Read (read: read) List

A list of all literary works I have read since I began reading the first of them.

A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of the Four - Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes (Short Stories) - Arthur Conan Doyle
Kapitan Sino - Bob Ong
Ang Paboritong Libro ni Hudas - Bob Ong
MacArthur - Bob Ong
Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan - Bob Ong
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
The Prestige - Christopher Priest
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Damned - Chuck Palahniuk
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
American on Purpose - Craig Ferguson
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Inferno - Dan Brown
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
(Short Stories) - Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket - Edgar Allan Poe
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Marley and Me - John Grogan
Noli Me Tangere - Jose Rizal
El Filibusterismo - Jose Rizal
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
The Revenant - Michael Punke
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
(Short Stories) - O. Henry
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith
The Shining - Stephen King
Cujo - Stephen King
The Running Man - Stephen King
Pet Sematary - Stephen King
It - Stephen King
Misery - Stephen King
Needful Things - Stephen King
Gerald's Game - Stephen King
The Green Mile - Stephen King
Lisey's Story - Stephen King
Blaze - Stephen King
Duma Key - Stephen King
Under the Dome - Stephen King
11/22/63 - Stephen King
Doctor Sleep - Stephen King
Four Past Midnight - Stephen King
Different Seasons - Stephen King
Joyland - Stephen King
Nightmares and Dreamscapes - Stephen King
On Writing - Stephen King
Rage - Stephen King

The Elevator Man (short story)

My life is a life full of running. In all directions, that is. But that’s the thing: you are always reduced into a constant race with time. Some people just sit and wait in a corner, while some people run and live the race. As for me, I run because running is what makes my life still.

                Now, here’s the picture: two men—one was a young teenager, on the left side and facing the door, and the other was an old man, on the right side and much nearer on his side of the wall than the young one—were standing inside a claustrophobic room, quietly, at least for some time. The young man was embracing a brown leather bag in his arms; the old man had his arms free, save for his right hand he put easily over the panel buttons on the side of the door before them. As time went on inside that elevator (as I have assumed you have probably assumed yourself what that room is), the young one was feeling an increasing discomfort within him. I should know—that young man was none other than me.

                “Are you alright, boy?” the old man, a so-called elevator man, asked. “You don’t seem alright, if I may say. You’re awfully very pale.”

                The young man looked slowly toward the old man, mistrustfully, I’d say.

                “You don’t look fine at all,” the old man said.

                “Just a…” the young man began. “Just…a little dizzy.”

                “Do you have a thing against closed rooms? Do you get all panicky when you’re inside one?”

                The young man had returned his eyes back on the closed door in front of them, and seemed to have not heard the questions recently asked by the old man.

                “Alright, I’d tell you now,” the old man said. “You’re running away from something, am I not right?”

                The young man glanced back at him, his attention utterly taken. A whole lot of sweat was threatening on the folds of his forehead, and if he could only see the look of his own face at that very moment, he’d laugh his butt off surely and forget in himself that that elevator ride was just the first one of the rides he had planned to take in but another escape attempt of his dear young life.

                “What did you say?” he asked, as if he did not hear what the old man had just said.

                “How many times have you run from something, Randy?”

                “How did you know my name?” The panic inside him had risen considerably up his throat now. “Who are you?”

                “An elevator guy,” the old man said. Randy, the young man’s name, had taken a few steps back away from him, instinctively. “Or, if you would allow me, I can be someone who can help you out with this new running of yours.”

                “Help?”

                “That’s right. I can offer you a hand in this escape.”

                Randy looked ponderously at the old man for a string of seconds. “Who are you, mister?”

                “My name is Danny.” The old man offered his hand for a shake, which Randy took reluctantly. “And I am going to tell you that I am not just any of your old, anonymous elevator man. I know a way out of everything.”

                “What are you trying to tell me, mister?” Randy asked.

                “Please, call me Danny,” the old man said. He moved his hand over to the floor buttons and pushed the button for the eighth floor. Currently, they were just cruising past the fourth floor and going down.

                “What are you doing?” Randy protested.

                “Relax,” Danny said. After he had pushed the “8” button, the elevator seemed to have come to a stop. The noise coming basically from the gliding of the elevator had turned into an eerie silence. Slowly, the numbers embossed on the other buttons started to disappear, leaving only the eighth floor button with a number. A few seconds after though, the number 8 slowly rotated counter-clockwise and stopped on a “lying” position, making it look like a mathematical symbol for infinity.

                “What’s happening?” Randy asked, frantically.

                “I’m showing you a way out of the trouble you’ve put yourself into, Randy. I’m offering you a hand, a friendly hand, that is.”

                Randy clutched his bag vehemently closer to him, although he was not at all conscious of it. The mystery enshrouding the old man, and the, let’s say, supernatural turnaround of things inside the elevator had caused him to absently lose hold of himself. Consequently, as cliché would suggest it, he thought he was just submerged in a very deep dream, and sometime later he would just wake up from all of it.

                But this isn’t no dream, Randy. Yes, it’s me, Danny, the elevator guy. Welcome to the place called “the past.”

                The elevator door opened to a bright, blinding light. Randy battled it off his eyes with his arms, inadvertently dropping the leather bag that he was holding them with. Gradually, the light dissipated and slowly showed to him what was outside the elevator as they had been standing inside it at the minute. A hallway, basically, the eighth floor hallway. But he remembered he had just been welcomed by the old man into a new place, apparently, which he called “the past.”

                Randy opened his eyes carefully, not knowing that the light had just been fainting out. When his vision had cleared out at last, he saw that it was not the eighth floor hallway that was waiting outside the elevator. He had somehow expected to see this different place, anyway. And he was also still clinging on the notion that what was happening was merely part of a dream.

                The opened elevator door led out into another room—someone’s bedroom. The ambiance implicit around it concurred with the nomenclature provided by the old man. It did look like a room inside a house inside an era of the past.

                “Take a step out, Randy,” the old man said. “I’ll follow you shortly.”

                Randy asked no further question. He stepped out of the elevator into the surreal room that looked sepia all over, and was quite unconscious of his steps. When out, he finally saw the entirety of the room. Danny was following him behind.

                “What is this place?” Randy asked.

                “The past,” Danny said. “To be exact, this is a room straight from sixty-seven years ago.”

                Randy’s eyes stretched in utter disbelief. “You mean to tell me that I have time-traveled sixty-seven fucking years into the past?”

                “Yes, you did.”

                “What are we doing here? This is your proposed way out for me?”

                Danny walked toward one side of the room, to a wall where a number of framed pictures were hanging, and stood specifically beside a large black-and-white photograph of a man staring dead-on toward every direction.

                “His name is Don Teofilo Villon,” he said. “He’s a doctor. And I’m sure you don’t know him.”

                “Yeah, I sure don’t. Who is he?”

                “Let me tell you a story. There was once a young Spanish adventurer many years ago who had joined the crew of a large Spanish ship named the Voyager. This adventurer’s name is Lopez. The Voyager was set on an expedition toward the Philippine islands, unbeknownst to them all that that would eventually be its last trip. So they sailed on for a month before they met a small canoe in the middle of the ocean which was just floating aimlessly. In that canoe was a famished, almost dying man who refused to talk who he was or what fate had beset him prior to that current time. The ship’s crew took the man in and provided him with much comfort, since they had expected that he would no sooner die. Lopez was the last man to see to him before he died; and without the knowledge of the other sailors, the dying man had told Lopez, before his last breath, about a large diamond he had swallowed during the mutiny of the ship’s crew he had last sailed with. The diamond was worth a fortune beyond all fortunes. He told Lopez that if he dies, and he’s sure it won’t be long then, he told him to slit a part of his stomach open and take the diamond. He did just as what he had been told.

                “When the others had heard of the man’s death and seen the wound in his stomach, they immediately thought Lopez had killed him, as opposed to letting the man die a natural death. Lopez was sentenced to a walk in the plank for his alleged crime. But before that, after he had taken the treasure from the dead man’s body, he had also swallowed it himself, lest the others would find it. He plunged the cold waters of the ocean and was left by the ship to his fate. Fortunately, another boat passed by the area after the first ship had gone a considerable distance away. He was taken in on that boat, which was coincidentally also headed toward the Philippines.

                “At the time of their arrival, Lopez immediately went about looking for a surgeon to get the diamond out of his stomach. That was how and when his path and Don Villon’s path eventually crossed. The doctor agreed to operate on him, after Lopez promised to give him a large part of the fortune that precious stone was worth. Unbeknownst to Lopez, Don Villon was planning to kill him off and take the treasure all to himself.”

                Danny paused speaking when suddenly a movement was seen from the other side of the room. There was a bed on that side where somebody had been lying beneath a couple of layers of blankets. Randy instantly knew who it was on the bed.

                “Shouldn’t we go now?” Randy asked.

                “No,” Danny said. “If you’re concerned about the man finding us here inside his room, then I’m telling you, that concern of yours is pointless. At the moment, we are but an inexistent pair of visitors relative to their timeframe. They cannot see us, they cannot feel our presence.”

                The door of the room located few steps away from the bed suddenly opened, permitting the entrance of a young woman. Her face had been drenched in tears as she slowly walked toward the man lying on the bed.

                “Who is she?” Randy asked.

                “She’s Don Villon’s daughter,” Danny answered. “Mary.”

                “Why is she crying?”

                “That is because, Randy, Don Villon is a dying man.”

                Randy observed the following sequence of events inside the room, and discovered another incredulous property of this peephole they were looking through. Don Villon’s daughter, who was sitting on the floor beside his father’s bed, was clearly mumbling some words. Randy could see her lips moving for him to deduce it. But in wonder of all wonders, not even a faint sound was audible from her. It had been like watching a motion picture in a TV that was set in mute.

                “We can only see, Randy,” Danny said, noticing the look of wonder on Randy’s face. “This part here has no audio yet.”

                “What is she saying?” Randy asked.

                “I don’t honestly have an idea. But what I do know is that Don Villon has to have someone to pass the diamond to now before he finally expires. As you can see, he has to do it as soonest as possible.”

                “He cannot possibly entrust that to his daughter. A woman!”

                “Exactly!”

                And Randy was struck with the quick understanding of everything before him.

                “I know who you’re running from, Randy,” the old man said. “I was just looking for a chance to confront you with this one of a time chance to relieve you of all your troubles.”

                “Who really are you? Don’t tell me this isn’t all just a dream.”

                “There are people pursuing you, dangerous people whom you have owed a large amount of money. This is your chance, Randy.”

                “I am dreaming,” Randy said, wandering about his place from disbelief.

                “Don Villon has already lost that diamond to history. Now, I’m giving you this precious opportunity to change that course of history and turn the tide in your favor. Imagine the treasure that lost gem can promise you, Randy. It’s a vastness of richness beyond measure.”

                Randy looked straight into the eyes of Danny, reading their depth.

                “Time is no more a luxury in your position,” Danny said. “You have to think about this now.”

                “No, I still have time,” Randy said. “I need time to think about this. I will get back here tomorrow. And by then you will have my decision. I need the treasure, I can comprehend as well its promised fate for me should I be able to obtain it from Don Villon, but I still have to think this over. Until now, these things haven’t gotten into the bottom of my mind yet.”

                Danny let out a brief sigh. “Alright. I’ll be just right here tomorrow. I shall expect you and your final decision. Be wise, Randy. Be wise.”

                Randy then quietly turned his back to the open door of the elevator. It looked very much a different world than the room of Don Villon. It was the world that he had lived for years. Turning his back to it to another one that was surely going to shed him from all his present troubles would surely be a matter needing of a heavy pondering. Deep within him, he was torn by two sides that were way much parted from each other.

                He got inside the elevator, waiting for Danny to move his way back in also. As soon as the old man had gone inside, Randy said to him, “You have to tell me everything I need to know about this dimension and this travel itself should I comply with your offer, Danny.”

                “Of course,” Danny said, fetching a smile on his lips.

                Randy needed the time to think, but at that very moment he had already been fixed on a final, irrevocable decision—Don Villon’s diamond, of course. Perhaps, he just needed the time to prove to himself that everything was not inside a dream.

                The next day, after managing to find a way through the people going after his tracks, he once again found his way inside the elevator, standing alone with Danny. The old man initiated that second meeting in a thought that Randy would be hesitant to talk first. And, as is usual, every time-travel should start with a smile.

                “So, is it a yes?” he asked.

                “Tell me the dos and don’ts,” Randy said.

                “Perfect!” The old man faced Randy and thrust his hand to the eighth floor button beside the elevator door. “Strap your safety belt for this one-of-a-hell journey, Randy.”

                “First, you’ve got to tell me if there’s a chance that I could go back in the present.”

                Danny seemed to have been taken aback, but he quickly regained himself. “Well, there is this one important rule we have to consider for this travel, quite connected to what you’ve just asked. You see, once a person has gone back in time through this elevator, all his memories of the present time will disappear from his mind. But no worries, since you would have the knowledge of a typical man of that era once you get there. You won’t be starting back as a baby inside an adult’s body.”

                “You say I won’t be remembering anything of the present?”

                “Yes. I should’ve told you yesterday, but I think it would not be a thing of concern for you now, given the past whereabouts that you are trying to run away from here.”

                Randy took a deep sigh. At first, his only reason in asking the question was to at least have a sure way out of the past if ever he should find himself in the middle of trouble again in there. Knowing a way out of something is always a rule. The news of the consequent total amnesia once in there was a bit of a surprise.

                But what was going to be a matter for consideration following that vanishing of his memories, anyway? He started thinking about the life he had led, the nineteen years he had spent in this fabric of time. There had been not a bright year, it seemed. He had no family, he had no friends, and hell! he couldn’t even find a point in his past that was worth keeping in memory. So maybe that would just be fine, losing his memory.

                But, “How can I get back here, in case?” He directed that question to the old man with total gravity.

                Danny looked at him in quiet awe. “How can you get back here?” was the first thing he could say after spending some seconds in silence.

                “Yeah, in case,” Randy said.

                “Perhaps we can do something about that,” Danny said, hesitantly so. “But you won’t be remembering anything, anyway. You won’t be aware that you came here in the first place.”

                “In case, Danny,” Randy said, almost in a whisper.

                “Alright.” Danny heaved a deep sigh. “I know it’s an odd thing to suddenly live in a life that is not yours firstly. We have enough secrets in this world to try and come up with another one. I know you won’t be comfortable, in any way, concealed behind the fact that you’re living in a completely foreign world, much more a completely foreign era.

                “So here’s what I’m thinking you should do. Once you get out of this elevator and into the past, inside Don Villon’s room, you will take the diamond from him, and find your way back to these doors.” (He pointed toward the ones of the elevator.) “Of course, it won’t be visible anymore from your reference point inside the past, but I will you show the trick of it. And of course, I will tell you where the diamond is hidden.”

                Randy’s face seemed to beam with excitement, though he actually tried to keep it from the old man.

                Danny took out a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket, wrote something, and continued, “Bring this. Hold on to this so that you could read it at once.”

                On the paper was written: “I HAVE TRAVELED BACK IN TIME. I SHOULD ASK NO QUESTIONS. I SHOULD GO OUT OF THIS ROOM AND GET INSIDE THE ROOM DIRECTLY ACROSS THIS ONE. ONCE INSIDE, I SHOULD GO TO THE CABINET BESIDE THE BED OPEN THE DRAWER AND GET THE BOX INSIDE. THE DIAMOND I HAVE COME HERE FOR IS IN THERE. THEN I SHOULD GO BACK TO THE FIRST ROOM AND STAND BY THE WINDOW WHERE I HAVE COME FROM. I SHOULD CLOSE MY EYES AND THINK ABOUT THE YEAR 2014. JUST THINK OF THE NUMBER. REMEMBER NO QUESTIONS!”

                Randy looked dubiously at the old man after he had read what was on the paper.

                “Just focus, Randy,” Danny said. “This is the only, and might just be the perfect way, for you not to get stuck in the past.”

                “Okay,” Randy said. The situation called for him to stay silent, as he tried to make a final pondering about what he was about to do. But the game had been fixed in his mind. He folded the paper into a lengthwise strip and put it between his two fingers. He looked at Danny, now with a seeming gratitude, and said, “Thank you.”

                “Always be happy to help,” Danny said.

                The door of the elevator finally opened, and the gloomy interior of Don Villon's room appeared before them like a sick old man on a hospital bed appears before you—as gloomy as the room itself, it had seemed. Randy glanced for the last time at Danny, smiled a little, and then took his first step out of the elevator. Officially, if it would be a great deal (as it apparently would), he was now standing in two time eras at the same time.

                The elevator door closed behind him in a slow, thrilling fashion, and for a thousandth time in his furthest memory, he felt alone. But then he thought, there is no need to worry about the breadth of my memory anymore—I'm going to lose it in a second now...

                In a second now.

                He looked around the room, curiously. He recalled the first time he got here that he hadn't been this curious as to look around the details inside this room. The bed was there on the far wall, sheets bulging and taking the shape of the old man lying beneath them. A continual rising and falling of them indicated the pace of the man's breathing. And then he remembered that the man was actually in the last moments of his life now. And he remembered...

                Remembered?

                Wait a sec.

                I cannot possibly remember anything. And I, yes I. It all goes back to me now. The Randy who's been running and running from almost everything.

                This can't be right! I look around the room faster now, and I feel the paper slipped between the fingers of my hand. Danny's note.

                I HAVE TRAVELED BACK IN TIME. I SHOULD ASK NO QUESTIONS.

                But I am filled with them now. I read the next lines and feel odd about it than ever. I decide to do what is just asked of me by the note. I run out of the room as fast as my feet could, finding the said room across this first one. And then at that point, all memories suddenly come back into me. Every memory I have of this room, and of this house, and of this era, apparently. I am starting to remember. But understanding is still out of the question.

                The room before me now, I know it. Yes, I know whose it is. The vague thoughts following the sight of it—cloudy thoughts of the past.

                Past?

                Which past?

                By then, I have remembered: For years, I have actually been putting the future into my past.

                But I am referring to another past this time. I cannot make my mind to concur with it, but apparently, there seem to be two fabrics of the past that I have lived through. The one which introduced me to Danny, the elevator man, and the past I have with this house.

                And then it starts to become clear. The rule. The important rule of this time-travel. All your memories of the present time will be lost in your mind—and the reason why the memories I have before I took the elevator ride aren't lost right now is because that time is not my present time.

                The door across me suddenly opens, and behind it stands a young woman—a familiar young woman, she is. Her cloudy eyes stretch to a width when she sees me, like she hasn't seen me for eternity. And eternity, it may have actually been.

                “Randy?” she says, in her broken voice.

                “Mary?”

                “I thought I wouldn't see you anymore!” She breaks down into more tears as she throws herself to me, embracing me with a grip that is a clear implication of how badly she has yearned for it. “I know you wouldn't leave me. I know you didn't mean what you said.”

                “Mary.” And I cannot bring myself to add more words to that. The very memory of what and why Mary has clasped me as she has starts to seep into my mind now—a memory involving her, an unexpected news, my want to escape from it, Don Villon's threat, and a mad scientist. Sixty-seven years into the future, the latter has said.

                I have entered the time machine to escape her, and her father's will to kill me for deciding to elude my responsibility. Don Villon is not dying! Yes, Don Villon is old but he can still grab a diamond and push it down into my throat like any Tuesday. And what diamond? There is no fucking diamond! The shithead Danny has only invented a backstory enough to convince me to get inside this hellhole! (Unfortunately, what has been my original hellhole.)

                “Please don't leave us, Randy,” Mary says, amidst the chaos inside my head. She is rubbing her belly as she speaks. “We need you. Little Danny needs you here.”

                Danny?

                And my mind shuts off in that instant like a movie cuts to black.

(end)

How The Rain Fell Upward and Why Trunks is the Weirdest Anime Character Name Ever

It wasn't a caricature of something big that was going to happen. I mean, a girl, standing there, barely even noticing you: what tell-tale hint could anyone come up to expect that, say, a supernova was going to happen some light years away from Earth, or that a birthday candle would be blown out in some household somewhere? There was nothing really. Only that I knew that she was a sad person herself. Like me. Like I was back then.

My life wasn’t the exciting and excited type the other people of my age used to lead back then. If there was any concrete description of a normal student’s life, mine was a notch or two below that level. As early as kindergarten school, I already knew about my incapacity to build and bloom the social side of my life. Imagine you were a loner and a weird kid with a penchant for dissecting the map of the Philippines into its regions and drawing them apiece on a paper. That was the illustrators of our HeKaSi books were. And I also did that for pastime.

Fourth grade saw me crushing on a classmate. And it took a good many years before I realized how blindingly awkward it had been during those times when I was spending every damn time in grade school wanting to be that girl’s boyfriend. Graduating from College and starting to squeeze myself into the real world, I happened to find my copy of our Elementary graduation picture. It was taken right after the Baccalaureate mass. We all stood on the steps of the elevated park outside the church, and with the usual set-up. The taller students stood on the topmost step, down, down, until it came to us the shorter ones on the first step. I stood on the leftmost side. I was the shortest in the class. On my right was another classmate, a few inches taller than me, and the next one was the girl of my utopian fancy. I looked at her and thought, damn if that face had belonged to the era of the Trojan horse, it definitely would have sent a thousand more ships than Helen’s. But then I felt my heart sank, not with some affectionate nostalgia, but with—I don’t know, embarrassment? The hell I feel embarrassed? The woman was almost a foot taller than me! That’s like a frog crushing on a fucking whale.

But anyway, I didn’t end up getting her, so might I as well carry on leaving that in my memory lane. I only had proved some point. When I was a kid, when everything I could describe myself with rhymes with naïve, I didn’t look at the woman’s body and said I gotta have a piece of that. No. That at the early stages of romantic inclinations, a man’s heart knows no criteria of how chiseled a woman’s body is so he can get attracted to her.

Eventually, all good feelings must pass, and to the tune of “Through the Years” we parted.

High school was a little like Elementary school. The only differences are: that in High school all the teachers are given their own space each in a faculty office, while in Elementary, a teacher has his/her house inside the classroom he/she is handling; that in High school there are no CR’s inside the classroom, so there is no need for a student’s father to volunteer to do the carpentry in constructing one in each of the Elementary school’s classrooms; that in High school the students go to the canteen outside the classroom during recess, and not lining up inside for the snack tray; that in High school a flag ceremony is done only once a week; and especially that in High school all subjects are freaking hard; and—I mean, screw this: High school is a whole lot different from Elementary!

After all, change is constant. If I’d only allowed myself to age without the person that I was to age with it, I never would have realized that one profound point in my High school life. When I saw her, when I heard her talk, when I watched her walk the aisle toward the front of the class, I abruptly said to myself: “If this swan doesn’t float on my heart’s lake, then the tractor would not run over the grass that sings to the melody of the moon on its first quarter.” Yeah, that is, I didn’t fucking understand what I felt. It was like deciding to stop Earth and start at once with Heaven. (And I don’t mean dying.) Sometimes you just have to set aside the reality and take yourself into the wonderful world between the stretched arms of Spongebob.

And like all period romance, it doesn’t get any better than fighting yourself out of numerous competition. Let us call out all the aspirants, shall we:

First, there is me—a small, silent, awkward, piece of writing desk that Alice couldn’t answer. I came from the land-of-don’t-leave-your-doors-open, a place where being lost in its interior is like having coffee on a Tuesday.

Then there’s this guy—a bully magnet, artistic, probably from Pluto. He came from a place where blah blah blah.

Then there’s this other guy—squirmy, flatulent, oh-hell-whatever-he-was.

Then finally this guy—the seeker of Ravenclaw, if the snitch is a small ball of attention, a footy shooter who hates the board enough to spank it in the forehead, and a crying lady. I mean dude. Because, he cries. Is all.

And so commenced the heated competition between us four. As for me, I did the best of what I do best—sitting on my chair, stealing glances at her like I was a stroboscopic light who can’t get enough of her sunshine, and keeping my calm. Also, I wrote poems for her. I went all Shakespeare and all Poe and all Leav at that span. And though I didn’t know what poems could do for my cause, I kept writing. Hoping one day someday she’ll notice that somewhere around the classroom, some stranger was weaving words in her name just because he couldn’t megaphone them in front of her. In the end, she didn’t. Or she may possibly have, but didn’t have the same tide washing over her to resonate with mine. But “you can reply even without the measure and the rhymes, my sweet, all I care is that maybe just maybe you’ll see me as I see you.” In the end, all hope must stop. That had been three years of unrequited puppy love.

After that, I thought I learned a lesson. But history history. It never learns how not to repeat.

College was a tough biz. So tough I and a friend had to keep a list of the Top Ten Chikababes around the campus a la Watchmojo and shit. That’s right, we were the Chicksmeter correspondents you never heard of. And looking back, I can only say the same thing to myself about that shenanigan (the list, not the friend)—why was this certain girl on the number one spot for the whole duration of my first year? Because shit, that’s why.

I found I was in the quicksand again, slowly burying myself in the grains of this psychedelic swarm of thoughts, or lack thereof. You know the routine. But this time, I progressed to the point that I can at once talk to her, or she at once can find a listening ear in me. For the next sequence of months, I inadvertently enrolled myself once again in the lessons of hopeless romantics. There can be no denying. I had been a resident of the friendzone before the place was universally publicized around the Internet. And you know who the heck abetted a finger to send me in that zone? That’s right, the shenanigan (the friend now, not the list). When the news came to me, I reacted like a silent movie star—silent, emotion-jabbed, my thoughts running in a very low frames-per-second rate. As if I had the right to despise him, though.

But all’s well that ends well. In the end, I fared just the same in this game, and he ended up without her. So close friends we remained, making sure we’d always have a good laugh on everything that happened.

And I remained the hopeless boy who had all heart to write it out, but couldn’t get a girl to listen. And maybe entrap her with it. So I decided to put my pen down, focused on Math, and did every bit of deed to be a typical College student.

I was a good boy. I thought of it like I thought I had been the one destined to prove the Goldbach’s conjecture. Because for anyone who isn’t aware, yes we do live in a world where there still abound questions and curious propositions that yet need to be proven if true and disproven if false. Goldbach had made a simple one. He believed that every prime number is a sum of two even numbers. Beautiful, isn’t it? Yet no one can tell for sure whether it’s true or otherwise. Much like love and finding one. It’s simple, beautiful, yet you would have to dig to the ends of the world just to quite realize it. (For the record, I already have proven the Goldbach’s conjecture, but the margin of this page is too narrow to contain it.)

I was a good boy because I was sincere. Through all the women in the past whom I have come to knock the doors of, I believed of my sincerity. And yes, I was.

Eventually I found a flicker of a light. But that was it, only a meaningless tiny bit of light. College was slowly burning out.

Stealing the Silence

“One day I’ll see you

Shedding your tears for me

Someday you’ll feel it

The warmth I tried to give

Will you go crying

Because I didn’t try?

Don’t steal my silence

Don’t blow away in here

Keep my stillness

Back in place

That day i'll see you

Fall away from the dark

This way i'll try to

Walk a step from us

Will you go trying

Because i didn't cry

Don't steal my silence

Don't blow away in here

Keep my stillness

Back in place

If we try to hide

Will we have the chance

To make this right

But it's over now

Don't steal my silence

Don't blow away in here

Keep my stillness

Back in place for me

Don't steal my silence

Don't blow away in here

Keep my stillness

Back in place

But i still love you.”

There’s a reason you haven’t heard of that song or even any line of the lyrics. Because it’s fucking cat litter. But believe it or not, this was the song that brought me into the doorstep of this girl, who opened the door even before I came knocking, and ushered me in even before I could completely bring myself back together from the abrupt turn of events. This is called a snapshot of love.

Everybody should have one of that. Or at least one. Anyway, that is how Mitch Albom had put it, so you can stick any argument back up your tongue now.

For quite the first time I began to understand the essence of being in love. When you get appreciated and all you do seems apple in their eyes, all you ever want to do is to grow apples. No, seriously, all you want to do is to do what you’re doing in the best possible way that you can do it. I thought I could poem my way in to this girl, but she preferred them with a tune. And though I needed to right-click-restore my singing voice from the recycle bin and had to call for a rocker-friend to do CPR on my guitar, I was able to scrape a song from my scanty knowabouts in songwriting. And though I wrote a 3-minute scraping noises on a tin roof, she said it was good, then said it was soulful, then a little sugar on top of that, then eventually she told me the voice was for anyone to fall for. If that understates it, it would feel like looking over the critical reception section of your novel’s Wikipedia page and reading that it was universally acclaimed. Then suddenly I realized, oh yes, my voice had just been universally acclaimed, knowing that I had first realized she had begun to transform into my own personal universe.

I was always sincere. I was always a good boy. We kept communication, and I didn’t miss a second letting her know that I cared for her. There were maybe some things we cannot confront each other with, but we went on knowing that we were not straying from the typical boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. The first month was flawless and happy, but the second one made a mirror-crystallography-wallpaper-group-stuff-you-don’t-possibly-know. (You will hate me for using that too many hyphens, but imagine reading it with hashtags instead.) Okay, I’ll elaborate it, non-Math gecko. The second month was all ice and neglect and doom. Not even nearing the halfway of it, I already knew that I was about to be looking at myself at the back of a car’s trunk, heading to the lessons in hopeless romantics. To no one’s surprise, she later gave me a night of bullshit break-up clichés in a mall’s parking lot, with all my friends enjoying shit inside, and all her friends enjoying the same shit, and she slowly pulling herself away from me. I didn’t have questions raised. I didn’t have any protests made. I looked at her, and looked at the only woman who dared tell me my voice was that awesome, my tune that eclectic, and me in general that worthy to be spent time with. I was looking at her and simply was just too hurt to dare move. But I loved that stupid girl, even while I was under that particular moonlight, when everything seemed to be wrong.

I drank with Brendon Urie and Patrick Stump afterward, and from them I heard the best pieces of advice you can give to a heartbroken person. Brendon said that lying is the most fun thing a girl can have without taking her clothes off. And then Patrick said something but his lawyers made him change it so he wouldn’t get sued. He simply said, “Oh, oh.”

It wasn't a caricature of something big that was going to happen. It was how the broken roads should be blessed.

A girl, standing there, barely noticing you. What could possibly happen?

I stood just outside the Fullybooked entrance, waiting. That’s how every great event is supposed to start. If people don’t pay time in waiting, no great magic trick is ever performed, no high-end technology is ever mustered, no driver’s license is ever issued. So I waited.

Then we walked toward the open field outside the mall, sat on the grass, and started drinking each of our Coke float. I didn’t know I was meeting with a lawnmower because all she did was to pick every blade of grass growing around her. But I understood her perfectly well. All I ever did myself was looking around, pretending to be cool enough not to start a conversation. But hell it isn’t cool. The awkward afternoon rolled by awkwardly. The last time we were there, with both of us in presence together, I was with her cousin, and she was with another guy.

Bastards be judging me, and I had even judged myself at first, but forgive me if there is that pricking sensation in you hearing that I was dating the cousin of my former sweet. It shall very soon pass, maybe even that of her mother’s.

When you’re into someone, you only sang the sweetest melody as far as your heart is concerned. When you fall for someone, everyone else whom you had fallen for in the past are just tiles on the sidewalk of your memory lane. They’re just there, and they don’t lay a finger on your every move in the present. When you love someone, it is just that someone and everything else doesn’t matter. Maybe that was what put the awkward away from that nascent pursuit of happiness I was weighing to partake or not. I took my leap of faith.

I obtained far more understanding of love and its other drugs when I met her. I thought I was the good boy, not in the sense that I thought now that I was insincere, but because she showed me that there are these faults in our stars, in the constellation that I was prepared to give. She showed me how bad I am in some aspects, but then made me realize that I could be better. And who in the face of the Earth is not going to fall for that kind of girl? Justin Bieber, I guess? (Because he’s a girl too?)

I used to realize my dreams just because I wanted them. But now, I realized them all because I love them, and I love being in the time when they would actually come true. She brought me into that realization because she had then become my biggest dream. And how lovely, how utopian, how sunrise-sunset-spectacular would it be to start living the rest of my life with her!  There were no more lessons in hopeless romantics. There are instead lessons in dreams coming true, in love finally requited—and I am a fucking PhD of it all.

(Also, the rain fell upward because Youtube did an awesome barrel roll, and Trunks is the weirdest name because, hey who names their child Trunks?)