Page 6 of Signal No. Us

This definitely wasn’t his first encounter with a cock today.

But this? This felt like the start of a whole different storm.

CHAPTER 2

Allan woke up the second time to actual daylight, and that particular ache of a body that had slept in yesterday’s clothes.

He found the whole house awake and operating at BEBES volume. Breakfast was tapsilog and an inquisition.

“So,” Tita Becky said, sliding a plate in front of him like this was a hostage negotiation. “Bakit ngayon lang? What took you so long to come home?”

“I got laid off,” Allan said, then reconsidered. “Fine. I resigned. Before they could ‘realign’ me into a ghost.”

“Realign,” Tita Yolanda repeated, tasting the word like it was spoiled bagoong. “Sounds like an exorcism.”

“That’s Manila for you,” Tita Gemma said, shaking her head. “It eats its young.”

“I’m twenty-eight, Tita. Not a kid anymore.”

“You’re still a kid to me,” she said, unfazed, and ladled more rice onto his plate as if volume could undo a decade.

Cora came in from the yard, a wet umbrella in one hand. She’d been up before any of them, apparently, checking on a neighbor’s roof, negotiating with the barangay tanod about a stray goat, the usual retired-principal turned senior citizen association president errands that somehow filled an entire morning.

“Ma,” Allan said carefully, once she’d sat, “seriously, what did the doctor actually say?”

She sighed like he’d asked her to explain long division to a class that refused to pay attention.

“Mini stroke,” she said again. “Blood pressure. Stress. I need to rest, exercise, cut back on the bagoong.” She glanced pointedly at the bagoong dish in front of her, then took a spoonful anyway. “Don’t be dramatic, Allan. I’m not dying tomorrow.”

Tita Becky leaned toward Tita Yolanda and didn’t bother lowering her voice. “That’s another few hundred gone on her Amlodipine this month, you know. Plus, the aspirin now, every morning, since the scan.” They’d gotten her in for the brain scan that same week, apparently, the doctor in Virac not willing to wait on that part. “And now the doctor wants a quarterly scan in Virac on top of it.” She ticked it off on her fingers like a grocery list.

Cora set her spoon down hard enough to click against the bowl and lifted her chin the exact half-inch she used to reserve for a student caught passing notes.

“Becky.”

“Relax, chinichika ko lang naman,” Tita Becky said, already reaching for more rice, the matter, as far as she was concerned, closed.

“I didn’t say—” Allan tried again.

“I saw it on your face,” Cora said. “That look, like it’s already over. Relax. We’re on a break, not at the end of the world.”

Ver called from Legazpi mid-breakfast, his face pixelating on Cora’s ancient tablet propped against the achara jar, still in the polo shirt he wore for his logistics manager job at a consumer goods distributor, the kind of job that had him living out of Legazpi three weeks out of four.

“Hey! You’re still alive?” Ver said, grinning through choppy signal. “Robby said you almost went down in the bathroom.”

“That happened because someone left soap on the floor,” Allan said.

“A soap crime scene, really?” Ver laughed. “Okay, take care of yourselves there. I’ll see you this week; help Mama with the prep. I’m getting married; this feels surreal!”

“Awwww…our Kuya Ver is finally getting married,” Tita Yolanda said, dabbing a dry eye theatrically. “We lived long enough to see it.”

“Tita naman… it’s giving dramarama sa hapon,” Allan said, candidly, before Ver dropped the call.

Robby appeared halfway through the second round of rice, dressed properly this time, a faded shirt with a DRRM logo peeling at the chest, cargo shorts, hair damp and pushed back. He looked, Allan thought with some resentment, disgustingly good for someone who’d been screaming a bad cover of the Backstreet Boys very, very early in the morning.

“Morning,” Robby said to the room, then, to Allan specifically, with the ghost of a smirk: “Safe from bathrooms now?”

“I have filed a formal complaint with management,” Allan said. “You’re still on the list of suspects.”