The Boyfriend App 3.0: Touch E-Book

Phenomenal Pen

• Herausgeber: Phenomenal pen
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

ONLINE IS SO OVERRATED

To escape the prison-like discipline of Camp Unplugged, Nathaniel “Nate” Policarpio makes a secret call to his Korean half-brother and K-pop star Kim Ji-hoon, a.k.a. Shadow. Shadow comes to his rescue and the two escape on a motorcycle while being pursued by camp counsellor Trinidad “Miss Perfect” Blanca. Nate and Shadow get into an accident and Shadow dies while Nate becomes a quadriplegic.

Kate Lapuz is still searching for her virtual boyfriend Ecto. He deleted his own avatar after making a promise to Mrs. Lapuz to stay away from her daughter. Kate believes Ecto still exists and is wandering the Internet without a home. 
               

Leseprobe

ONLINE IS SO OVERRATED

To escape the prison-like discipline of Camp Unplugged, Nathaniel “Nate” Policarpio makes a secret call to his Korean half-brother and K-pop star Kim Ji-hoon, a.k.a. Shadow. Shadow comes to his rescue and the two escape on a motorcycle while being pursued by camp counsellor Trinidad “Miss Perfect” Blanca. Nate and Shadow get into an accident and Shadow dies while Nate becomes a quadriplegic.

Kate Lapuz is still searching for her virtual boyfriend Ecto. He deleted his own avatar after making a promise to Mrs. Lapuz to stay away from her daughter. Kate believes Ecto still exists and is wandering the Internet without a home. 

The Boyfriend App 3.0:

Touch

Phenomenal Pen

Epigraph

I know my kingdom awaits

And they've forgiven my mistakes

I'm coming home

I'm coming home

Tell the world I'm coming home

- Skylar Grey, Coming Home Part II

Prologue: The Blackout

Nestled in the rolling foothills of Laurel, Batangas is a picturesque resort-subdivision called Woodland Vista. Spanning 300 hectares, it’s made up of townhouses, condominiums, condotels, pools, private estates, a golf course, a country club and a hotel. Tonight though, it’s just a fathomless pool of inky blackness because there’s an unscheduled power interruption from its energy provider, BATELEC II.

Approximately twelve hours ago and 45 kilometers away, a kite got entangled on a power line in Barangay Biga, Sto. Tomas. The anonymous kite-flyer was unharmed but their kite caused a chain reaction of misery that started in the controlling breaker and reached hundreds of thousands of households across one city and four towns along the northeastern rim of Taal Lake. The power has been so erratic that parents were forced to turn off appliances and grudgingly took out candles and hand fans. Kids had to content themselves with just listening to tunes to conserve the battery of their smartphones.

But the rich retirees scattered inside gated and exclusive Woodland Vista have backup generators. To the solitary night jogger running along the dark streets of the subdivision, the townhouses of those rich folks look as resplendent as the entrance of theme parks. The night jogger feels a stab of self-pity because the only light he’s carrying is a cellphone – and a brick phone at that. To be precise, he’s holding up a Nokia 3310 to light his way. The phone model is probably as old as him. 

The light from the phone’s screen floats like a lonely firefly in the endless expanse of darkness. Because Woodland Vista is in the hills, when it goes dark, it goes pitch-black. To make matters worse, the moon is a no-show tonight. The night jogger sees in powerless Woodland Vista the visual equivalent of the local idiom “engulfed by heaven and earth”.

In the 53 days that Nathaniel “Nate” Policarpio has stayed (against his will) in Camp Unplugged, which is based in Woodland Vista, he experienced over ten power outages; a clear insight into the frequency of such interruptions in that backwater. Nate knows too well because he scritched a tally mark on the wall of his room for every single outage. Camp Unplugged is certainly living up to its name, over and beyond its mission of being an Internet addiction rehabilitation center.

Nate twists his hand to glance at the battery meter of the 3310. In the few seconds that the glow of the screen touches his face, it reveals his big, hazel eyes with the long eyelashes. Around them, his complexion is dark olive with warm undertones. His eyes are restless and popping as they register the last two bars of the meter. 

Don’t die on me, buddy, Nate thinks to himself. Even though the 3310 is as indestructible as Mjölnir, this particular gadget didn’t come in a box with a charger that he could’ve used behind Miss Perfect’s back.

Miss Perfect. Trini Blanca. Vice-President and prefect of Camp Unplugged. Warden and psycho psychologist. She wouldn’t be too happy tomorrow to discover that Nate had left behind the oldest trick in the book: pillows mimicking the contours of a human body and covered with his blanket. Unfortunately, he still had to take his QD dose of Vortioxetine at the 9-pm flashlight check because Miss Perfect always checks in case he just tucked the tablet under his tongue. End result: he’s now feeling a bit woozy.

What ifMiss Perfect is somehow already clued up on my escape plan, Nate thinks darkly. Maybe right thismoment she’s waiting at the rendezvous point with a couple rottweilers.

He shivers at the thought. Of course Camp Unplugged doesn’t keep any guard dogs but he wouldn’t put it past Miss Perfect to be so vindictive. He tries to steady his breathing and sees clouds of vapor in front of his face. He shivers again because the air is a crisp 19ºC and he’s only wearing a shirt, shorts and flip-flops. All his hoodies and jackets are in the ROTC camo backpack that he has hastily packed.

Nate arrives at the rotary at the top of the sloping street of Phase 2, a couple of blocks from the chapel. The rendezvous point looks dark upon his approach and there’s no sign of a living soul anywhere. Did his big bro miss the Welcome to Nasugbu arch and, next to it, the turn to Diokno Highway? Being a foreigner, it would be easy for hyung (big bro) to keep driving straight into the wrong town.

Just as Nate is about to have a panic attack, he hears a distinct click and the sound of a motorcycle starting. The Cyclopean glare of the headlight dazzles him.

PART 1: Shadow

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

- Pablo Neruda, I Love You Without Knowing How

Chapter 1: Bros

“Jjajan!” Kim Ji-hoon greets in the tune of the Netflix logo: jja-jan.

“Jajangmyeon!” Nate blurts out and, clutching his chest, mutters: “Kkamjjagiya…”

His hyung giggles. He’s seven years older but Nate often acts more mature than him. Nate supposes it’s because of their different upbringing.

What Nate has just said is a private joke between them. His first word is nonsensical. It’s the name of Korean noodles with black sauce, eaten by brokenhearted, shaved-headed single men on Black Day. The second word translates to “you scared me”, which is a bit too literal for a Filipino like Nate who prefers to utter less filtered exclamations like “ay” and “oh my god” when surprised.

Nate looks at the K-pop star with longing and adulating eyes. Kim Ji-hoon, whose stage name is Shadow, stands almost seven feet tall. His handsome face is currently hidden by a black helmet but it’s him all right. He’s wearing a sleek leather jacket, fingerless gloves and leather pants; black from head to foot except for a pair of faint green Antlia Yeezy Boost 350 V2. The sneakers were supposed to be released only at select retailers in Europe, Russia, and Ukraine around the end of this month. (Nate has managed to keep abreast of the outside world through actual paper copies of Manila Bulletin on Camp Unplugged’s coffee table.)

“You’re late. Your engine’s still warm,” Nate nags in Korean, referring to the RPM, which he’s able to tell by ear alone. The motorcycle’s smooth idling signals a happy engine.

Nate has just toned down his relief at finding his hyung and their getaway vehicle. It’s his way of saying I missed you and Am I glad to see you. 

“Don’t blame me,” Shadow replies in Korean. “Blame the Woodland Vista website. This ain’t Tagaytay. This is Batangas.”

His intonation is everywhere especially when he says Philippine place names.

“Geureom,” Nate says matter-of-factly. “It’s marketing for the tourists. They’ve stretched out Tagaytay and called it Metro Tagaytay. They’re billing it as ‘the second Summer Capital of the Philippines’.”

Shadow taps a button on his helmet and the electrochromic visor instantly switches from tinted to clear, revealing cute, almond-shaped and single-lidded eyes. The other differences between the half-brothers are the peek of Shadow’s skin, which is pale white, and the fact that he’s wearing red contact lenses. To complete the vampire look, he also has on smoky eye makeup, which means he came straight from his concert at the Mall of Asia Arena, 70 kms north from here.

“Summer Capital?” Shadow echoes. “Isn’t that supposed to be Baguio?”

He takes off the full-face helmet and reveals, below a black wave cap, the chiseled face with the v-shaped jaw that so many fangirls swoon over. He sweeps off the cap and flips his trademark dreads left and right.

At this moment, Nate feels like crying. It never gets old. Kim Ji-hoon a.k.a. Shadow, leader of the five-member boy band MXO (short for Monte X-O), is on a first-name basis with him. Sure, Nate signed a slew of NDAs so he can’t really tell anyone that they’re related. Everyone knows Shadow as this big-shot celebrity but to Nate, he’s just hyung.

Nate fought back the tears because he can’t be seen crying by hyung. Real men don’t cry.

“Yeah,” Nate replies, low-keying the breaking of his voice with a cough. “That’s why I said ‘second Summer Capital’.”

“Oh, so like you and me. You’re the second popstar of the Philippines.”

“Aniya,” Nate refuses empathically. “I’m the illegitimate kid who’s sent to a paramilitary camp because his mother and stepfather are embarrassed of him. I’m no idol material.”

Even though Shadow’s motorcycle, a brand-new-looking Yamaha MT-09, has warmed up enough and Nate doesn’t want to stay a second longer near Camp Unplugged, they make idle chit-chat because they both know they won’t be able to talk properly once they ride.

“Or maybe you’re a slacker who was banished here after you got caught playing Dungeon Raydens 36 hours straight. You ever think of that?”

The exact words Shadow used are “teng tengi”, which mean play hooky. Nate thinks Shadow, of all people, should understand how addictive Dungeon Raydens is because the game maker is South Korean after all.

“Be that as it may,” Nate says, “they should’ve just sent me to North Korea. I think that place is better than this hell.”

Nate used the English word “hell”. It’s mild among Koreans but very apt for a place like Camp Unplugged. He was thinking of the neologisms Hell Joseon and Tal-Jo. But between two Korean guys, there’s seldom a need for potty-talk euphemisms.

“Don’t be so dark,” Shadow says in English. “Be Marvel. Don’t be DC.”

That’s another private joke between them because Shadow likes Marvel movies (his fave superhero is Thor) while Nate is a die-hard Batman fan.

“I can’t help being dark,” Nate blurts out, “cause there’s literally a blackout!”

They both fall quiet, get into an impromptu staring contest, and then burst out laughing. They laugh so long and hard that Nate finally grips his stomach in pain. But it’s a good kind of hurt. This is like old times with hyung.

“Seriously though,” Shadow says, “you’re smarter than this, Nate. And you’ve got so much raw talent. It just feels like a sin letting all that go to waste. When are you going to audition for SM Entertainment?”

“Nollijima…”

“Who’s joking? I’m not joking. I’ve heard you sing, bro. You’ve got the voice of an angel. We both got that from appa.”

“Maybe I can sing. But I can’t dance for s**t.”

“If I told you once, I told you half a dozen times: Anyone…”

“… can dance,” Nate finishes, nodding like a bobblehead puppy.

“Just pretend nobody’s watching you. That’s what I do. You think I dance for other people? Fat chance. I dance for myself. To relieve my stress. When I’m dancing, that’s the only time I feel I’m free.”

Shadow extends his motorcycle helmet to Nate. “Here.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Try it on, du****s. What else are you going to do with it? You drive.”

“Jinjjah?” Nate asks incredulously.

“Jinjjah. This baby’s yours so you’d better break it in.”

“Holy…” Nate squeals and excitedly puts on the helmet.

Shadow knows that riding is Nate’s passion. Nate started with a dirt bike when he was three and then moved up to a pocketbike and also through the various racing categories. By the time he was ten, he’d been joining club races on the Boomland kart track in Pasay City – and winning. He had a small shrine of trophies and medals in his room. But then his mom started discouraging him from becoming a pro racer because it wasn’t a profitable career. That was about the same time that his mom remarried.

The final straw happened last year when Nate experienced a motorcycle crash. A kid was playing with a basketball on the sidewalk and suddenly darted across the road to chase the ball. Nate only had a second to veer away and slammed against a low concrete barrier. There was one exhilarating moment of weightlessness as he flew off the saddle, sailed through the air and landed smack dab on, thankfully, something springy: a bed of oranges in polystyrene boxes sitting on a sidewalk rolling store, which was a kind of store under a beach umbrella and on top of a cart.

Nate only suffered minor injuries and the kid was unharmed, but his motorcycle was totaled. There was orange juice all over him and everywhere. When the police arrived, the kid was nowhere to be found and no eyewitness was willing to come forward to testify to Nate’s innocence. Nate chose to keep mum about the whole thing and be presumed guilty because the kid looked like his family didn’t have the financial means to get a lawyer or cover any of the damages (to Nate and the sidewalk fruit vendor, who of course had no vending permit). 

In the end, his driver license got suspended. His stepdad begrudged having to pay the court fines and, since then, no one has made any attempt to pay the hefty fee to get his license restored. Not even Nate himself. A big reason is because he’s still shaken by the accident. He keeps thinking what could’ve happened if he hadn’t managed to swerve away in time. Nate gathered all the racing trophies and medals in his room, put them in a box and relegated everything in the closet under the stairs of his stepdad’s house.

But Nate has always been a motorhead. He told Shadow once how classes in senior high felt too slow for him. To satisfy his craving for speed, he turned to computer games, which were the next best thing. One thing led to another and, before he knew it, he was in Camp Unplugged. 

“But what about you?” Nate asks presently, even though the helmet’s already snug around his head.

“Gwenchana. I was in so much hurry to get here I forgot to bring a spare.”

Shadow puts the wave cap back on. The motion looks as dainty as a swimmer putting on a swimming cap, but once he has pulled it down his gorgeous head of dreads, it looks like a badass bandanna. A helmet it isn’t. 

“That’s not going to work,” Nate whines.

‘Who’s going to notice, huh? Where are all the policemen? Just drive slow, and as soon as we get to civilization, I’ll buy all the helmets you want.”

Nate still looks on with hesitation.

“Gwenchana, gwenchana,” Shadow says with an air-pawing, dismissive gesture.

“Speaking of men in uniform,” Nate says, “did you get in okay?”

“Geureom!” Shadow replies confidently. “I just gave the guards my golden autograph like I said I would. They were tripping over each other to roll out the red carpet.”

All visitors of Woodland Vista are required a pre-filled-out and approved authorization letter before being allowed entry to any one of its boom gates. At times, even members of the Homeowners Association are denied entry if they’ve been forgotten after being away too long. 

“Did you mention anything about Ms. Blanca or Camp Unplugged?” Nate asks.

“Er, well… yeah,” Shadow says reluctantly. “I may have.”

Nate’s eyes widen.

“I had to,” Shadow says sheepishly. “My charm may be irresistible but my demographic is really teen girls. Not so much grownup security dudes. It was just natural for me to give a reason for coming here and I said I was just visiting my bro in Camp Unplugged. Geuraeseo? It’s not a big deal.”

In the graveyard silence, they hear the roar of a car engine mounting the steep street and getting closer. Soon, headlights sweep at them and Nate’s eyes widen as he sees ROTC Sergeant Luna behind the wheel and Miss Perfect sitting next to him. Caught in each other’s headlights, all four of them probably look like startled deer.

“Oh no…” he mumbles.

“Pali pali!” Shadow shouts and swings his leg over onto the driver’s seat. “Hop on!”

****

That Sunday morning, newly legal-age Rapunzel Kate Lapuz wakes up at 6:00 am. It’s church and family day but Kate and her ma are still not on speaking terms because of what she did to Ecto. Kate is also feeling ambivalent about going to church today and hearing her first Mass back in her hometown. Partly it’s because she has seen how religious people like Miss Perfect (Miss Blanca) could be evil. Unwitting and with good intentions, but evil.  

It’s the end of June, four days after her debut party, and four days since she ran away from Camp Unplugged. Lying on the bed with eyes open, she does a mental scan of her horizontal self from head to foot, trying to determine if anything has changed about or within her now that she’s officially an adult. She runs her fingers over her body. She seems to have gotten slimmer, especially around the waist, and she can feel the beginnings of… what feels like… abs. Probably because of all the “sit-in-the-air” squats Sergeant Luna made her do.

Cool, she thinks to herself. I have a one-pack.

Next, she touches her boobs and cups each in one hand.

Nope, she thinks. Still B-cup.

The biggest change thus far is her sleeping cycle. On a weekend like today, the younger version of her would’ve gone to bed late last night and would still be asleep around this time. Ma would be giving her a series of stentorian wakeup calls in the half hour to 10 am, their preferred time of Mass. Ma would nag her about how she was always sleeping late and almost married to her smartphone. Ma would call her a turtle and remind her of the proverb of the early bird while Kate would silently console herself with the fable of the tortoise and the hare.

Kate still has plenty of hours to sleep but, the truth is, even though it’s been four days of freedom, she still can’t shake off the sound of the intercom bugle in Camp Unplugged. She can hear it every morning at six and, no matter what dream she’s having, the sound bumps her off and out of the dream like a bowling ball that first glides as a straight ball and then suddenly becomes a gutter ball. Or, right before she gets cut off from the dream, the bugle sound gets mixed in and she sees miniature unicorns forced to join an endless race on a gerbil wheel. Such a cuteness-overload dream should be pleasant, except that the unicorns are gaunt and panting in exhaustion.

Kate gropes for her new Samsung A10, her birthday gift from her parents. She puts it on airplane mode every night before she goes to bed, not because she feels like she’s travelling or flying each night but because data providers in Prepaid Philippines can get a little overkill on spam. Whenever her phone moves out of range of the LTE Home Wifi router or when the signal gets wonky, a little SMS would appear on screen:

SurfAlert: You are connecting online without a surf promo. Register to a promo to continue.

1 GoSURF 15

2 GoUNLI 20

3 Surf at the regular browsing rate

4 More

There’s no way to block the sucker. Not through Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb; not through Settings > Lock Screen > Notifications; not through Messages > Settings > Block numbers and spam. Kate has tried them all but the whole SMS just keeps popping right through the lock screen, like a laser pointer on the back of a cat’s paw. In the first place, there’s no phone number to block and the feature seems to emanate from the SIM itself.   

Kate could’ve just let the little pet peeve slide but, the thing is, when she’s asleep and the SMS comes, it wakes up her phone and demands a response between two options: Cancel or Send. Depending on what time the text message comes, her phone would stay awake for hours, get as hot as fresh pandesal and become low-batt.

The only solution? Airplane mode. 

Presently, Kate goes to Connections and toggles off Airplane mode. The wi-fi automatically switches back on.

A Viber message from her bes Lor comes in with a familiar, exciting tune. Kate clicks the push notification and that brings her to the app. Lor’s message would’ve sounded like clickbait if Kate didn’t know it was her: WTF! Turn on your TV. Are you seeing this? Channel 2. This is cray!

The time stamp is 5:23 so the message is still fresh. The real question is what Lor is doing up at 5:23 and whether she’s just about to go to bed or she’s already up and about.

Kate rises and goes to the living room. As she descends the stairs, she sees her parents in front of the TV and tuned in on Umagang Kay Ganda (literally Beautiful Morning). They both turn to her with saucer-wide eyes.

Chapter 2: Bad News Bears

The news anchor’s somber words float from the studio on screen, across the living room, to greet Kate, who’s walking slowly towards the sectional sofa. It feels like she’s still surfacing from a dream. She thinks if she doesn’t make any sudden move, the dream might not take a dark turn and become a nightmare. 

“… reports from Batangas that Ji-hoon Kim, more popularly known as Shadow, leader of the K-pop group Monte X-O, has been killed in a motorcycle accident… and that an until-today largely unknown Filipino half-brother by the name of… Nathaniel Policarpio is gravely injured.”

Kate’s mouth produces a gasp before she can cover it.

“They were apparently being pursued by a van carrying camp counsellors of an Internet addiction rehabilitation center. The reports are that Shadow has been killed. The half-sibling Nathaniel Policarpio is in critical condition.

“For those of you just tuning in, here’s the footage from our field team in Laurel, Batangas captured just 30 minutes ago.”

The video switches to a recording. A field reporter announces:

“… We’re along Diokno Highway deep in the foothills of Laurel, Batangas, where a rescue mission is underway. Diokno Highway connects the quiet town of Lemery to Cavite. It’s a 40-minute drive and has hairpin turns along its 20-kilometer length. Residents are saying that there was a fog last night, making the road dangerous for inexperienced drivers. Weather conditions and a massive blackout since yesterday noon have delayed the rescue operation…”

Kate grimly watches as the footage switches between aerial and ground perspectives. A TV news helicopter is hovering over a deep ravine. The image is grainy because the day is just breaking. The text in the upper left corner of the video reads: Batangas foothills, 5:36 AM.

The field reporter recaps: “You are currently watching the rescue operation underway for Korean idol Ji-hoon Kim and his Filipino half-brother…uh, Nathaniel Policarpio. Authorities believe the two are at the bottom of this steep ravine in southern Luzon.” 

Kate sees people gathered above the ravine. Close to the gray concrete barriers on the edge of the road are the police officers and not too far from them, behind a police cordon, are curious onlookers. Two civilians have been allowed past the cordon and are mingling with the police and the paramedics. Kate’s heart thumps when she recognizes Miss Perfect and Sergeant Luna. 

“Counsellors of Camp Unplugged,” the field reporter continues, “an Internet addiction rehabilitation center, have provided authorities with the two brothers’ exact location. The grim question, however, hangs in everyone’s mind: Are they still alive… or is it already too late?”

Via split-screen, the news anchors in the studio proceed to debate the question posed by the field reporter. To Kate’s tense and highly sensitive ears, the anchors sound just a trifle fake. She can perceive something akin to a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God detachment.

The anchors fall silent as the field reporter does a quick on-the-spot interview of Miss Perfect, as though she was some kind of pundit. Below her video, the text reads: Ms Trinidad Blanca, Vice President, Camp Unplugged.

“How long have you been running your Internet addiction camp… er, what was its name again? Camp…”

“Camp Unplugged,” Miss Perfect supplies, speaking into the camera calmly, if a bit too phlegmatically.

“… Camp Unplugged. How long have you…?”

“Oh, it’s actually fairly new, Jay,” Miss Perfect addresses the reporter by his first name. “We opened just last year.”

“This is the first Internet addiction camp I’ve heard of. Is it safe to say this is the first of its kind in the whole country?”

“I would think so, Jay, yes… but subject to verification.”

“But now you have this, um, issue. Do you think it’s going to affect your business?”

“No, Jay, I don’t think it is. As the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity. We’ve handled many campers like Nathan, whose parents enroll them for long-term treatment. This is an isolated incident. We have systems in place to prevent campers from running away and reverting to their old, self-destructive behavior.

“Nathan, for instance, lost his driver’s license after another tragic motorcycle accident last year. He has a history of reckless driving that endangers not only himself but also his passenger and countless innocent pedestrians."

“Are you saying Nathan Policarpio was the one driving the motorcycle when it fell over the ravine?”

“Yes, I saw it with my own eyes.”

“For how long has his parents enrolled him in camp?”

“Four months.”

“Four months? That’s quite long.”

“Indeed. It depends on the camper and their needs. We have a two-month summer prog—”

One of the studio anchors says: “Hold on guys. It looks like they’ve found them.”

The split-screen disappears and the camera focuses back on the rescue. Dawn has broken and the image is brighter. A team of paramedics huddle as two rescue responders gradually make their ascent from the bottom of the ravine. One of the brothers is strapped to a rescue basket but the televiewers can’t make out who it is from the zoomed footage of the aerial camera.

“Oh my god,” a female anchor whispers in a voice-over. 

As soon as the rescue basket reaches the precipice, many things happen all at once and the footage becomes shaky. The viewing angle has also shifted from high and distant to on-ground closeup. The paramedics surround the patient, obscuring him temporarily. They transfer him onto a stretcher.

Through a break in the hurried checking of vitals, the news camera zooms in on the patient but it’s still impossible to tell who it is because he’s wearing a motorcycle helmet now secured to the basket. His body is wrapped in a Mylar blanket and only his face and arms are visible.

The patient is unresponsive and the visible parts of him are covered in grime, bruises and blood. As a paramedic gently folds his arms over his stomach, Kate notices an object he is gripping: a Nokia 3310.

First, a single teardrop falls from Kate’s eye. Her face is peaceful, almost deadpan. It looks unaware that it has shed a trickle of tear. The only evidence of emotion is deep inside her eyes, which are glassy and inertly active, like orbs of galaxies teeming with life. Next, she releases a sigh from the deepest recesses of her heart. As she does, her face offers a fleeting glimpse of the torture her soul is enduring.

Her eyes are blinded by the welling tears and she barely notices her parents rise from their seats and approach her. Her Ma looks like she did in the early morning after Kate’s debut party: wracked with childlike guilt. The only thing missing is her mannerism of wringing her hands while she made a confession. 

“I’m sorry, Katie Pie,” Ma says. These are the first words she has ever spoken to her since their fight. “If I had known Camp Unplugged was such a terrible place, I never would’ve sent you there.”

The words send more tears – this time, tidal waves – falling from Kate’s eyes. All the tension and knots that her poor stomach and muscles have borne since she discovered Ecto’s fading trail in her laptop. Her heart slumps like a one-million-ton steel bridge upon the nine-magnitude sobs racking her chest. Meanwhile, her feelings flail about like 50-inch-thick suspension cables, slapping the ocean of her reticence and creating mini-tsunamis of tears.

She buries her face in Ma’s chest and breathes in the soapy, fresh linen scent; which, in Kate’s mind, is the olfactory representation of all sweet comfort. Pa runs his hand on her back, up and down like the countless times he did when she was a kid and had a cold or cough. Kate’s back remembers the feel of his calloused fingers rubbing his cure-all Vicks VapoRub. Of course the ointment didn’t really relieve a clogged nose, but the signature menthol vapors tricked her child brain and made her smell and then breathe through her nose, giving her a restful sleep while her Pa stayed up through the night.

****

“Whoa,” Lor mumbles as she pushes her big black-rimmed glasses up her nose for the umpteenth time while looking down at the screen of her OPPO A5s, which is as new as Kate’s Galaxy A10 and was gifted to her by her bae JM. “This is the first time I’m seeing Waze lit up like my essay after it’s been marked. You know, bloody.”

“For reals?” Kate asks, leaning over to see for herself.

As has earlier been established, Kate’s phone doesn’t always have wi-fi outside the four corners of home. It mainly depends on her budget. And having just come back from summer camp, after weeks of no allowance from the parentals, she’s practically a beggar. 

“For real for real. See? There’s hardly any green. It’s dark red all over. Like a sanitary pad at the beginning of your period.”

Next to Francine, their go-to driver, Grace looks back from her seat and says with a grave face and a mellow, vaguely British voice: “Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Your ledger is dripping. It’s gushing red.”

The inside of the car rings with cheers and raucous laughter. Grace’s voice impersonation of Loki was on point. Everyone else tries to copy Grace but they don’t know the lines by heart and they aren’t crushing hard on Tom Hiddleston like Grace is.

Kate smiles contently to herself. It’s just like their first ever accidental road trip, when the Bali Girls brought the getaway car and rescued her from the abandoned theme park Enchanted Land. Like before, Lor is sitting next to Kate in the second row of the Montemayor family’s silver Range Rover.

The biggest difference from their first road trip is the absence of JM. When he heard the girls were planning to go to Makati Medical Center to visit Nathan Policarpio while hoping to catch a glimpse of his recently departed popstar brother, JM said pass. JM had already anticipated the crowds and he wasn’t a hallyu fan like his GF. The excuse was entirely plausible except Kate is also privy to the fact that Lor told JM about her pregnancy last week. Like most male teens after hearing news of the dreaded Double Line, JM has since withdrawn into his man cave.

None of their parents know because Lor is still working up the courage to tell hers. Kate assured Lor that JM just needs a little time to think but he will do the right thing in the end. Kate’s putting to good use the insights into the opposite gender she took away from her interactions with Nathan in Camp Unplugged.

Two others took JM’s place. The first is Trish, who’s now sitting in the second row on Kate’s opposite side. The second is Babylee, who was their defunct team’s libero and is now Trish’s steady. Babylee, whose preferred pronouns are “they” or “he”, certainly wouldn’t brave the crowds for the sole prospect of glimpsing a dead K-pop star. They’re sitting in the back with Terra.

The only one missing from the roster of Bali Girls is Mikaela, their ex right-side hitter, because she’s stuck in a summer job as an “umbrella girl” – basically an attendant to golfers. She left enough creepy requests to Lor though about taking pics of Shadow in case they do see his dead body.

Kate has tried to make it clear to the girls that the main purpose of their trip is to visit Nathan. She just went along with the secondary goal of stalking the late K-pop idol. But she can’t really expect them to understand what’s at stake because they don’t know Nathan personally. 

Just like on their first road trip, Terra’s their organizer and liaison officer. As it turns out, five days after his accident, Nathan had the Nokia 3310 recharged and then called the only number saved in it: Terra’s.

Terra may be the point of contact but Kate is the lynchpin of the entire trip. She knows how much Nathan needs a familiar face right now. Even if Nathan hadn’t taken the initiative to contact her through Terra or even if the Bali Girls hadn’t volunteered to come along, she would still go to him. Grim worry slowly creeps back to her face. 

Shadow’s MONTE X-O bandmates, though in shock and mourning, still pushed through with their second concert day in Pasay City on June 30, the same day that Shadow’s lifeless body was discovered. Of course they dedicated their performance to their fallen hyung and leader and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. After their concert, they were whisked away by Big Break Entertainment to their hotel for fear that they would say something inappropriate to the local press. The truth was, all four members of the group MONTE X-O, including the talent agency, had been completely clueless about Shadow’s Filipino blood.

They flew back to Incheon airport the following day and have resolved to complete the final leg of their Children of the Night World Tour in Singapore, which is scheduled tomorrow. Beyond that, their long-term plans aren’t clear. They would be back in the Philippines the day after the Singapore concert to pick up Shadow’s remains and transport him back to Korea with them. They were unable to do so earlier because the body was yet to clear the local coroner’s office.

In the latest update on the Shadow-Nathan national telenovela, a bedridden Nathan was caught on camera screaming at paparazzi who had broken into his hospital room. His bed was surrounded by a whole bunch of bright flowers: roses, irises, chrysanthemums, carnations; in vases, in bouquets, with stuffed animals and greeting cards that bore Get-well-soon messages. Nathan was wearing a paper gown and a neck brace. There were still transparent dressings over his wounds but his face was contorted and screaming at the camera: “I wasn’t the one driving that night! I didn’t kill hyung! Why would you even say that?”

Based on his scarlet face and the dribble on his chin, Kate believed Nathan would’ve grabbed one of the vases on his bedside table if he could but, according to his doctor, Nathan had suffered a major spinal cord injury and had become a quadriplegic. He only had a 5% chance of ever regaining any feeling below his neck, let alone walking.

When she first heard the English word quadriplegic from the news, Kate felt her shoulders literally grow heavy. She was familiar with the other, more common word paraplegic because of X-Men’s Professor X. She also knew what the Latin prefix “quadri-” meant but her brain refused to accept the looming truth. She needed Google to break the stalemate of her denial.

At the top of the search results blared the answer, more convenient than she dreaded:

Quadriplegia refers to

paralysis from the neck

down, including the trunk,

legs and arms. The condition

is typically caused by an injury

to the spinal cord that contains the nerves

that transmit messages of movement and

sensation from the brain to parts of the

body.

Symptoms: Paralysis

https://www.spine-health.com > qua…

Quadriplegia Definition | Back Pain

and Neck Pain Medical Glossary

?About featured snippets​! Feedback

People also ask

Is quadriplegic permanent? ​​˅

Can a quadriplegic move their arms and legs? ​˅

In the other half of the phone screen, there was an illustration of a skeleton from the shoulders up, and a call-out label pointing to the crucial body part: Spinal cord.

After this confirmation, Kate cried some more in the privacy of her room. If the Nokia 3310 she had given Nathan was remotely connected to his accident, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself.

Chapter 3: Generation Unlucky

The red veins and arteries and cute round car icons on Waze turn into an actual kilometer-long gridlock around the hospital. Traffic grounds into a complete halt and Francine and Grace confer with each other whether to turn off the engine. Apparently, hundreds of K-pop fans from all over have shown up this weekend to pay tribute to the fallen star. The Makati police were called in to help with crowd control.

Like a street protest, the sea of people is spiky with signs and banners that read “RIP”, “WE LOVE U”, and “SHADOW FOREVER”. Some are holding up Monte X-O merch shirts and posters of Shadow’s iconic silhouette with the glorious dreads. Others are blasting portable Bluetooth speakers and singing the group’s hit songs at the top of their lungs. It’s like a street carnival. A celebration of Shadow’s legacy, not a mourning.

“Okay, guys,” Francine says, turning off the engine with a certain finality and resignation. She looks back and announces: “This is it. End of the line. If you want to see this Nathan guy within today, you better walk cause this traffic isn’t budging.”

“But what about you?” Kate protests.

“I’ll be fine,” Francine replies though there’s a distinct crease in her forehead as she scans all the cars behind them. “Chances are, I’ll have moved just a foot when you come back. I won’t be going anywhere for the next few days.”

With blinding speed, Lor, who’s the biggest Shadow and hallyu fan among them, has slid the side door open and is standing outside it. The others follow suit, grabbing their bags and purses. 

“Call us if you ever find parking, all right?” Grace says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Francine says, trying to put on a brave front. “When you’re done, look for me around this same spot.”

“No,” Lor says. “We’ll look for a silver Rover with a geriatric driver: white hair and wrinkled like a raisin.”

“Har har,” Francine says and flips the bird (actually the ring finger, which is the physical equivalent of a faux-curse among high school students).

Grace shuts the passenger door and Babylee, the last one out, slides the side door closed. They turn to the crowd of people ahead and crane their necks, but there seems to be no end in sight to the sea of bodies.

They grab each other’s shoulders like kids playing Hawk and Chicken so they don’t lose anyone, and then they attempt to weave their way through. Terra, their point of contact, makes a call to the hardy and fateful Nokia 3310, rather like an army radio operator calling for reinforcements in the middle of an aerial bombardment. 

Lor feels excited and keeps making jokes at the head of the line, just behind Kate, because the whole thing reminds her of the live concerts she has attended, the long-arse ticket queues she has camped on in the wee hours of the morning, and the moments of cold sweat when she realized she had almost maxed out her parents’ credit card in hopes of snagging meet-and-greet or backstage passes. Kate, on the other hand, feels like a single mango that got left behind in a crate on a speeding truck. She keeps getting jostled and pushed this way and that. She wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow, she’s black and blue. 

The crowd is the thickest around and on either side of the main entrance of the hospital. There are men in uniform, both police and hospital security guards, desperately trying to keep order. Right in front of this cordon are the media carrying mics with broadcast company logos on the plastic cubes. They’re ready at any moment to pounce on the juiciest cuts of information because Nathan’s life has indeed become primetime telenovela stuff. Finally, there are the die-hard sasaeng fans who have been holding back tears and holding candlelight vigils all week.

When the Bali Girls plus Terra reach a shoulder-to-shoulder impasse by the entrance, Kate doubts the efficacy of their plan and entertains that little nagging worry in her head about having made a pointless trip.

We did not think this through, she thinks to herself, squeezed by sweaty bodies from all directions, with barely any wiggle room. What was I thinking? That I would just walk up to a police officer and introduce myself? Hi, my name’s Rapunzel Kate Lapuz and I…  

She’s so fixated on her failure that she belatedly hears a nurse with a flipchart calling out her name from the other side of the glass doors.

“Kate Lapuz! Kate Lapuz! Is there a Kate Lapuz?”

“Present!” she blurts out like a student who has nodded off during roll call, complete with a raised hand. “I mean… that’s me!” 

After establishing eye contact with her, the nurse gives instructions to the security guards inside the doors and they go out to pluck Kate and her friends from among the crowd. Cameras and phones flash as the media get wind of a story. Mics and pocket recorders point at them like the antennae of a colony of crickets, along with shouted questions and calls of “Miss! Miss!” The sasaeng fans break out in piteous wails as though Kate and her friends were audience members spontaneously and randomly selected to hang out with MONTE X-O.

They’re not even in the country, Kate wants to tell them but bites her tongue.

The first thing that hits her when they get to the other side of the glass is the peace and quiet. It’s a warzone outside but here, it’s the hushed world of a healthcare facility; business as usual. Neither of Kate’s parents have health insurance so she grew up feeling just a tad uncomfortable about hospitals. Kate can’t explain it but hospitals to her feel like a cross between the stiffness of church and the super-casualness of the beach – but not in a good way. You have doctors and nurses wearing face masks while patients shuffle around in paper gowns and fuzzy slippers. It’s antiseptic on the surface but it hints at infirmity.

They’re escorted by a security guard and the nurse with the flipchart along clean, nondescript and maze-like corridors. Kate’s friends have fallen quiet, even Lor, and walk behind Kate like kids on their First Communion, getting anxious and not wanting to do or say anything wrong. All at once, an open door greets Kate like a hole she has stumbled into and when she looks, there’s Nathan sitting on a wheelchair by his bed.

Kate and her friends file into the room with retained solemnity. They don’t notice that the nurse and the security guard have elected to stay outside and closed the door by removing a door wedge.

Nathan is smiling but he’s far from okay. He’s wearing a neatly pressed sapphire long-sleeved dress shirt complete with necktie, a black belt, a pair of khaki pants, loafer socks and shiny tan brogue shoes. But his large yellow-and-blue neck brace clashes with his outfit, not to mention the transparent dressings on his face and the back of his hands, and the black straps across his torso and waist which are all that stops him from pitching over in the wheelchair. Finally, because of all the flowers in the room, he looks like a clerk in a flower shop.

“Annyeong,” Kate says shyly, not because Nathan’s related to a Korean but because of their Korean-English language exchange tutorials in Camp Unplugged.

“Annyeong,” Nathan says back to her across the gap between them, still with the smile plastered on his face. 

“These are my friends,” Kate introduces. “Lor, Grace, Babylee, Trish and Terra. Guys, this is Nathan.”

“Nice to meet you, guys,” Nathan says in English.

“Same here,” Lor and Grace reply.

The first moment of awkward silence ensues as the visitors stand around undecided. Nathan didn’t expect Kate would bring company. He’s blaming himself now for not anticipating so. 

“They picked me up from Enchanted Land,” Kate offers as explanation, “you know, the night of the war game.”

“Ah right,” Nathan says; all smiles. “I’m really glad to see you made it out okay.”

“Oraenmaniya,” Kate replies. “Bangapda.”

The words mean It’s been a while and Glad to see you again. They almost bring tears to Nathan’s eyes because he didn’t teach those words to her, which means she made an effort to learn them especially for this visit.

The truth is, Nathan has been wanting to make them feel comfortable since they entered the door. He’s pleasantly surprised to have so many visitors but he’s unable to offer them seats or shake their hands because he can barely stay upright on his wheelchair. Everything feels so weird, as though his body had an off switch and he couldn’t toggle it back on.

“Butak hana heado doelkayo?” Nathan asks Kate. He doesn’t want the others to feel any more out of place but he’s embarrassed to say his next words.

Kate, for her part, doesn’t understand all his words but she remembers “butak” as favor.

“Geureom,” she replies. “Monde?”

“ ‘Nurse’ beoteon-eul nulleo.”

Kate takes a few seconds to process his request. Nathan puckers his lips in the typical Filipino mannerism of pointing at something, and she follows his line of sight to his bed. At the same time, her brain finally puts the two words “nurse” and “beoteon” together and her eyes widen in realization of what he’s trying to say. On the rails of his bed are orange nurse call buttons and she hurries to press one of them.

“Gomawo,” Nathan says and Kate, her face red, smiles sheepishly. 

****

“Thanks, bro,” Nathan tells Terra in Filipino, “for picking up the phone and listening to a complete stranger’s request.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Terra says cheerily. “Don’t mention it.”

They’re now seated on Monobloc chairs in a loose circle in front of Nathan’s wheelchair.

“I don’t remember all your names,” he says, playing the hospitable host who doesn’t want anyone to feel left out. “But Kate has told me so much about the Bali Girls.”

“Really?” Lor asks, throwing Kate a sideways look. “Like what?”   

“How you got eliminated very early on at the tournament,” Nathan says with a mischievous grin. “Conference level, I think.”

“Grr,” Lor says and mimes strangling and shaking Kate, who’s sitting next to her wagging her hand in front of her face and saying Aniya.

“We didn’t get eliminated,” Babylee says. “No, our opponent wiped the floor with us.”

The rest of the Bali Girls giggle. Then, silence again.

“Er, you must be so happy you received so many flowers,” Grace states the obvious to nip the awkwardness in the bud before it can creep back.