Bunyag

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, the time when our video editor decided to have a yosi break. There were four of us, sitting by the balcony of the video editing building’s second floor. Fronting us was an abandoned building -dark, and the windows of which were open.

It was my first time to spend what me and my friend call an ungodly hour, the time when a person’s real self comes out, at the heart of the city with a person whom i met just twelve hours ago; the first time i saw her, she was coaching my friend how to deliver the voice over for our documentary effectively.

with her cigarette’s smoke dancing in the air, she asked me and my friends if we could teach her how to write. she added that she wanted to write because there were so many things that pop out of her mind, and she wanted to write about them. then she added, almost in whisper, that even though her soul can’t be saved, she wanted to save other souls. when i asked her why, she told me that it was not the right time that she should tell me about it.

sitting beside her, i was obliged to listen to her while my riends were slowly ascending towards sleeping and dreaming. she asked us if we were catholics, and we answered her that we were catholics by virtue of our birth certificates. we emphasized to her that spirituality was different from religiosity. she agreed with it, but in between her puffing, she said that time will come that our faith will be tested, that there was due time for each one of us. she told us that if Christ was crucified, how much more us, frail human beings.

looking at the darkness beyond the window, i looked at her from the corner of my eyes, thinking that she might be, after all, one of the souls that she wanted to save.

then i tapped myself to make sure that it was real, that i was not dreaming.

at around 6 o’clock in the morning, we parted ways -she mounted her motorcycle while my friends and i took the same road that we took in our travel towards the editor’s building.