The wall clock in the Ayala Avenue office of Mendoza & Valdes didn't tick, it pulsed. To Elias Santillan, it sounded like a heavy, industrial heartbeat—the sound of seconds being crushed into the gray Metro Manila smog.
Elias was twenty-five, an age that society promised was the "prime of life," yet he felt like an old relic. He sat at a desk made of high-quality grade that mimicked the look of narra—a metaphor for his entire existence. He was a Taurus, a creature of habit and stability, and he had done everything "right." He'd graduated cum laude from a top university, secured a junior auditor position before his graduation photo was even framed, and owned four identical Barong Tagalogs and three navy blazers that hung in his closet like soldiers in a row.
But today, the stability felt like brackish floodwater.
He stared at the Excel worksheet on his monitor. The formula was simple, yet his mind kept wandering to the floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, Makati was a hazy smudge of glass towers and the shimmering heat rising off the gridlocked traffic below. He felt an ache in his chest—a literal, physical and mental exhaustion that no amount of expensive, over-extracted espresso could fix. It was an existential crisis at his prime.
"Elias, did you finish last quarter's projections?"
It was Marcus's annoying floor walk voice, a man in his forties who seemed to have been born with a company ID lanyard fused to his placenta. Marcus wasn't a bad guy, but he was a ghost of Christmas future. He was what Elias would become if he settled for the same life decision this man had: a man who measured his life in coffee breaks and 13th-month bonuses.
"Will leave at your desk by five, Marcus," Elias said, his voice practiced and steady.
"Good. Trabaho lang, walang personalan. Reliability is your middle name. That's why we hired you." Marcus chuckled, patting Elias's shoulder before disappearing into a glass-walled meeting room.
"Psst! On his usual floor walk, eh?" Edward, his colleague and desk neighbor, whispered as soon as Marcus was out of earshot.
"Yeah. Best way to get paid, I guess. I'm jealous," Elias replied.
Reliability. The word tasted like cold ash and blinding pollution.
"Will you be joining us later?"
Edward was talking about an engagement organized by their higher-ups. Elias shook his head and sighed at his Seiko watch as if he had somewhere he needed to be after his shift. Edward smiled and shrugged, as if he already knew exactly where Elias would actually be. They shifted their focus back to their respective desks and began typing on their computers.
The pantry smelled of burnt 3-in-1 coffee and the sterile, lemon-scented disinfectant used by the housekeeping—a combination Elias found oddly grounding. He was meticulously leveling off a spoonful of sugar for his afternoon cup, ensuring it was a perfectly flat scoop, when Sarah, his work bestie, nudged him.
"Easy there, Santillan. If that sugar isn't at a perfect ninety-degree angle, will the PSEi drop?" she teased, reaching for a piece of slightly stale pandesal.
Elias didn't look up, though a small, tight smile tugged at his mouth. "Consistency is the foundation of civilization, Sarah. Or at least in this department."
Sarah leaned against the countertop, swinging her lanyard. "Speaking of foundation—word on the floor is that the foundation, Marcus, is eyeing you for the Senior Associate track. That's the 'Five-Year Plan' goal stated in your Workday, right? Having your own space corner cubicle with a view of the Ayala skyline? The ergonomic chair with actual lumbar support?"
Elias stirred his coffee in a slow, clockwise circle.
"It's the logical progression. Three years to Senior, two more to Manager. By thirty, I'll have enough for the down payment on a condo in Legazpi Village. It's near the park, the foundation is solid, and the property value never dips. It's a safe bet."
"Gosh, you are such a Taurus," Sarah laughed, poking his arm. "You're the only twenty-five-year-old I know who fantasizes about 'foundation integrity' and a retirement fund. Don't you want to do something… fun? Adventure maybe? Go backpacking in El Nido?"
"Fun and adventure is expensive, Sarah. And it usually involves sleeping on doubtful mattresses," Elias replied, tapping his spoon twice on the rim of the mug.
"I like knowing exactly where my feet will land tomorrow morning. A much safer bet."
"Right," she sighed, her eyes softening with a touch of pity he didn't want to acknowledge. "Safe. Just don't get so deep in the earth that you can't pull yourself back to the surface when the weight becomes heavy."
He just smirked, and before he knew it, the conversation had shifted to Sarah's latest tantrum over her boyfriend forgetting their monthsary. She was a combination of nuisance and ray of sunshine for Elias when things got exhausting—when everyone else was racing like horses to pile deadlines onto Marcus's desk. A characteristic of her that he would never complain about. Sarah had joined the firm only months before Elias, because they were both the "newbies" at the time, their friendship had formed without the usual office awkwardness.
After their conversation, he was left alone in there and just sipping his drink while gazing outside.
"Five-year plan, huh.", he murmured. A subconscious uncertainty despite the blue print of plans he has.
✬✬✬✬✬
When five o'clock finally arrived, Elias just bids goodbye to his colleagues from the lobby as they went their separate ways. He didn't join his coworkers for team dinner at the upscale gastropub in Greenbelt. It's an unappetizing scene he couldn't bear, the thought of talking about inflation rates over craft beer and sisig. Instead, he descended into the basement parking, his footsteps echoing in the area.
He hopped off into his car—a sensible, white Sedan—and sat in silence as he started the engine. He reached into the glove box and pulled out a small, leather-bound book hidden beneath a stack of parking receipts. It was his star chart.
While the world saw a busy CPA, Elias lived for the movements of the celestial bodies. To him, the stars were the ultimate accounting system; they were predictable, grand, and followed a divine logic that the Philippine Stock Exchange lacked.
He checked his transit for the day. Venus in the second house. It should have been a day of comfort and financial gain. Instead, it felt like a void. He looked at his natal chart, tracing the fixed lines of his Taurus sun. He was supposed to be content with the material world. So why did he feel like he was trapped in the middle of a city of skyscrapers and grid ceilings?
He didn't go home to his condo in Pioneer. He drove.
He fought the never-ending crawl of C-5, dodging aggressive motorcycles and the hulls of passenger jeepneys. Metro Manila's fractured transit system was a relentless grind—a nightmare that made every kilometer feel earned. As the concrete labyrinth of the city finally began to loosen its grip, Elias pushed the car up the winding inclines toward Antipolo. He drove past the neon lights of the malls, past the crowded tenements of Pasig, until the skyline began to blur away in his rearview mirror.
The thick, humid air of the lowlands thinned, replaced by the scent of damp earth and cooling asphalt. The urban noise faded into the sound of crickets, and the jagged skyline of the metro transformed into a distant, flickering horizon of amber lights. He slowed as he passed a clearing where a handful of campers had pitched tents near the cliff's edge. They were silhouettes against the moonlight, huddled around telescopes and folding chairs, their faces tilted toward a sky that actually dared to show its stars. For a fleeting moment, Elias felt a sharp pang of envy.
While he was chasing deadlines and dodging corporate micromanagement, they were busy measuring the universe, finding a quiet pocket of peace in a province that seemed to exist just out of reach of the city's frantic pulse.
He pulled over at a gravel turnout. The once blue sky and scorching heat of the afternoon turned into playful shades of orange and red. A few minutes later, it was twilight—the thin border before the day turns into night. He had missed the sunset, but below him, Metro Manila stretched out like a carpet of fallen embers—millions of lights flickering in a basin of smog.
Elias stepped out of the car, the humid night air still warm, but moving. He didn't care about the sweat staining his dress shirt. Holding his star map, he began scanning the patterns as if it was a treasure hunting and the prize was in the heavens. The map has a full grid from top to bottom, left to right. In that piece of thin paper were constellations.
He looked up, and for the first time in ten hours, he breathed. There, away from the harsh glare of the city's LED billboards, the sky opened up. There was the Southern Cross, hanging low. There was Mars, a faint reddish spark through the tropical haze.
"I did everything right," he whispered to the vast, silent archipelago of stars. "So why does it feel so wrong?"
The stars didn't answer. They just burned, indifferent and beautiful, over the sleeping giants of the Sierra Madre, like any other mountains that bear the weight of the earth.
Elias stayed there for hours, a solitary figure in a rumpled suit, standing on the red Rizal dirt, trying to find a reason to descend back into his usual hive tomorrow.