main character, whose face seemed marred by some kind of hesitance. The narration continues…
(Suddenly, you realize a very basic thing.)
(He will never touch you. He will never say it to you. You will be stuck here forever.)
(Stuck in your yearning.)
(Unless... you're the one who breaks the cycle.)
(You reach out.)The next several moments in the story practically caused Mrs. Portillo’s heart to stop. The main character seemed to be leaning up towards the other man in the picture, possibly—she couldn’t even bear to think of what he was doing to him.
Shutting the book, she quickly turned her attention to the other books in the collection, growing more and more scandalized with every one she read. A detective daring to settle with a repugnant, flamboyant thief; two soldiers forsaking their countries for each other; even a maid daring to do unspeakable things with her mistress—every time she saw yet another man with a man or a woman with a woman, her disgust exponentially flared up.
At the end of it all, she threw down the books, gathering some of them up whilst grabbing a nearby basket. So this is where Catherine’s been getting the idea that settling with a woman is acceptable. Thank God I found these. Who knows what she might do if she were to read all of these unchecked?
Her revulsion towards the books still not abating at all, she stacked up the last of them in the basket and carried them off to the attic. “What a waste of time, effort, and money”, she scoffed to herself. “Hopefully there’s some degenerate who’ll buy this off of us.”
It took Cathy some time to get back from her errands, not helped in part by her lack of foresight. Although she’d brought money with her for the printing shop, she didn’t consider the fact that the printing costs were relatively cheap, leaving the shop unable to give her enough change with the one 500 peso bill she had. As a result, she ended up having to head off to the nearby AlphaMart to go spend a little and get the smaller denominations she needed.
At the very least, that delay had earned her quite a respectable supply of snacks. It wasn’t the largest haul—heck, that one Olivia character from one of her books would’ve probably passed on it if offered them—but she was quite proud she got that many. Two bags of Crispy corn chips, a nicely-sized bottle of C4 apple tea, and a Creamette for only two-ninety something? Still can’t believe I got all of this…
Nevertheless, she’d managed to complete all her chores with Andrew’s help, and both siblings were now free—especially since both their parents were out at work.
Back when the family relations weren’t nearly as bad, the two of them would sometimes ask why they’d have to work all the time, even on Sundays. Despite this, both Mr. and Mrs. Portillo never really answered their questions, although they knew well the scale of the debts that bound them to their work—making do in their current circumstances was neither easy nor cheap, and they’d been well behind on their loans for much too long by now.
Now, however, the presence of their parents was a dark cloud on the horizon, a sure sign a storm would soon approach, and so the two, even if they didn’t outwardly agree or cooperate very often, both welcomed the peace brought by their absence. While Andrew busied himself with last-minute edits to his assignments, Cathy went off to the room, ready to spend another afternoon poring over one of the many books in her special collection.
This time, Cathy wanted to go ahead and continue following along the story of one manga she was reading. This one was about a pair of overworked office guys, the main one of which had quite a considerable backstory—or at least that was the impression she got from what she’d read so far. Maybe I can finally figure out what’s really going on with him, she thought.
She shut her door, walked over to her couch, and pulled out the cushion. Well, time to go and catch up—
The cushion fell out of Cathy’s hands, and her entire body went slack. Her entire collection had disappeared into thin air.
She was practically about to fly off the walls at this point. There was no way that all of her precious yaoi and yuri would’ve just disappeared like that, she thought. Maybe I even left it on the other side, she thought. Yeah! I did sort through all of them last week, after all. Maybe I just placed it there…
But when she pulled out the other cushion, all she found was a compartment filled with everything but what she was looking for.
There was only one logical explanation for it: her folks had taken it, or else her brother had been tasked by them to take it. There’s no way that he would’ve turned heel and stolen it on his own—I know he’s not one for shitty pranks like that. They— they found out, didn’t they?
Earlier, Cathy was simply anxious. Now, she became PANICKED.
Her steps from that point on took her around the whole house. Every drawer, every cupboard, even her father’s filing cabinets—she checked every possible nook and cranny she could think of, and yet her collection was nowhere to be found.
Frustrated, exhausted, and out of patience, Cathy sat at the table, right in front of a glass of water. An empty look was the only expression on her face—not only was she robbed of one of her favorite pastimes, but her folks were surely about to give her a very hefty scolding.
She took the cup in her hands, and drank—
Andrew deadpanned, “Hey. Something wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong!” Cathy snapped. “My books are all gone, my afternoon is ruined, and Mom and Dad are gonna kill me or do something even worse—I don’t know!”
“So that explains what happened earlier,” he grumbled to himself. “Those books were yours?” he asked—he’d seen their mother headed for the attic with a basket full of them.
Cathy only nodded back, heading off to the sink to get herself another glass.
“You see, I saw Mom running off with a bunch of books from your room, headed to the attic.” Andrew huffed. “Not only that, but I tried asking her about it. Do you know what she did?”
Cathy returned to the table, still crestfallen. Andrew continued anyway.
“Like, Mom kept accusing me of keeping all that shit in secret, and that, even if you did read them, I mainly kept them for myself. I tried telling her that I’m not even interested in any of them, and that you—”
Cathy loudly huffed. “And you threw me under the bus, didn’t you?”
“No, why would I?” Andrew spat back. “All I said was that you might have been the one collecting them, but she wouldn’t listen! We may as well both be screwed.”
“Maybe,” his sister said. “Maybe.”
Not wanting to dwell on it any further, Cathy left her brother in the kitchen, heading back up to her room. A part of her felt that, beyond hope, she’d be able to somehow get her collection back.
Once again in her room, she closed the door behind her and took a sharp breath. Alright. This is impossible, isn’t it?
She chuckled, quickly turning over the possible ways she could try and somehow get her collection back. I couldn’t just go into the attic and take it back—they already know it’s there, and they’ll only know for sure that those books are mine…
So, then what? her train of thought continued. Is she just going to keep them all in the attic forever? Or…
She suddenly realized something possibly critical to all this. Could she… could she be selling it? If she is, maybe I could.. maybe I could try and get some help, and get them back?
Cathy sighed, knowing there was only one way to be sure of her mother’s intent. I guess I’ll have to put up with my brother one last time, then.
She left the room, and headed back down the stairs, expecting Andrew to still be downstairs. As it turned out, however, he was already on the way back up to his own room, apparently trying to take his mind off of the inevitable storm of accusations and guilt tripping his folks would stir up.
Andrew, looking up, soon noticed that his sister was there. “Oh. What is it now?”
Cathy leaned against the wall, her face showing only a small sign of hope. “Could I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Well,” Cathy began, “did Mom happen to say something about… selling those books?”
“She did,” Andrew answered. “Hoped she could find some degenerate who’d buy them up. We both know how our folks are around money.”
Cathy shook her head. “Alright, thank you.”
She immediately went back to the room, and continued thinking things over. As much as she wanted to scramble and get her collection back before things really got out of hand, the few remaining rational parts of her mind knew any hasty actions would only worsen her chances. I’d have to pull this off perfectly, or I may as well- I may as well personally sell them all.
Cathy didn’t want to see that happen, ever.
A plan came to her mind. She took her camcorder, set it up on the table, and began to record…
With her video now recorded, Cathy decided to head out, hoping she could put the first part of her plan into play—get at least some of her friends on board with helping her out. For now, her plan was to hand over her tape to Sofia, and then she’d work up the courage to pass around the message to some of her other friends. Just Sofia for now, though, she thought. I’ll have to see whether or not the others might want to be in on this.
Unfortunately, though, Cathy would have to wait a while before she could get that load off of her chest. Earlier that week, she’d opted to schedule a mall outing with Mark and Ridel that day. Ordinarily, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity for her to find some peace away from home, especially since it had been a while since the last time she’d had a chance to hang out with them. Now, however, especially after her parents had pilifered into her entire collection, there was no way she’d be able to keep her cool while she was there. If I panicked and somehow told them about it… there’s no way they’d let me live that down after that.
As she got off the jeepney she’d taken to the mall, Cathy continued mulling over the prospect of her accidentally telling her friends about what had happened. Her thoughts had now turned towards the “Jaggy incident” and the aftermath of it all; although it had led to a lot of good-natured teasing between her and her friends, something about telling her friends about her all-encompassing interest in yaoi and yuri felt… very wrong. She just felt that there was no way Mark and Ridel would be able to handle that revelation level-headedly, especially when this was something a LOT heavier than… having a photo of her taken in some guy’s arms.
She breathed in, and out, as she passed through the mall’s doors. After quickly showing her bags to the guards so they could check it, she made her way in, hoping she wouldn’t make any missteps while she was there. The plans for this meetup had been laid for days by now, and there was no way that she was going to be backing out of it by now.
And so, Cathy kept on going, hoping she could somehow sift her memory for the location she, Mark, and Ridel would be hanging out at. It wasn’t going to be a particularly easy task, especially given the mental ferment she’d gone through earlier, but she hoped she’d be able to remember in time.
Schools of mall-goers whirled about her as she made her way to the first of the spots she’d thought of, the food court. Mark’s still quite a bit of a cheapskate, she told herself. If there’s any place he’d probably want to start things at, it’d most likely be there—
Mark’s voice broke over her train of thought. “Uy! Cath, what’re you doing there? We were waiting for you for half an hour by now!”
Cathy groaned to herself. Speak of the devil… She looked around, trying to figure out where he’d called her from. It didn’t take her very long to figure that out, though, as she soon found not only Mark, but Ridel, just behind her. Apparently, they’d already gotten their snacks from the food court, and were now heading off to wherever Ridel wanted to go next.
Mark was still rather flabbergasted by Cathy’s lack of a response. “Like, did you even check your phone earlier?” he asked. “I could’ve sworn I dialed your number at least 13 times by now!”
He had what? Cathy thought. “You— lemme check my phone…” Without a further thought, she whipped out her smartphone, turned the screen on, and sure enough, it told her she’d missed no less than 13 calls from her friend. How’d I—
It then dawned on her—she’d silenced her phone whilst recording the video she’d pass off to Sofia later that day, and had forgotten to turn the sounds back on.
Cathy shrugged. “Sorry for forgetting, I uh… um… was a bit, eh, busy earlier!” She put on a smile, vainly hoping she could somehow throw Mark and Ridel off with some kind of reasonable excuse. “Yeah, yeah! Performance tasks! Y’know how we’ve got like, four PETAs to finish off this week? Had to go and clean those up earlier!”
Although the squint on his eyebrows hinted at some suspicion on his part, Mark found her explanation somewhat reasonable. “Eh, if you say so. Anyways,” he continued, “we’re going to be heading off to the Kopickole, soon. Ridel wants to treat us there, so.”
“Alright,” Cathy said with a nod, finally settling into her usual chipper attitude as thoughts of her parents’ reactions to her collection lay siege to and chipped away at that facade. “Come on, let’s go already!”
Before Mark and Ridel could even register what she was doing, she’d already started to skip along. Nothing ever really seems to weigh her down, doesn’t it? Ridel muttered to himself.
“So here’s the thing,” Ridel began, taking a sip of his iced cappuccino before he kept on going. “I’ve been working on this secret new project with Kambing Studios; we’re working alongside the Stronks to make these MVs.”
“MVs? From Kambing Studios?” Mark said, his eyes wide as he came to grips with the reveal. “How’re they—”
“That’s the thing,” Ridel continued. “Our idea here is to make a series of MVs with an actual continuity to them. I’ve been keeping touch with the writer, and he’s been hard at work making sure this is a story that’ll hook a lot of folks.”
“Ooh!” Cathy burst in, her eyes practically sparkling at the idea. “Music videos with an actual story? That might be interesting.”
“You bet it is,” Ridel said. “Last I heard from him, he said that we’d be making a story inside a story! Crazy, I know, but I think it has a lot of potential. You better look out—when this show hits screens our story won’t pull any punches!”
Mark clapped twice, his enthusiasm just as eager as Cath’s. “Yeah, ’yan ang ating Ridol!”
“Heh, thanks.” Ridel said, taking another sip of his coffee. “So, uh, what do you think of it?”
“Hm, let’s see,” Mark thought. “Like, the idea honestly sounds a bit too ambitious… I think? But if there’s good music to back it up, and the plot is decently interesting, it’ll at least make for a half-decent B-movie.”
Ridel nodded. “So we’d have a decent chance of making it work. I see.”
He dug into his bag, and pulled out a small, pink cassette—Yokofilm-branded DV-C tape. “Well then… Mark, Cathy. You two can go figure out who exactly’s gonna be keeping it, but I want you two to give it a watch.”
His voice fell to a tone just so lightly louder than a whisper. “Besides, the press has been on my ass as of late. They’ve even been sending folks to try and lift this tape off of me, sometimes even with force. Thank God I know how to kick things real well—” Mark and Cathy visibly saw his leg twitch just a bit—“or they’d probably already have run off with that tape by now.”
“So, what are we going to do with this?” Cathy asked, taking the tape.
“Just hold it for me,” Ridel sighed. “You two don’t have the same online footprint I do, so it’s way less likely that they’d be able to track you down. Just make sure you don’t break it, now—that’s the only copy I’ve made of it. Too risky to carry the original tape around, especially with all of those people.”
“Alrighty, then!” Cathy exclaimed. “Hm. I think Mark can take this, I’m the only other person with a bag here—”
“Hoy, Mr. Gonzales!” came a shout to the trio’s left. Mark, Cathy, and Ridel soon found who it was: a pair of men, both wearing the same tuxedo-and-sunglasses combo they’d seen before in Men in White, its sequels, and its many spin-offs. Before any of the three kids had realized what was going on, the men had already rushed into the cafe, speedwalking towards their table as fast as they could.
“Ibigay mo na ang iyong tape sa atin, Mr. Gonzales!” one of them said, forcing Cathy to quickly stuff the tape Ridel had given her into her bag. “Do you know how much we could make off of that scoop?”
Ridel’s face grew colder, and a scowl took the place of the smile that had been there when he was pitching his work to his friends. “If you could have waited for the film to release, you’d be able to make more money off of the articles you’d be able to make about it. All you’d be able to make off of getting this tape is a single one-off article, and—” he slammed his drink on the table to assert his point—“I’d probably lose my position with Kambing Studios, and you’d only lose further profits from the articles you guys could make about the films I’d make after this one?”
Despite this brief sermon on the poor reasoning behind their plan, neither of the men were willing to back down. Mark, realizing that something drastic was about to happen, packed away his phone, hoping he and his friends would be able to get away before things really went south—
and before he knew it, one of the men had already seized Ridel’s bag, gripping at the zippers in a bid to crack it open and nab any tapes he could find.
“Damnit, I knew you wouldn’t listen at all!” Ridel huffed. “Quick, guys, let’s get outta here!” He wrested his bag out of his assailant’s hands before using it as a counterweight to land a particularly hefty uppercut on the grabber’s accomplice—then, seizing on the opportunity that first take of chaos offered, quickly kicked his chair at the grabbing man’s shin. His opponent now stunned, Ridel decided to give the would-be thief a good schooling. Nailing him in the chest with a spinning knee attack, Ridel, still spinning, followed up with four more kicks. The man, although not out of the fight yet, practically flew across the room before crashing back-first into the floor.
With their opening now secured, the trio now made their exit off the scene, hoping they’d be able to escape the mall and get on a jeepney before their pursuers could catch up. Nothing else mattered to them at the time, whether it was Ridel’s anxieties about possibly being banned from the coffeeshop, Mark’s concerns of being labeled as a delinquent, or even Cathy’s still-present concerns about the future of her yaoi collection. Right now, the only thing any of them cared about was making sure they could get away from the mall in time.
Their legs took them as fast as they could through the mall, none of them looking back at what was behind them. On and on they went, still not letting up even as the exit was in sight—Mark, in his desperation to keep up with his moreso athletically gifted friends, even went as far as to run over multiple people on his way out of the mall.
And it was just their luck that as they finally made their way out of the mall, a somewhat loaded jeepney happened to pull up just in time. Without even bothering to check what route it was on, Mark, Cathy, and Ridel hopped on, hoping to get anywhere other than the mall before those men could pull any other stunts.
Worn out by everything from the heat to the day’s stresses to their recent escape attempt, the trio did not speak a single word to each other on the jeep. The only one doing something other than vacantly staring into space was Cathy, who had since realized that the jeepney they’d boarded was headed straight for her destination anyway.
She’d already messaged Sofia, telling her that she’d be meeting her there once she’d dealt with Mark and Cathy. Now, all she had to do was keep an eye out for the Eclipse Park—so-called because of its distinctive ring shape’s resemblance to a solar eclipse. This should go over pretty quickly, Cathy told herself.
It didn’t take very long for her to soon spot the park’s signature lanterns in the distance, and she waved her hand in front of both her friends’ faces, hoping to get them out of their stupor.
“Hey, Mark, Ridel.”
No response from either of them. The heat had taken out what little energy they had left.
“Hoy, Mark!” Cathy spat, cleanly landing a slap straight on Mark’s cheek.
Mark’s eyes soon fluttered back to life, a confused mess of random faces scrunched onto his face. “Hm. Wha?”
“Can we… get off here? I’ve got some business here, and perhaps we can sort out everything else as well.” She pointed at her bag, then at Ridel.
Both of them knew exactly what she meant. “Alright, sure,” Ridel quipped. “Just let me go and handle the fare, and we’ll get off.”
“Alright,” Mark added. “Besides, if any of us are going to get home by jeep, Eclipse Park has a lot of them going by anyway. I think we’d be able to find any jeep we needed.”
As their vehicle finally pulled off to the side, Mark, Cathy, and Ridel got off, and headed over to one of the nearby benches. The three took their seats, and pulled out their respective drinks. Thankfully, none of the coffees had spilled during the tussle earlier, and so the friends resolved to drink what remained of their coffees together.
Mark was the first to speak, somewhat refreshed by his coffee. “So, I’m going to be keeping the tape, right?”
“Yeah, you are,” Cathy said, taking a sip from her caramel latte. “Here, lemme just… get the tape here…”
Unzipping her bag, Cathy fumbled around, looking for the tape she’d just packed in not very long ago. It didn’t take her long to get the first hard-feeling plastic thing in her bag. Her arm tensed, prepared to proudly pass Mark the tape—
but a brief look downwards, past the bench, showed her that she’d somehow gotten both hers and Ridel’s tapes. That wasn’t much of a problem, she could just get hers.
It was only then that she realized that she couldn’t find it; both tapes were identical, and completely unlabeled.
Hay, putang ina! Cathy’s mind screamed. Which- which one’s Ridel’s tape and which is mine?
Her eyes frantically danced between both tapes, desperately gleaning both of them for any possible difference that could let her tell them apart. As much as she tried, however, nothing seemed different about them—both tapes were completely new, and showed not even the slightest sign of wear.
“Uh, Cathy?” Mark said. “I thought you had the tape?”
“No!” Cathy sputtered, her terror momentarily showing on her face. “Uh, yes I still have it, just give me a sec.”
Before she even knew it, she’d already singled out the tape on the right, quickly passing it to Mark with a guilty look on her face.
“Alright, thanks Cathy.” With that, Mark finished up the last of his drink. “Ingat kayo, ha?” he said, getting up from his seat and chucking his cup into the trash. “I’ll see you all around.” It wasn’t long before he soon headed down the road, hoping to get a jeep headed straight back for his neighborhood.
“I think I’ll be headed off, too,” Ridel said. “Whatever you’re doing here, Cath, good luck with it.”
Cathy’s face crumpled into an awkward expression, hoping she didn’t have to tell Ridel exactly what she was doing. “Uh… thanks, ehe! And uh, the same to you with the movie!”
“Yeah, yeah,” he beamed. “Alright, see ya at school tomorrow.” He headed in the opposite direction, hoping to get one of the other jeepneys that queued up on another side of the park.
Now on her own, Cathy fidgeted with the last tape in her fingers, the warmth of her farewells to both her friends now overshadowed by unease. Her plan depended on whether or not she’d picked out the right tape, and if she’d somehow still pulled Ridel’s…
She couldn’t even bear to think about it anymore, and yet it still kept going up to the front of her mind. If they know… if they know how rotten the stuff I’m into really is. I can’t even imagine what they’d think of me.
Her thoughts continued. What if they think I’m a creep and leave me behind? What if they quietly distance themselves because I’m ‘too weird’ for them now? What if—
A tap on Cathy’s shoulder. “Cathy? You alright?”
Cathy looked behind her, finding her ever faithful friend Sofia Rubio at her back. “Not really,” she said, looking back at Sofia with a vacant, resigned look in her eyes. “It’s… Just watch the tape, it should explain things.”
“All… right then? But, uh, what does the tape even have?” Sofia asked, scratching her head.
Cathy’s face grew a bit blanker at that question.”I can’t really say, especially not out here. Like, this is stuff that’d get me mocked in public, I’m sure.”
“Okay, Cathy. I’ll watch it once I get home, and I’ll text you then.”
Cathy nodded, her face somewhat lightening up as she realized it. “Thanks, Sofia.”
“Mhm.” She took the tape, and stuffed it into her pocket, clutching it as if it were some treasured keepsake. “See you again, Cathy.”
“Seeya, Sofia!”