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The weekend passed by too fast. Laurence did not get the chance to resume the investigation he had started yesterday about the whereabouts of his original body because Jade had gotten a hold of him this morning and asked if he could accompany her to the shopping mall. He understood that the older Villena sibling still feared letting her brother wander into the city on his own because of his circumstances. Remembering how she had been worried about him yesterday, Laurence could not have the heart to decline Jade's request, especially when the woman told him it had been a while since the last time they had hung out with each other.

They first went to the theater to watch a slice-of-life film. At lunch in the food court, the older woman let Laurence know that Florence used to be into movies with great dialogues because he liked to collect stunning quotes and write them down in his notebooks. Jade kept talking about the things the younger sibling loved, including his flair for composing poetries.

After a while, the woman must have noticed Laurence's silence.

"Are you not having fun, after all?" She forced a smile while guilt became apparent in her eyes. "I'm sorry. Am I being a nuisance to you, Rence? You can tell me if I'm being too much, so I could step back." Jade turned to her plate of spaghetti, twirled her fork before adding in a mumble, "I can't promise I'll be able to stop worrying about you though."

"It's not that," Laurence said, mirroring the woman's regretful expression. "I just honestly don't know how I'm supposed to respond to all of this. I know you're talking about me. Or the previous me. But it feels like I'm hearing stories about a stranger because, you know..." I am not Florence and he's indeed a stranger to me. "I can't remember any of it."

"Are you uncomfortable about it?"

"Not really. I'm just saying it somehow feels strange, but I still want to learn the kind of person I used to be."

This time, Jade responded with a smile that lightened her eyes.

After a meal, they spent the rest of the day checking out department stores since Jade insisted on buying her younger brother something.

At past seven o'clock in the evening, Laurence came back to his room in the Villena residence. He placed the small paper bag, which contained the matching crescent hair accessory and earrings that Jade had gotten for him, beside the calendar block on the nightstand.

Just as he fished his phone and handkerchief out of the pocket of his slack pants, a couple of silver changes got drawn along with the fabric. The coins fell to the floor, creating clinking sounds.

Laurence crouched, picked up a couple of them, and then bent his head even lower to search for a few that had rolled under the bed. The darkness in the area made it hard for him to look for them. However, he found something else that immediately piqued his curiosity.

On the further back leg of the bed, Laurence made out a silhouette the shape and size of a shoebox. He crawled to reach for it. As soon as he had his hands on the thing and emerged back to the light, he saw a green cupboard box decorated with flower and cute animal stickers. Cut-out letters forming the name RENCE were also pasted on top.

He leaned his back against the edge of the bed before removing the lid of the box to discover four various books inside. He took out the bigger of the two spiral ones and flipped the cover, noting the yellowish-brown spots on the paper. As he turned a page over, the cursive handwriting in verdant glitter ink greeted him.

Laurence read the texts and realized it was a poem about friendship. He shifted to the next page. There was another composition about the uniqueness of each person. He continued to leaf through the compilation of poetries tackling different topics. From nature, to not giving up on the way to the victory, to love, to the seasons representing hope, to freedom, to the pros and cons of modern technologies, to self-appreciation—the majority of them carried positive and encouraging themes, which gave the impression that the author was a very optimistic and cheerful person, someone who enjoyed his life and would never think of ending it with his own hands.

He supposed the creations were not always a reflection of the creator's mind and soul after all.

Laurence closed the notebook, lowered it beside him, and chose another from the box. It was a black yarn-bound that contained a collection of quotes from what he guessed were books and movies. Since he was unfamiliar with most of the references, he could not bring himself to be thrilled reading through all of them.

The third one was a smaller spiral notebook, but thicker. Laurence opened it, and the moment he understood the words written on the first page, his attentiveness turned up.

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January 30, 2011

It's dang hard to have a problem, but it's even harder when you know you have a problem but you don't know the reason. I don't know... I just don't understand this heaviness I'm feeling right now...

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February 14, 2011

Have you ever experienced that feeling of always being misunderstood by the people around you? It won't surprise me if you answer "yes" especially when you know you can't count on anyone else. But what if, even in this kind of situation, you can't understand yourself anymore?

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Laurence tightened his hold on the notebook, nearly crumpling its edges, as he figured out these were the raw thoughts of Florence from thirteen years ago. How old was the guy at that time? Junior high school? Senior? At that age, he must have already been experiencing things that drove him to pour out his true feelings in his journal.

Anyone who didn't know any better might have believed these words were normal things any angsty teenager would say. But for Laurence, who was aware of the guy's unfortunate fate, he knew not to brush off this kind of behavior as overacting. Besides, he also had a personal encounter with a young lad who had a similar sad view of his life, even when it seemed like that boy had gotten it all.

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June 8, 2011

JUST SMILE, dear! Everything's gonna be alright!

"If I say I don't know, I don't really know! Is it wrong to ask something I don't know?"

.

Laurence carried on reading Florence's entries. Most of the things he had written in 2011 were about his good and bad experiences in school, how he appreciated some of his friends and classmates, while some of them were being two-faced. On the paper, Florence admitted he enjoyed algebra more than geometry, which made Laurence cringe because any branch of mathematics was not any better than the other for him.

Florence had also penned down all his frustrations throughout the year, his disappointments with the world and other people. But there were a couple of entries when he tried to encourage himself that everything would pass, that he should keep going and just smile through it all. At times, Florence also inserted some random quotations.

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July 5, 2012

I saw that senior in the school garden today too. He's kinda weird but I also find him interesting. I wonder what his deal is, always sitting in front of the flower beds during breaks. One time, I think I even saw him talking to the plants. But also, I often find him looking up at the classroom building with this... Not sure how to describe his expression. Maybe sad? Lonely? Like he's waiting for something that may not come? Maybe he has an unrequited crush from that room he's always looking at. Can't relate.

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A curious scowl settled on Laurence's face as he went over the particular part of Florence's journal once more. He remembered he, too, used to hang out with the plants in high school every time there were no activities in their sports club.

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July 22, 2012

You'll make it through, Rence. You're strong. You've come this far. You're a fighter. Once all of this is over, you'll realize every struggle has served its purpose. You'll just laugh at it. You'll be happy again. You'll be okay again.

Please hold on. Please keep on fighting. Yes, it's hard. Perhaps you'd rather let go, but please hold on.

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August 1, 2012

I haven't seen that senior for a week and I heard he won't be attending NISP anymore.

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The wrinkles on Laurence's forehead deepened while his pulse sped up.

NISP. Northern Integrated School of Perlientas. The same school he had attended. Another similarity with Florence.

He noted the date of the entry and worked out it was the time when he was still recuperating after the fire incident. More accurately, it was a few days before he had been discharged from the hospital. That was supposed to be his last year in high school, but he could not go back anymore. He had turned eighteen later that month, so he had prioritized looking for a job to fend off for himself.

How uncanny it was that this timeline was somehow consistent with Florence's story about that upperclassman. But Laurence was pretty certain that the mentioned senior was not him because the earlier dates did not match. The first entry when Florence had seen that person was dated July 2012, and during that month, Laurence was no longer in school as he was already in the hospital.

Still, all the other similarities were enough to make the whole thing strange.

"The hell is this universe playing at?" Laurence muttered, flipping to the next page, hoping he could learn more about the mysterious student, see if that person was in any way connected to this bizarre situation too.

Unfortunately, there was no mention of the senior in the next couple of years anymore. Throughout the last few months of 2012 up to the year 2018, the journal was filled with records about Florence's time in high school and college. The back-and-forth expression of his tiredness with the world and encouragement to just roll with the punches also remained.

In 2019, the entries about the real happenings in Florence's life started to drop while the depressing thoughts increased.

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September 4, 2012

My birthday. But I feel nothing about it at all. Am I supposed to celebrate another year of my boring, nonsense life? Why was I even born in this world?

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October 3, 2015

Wanna know what I feel right now? I feel like I'm dying!! But I don't want to say I want to die because I actually don't want to! But still, this is too much!! this is too much! I don't want this anymore!

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January 1, 2016

Another year... But damn! Why am I still feeling like this? I always say I don't want to keep going anymore, that I'm giving up. But look! I still keep on doing things I should have given up a long time ago. Why's that even when I don't want it anymore and I feel like there's no purpose to it anymore, I'm still here fighting? I think I'm going crazy. Maybe I have actually gone crazy.

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February 3, 2016

I noticed that I've learned to just accept things the way they are. No matter how hard the situation is.

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July 3, 2016

I know no matter how much I cry, nothing's going to change. Time won't pause, the world won't stop rotating just because I'm having a huge problem right now.

"Maybe I just can't accept the vast gap between dreams and reality."

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January 2017

I want to pick up the pieces of my life and to start all over again.

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March 8, 2019

Give me a reason not to hate my life. It's been a living hell from the start.

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September 9, 2019

I want to say I'm sorry. To all the people I've hurt. More than anything else, I want to say SORRY TO MYSELF.

"Why can't the world just stop revolving, so that everything will remain the same forever?"

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February 9, 2020

I feel like I don't know myself anymore.

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June 11, 2020

I just learned to laugh off the bad things that have been happening in my life. Sometimes, even if it's already painful, it's better to just laugh it off. Nothing's going to change anyway. But there are still some days when I'd feel like... I'm sick of it. I'm tired of everything.

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October 12, 2020

Looking back, why did I even stop hoping... just maybe because I know it's not going anywhere. Or have I really stopped hoping?

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May 8, 2021

I wonder if I'm reverting to the depressed loner I used to be. It's getting exhausting. It's getting annoying. The world hates me. And people are idiots.

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Laurence did not know how long he had been reading Florence's journal, but by the time he reached the end, the tiredness of his mind was already apparent. He suspected that the last book in the box was a continuation of Florence's notes about his life. It might have contained a listing of some events during the most recent years, but as much as Laurence wanted to immediately check it, he doubted his brain could digest any words when he could barely keep it active at the moment.

As he flicked to the last page, he saw that the last entry was another poem. But unlike the other pieces earlier, this one sounded like it came straight out of the writer's raw emotions.

To the person I've hurt the most,

You kept quiet most of the time because you didn't want to upset people,

You hid your tears because you didn't want to be called weak,

You tried to strive for the things that were hurting you because you didn't want to be seen as a failure.

That was enough.

You've done enough.

It's time you accept you can't go on anymore,

You're strong, but it doesn't mean you're resistant to pain.

You're not okay.

And that's okay.