Leo and I took a day trip to Manila to look at university campuses. The city was a sensory assault—a roaring, chaotic symphony of traffic, smog, and relentless energy. Standing on a crowded overpass, watching the sea of cars and people, I felt a pang of intense longing for the slow, familiar rhythms of Nasugbu, for the smell of the ocean and the mountains on the horizon.
Leo thrived in the chaos, his eyes alight with the possibilities. "Can you imagine, JM? The internet speed here is probably insane!" He belonged here, in this world of circuits and code.
I knew then, with absolute certainty, that I didn't. My battle had been for a place, for its history and its secrets. The thought of leaving it behind, of trading the sea for the city, felt like a betrayal of everything I'd fought for. My future, I realized, wasn't out here in the anonymous sprawl. It was back there, in the quiet streets where a ghost had once walked beside me.