Yuna's POV
Moving to the province was supposed to be a fresh start. A break from the chaos of the city, a chance to breathe, maybe even figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
That was the plan, anyway.
The reality was me standing alone at the San Esteban bus terminal, sweaty, slightly disoriented, and already regretting every single decision that had led me to this moment.
My aunt's family was supposed to pick me up. Apparently, they were too busy. So here I was, one girl, one overstuffed bag, and a suitcase that was already giving me a bad feeling.
The terminal was loud in that specific provincial way — tricycles idling at the curb, vendors calling out from their little stalls, the smell of something frying mixing with diesel and fresh air. It wasn't unpleasant, exactly. Just overwhelming. Like the town was already introducing itself at full volume before I even had a chance to say hello back.
I should have known things were going to go downhill the moment my suitcase betrayed me.
It didn't just break. It exploded.
One second I was rolling it across the pavement like a completely normal person, and the next, the wheel gave out with a sound that was genuinely offensive — a sharp, cracking pop that made a nearby vendor look up from her bangus. The suitcase lurched. I lurched with it. And just like that, I went from city girl arriving with dignity to tragic heroine dragging a half-dead piece of luggage across uneven concrete.
A very sweaty, very frustrated tragic heroine.
The air smelled clean at least, that particular kind of clean that only existed outside the city, like someone had washed the whole sky and left it out to dry. I would have appreciated it more if I wasn't already at war with my own belongings.
I sighed, yanked out my phone, and opened the map. My aunt's directions had seemed simple enough back in the city. Follow the main road, turn left at the sari-sari store. Easy. Straightforward. Basically foolproof.
I was not, as it turned out, foolproof.
Because the map did not account for the fact that this town had approximately forty-seven paths that all looked identical. Narrow, slightly uneven, lined with the same trees, leading to the same clusters of houses and the same stretches of grass. There was no logic to it. There was no system. There was only chaos, and me walking directly into the middle of it with full confidence.
I took what I was pretty sure was the right turn. Then another. Then one more that felt right but probably wasn't.
The houses started thinning out. The grass started getting taller. The road turned into a dirt path, and the dirt path turned into something that was definitely not meant for suitcases, broken-wheeled or otherwise.
I was beginning to suspect I had made a mistake.
Then, out of nowhere — plop.
I froze.
The sound had come from somewhere very close to my foot. Too close. I turned my head slowly, the way you do when some part of your brain already knows it's not going to like what it sees.
A frog. Large. Green. Absolutely unbothered, sitting right there beside my shoe like it owned the entire path.
"Okay," I whispered to myself. "You're fine. You're a strong, independent woman. It's just a frog."
The frog blinked at me.
"A frog cannot hurt you."
The frog jumped.
I screamed.
Not a loud scream — more of a full-body flinch that turned into a yelp that turned into me stumbling backward over a rock I had not seen, which sent me sliding sideways down a slope I had also not seen, which ended with me landing flat on my back in a rice field.
A literal rice field.
I lay there for a moment, completely still, staring up at the sky. It was a very nice sky, actually. Very blue. A few clouds. Peaceful in a way that felt personally insulting given what had just happened to me.
The mud was cold. My suitcase was half-buried somewhere to my left. And from somewhere in the distance, I could hear what I was almost certain was a carabao making a sound that was uncomfortably close to laughter.
"This is fine," I announced to no one.
I sat up. Mud shifted. Something squelched.
"Totally fine."
There was no one around. Just the open field, the distant rooftops of houses, and the path I had somehow rolled down from. The frog was gone, probably already off terrorizing someone else.
I sat there for another few seconds, just breathing, letting the full picture of my situation sink in. Then I stood up, shook what mud I could off my clothes, grabbed my suitcase by what remained of its working parts, and nodded at nothing in particular.
"Alright. No more trusting my gut."
I climbed back up the slope, which was harder than it sounds with a broken suitcase and zero remaining dignity, and got back onto the path. Somewhere out there was my aunt's house. I just had to find it before sunset, or before something else tried to ruin my life.
Whichever came first.
I spotted her a few minutes later an old woman sitting on a wooden bench outside her house, slowly fanning herself like she had nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She had that specific kind of stillness that made her look like she had seen everything this town had to offer and was completely at peace with all of it.
More importantly, she looked like someone who knew where things were.
I approached carefully, hyper-aware that I was covered in mud and probably looked like I had crawled out of the earth.
"Excuse me," I said, pulling out my most respectful smile. "Do you know where I can find Aling Rosa's house?"
The old woman stopped fanning. She squinted at me. Then she opened her mouth and launched into what I could only describe as a full-speed, high-volume monologue in an accent so thick I caught maybe one word every ten seconds.
I nodded. Kept nodding. Smiled like I was following along beautifully.
At one point she waved her hand toward some trees. Then at the sky. Then back at the trees. Was I supposed to go through the trees? Climb something? Was the sky involved? What was she telling me?
"Ah," I said, nodding wisely. "Right."
She kept going.
"Got it."
More nodding. More smiling. I had no idea what I had gotten, but backing out now felt rude.
When she finally paused for breath, I seized the opportunity. "Thank you so much!" I chirped, giving her a polite little bow, and walked away in a very confident direction before she could test me on anything.
I did not know where I was going. I was choosing to pretend that I did.
The sound came maybe a minute later. Soft. Rhythmic.
Clucking.
I turned around slowly.
A chicken stood a few feet behind me. Brown. Medium-sized. Perfectly still, staring at me with small, dark eyes that held absolutely nothing behind them.
I took a step. It took a step.
I stopped. It stopped.
I stared at it. It stared at me.
I told myself I was imagining the menace. That chickens didn't have intentions. That this was a normal, regular farm animal doing normal, regular farm animal things.
Then I took another step, and it lunged.
"WHY?!" I shrieked, breaking into a full sprint.
The chicken was fast. Horrifyingly fast. It came at me with a focus that felt personal, wings half-spread, clucking intensifying into something that I could only interpret as a battle cry. I zigzagged. It matched me. I cut left. It cut left. I swung my suitcase out behind me as a shield and it didn't even slow down.
I had no idea where I was running. I didn't care. All I cared about was that the chicken was still behind me and my only goal in life was to make it not be behind me anymore.
I ran until my lungs started complaining, ducked around a corner, then another, then shoved myself behind a large tree and pressed my back against the trunk.
Silence.
I waited. Nothing.
Peeked around the tree.
No chicken.
I slumped against the bark, gasping, one hand pressed to my chest. My suitcase sat beside me, looking personally offended by everything that had just happened to it.
I pulled out my phone with shaking hands.
No signal. I tapped the screen, waiting for the map to load. The battery icon blinked once. Twice.
Then the screen went black.
I stared at it.
"Okay," I said, very quietly. "Okay."
No signal. No battery. Lost in an unfamiliar town. Just survived a poultry assassination attempt. The mud on my clothes was starting to dry and it was pulling at my skin in a way that was deeply unpleasant.
I did the only logical thing.
I sat down, unzipped my backpack, and pulled out a bag of chips.
If I was going to be stranded, I was at least going to be stranded with snacks.
I had barely gotten through the second chip when footsteps crunched on the path nearby. I looked up.
A guy was standing there watching me with the expression of someone who had not expected to find this particular scene when he turned that corner. Tousled dark hair, tan skin, a relaxed kind of posture that said he belonged here without even trying.
His eyes moved from my mud-covered clothes to my collapsed suitcase to the chip bag in my hand.
"Uh," he said. "You okay?"
I crunched loudly and held up a thumbs-up. "Yup. Totally fine."
His eyebrow lifted just slightly. "You sure? You look like you lost a fight with something."
"Close." I lowered my hand. "Chicken."
He blinked. "Chicken."
"Vicious. Very fast. Probably still out there." I gestured vaguely at the path behind me. "I wouldn't go that way if I were you."
He let out a short laugh, like he wasn't entirely sure if I was joking. "And you're just... sitting here?"
"I don't have a working phone, I don't know where my aunt's house is, and running in random directions hasn't been going great for me." I held up the chips. "So I figured I'd stop, eat something, and wait for the situation to improve."
He looked at me for a moment longer, then shook his head with something that was almost a smirk. "You're not from here."
"Groundbreaking observation," I said flatly.
He chuckled and dropped down onto the bench nearby, elbows resting on his knees. "Who's your aunt?"
"Aling Rosa." I looked up. "You know her?"
He nodded. "Yeah. You're not even that far. I can take you."
I exhaled so hard my shoulders dropped. "Finally. Something going right today."
I stood and grabbed my suitcase. The handle promptly came off in my hand. I held it up, looked at it, set it down on top of the suitcase.
"Okay," I said. "Now I might panic a little."
He laughed again, easier this time, and reached over to take the suitcase from me. He lifted it like it weighed nothing, which was slightly embarrassing given how much I had been struggling with it.
"Come on," he said, tilting his head toward the road. He hadn't introduced himself yet, but something about his tone made it easy to just follow.
"Oh — I'm Kai, by the way. Kai Dela Cruz."
"Yuna," I said, falling into step beside him.
"Well, Yuna." He glanced sideways at me, something amused flickering in his expression. "Try not to trip over anything else on the way there."
I cast one last look back at the path behind us.
Just in case the chicken was still watching.
To be continued...