Iloilo City was known as the “City of Love,” or so the moniker went. I wasn’t sure where that term originated until a street vendor explained it to me.

“We sing everywhere we go,” the wiry old man said as he scooped several fish balls from a skewer and added them to a bowl. “At work, at home, after church, in the jeeps, in the streets, everywhere. Especially our words—our language is singsong. Can’t you tell?”

I could tell. I had been listening to the people speaking around me as they waited at the other street vendor stalls. The stalls were situated near a wall bordering a church, and most of the people gathering nearby spoke in a wavering, soft-spoken tone that I had come to know as the Hiligaynon language, which was native to the Iloilo region. It was a sharp contrast to Tagalog's blunt, straightforward delivery and, of course, English. Thank God the vendor spoke the latter.

I poured vinegar over the fish balls and chewed my way through a mix of salty tang and a rush of earthy umami. If you told me I was biting the ocean itself, I would have believed you. What was considered street food in Iloilo City was almost a luxurious delicacy in Manila.

The tinge of that polluted, gridlocked city still lingered on me, and I was thankful to be away from it for over half a year. I would never go back. Not unless I had to.

I passed over 100 PHP to the vendor, five times more than the cost of the fish balls. It was a generous enough payment that didn’t leave too much suspicion. He probably thought I was a Pinoy born in a foreign country lost in his ancestral land.

“One more thing,” I said before leaving, “I need to find a place.”

I told the vendor the name of the place I was looking for. I described it vaguely, relying on memories of conversations I had overheard. Mostly, it was guesswork. The place might not even be here. Halfway through my explanation, I considered saving myself the shame and leaving.

But the vendor’s interest began to pique, and eventually, he told me where the place was. Simple as that. There were over a million people in Iloilo City, so I counted myself fortunate to have found someone who knew the place. After three days of searching, I was excited to return home.

It wasn’t pinned on Google Maps. It had zero web presence. I had tried searching, believe me—I had used every web crawler I could think of, but its name never appeared. I had thought it didn’t exist many times, and a few days from now, if I hadn’t discovered this lead, I would have given up. But a lot could happen in six months.

Above all else, I made a promise.

The place was across from a cafe. I staked it out for hours, unsure if I should approach or if the wrong people were waiting for me.

It wasn’t open yet, appliances still littered inside. Some walling was exposed, and workbenches, plaster, and tools were scattered around. I guessed it would be a restaurant soon. Its only light was far in the back, illuminating a man in his twenties hunched over one of those new-age stoves with an entire tablet above the burners. I was surprised he could have afforded one of them.

I waited until nightfall before approaching the restaurant and gazed up at its neon-lit sign.

REGGIE AND REI’S.

I knocked on the glass.

It took a few tries until Andrei looked up and peered over to me. He was much the same as the last time I saw him six months ago; only now had he shaved his head clean, which was a good decision. You wouldn’t have recognized him from photographs. He’d gained a bit of weight, his shirt tighter around his midsection, and his thick eyebags were a testament to a lack of sleep. Knowing I had everything to do with that, I tried to stomach my guilt.

Andrei walked forward, keeping his head down, throwing away any sense of urgency. He stood there, looking at me while making no move to open the front door.

I thought this was his way of saying I should get lost, until he pointed to a side entrance of the building. I walked up to it, and the door opened. He was a few feet away from the door as I entered, and as I walked in, he scanned me as if I had just returned from a late night out.

His change appeared to extend beyond his appearance. He moved cautiously with his back never to the windows. That, or he was just upset at seeing me here. I couldn’t blame him for that.

“Six months, Jayson,” he said, gripping a glass display case with enough calm and strength that I thought he’d lift it and throw it at me. “Six months. It’s an awfully long time to lay low. I didn’t think it would be, but damn, is it ever.”

I swallowed. “You didn’t tell anyone you were here, right?”

“Tch. That’s the first thing you ask? After six months?” He turned. His chest had lost some of its bulk, his belly compensating, but he was still large enough to throw me against the wall. Again. “Did you ever stop to think how we are doing out here?”

I had thought about it every day since leaving my friends behind, but he was being selfish. “Do you think I was just hiding for six months?”

He paused. He must have thought exactly that.

I shook my head. “You know where Shay is, too?” I asked.

He didn’t nod or shake his head. “Case in point. We risked our ass for you, and I didn’t hear a freaking word from you until now? Not even a text or… something cryptic?”

“That’s not as easy as you think,” I told him. “I’m being watched.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Someone’s always watching us these days.”

I couldn’t argue with that. No Filipino was safe from the streaming Giants, who sent their all-seeing-eyes to investigate everyday people to inspire their television shows. Still, I didn’t have time to argue.

“Listen, I don’t have much time,” I said. “It was hard enough trying to find you. Now that I have you, we have to go.”

Andrei didn’t move. “Yeah? Go where?”

I scratched my ear. The restaurant felt cold despite the fun decor. I was sure that the empty shelves with partitions perfectly square would one day hold board games. The tables were larger than most you’d find in a traditional restaurant, and there were fewer, but Reggie and Rei’s would make up for it by charging a cover fee on top. In exchange, you could play as many games as you want.

Reggie and Rei’s had been Andrei’s dream, and Reggie’s, too.

I snapped myself out of my reverie and found Andrei watching me with his arms folded. “It’s not the same this time,” I said. “My mother is… out of the equation.” That was the only way I put it. It was the only way I had put it since the shootout at the Bernal mansion.

Andrei nodded. “She’s dead, right?”

I nodded back.

“How did that happen?”

Andrei was correct in not always trusting the media, especially in the Philippines. Some news outlets operated on the government’s side. Probably, he had heard conflicting information.

“I…” I stuttered. “I… pushed her.”

Andrei’s head tilted upwards slightly as if pointing a sharp weapon at me. It appeared all that was needed to be said. What was consistent among the coverage from the mansion shootout was that Esmeralda Bernal Lane—my mother—had taken hundreds of innocent people hostage and, after exposing herself to the line of fire, been shot by a dozen different PNP drones. I don’t think anyone reported how she had stumbled into that line of fire.

“Sorry, man,” Andrei said, looking down.

Don’t be, I thought. Don’t be ever.

Andrei cleared his throat. “You dodged my question earlier. Where would you take us?”

“My family,” I said. “We’ll go to my family. My Uncle, specifically, he’s a lot better than my mother ever was.” My thoughts returned to where I had spent the last six months, the words pouring out. “You should see it, man. We have a whole plantation. They have way more contacts here—all around the Philippines. It’s not the same operation.”

Andrei stared at me and sighed. “Again? Can’t we just… you know… do something legitimate?”

My gut instinct was to tell him that most small businesses fail, and I had something guaranteed to make us rich—even more than before.

“I’m sorry, Jayson,” Andrei continued, “but I got out.”

I looked around. It was quite the establishment. Andrei bought a stove, refrigerators, tables, upholstery, and decorations. He had painted the whole place and, by the looks of it, had taken down some of the walls as well. It was a massive transformation, but I could do the math. It wasn’t adding up.

“This all costs way more than what I gave you,” I told him. “You must have had help.”

He nodded. “Reggie’s family helped a lot. He has a lot of cousins who want to work here.”

Reggie. There he was again. It was impossible not to mention our friend out loud, the one who Metamatics—the largest streaming Giant—had taken from us. I swear he was still out there. We had seen a sign before we left Manila, but maybe that had been wishful thinking.

I was prepared for this. “I need people I can trust,” I told him. “Look, I know you have your life here—or whatever you’ve started—but…” I scratched my neck, thinking of how to phrase the next point. “Do you think they’re just going to leave you alone?”

Andrei paused.

“No,” said a voice.

A staircase led to a second floor opposite the front checkout counter. At the top of the stairs, Shay sat.

She had cut her hair down to her shoulders and lost weight, but Shay still resembled the same voice of reason, and the calm that seemed to subdue us even before. I don’t know how long she had been sitting there, reading a Wattpad paperback riddled with sticky notes.

She closed her book, rose, and walked down the stairs. She smiled at me, not showing teeth, and slowly walked over and hugged me. The gesture was lukewarm, and it was over with too quickly.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” She poked my stomach. “Looks like you’ve been eating pretty well, wherever that is.”

Shay, by comparison, had shed at least twenty pounds in six months, I guessed. They must have been working hard to get Reggie and Rei’s up and running, maybe skipping meals. I could get them out of their uncertain life—and for good this time. They were my friends, after all. I owed them the world.

Her gaze rested on me a moment longer than I thought it would before she turned back to Andrei. “You’ve seen them. Don’t kid yourself.” She nodded out the window.

The curtains were closed, parting just enough to reveal the teal and pink running lights of a spherical capture drone hovering outside. It was a Q-96, the largest beach ball-sized version of the drones, and it appeared to be deeply interested in a confrontation between two shouting men outside.

We stared at it, remembering, daring not to speak as its hum filled the room. If it saw us conspiring, maybe the Giants would connect the dots.

But I couldn’t help but remember six months ago when a swarm of these drones had crowded around a graffiti wall, with the message I’M SORRY I’M OK written there. We thought those words straight from Reggie’s mouth: “I’m sorry I let you guys down, but I’m OK.”

“All the more reason you come with me,” I told them. “If the capture drones are here, the Giants are too. They’re going to have field agents everywhere. Imagine if one of those things breaks down outside here, and they start asking for your information.”

Shay put her hands in her pockets, sagging her shoulders in defeat. “Alright. So, you’ve come to whisk us away again?”

“Yeah,” Andrei said, answering for me. “I’m not going.”

“You will when the Giants come here,” I told him.

“How do you know they will?”

“Because they always do.”

“Like with Reggie?” He wouldn’t let that go.

“Like with Reggie.” I scratched my forehead. I had been holding back the next point, but now it seemed I needed it. “I’m going to get him back.”

Shay stiffened.

“Impossible,” Andrei said. “They probably have him in house arrest somewhere. Maybe even in their headquarters.”

“That can’t be legal, too,” Shay added with more than an ounce of scorn.

“There is that route,” I confirmed, “but it’s slow. The Giants have armies of lawyers.” I cracked my knuckles. “So, I was thinking of something more… straightforward.”

This seemed to get Andrei’s attention. He was the assertive type, jumping in first and asking questions later. Thinking wasted time. We were wasting time now.

“The capture drones are coming to Mindanao,” I told them. “They’re not there yet, so we still have time. We’ve been expanding. We’re everywhere. I… want to show you everything.” I was starting to sound like my uncle months ago.

Shay turned to Andrei as if this was his choice to make.

“And Reggie?” Andrei asked.

“I need him just as much as I need you two,” I told them. “I can trust you all, but Reggie, especially… he knows things. And I need trusted and knowledgeable people for what’s coming.”

I was fully aware of how vague my words were, but if Shay and Andrei did not decide to follow me, I didn’t want to give them any knowledge that could be forced out of them.

I cleared my throat. “Our boat leaves in an hour, whether you two are on it.” I felt the pressure mounting. I moved to the side entrance. “I’ll let you two talk it over.” I turned to go.

“Wait,” Andrei said.

I stopped.

He smiled at me. “How much are you willing to give us? We’re not doing this for free, man.”

This part of the bargain was the easiest. I smiled. “Way more than you’ll ever get here.”