It was easy to think that whenever Kian ran, something bad had happened.

The Talaba camp's familiar tension settled on my shoulders the moment I ducked out of the tricycle I conscripted going deeper into the city. The roads were untouched by the war, remaining pristine and leading me to where I needed to be without hindrances.

My call with Raizen rang at the back of my head, sending my heart fluttering. Despite my adamance in not pitching my works, I wanted to be recognized, to be appreciated for my words. Just that with every aspect of my life going to shit, it did not occur to me there was still a place for me to shout to the wind. Never in a million years did I hope my words would usher me to a safe haven. Or whatever haven lands beyond the waterline awaited me.

As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, Raizen gave me hope. And he did it when he already had none. Kindness could go a long way, but I wondered if it would go the same length when given to me.

After giving Ma'am Mich a quick call to let her know where I was and what I planned on doing, she gave me permission to drop by the Talaba campsite while she and the other senior journalists tackled Parañaque. Those who had been closer to the higher-ups than the interns were sent straight to the heart of the battle—the capital region.

Kian was not kidding when he said the military was struggling. Just this week, the interlink bridge from Corregidor to Naic was seized from the country's control. In under two days, the place crawled with tanks, enemy stations, and ground units. A little more, and they might pincer Bacoor through sneaking around the neighboring cities of Cavite. At some point, only the mountains would be the only place the war would not visit, but unless normal civilians like us learned guerilla tactics of old, we would not stand a chance at defending even that spot of land.

If someone still had hope in this country after that knowledge, they must be saints born again.

My soles crunched against the thinning asphalt, bringing the horrors of Longos with me. What would the roads here think about the remnants of something that could have been them?

"Maian!" A voice made me look up from my toes towards a small figure weaving past rumbling tanks, uniformed soldiers heaving crates or comrades in stretchers, and open tents quivering against the hot, morning ambiance. His hair bounced against his forehead with a film-like flair, his glasses skewing with every meter closing our distance. By the time he reached me, sweat plastered his locks against his face in matted clumps.

I looked behind him, hands gripping the strap of my reporter bag against my shoulder. He could run if he wished. Was there someone chasing him? The soldiers largely paid him no attention. To them, we appeared to be a journalist asking a doctor about yesterday's casualties. I would ask him the same thing if Raizen did not get to Kian first. As promised, I would profit off my senior from another broadcasting company in exchange for stabbing me in the back. A good deal, I must say.

Kian straightened from bracing his knees. In not even a full huff, he gasped out, "Maian, we got a hold of him—"

He didn't need to finish. Within seconds, he was left in the dust. Which direction did he come from again? The tents whizzed by me. The faces of the soldiers stuffed into camo blurred in a wall of haze. My vision tunneled for the sight of a man with a perpetual goofy grin on his face, a receding hairline tinged with gray on the sides, and just the softest demeanor I have seen in a man. It was amazing how he kept Mom grounded when she would rather spend a whole day crowing at every little thing. Where was that man?

A grip closed around my arm, and I whirled to find Kian's face pushing past the coat of gray blobs. His glasses glinted against the mid-morning sun, sending sharp prickles into my eyes. "Maian, here," he said in a gentle whisper. I did not like it, because it implied something else. Something unkind. Cruel. "I'm sorry."

He guided me towards a clearing free of cars, soldiers with guns, or the steady chgg-chgg-chgg of conveyor wheels against concrete. What was I doing here? Was this not where they...

The scent hit me before the sight registered in my feeble mind. Bodies—tens of the—lay on the uneven cemented ground, each shrouded with muddied white sheets, as if it was the same yard they expired in. Right. These faceless people on the ground...

They were dead.

Why was Kian bringing me here? He had news about my father—no. No.

No.

My legs navigated the maze of misery until it led me to a place where I was meant to be. A long rectangular tarp cut to be the same size as a man I knew prevented a human-sized lump from touching the ground. The sheet thrown on top of him contoured the shape of his body, like far-off mountain silhouettes. A leg was missing. My eyes noted a hand splayed out of the sheet's influence. And on the wrist...

A disheveled seahorse stared back at me. At this angle, under this light, and through the veil of hot, sticky tears welling in my eyes, it might have been a squirrel or a whale on weed. It was supposed to be a thing of ridicule, of interesting openers at family reunions, but why were my knees knocking together, bringing me closer to the person who made the choice to take such a hideous thing to the grave? Why was I heaving like a horse worked close to the bone? Why, in God's name, was I reaching out to that hand—one that held mine for as long as I remembered—and instead of finding the warmth I expected, bringing a devastating winter in its wake?

"Pa." The word came out as a garbled syllable to my ears. It did not matter that there were people watching, people who would rather pull the trigger than see another howling relative. It did not matter that Kian was somewhere behind me, keeping a respectful distance even though I could not perceive him beyond a blurred blob of white, green, and brown. Nothing mattered but the sordid truth in front of me. It was final.

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. Dirt particles poked at my eyelids, but they were washed down by a waterfall running down my face. "Pa," I said again, giving the cold, rubbery hand a little shake. "Let's go home."

There was no reply. Despite my hope against hope this was nothing but a harsh nightmare, a recurring manifestation of my worries in my dreams, brought about by experiencing an air strike in person, I received no answer. But I was awake. I had never been more awake. Maybe I would never sleep again.

"Out of my way, mga inutil!" A stringent curse ripped my attention from my father's hand to the pair of women hobbling past the line of soldiers guarding the bodies. "Where is my husband? Ha?!"

Then, her head turned in my general direction. Through my blurry vision, her entire body shifted towards me. Within seconds, her shadow fell over me and almost devoured the body before us. Without waiting for anyone to intervene, my mother lifted the sheet covering my father's face. Up close, I did not need to confirm it was him. Instead, I watched my mother's face change from shock to disbelief to sadness. But something else crept into her expression, something I never thought I would see in a time such as this.

Rage.

Before I could make sense of it, my mother reached past the body, fists curling against my collar. Everyone started yelling, and arms speared in and out of my view. None of that mattered, as my mother shook me hard enough to bring my senses back to the land of the living. Amidst the screams, only hers registered in my ears.

"Ingratang bata ka!" My mother's lips moved, but somehow, I had a hard time connecting her words to the intended recipient—me. It only struck home when I felt a fist slam against my collarbone. Again. And again. It was me. Her face matched mine—swollen red and tear-stained—when she raised her gaze to meet mine. "I told you to stay inside. To wait for your father. And what did you do, ha?!"

She shook me again, her grip against my collar tightening. Her fist pounded against my sinking heart. "What did you do, you bitch?" My mother screamed. To my face. Calling her own daughter a bitch—how much had my world changed in a span of seconds? "What did you do?"

Lola's face bobbed from my mother's shoulder, feeble and wrinkled hands wrestling my mother's grip off me. It was the only thing she could do without breaking herself. My mother was not one to lose. "You went out there like a fucking bull, thinking you can save the world," she continued, breaths and words not aligning enough to deliver her words in a straight, cohesive line. If this was a film, the director would have yelled, Cut!. But there was no director. I stopped believing there ever was one since the war started.

"Your father came home, Maian," my mother hissed. "He came home that night, but when he heard you're still out, that you were searching for him, guess what he did?"

I did not need to. "He came out of the fucking house again because he was worried about you," she said. "He kept worrying about how you're faring and where you are. I begged him to stay home. You would come home the same way he would, but he wouldn't listen. And now..."

Now, my father lay on a muddied sack like a gutted pig opted for the butcher shop.

She did not need to say it, but I needed to hear it. My mother looked me dead in the eye, and in her grief, in her anger at everything she could have prevented, she seethed. "You killed him, Maian," she said. "And I won't ever forgive you."

More hits thumped against my arm, and I took them. I killed my father. Perhaps, I deserved every bit of it. And more. The words You killed your father, Maian Dizon blared at the back of my head with each hit my mother delivered. It did not matter if she shouted it at the top of her lungs through sobs. It did not matter how my chest, arms, and neck hurt with the same dull pain plaguing my heart. The tears had dried to a desert, leaving my eyes witness to the pure, animalistic wrath in my mother's face. Perhaps, I did not deserve to be forgiven either.

My mother raised her fist to strike me again. If this hit, she would leave a bruise, if she had not already. I flinched, gaze training to the ground. Closing my eyes to brace for impact was disrespectful to my father's memory. The blow did not come. Instead, I heard my mother grunt, her grip on my collar loosening.

"Let me go. I'm warning you," she sputtered. Slowly, my gaze traveled from the ground to the pair of combat boots with one set of shoe laces undone to the white-knuckled grip stopping my judgment from reaching me. I watched my mother squirm against Kian's grip, staring up at him through their severe height difference. "I said let go!"

"Not when you have not calmed down," Kian answered, mouth set in a thin, thin line. He nodded to the nearby soldiers who started flanking my mother. With Lola behind her, it appeared they were being arrested. "Anger is bad for your heart."

My mother's face fell. Without another word, the soldiers gripped the stocks of their rifles before ushering the two women away from the scene. They were not arrested, were they? I stared at the back of my mother's head, willing it to turn back, to tell me through a flat gaze that it would be alright, that we would still be a family even if the world boiled to shit around us. She kept looking ahead, like a war prisoner on the way to tribulation.

"You okay?" Kian's voice speared through my thoughts. He has not left with them? Why? "Do you need a drink?"

I could only nod. A drink was the last thing on my mind, but if it meant I could escape this place, this...reality, I would. Maybe I should start running too.

Within minutes, I sat under the shade of an off-white canopy, legs crossed at the ankles. I vaguely remember Kian running off after telling me he would get me something. It has been five minutes, but it felt like forever. If I ditched him and went home—perhaps to have a saner conversation with my mother—would he hate me? I had been making him run ever since I met him, and the thought was terrifying. What else had I been making people do just because I existed?

A panting shadow fell over me at the same time a speck of the blue packaging of bottled water poked past my periphery. My fingers gripped the bottle despite me thinking they could not. I should be shaking all over, screaming at the heavens for taking away our strength, our pillar. Without my father, perhaps we could not stand up. Not anymore. But instead, I settled under a tent, drinking water brought by a personable man, and staring out into the sea of bodies multiplying by the second.

After a few minutes of sticky silence, I caught Kian looking at me. "Whatever you're going to say, spit it out. I told you talking helps," I said, unscrewing the lid of the bottle and taking a quick sip. It did nothing to quench my thirst nor ease the scratchy feeling in the throat. "I looked ridiculous out there, didn't I? And my mother loves to bring a show with her."

"So...the seahorse," was Kian's only answer.

It was unhinged, and so, so not in the direction our conversation should be going that I snorted. And laughed.

I should not be laughing, but I was. And this boy across from me had been the sole reason every time I let out an out of turn chuckle.

Kian propped his weight on the flimsy foldable table meant to house relief goods. It was scraped clean now. "Fine. I suppose you deserve to know," I said, tilting my head towards him. The memory floated from the depths of my mind, bringing another smile to my lips. "That seahorse was the first drawing I gave him as a child. He loved it so much that he had it engraved on his wrist."

I clearly remembered the toothy smile I put on my lips as I handed the doodle to him. Papa, it's a seahorse! I love them, but I love you more! Those words were tainted with poisonous bitterness now. My father was a silly man. He showed his love by hurting himself. Today was not any different.

"I should not have gone out." A sigh ripped off my chest. I set the bottled water now drained to half on the table inches from Kian's thigh. It occurred to me he was in camo like those soldiers who carried rifles. But instead of a weapon to take lives, a cubical bag filled with medical supplies sat opposite the bottled water, his hand resting on it like a lifeline. "We'd all still be here if I hadn't been so bull-headed about it."

Kian slid the bag backward with a flourish. His face leaned closer to mine when he braced the rim of the table with his hands. "I lost my family in this war too," he said. "I know it's not going to make you feel better, but...yeah. They didn't even last a full year of the onslaught. And do you know what happened?"

"You're the only one who survived?" I supposed the sadness clouding his eyes and smiles was rooted in an equally strong emotion—guilt. Survivor's guilt, to be exact.

He bobbed his head. "And just like you, I thought I could save them," he said. "I volunteered to get groceries when a bomb landed straight on our house. I came back to cinders. Everyone—all of them were just...gone."

I pursed my lips. If I trust myself to speak now, I would probably say the wrong thing. "So believe me when I say I have been where you are," Kian continued. "I thought I was okay, but there are days when the truth sneaks up on me and I plunge into doom. Over and over again. There are some days I don't feel like existing, and my bed becomes a death prison I can't escape. And I wish and wish someone would tell me that it wasn't my fault, that these things happen in our time of war."

He smiled at me. "So, allow me to tell you now, Maian," he said. "It wasn't your fault. What happened was a cruel twist of events of wanting to save and be saved. You can't blame anyone other than those who started this pointless war."

He stayed where he was, but somehow, he felt closer. He was closer. "Is that why you're here?" I asked. "As a doctor?"

The sad smile revealed itself again. It should not belong to anything, even on his face. "I survived this long," he said with a shrug. "Might as well help people using this second chance. I should have died that day, but I didn't. That counts for something, right?"

Without thinking, I reached out and laid a hand on his. Against the dirty white of the table, his knuckles looked almost the same color. "Then, allow me to say the same thing someone told me." I raised my puffy eyes at him, giving him a smile of regret, of guilt, and of woe. "It's not your fault, Kian. Isn't that your wish—for someone to tell you that? It has never been your fault."

At that, Kian removed his grip from the table's ridge, taking mine properly. "I sure hope so," he whispered. It was weak enough to disappear into the roar of the tanks or the clatter of rifles being cleaned in the neighboring tent. "I sure hope so."

And hope, no matter how putrid the word started to sound in my head, was all any of us could have in our time of war.