Friday evenings quickly became our sacred, unbreakable ritual. The entire week began to pivot on that single point. The weight of schoolwork, the oppressive heat of the classrooms, the mountain of homework—it all became strangely bearable because I knew each task was just a stepping stone, pulling me closer to that moment at the plaza with Luna. Our meetings became an anchor, a secret world within the world that only the two of us inhabited.
We'd share a bag of chicharon, a cup of dirty ice cream (she always chose ube), or sometimes just talk for hours without any food at all, perched on the edge of the fountain as the world moved around us. Our conversations began to drift from the trivial into the intimate and the strange. We spoke about our fears—I confessed my anxiety about the future, about being stuck in a loop forever. She listened with a empathy that felt ancient, but her own fears remained veiled, hidden behind that gentle smile.
Instead, she began to speak of secrets. Not her own, but the town's. Local legends and lore. She told tales of the kapre that smoked a giant cigar in the old mango tree near the river, its red eyes glowing in the dark like embers. Her voice would drop to a hush as she described the white lady who was said to roam the Spanish-era cemetery at the edge of town, her mournful cries echoing in the wind as she searched for her lost love. She spoke of the multo, the ghosts, that haunted the forgotten ancestral houses up in the hills, their stories tangled with the town