Ruz's POV
A month passed like water through fingers.
Not slowly. Not quickly. Just steadily. One day I was waking up to bruised knuckles and a warehouse still fresh in my memory, and the next I was looking at a calendar and realizing that almost a month had disappeared while I wasn't paying attention.
We fell into a rhythm.
School. Class. Lunch. Stealing food from each other's trays. Teasing Liam about Angela until his face turned the color of a ripe tomato and he threatened to transfer to a different school where his friends weren't all emotionally abusive. Walking home together, not because we had to, but because being apart felt wrong somehow.
The days blurred together.
But in a good way.
Liam was a different person around Angela.
Not in a bad way. Just softer. Quieter. which was hilarious because Liam had never cared what anyone thought of him before. He walked into classrooms like he owned them. He spoke his mind without filtering. He complained about everything and everyone with the same dramatic energy.
But not around Angela.
Around Angela, he was gentle. Attentive. The kind of boy who remembered small details her favorite color, her coffee order, the way she took her tea.
He didn't complain like a child when she was around. Didn't dramatically collapse onto tables or announce his suffering to the entire cafeteria.
He acted mature.
It was disturbing.
"He's possessed," Nika said one day, watching Liam hold the door open for Angela. "That's not our Liam. Our Liam would have let the door hit someone and then blamed the door for being in his way."
"Character development," Mira said without looking up from her phone.
"That's not character development. That's witchcraft. Someone has replaced our Liam."
"Or," Josh said, "he actually likes her."
Nika stared at him. "That's worse."
"How is that worse?"
"Because if he likes her, he's going to be insufferable. Imagine him insufferable and in love."
I watched Liam laugh at something Angela said, actually laugh, not his usual loud, but a soft, genuine laugh that made him look almost handsome.
Almost.
"…He's gone," I said.
"Completely gone," Josh agreed.
"Should we save him?"
"No," Adrian said from somewhere behind me. "Let him drown. It's good for him. Builds character."
"What kind of character?"
" Learns not to make heart eyes at someone in the middle of the cafeteria where everyone can see."
Liam caught us staring. His face went red. He flipped us off.
Angela didn't see.
Which was probably for the best.
We stopped pretending that we were just friends.
It just happened.
Section Z and Section E had merged into something new. Something chaotic. Something that the teachers watched with wary eyes and the other students approached with caution, like we were a wild animal that might bite if provoked.
We had our own slang now. Inside jokes that made no sense to outsiders. Shortcuts that only we understood. A language built from shared experiences and shared trauma and the kind of bonding that only happened when you fought side by side with people and almost died together.
Rifat and I stopped fighting.
Not because we apologized or forgave or any of that sentimental nonsense. But because we realized we were the same.
Same pride. Same stubbornness. The same refusal to step back. Same sharp tongues and quicker tempers.
We held back now. Not because we were afraid of each other, because we knew the other would do the same. An unspoken truce that neither of us acknowledged but both of us respected.
Unless someone poked us.
Zayn was different now.
He stopped observing us because he had observed enough.
Knew us now. Knew our patterns, our tells, that we were all reckless, chaotic, broken in our own ways.
And he was too.
So he stopped standing apart and started standing with us.
He talked more. Enough that we learned his voice, his humor, the dry way he delivered punchlines that made everyone laugh harder because they didn't see them coming.
He laughed more too. A quiet laugh, but real.
He teased Liam about Angela with the rest of us, his deadpan delivery making the jokes even funnier. "She laughed at your dinosaur joke," he said once, and Liam preened, and then Zayn added, "It was a terrible dinosaur joke. Still she laughed because she likes you."
Liam's face fell. "You could have just let me have that."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because watching you suffer is entertaining."
Liam looked at me. "Is he always like this?"
"Always," I said.
Zayn smiled. Barely. But it was there.
He is having fun now. Chill.
He dove into every chaos with us no hesitation, no calculation, just presence.
Zayn and I had a secret.
How we met. How he knew me.
No one else knew.
Not Adrian. Not Josh. Not even Liam, who knew more than he should about other things but had no idea about this.
Zayn and I didn't talk about it. Didn't acknowledge it. Didn't do anything that would make the others ask questions.
But the knowledge was there.
Between us.
Always.
He knew me. Not my past, not my trauma or my secrets. He just knew me. How I was. How I used to be.
Before Monterrazas.
Before this version of myself,that I still learning to understand.
Eren was still quiet.
The kind of quiet that came from knowing that words were not always necessary, that presence spoke louder than speech, that sometimes the best thing you could do was simply be there.
He didn't talk much. But he was always there.
Any situation, any chaos, any fight. He always there. No questions. No complaints. No hesitation.
And in his silence, we learned to read him. The slight shift of his shoulders, that meant he was amused. The narrowing of his eyes that meant he was paying attention. The way he stood always slightly apart, always watching that meant he was ready.
We learned about him.
And he let us.
That was enough.
And me
I changed too.
Not overnight. Not in some dramatically, Slowly. Quietly. Without me noticing until I looked back and realized I wasn't the same person who had walked through those gates five months ago.
I used to be happier. Funnier. Freer.
Only with my family, though. The ones who had seen me at my best and stayed through my worst.
Tita Regina sat me down in her kitchen the week before school started. Her eyes were soft but serious.
"Try," she said. "Try to be friendly. Try to let people in. You don't have to be alone forever."
I promised.
I didn't believe it would work.
But I promised.
And now five months later, I'm here. Surrounded by people, who had pushed their way into my life and refused to leave.
I didn't plan this.
I didn't expect this.
In my previous school, I was the girl everyone feared. The one who fought too much and talked too little. The teachers avoided me. The students were afraid of me.
But here I was stuck.
Stuck with people who made me laugh. Who made me forget to be careful. Who made me feel like the girl I used to be,the mischievous one, the playful one, the one who smiled without checking to see who was watching.
I was happy.
And that scared me.
Because this wasn't my first time.
The first time I felt like this free, light, like I could breathe without choking and it ended badly.
Very badly.
I got hurt.
I ended up in pieces.
And Adrian had to put me back together.
He noticed everything. Always. He saw the way I was changing, the way I was loosening, the way I was letting myself care about people again. He saw it before I did, probably.
He was worried.
I could see it in the way he watched me. The way he finds new tricks to annoy me , ridiculous, designed to make me laugh, scream or both. In the way he made sure I ate even when I forgot to, not saying anything, just being there.
He didn't stop me.
Maybe because he knew this chaotic, reckless, impossible group wouldn't let me fall.
Maybe because he trusted them.
Maybe because he trusted me.
For now we all are on good terms.
Not everything was good.
There were shadows now. The kind that made you look over your shoulder when you walked home. And that made you check the locks twice before bed.
Someone was following us.
Not every day. Not obviously. But enough that we noticed. A car that stayed too long on the same street. A figure that disappeared around corners when we turned to look.
They were hunting us.
One by one.
Trying to learn our patterns, schedules, routines. Where we lived, where we studied, where we went when we thought no one was looking.
So we changed everything.
Random routes for home. Different cars. Different times. Different meeting places. We stopped being predictable because predictable was dangerous, and we had learned that lesson the hard way.
Josh and I came up with the idea together. Because of course we did. We were the strategists. The ones who thought three steps ahead while everyone else was still figuring out where to eat lunch.
We fed them false information.
Let them think they knew where we would be. When we would be there. How we would act.
And then we did the opposite.
It was exhausting.
It was also fun, in a strange way.
We carried things now.
Not openly. Not obviously. But always.
Aira had a metal water bottle that was heavier than it looked. The kind of heavy that made people wonder what was inside.
Mira gave us tracker lockets small, silver, innocuous. They looked like jewelry. They worked like GPS. She knew where we were at all times.
Nika had a trunk in her car. A trunk full of weapons. Metal bats. Hockey sticks, Things that could be explained away as sports equipment if anyone asked, but were really there for other reasons. Darker reasons.
We were ready.
Not paranoid.
Prepared.
There was a difference.
And Kairo didn't wait quickly.
He sent a letter to Tita Luna's office.
Not an email or a phone call. Not a text message that could be traced or a voicemail that could be saved as evidence.
A physical letter.
Delivered by hand.
Placed on her desk while she was in a meeting.
The security cameras had been disabled. The guards hadn't seen anything. The receptionist remembered a delivery boy in a uniform. She didn't recognize his face.
The letter was short.
"You think time will protect him. It won't. When he turns eighteen, everything changes. Including his life expectancy."
Tita Luna was scared.
I saw it in her eyes when we visited. On the way she checked the locks twice before bed and looked out the windows before opening the curtains.
But there was relief too.
Because we were there.
Always.
Kuya helped her arrange security guards for the house. Connected her with people he trusted, people who had kept him safe during worse times. Helped her with the business the Castillo Enterprise, the company that Kairo wanted so desperately, the company that was the real reason Liam was in danger.
And we stayed with Liam.
Every day. Every night. Every moment that mattered.
He complained about it "I don't need a babysitter," "I can take care of myself," "You're all suffocating me, I can't breathe with this many people watching me sleep" but he didn't make us leave.
Because he knew, he is in danger
Liam was turning eighteen in four days.
Eighteen meant inheritance. Legal ownership of Castillo Enterprise. Full control of everything his father had left behind the money, the properties, the business, the legacy.
Eighteen meant Kairo would try something worse.
We planned the party anyway.
Not because we were careless. Because we wanted Liam to have one good day.
One day where he wasn't scared or watching over his shoulder.
We planned a surprise.
Josh handled the decorations
streamers, balloons, the kind of tacky birthday banners that Liam pretended to hate but secretly loved. Nika handled the food real food, the stuff Liam had been dreaming about during his hospital stay. Mira handled the guest list which was mostly us, because Liam didn't have many other friends.
I handled security.
Not officially. But in my head. On the way I watched the doors and counted the exits and noted every face that didn't belong.
Adrian helped.
We didn't talk about it.
didn't need to.
We just moved around each other like we had been doing this for years, checking windows, checking corners, checking the street outside. A silent partnership built on trust and the kind of understanding that came from surviving things together.
Next day at school.
The final exam dates were posted on the bulletin board.
The last exam of our school life.
After this we went to college.
Separate colleges. Different cities. Different lives.
We didn't talk about that either.
Too heavy. Too real. Too much like goodbye when none of us were ready to say it.
So we ignored it. Focused on the birthday. On the threat. On the day to day chaos that kept us together.
Tomorrow will come soon enough.
But for now
For now, we had today.
I rode in the car home that evening with Adrian.
The sun was setting behind us, the kind of sunset that felt like a reward for making it through another day.
"The party," Adrian said. "Do you think he'll show?"
Kairo.
Probably.
"Probably," I said.
"Are we ready?"
"No."
He looked at me then. His eyes searched my face for something fear, maybe, or doubt, or the cracks that sometimes appeared when I wasn't paying attention.
"Then why are we doing this?" he asked.
I stopped walking.
I turned to face him.
"Because hiding never worked," I said. "Because running never worked. Because the only way to end something is to face it. Head on. No excuses. No backup plan."
Adrian was quiet for a moment.
"You sound like Kuya."
"I learned from the best."
He almost smiled. Almost.
We kept walking.
Tomorrow, we will prepare. Plan. Practice. Run through scenarios until we could execute them in our sleep.
But tonight
Tonight, we will rest.
Because Kairo was coming.
And when he did
We would be ready.