The quiet shadowed the calls of the night when we headed out. Overhead, the inky expanse formed a damning dome, reminding us that what we have now—this peace—would not last for as long as we wanted. Kian shuffled beside me, our shoulders brushing against each other every other step. From the corner of my eye, he raised a hand towards his head, fingers attempting to smooth down the matted, jet black strands.

After jolting awake a few minutes ago, he gave me a sheepish look before apologizing profusely. I might have given him a light slap on the arm. "It's okay," I said when he scooted a considerable distance off. "We have these days."

No matter how I downplayed it, the pink tinge in his cheeks never ebbed even as we walked past the cracked roads, the smoking and hissing rubble, and the towering ruins of a metropolis collapsing on us. It was not cold—that much I could say with certainty. We have gone at least a full two blocks, and no one had the courage to melt the thickening wall between us.

I pursed my lips, training my gaze towards my rubber shoes. The peeling, faux-leather lining had parted bit by bit from the toe cap over the years, leaving a murky beige cloth. Mud, dust, and dried stalks of grass clung on the twisted netting lining the upper. With the hack I watched from YouTube a few years back, the parallel strands of shoe laces never came undone. I ought to recommend that channel to everyone in the field. Maybe Kian would benefit from it as well. I peeked at his combat boots to find one of the pair trailing along his ankle like feeble arms.

He must have noticed where I looked because his steps faltered, head dunking to check what went on. His head disappeared from my periphery, sliding down to the ground. My worn soles skidded against the baked asphalt, and I looked back to him on one knee, fingers looping the laces in expert maneuvers.

The smell of burning glass and unfiltered smoke was heavy in the air. No breeze filtered from the bay, keeping the whiff of rotting trash, poisoned fish, and decomposing bodies back. During the insane heat of May, being near the waterline was a nightmare. Bacoor was the coastal city that Madaluyong was not. No wonder my mother hated it here.

In speaking of my mother...

"Hey, you're in the army, right?" I whirled back to Kian as he straightened and patted the dust off his coat, at least the particles that would come off. Some of them were as everlasting as the sun, especially those streaks of chocolate by the thighs. "I know it's a big ask, but..."

My voice refused to work, for some reason. Kian flashed me a look—one that I could not read without assuming pity or, worse, understanding. "What is it?" he prodded, walking me deeper into the grave I started digging. "Something I can help with?"

An arid breath zipped out between my lips. I tucked my grimy hands deep into the pockets of my trousers, or at least, what remained of them. My eyes fell on the metal foundations jutting from the ground in bent and welded piles behind him. The chunks of what had been a sturdy wall surrounded them, sprinkled like roasted flour on espasol.

"It's...nothing big, really," I said, hooked finger clawing at the stray locks of hair stuck in my chapped lips. My throat was dry as fuck, making it harder to blurt out what I had to say next. I could not face away without seeing more of the reminders of what happened merely a few hours ago. "I just—my dad went out before the air strike reached Longos, and I was out looking for him. But as you can see..." I spread my arms in a T-shape before swinging them down, my hands slapping my hips. "A building almost crushed me gutless, and now we're walking nowhere in the middle of the night." I sniffed. "No dad in sight."

Kian opened his mouth, but mine rambled on. "I mean, not to impose anything on you, but..." I twiddled with my fingers. "Maybe you can keep an eye for him? See if he turns up in the rescue operations in the coming days? Maybe he made it to the Talaba camp after all, and communication's just whack. I need to go back to my mother, see if they're okay, and—"

"Whoa, slow down," Kian said, putting his palms up in a placating gesture. "You'll run out of breath."

How different would that be from keeling over to the other side of life? "Forget it," I said, whipping away from him. My hand made vague waves in the air between Kian and I. "I'm just...I don't really know what I'm doing. You must be busy with the wounded and sick coming all the time—"

"I'll keep an eye out, sure," came Kian's answer. Our paces picked up only for me to pause again. Despite my strict prohibition, hope blossomed—its damned and tingly prickles clawing at the pit of my stomach. "What is his name?"

"Victor Dizon," I replied, tamping whatever ridiculous emotion bubbled up my throat. I raised a hand and imagined my father beside me. My fingers were level a head past my hair. "About this tall. Middle-aged, around 50...something—I mean, who remembers their parents' ages, right? And um, he had a tattoo on his wrist of a seahorse. Might be helpful."

A period of silence settled between us. "I wasn't meant to ask about the seahorse," Kian said. "Probably."

I snorted. "No, you're not," I answered, jerking my chin towards the road for us to continue on our way, wherever that was. The stupid smile on my face did not fit the landscape painting of our evening. "Anyway, I'm going back there. Feel free to come along. Totally fine if you have somewhere to be. I still have to call my colleagues."

His eyes sparked as if he remembered to do the same thing. Instead, he scratched the back of his neck, training his eyes to the sky. "Not to pry, but why are you looking for him in the first place?" he asked.

A sore topic. Everything underneath his words told me it was alright if I preferred to not yap about it. But I did, anyway. "He has been searching for a way to get us out of the country," I replied. "My mom was against it. My grandmother was abstaining, not wanting to get between her son and his wife. And well...I guess today was one of his without luck."

"And you?" Kian ventured, earning a quick glance from me. "What do you want?"

I did not have an answer. Never did. When my life revolved around writing headlines for tomorrow's news, dashing towards the grocery in the neighboring city for our monthly supply, and ensuring my family stuck together, I did not have the time to think about that. Whatever my family wanted, I followed, so what would happen if even they could not agree among themselves?

"I want them to be safe," was all I said. A generic answer, and one without resolve nor definite decision. "If looking to get out of the country will bring us more misfortune, then I don't want it. We can still live here. But if I am to find a place where the war won't reach us...that will be a bit better, won't it?"

Kian didn't have a reply to that either. "There are fewer flights out of the country now, much less boats," he said instead. "Even if you can get in on one, we just lost control of the sea even with our allies' help. It will be tough for refugee boats to sneak past the radars. Worse, not every country in the SEA bloc is extending asylum beyond what they already took in. If you go out there, you might be left bobbing in the water for days on end, without any borders to cross."

"I'll relay that to my father, for sure," I said with a small nod. Part of that statement would appear in the headlines I was supposed to submit to Ma'am Mich before 5 AM tomorrow. "I'll drop by the Talaba camp in a day or two to gather leads about the situation in Parañaque. Hopefully, we can see each other there."

Kian clasped his hands behind him. "Yeah," he said. "I hope."

And we parted after we reached the lip of the road leaving and entering our neighborhood. The house was quiet when I stepped in. Mom and Lola had gone to sleep, or at least a semblance of it, in the cramped basement the new house came with. Following the air strikes today, they might be holed up there together. Again.

The sky was quiet, the stars and the fading moonlight streaming past the thin, lacy curtains of the living room guiding my way towards the lone couch. Without shedding my layers, I threw my weight, face-first, to the squares of pillows waiting for me. The rent was staggeringly low in this area, but the pillowcases smelled of flowers and stale fabric conditioner. Leave it to Mom who still found the time to do laundry. She could have towed some of my clothes too.

By the time I opened my eyes, morning had come. A stringent noise screamed in the background, the lilting notes of my maddening ringtone pounding in my head. Even though I did not drink a drop of alcohol the night before, getting up took longer. Slower. A groan rumbled in my throat as I rolled off the couch and, with squinted, sleep-heavy lids, wandered towards the source of the sound. With Mom and Lola in the basement, it was the same thing as being alone on the first floor. My hands curled around the flip phone buried with the essentials in my reporter bag I did not remember slinging on a chair pulled from the dining room.

Thrusting my thumb between the gaps of the phone's two faces, I flicked it open to take the call. "Yeah?" I said, fighting the thickness of a yawn gripping the back of my tongue. "Maian Dizon, speaking."

I expected Ma'am Mich's reedy voice demanding the headlines. What time was it anyway? 7:06 AM, read the numbers on the clock on top of the fridge. I was late. Too late. Instead, a deep baritone scratched out from the other side, sending a sour taste shooting up my gut. "I know it's you, Mai," Raizen's voice drawled out. Something metal screeched from his side. Was he...on a payphone? From where? There were not many of those booths scattered in Bacoor after the modernization effort. Everyone was simply on their AI-tech.

I pushed the strands of hair off my forehead. My messy bun had let loose and turned messier with everything that happened. "What do you want?" I rasped, my lack and need of water becoming more apparent with every word. "I'm not in the mood for your bullshit, Kuya."

"I got it." Raizen's breathy voice made it as if he had been running for a long time. Given the nature of our job, he might as well have been. Maybe he pissed off the wrong side of the war, and it was coming to haunt him now. Who knew? "Forget the embassy contest. I've gotten us a secure line to a publishing house. Overseas. They're interested in your poems."

My eyebrows crept up even though he could not see them. "And how, pray tell, did they hear about me?" I trudged towards the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. "I sure as hell didn't send them any."

The fridge stopped working sometime at dawn when the last of the electricity in the Parañaque grid leaked out into the residential houses. Restarting that, even if they could, would only bring enough for a baranggay or two. The Bacoor Grid was not any better. City-wide blackouts usually followed air strikes to prevent unnecessary electrocution through fallen towers or snapped cables. Which meant the water trickling into a plastic cup recycled from under the sink was as lukewarm as the briny waves of Manila Bay.

Raizen's cough from the other line did not sound the least innocent to me. "I might have, uh...sent them advanced samples."

"What?" My voice rivaled my ringtone, bouncing around the house in a barrage of soundwaves. The plastic pitcher in my hand slammed on the dining table. Droplets of water splashed from the lip and onto the crunchy placemats. "Tell me you didn't, Raizen Estrella. I don't care if you're decades older than me—why the fuck did you do that? And which pieces?"

More metal crunches. He shifted position. "I just gave them the school publications I kept over the years," he said before sighing, swallowing most of his aggression. As he should. If there was anyone who had the right to be angry, it was me. "I know you don't like pitching your works, but don't you want a ticket out of here? I'm more than willing to help you, and this is one of them."

My hand slipped off the pitcher, resting instead on the chair's backrest. "What did you say?"

"The publisher's willing to offer you a grant to get you settled there as part of the deal," Raizen said. "They're aware of what's happening with the country and want to support the literary voices from it."

I snatched the cup with what little water I poured into it and took a sip. Just to douse my lips. "You mean, they would offer me asylum on the grounds of me writing for them?"

The other line crackled with Raizen's huff. "It is an asylum, however temporary. While there, you can also kick off the refugee process for your family. What I'm offering you is a chance, Maian. You don't get it anytime you wish."

"Why are you hell-bent on helping me, Kuya?" I blurted, the morning haze clouding the rational part of my brain. At times like this, it was better to shut up, smile, and thank him for his kindness. Instead, I truly needed to know why he would send my poems behind my back, talk to the publishers to bargain for a grant, and run out of breath just to tell me. "I haven't done anything worthy to be coddled like this."

Even though he was not in front of me, I could picture his iconic lazy smile plastered on his face when he replied, "I just want to. Can't I? Out of all us, you've got the biggest chance to make it out there, and I'm not even kidding. Maybe you just needed the right push, and I'm more than willing to give you that."

"What about you?" I tilted the cup up, taking a bigger gulp this time. The back of my hand absorbed the stray droplets resting on my upper lip as I placed it back. "Did you pitch your work too? You've got better chances than me if we're talking about skill."

Raizen chuckled. "Oh, I stopped writing for literary purposes," he said. A certain hint of sadness shone through his voice, and even through the phone, with miles and miles of cables and posts separating us, I felt it. "Words don't come easy as it did back in college. I just...stopped. Figured it would be better for me and my career in the long run. But you continued. You didn't give up, so I guess you'll make an abandoned fantasy of mine into reality."

"Don't hope too much, Kuya," I answered, my own jaw clenching. How could he be so selfish, throwing his expectations and wishes to someone who did not have the ability to carry more weight. It was admirable how I have not snapped in half until today. "But I'll give it a chance with newer pieces. When do you need the samples?"

"If it's not too much trouble, you can meet me in the Talaba camp," he said. "We will talk more there. Bring a part of your manuscript. I mean, if you're working on one already."

I finished the water from the cup before trudging back to the living room. The drawer shrieked when I pulled it with such speed and force. "How many do you need?" I asked.

"Two? Three? Everything?" Raizen answered. "I'm going to gather leads from the captain now. Meet you in an hour?"

My head nodded by instinct. It was too late to stop it now. Thankfully, I was alone in the living room. My eyes rested on the pile of creased pages torn from my journalist notebook. It was like drawing from the lottery as I lowered my hand towards the sheets. The other side frizzled. "Tell you what, I can let you copy all the leads I will gather today," Raizen added. "Just to make up for sending the poems without authorization."

A small laugh bordering on a scoff escaped my nostrils. "You should," I replied.

The call cut off without another word exchanged between us. With a sigh, I swirled the papers betraying my life and thoughts in ink. Two sheets rose above all the rest. I did not check what they were about, shoving them into my bag. The faster they were off my sight, the better.

I could say the same thing to a number of things beyond the walls of this house.