The town plaza at night was a world utterly transformed from the sleepy, sun-drenched streets of the afternoon. It shimmered under a kaleidoscope of artificial stars: the neon glow of food stall signs advertising isaw and kwek-kwek, the warm yellow haze from the old streetlamps, and the colourful fairy lights strung around the octagonal bandstand where no one had played in years. The air was thick and heavy with the mouth-watering smell of grilling meat, sizzling oil, and the sweet, sugary aroma of cotton candy and candy apples. Families gathered on cracked concrete benches, their chatter a comfortable, low rumble, while children weaved through the crowds like minnows, their bare feet slapping against the polished tiles, chasing each other with shrieks of joy that cut through the night.
My heart was doing a nervous, frantic drumroll against my ribs as I waited by the central fountain, its water catching the multicolored lights and scattering them like a handful of thrown diamonds. I'd asked Luna to meet me here after our project session, the question tumbling out before I could stop it, half-expecting her to politely decline.
But then, I saw her. She didn't arrive from the main road. She simply emerged from the deep shadows between two closed-up stalls, her arrival silent and sudden, as if she'd been woven from the darkness itself. She seemed to command the space around her, yet paradoxically, no one else in the bustling plaza gave her a second glance. She walked to the fountain's edge and sat beside me, folding her hands neatly in her lap. Her eyes reflected the swirling neon signs—pinks, greens, blues—making them look deep and ancient, like a sky full of alien stars.
"It's so lively here," she observed, her voice blending seamlessly with the rhythmic splashing of the fountain water behind us.
"Friday nights always are," I said, my voice slightly tight with nerves. I handed her a stick of fishballs I'd bought earlier, the sauce dripping down the paper plate. "It's like the whole town decides to wake up."
We sat there, eating and talking. Our conversation was easy, flowing from the tangy taste of the sauce to our shared annoyances with certain teachers, to the fragile, half-formed dreams we harboured for a future beyond these streets. I told her I wanted to maybe study computer science in Manila one day, to see a world that wasn't made of mountains and sea. She listened intently, her head tilted, but when I asked about her dreams, about where she came from, she just gazed out over the chaotic, joyful crowd, a wistful, almost longing look on her face.
The noise of the plaza seemed to fade around us when she spoke again. "Do you believe in promises?" she asked softly, her question a sharp, precise instrument cutting through the fog of laughter and noise.
I was taken aback. The question was so profound, so out of the blue. "I… guess? It depends who makes them," I said, stumbling over my words. "And why. And if they mean it."
Her smile was sad and sweet all at once, a look that made my chest feel tight. "Then let's make one. Promise me that no matter what happens, you'll remember these moments. That you'll remember me exactly like this, right here." The request was so intense, so sudden and layered with meaning I couldn't decipher, that it left me breathless. I just nodded, my throat too tight to form words, the immense, beautiful weight of the promise settling over my shoulders as gently and strangely as she had arrived.