Chapter Text
The morning after the UP Fair smelled like regret.
Myles Leal had a specific relationship with the UP Fair: she shot it every year, she complained about it every year, and every year she went back like a dog to a bowl it already knew was empty. The crowds were impossible, the lighting was mid at best, and by the second night the grounds smelled like squidballs and questionable decisions. But the shots were always good. Chaos was photogenic. She had about four hundred RAW files on her card right now and zero desire to edit any of them before noon.
She was on her way to Brew Bros, the coffee shop on Katipunan that had somehow survived three rent increases and a TikTok controversy about their oat milk. It was six forty-two in the morning. The cab had dropped her two blocks short because the driver had opinions about u-turns, and now she was walking in yesterday's hoodie with a suspicious stain in front, a camera bag that weighed approximately one-third of her body weight and a personality that had not yet been switched on.
She almost didn't see the girl.
Almost.
The girl was sitting on the low concrete ledge outside Brew Bros, knees together, hands folded in her lap, back straight. Her clothes were a mess — a white linen top gone gray with dust, a linen skirt with a long brown smear along the hem like she'd slid across gravel. One sandal strap was broken and hanging. Her hair was down, slightly matted, with a piece of dried grass stuck somewhere near the crown that she appeared to be completely unaware of. She had the kind of face that magazine covers were designed around: structured, soft in the right places, cheekbones doing their own PR. She was looking at the middle distance with the serene, faraway expression of someone watching a sunset from a rooftop, not of someone who had clearly spent the night in a ditch somewhere on the UP campus.
Myles stopped.
The photographer in her said: light is perfect, composition is perfect, chaos contained in stillness, shoot it.
The human in her said: that girl has grass in her hair and a broken sandal and it's six forty-two in the morning.
She walked over.
"Hey." She stopped a few feet away, not wanting to startle her. "Hi. Are you okay?"
The girl looked up. Her eyes were very clear. That was the first thing Myles noticed-- not glazed, not red-rimmed. Clear and dark and attentive, the way someone's eyes are when they are genuinely present.
"Good morning," the girl said. Her voice was low and composed. Soft. Like she was at brunch, not sitting on a concrete ledge in wrecked linen.
"Good morning," Myles said, because apparently she was doing this now. "Are you... did something happen to you?"
The girl looked down at herself. Considered her clothes with the same mild expression someone uses to check if they left the stove on. "I think so," she said. "Yes. Yata."
"Okay." Myles shifted the camera bag on her shoulder. "Do you know where you are?"
"Katipunan." She looked at the coffee shop sign. "Brew Bros." A small pause. "I'd like coffee."
"That's... ok, fair. Do you know how long you've been sitting here?"
"I'm not sure." She thought about it. "Madilim pa when I sat down."
Myles looked at her. Looked at the general state of her. Looked at the broken sandal. "Do you know what day it is?"
"Sunday," the girl said. Then, with less confidence: "I think."
"It's Saturday."
"Ah." She received this information with great calm.
"Do you know anon'ng nangyari sa'yo?"
She was quiet for a moment. "Something happened at a fair," she said. "There was a fair. I think." She touched her temple lightly, not with distress, just the way you'd touch a bruise to map its edges. "I'm not very sure."
"Okay." Myles sat down on the ledge next to her. She didn't really plan to do this. It happened the way a lot of things happened to Myles-- she decided in her body before she decided in her head. "Can you tell me your name?"
The girl opened her mouth. Something shifted in her expression-- not panic, not fear, just a very quiet blankness, the look of someone who has reached for something on a shelf that is no longer there.
"A," she said.
Myles waited. "A?"
"That's what I have," the girl said. She seemed mildly puzzled by this herself, the way you're mildly puzzled when you forget a word you use every day. "The rest isn't there right now."
Myles stared at her for a long moment.
Then, because she was Myles and she had spent seven years photographing strangers in the worst and best moments of their lives and had developed a kind of procedural calm about human disaster, she said: "Can you turn around for me?"
"Sure," the girl said, and turned.
She parted the girl's hair and found the swelling-- a raised welt, dark at the center, no blood, no break in the skin.
"Okay," Myles said.
"What is it?" A asked, still very calm.
"You hit your head."
"Oh," A said. A moment. "That would explain it."
"That would explain it," Myles agreed.
She called a cab.
The emergency room at a nearby hospital on a Saturday morning had the specific energy of a place that had long ago made peace with the fact that its primary function was to absorb the aftermath of other people's Friday nights. Myles had been to ERs before, for shoots, for accidents, once for a friend who had a very bad experience with street taho she'd been warned about. She knew the rhythm: the triage window, the plastic chairs, the particular shade of fluorescent light that made everyone look slightly post-apocalyptic.
A sat beside her in a plastic chair and looked around the ER with genuine interest. Like she was visiting.
"Have you been here before?" Myles asked, more to fill the silence than because she expected a useful answer.
"I don't know," A said pleasantly. She picked up a year-old copy of a magazine from the side table, looked at the cover, put it back. "Are you my friend?"
Myles considered this. "I'm the person who found you."
"That's better than most friendships," A said.
Myles looked at her.
A looked back. There was something in her expression that was very hard to read-- not empty, not lost, just unhurried. Like whatever was missing from her memory was a minor inconvenience she had decided not to be bothered by yet.
"Are you scared?" Myles asked.
"Konti," A said. "But also." She looked down at her hands. "Also not. Is that strange?"
"Everything about this morning is strange," Myles said, and A almost smiled.
They called her to triage. Myles went with her because A stood up and looked at her like it was assumed she would, and Myles was not capable of not following a girl who looked at her like that.
The nurse ran through the standard checks. Name? A. Date of birth? Silence. Address? More silence. Emergency contact? A looked at Myles.
Myles said, "Working on it."
The nurse gave her a look. Myles gave it back.
They took A to be examined. A sat on the paper-covered cot and submitted to the examination with the cooperative patience of someone who had excellent bedside manners for being the actual patient.
Dr. Reyes ran the standard checks: track the light, squeeze both hands, state your name. A passed the first two and stalled cleanly on the third. The doctor made a note, then another.
"Retrograde amnesia from the head injury," she said, "but your presentation's too lucid for pure post-traumatic. Which means something else was already happening before you fell-- high emotional state, adrenaline, distress. The physical injury and whatever you were running from compounded each other."
She ordered imaging, confirmed overnight monitoring, and stepped out.
Two minutes later. A went sideways and fainted.
Myles caught her, mostly by instinct and partly by position-- she'd been standing close, for reasons she hadn't examined-- and the doctor called for a gurney and suddenly there was a lot of motion and Myles was outside the room holding a stack of hospital intake forms that a nurse had handed her with an authority that did not invite debate.
She stood in the hallway and looked at the forms.
Name of patient.
She wrote: A. Last name... she paused, pen hovering... Leal.
Relationship to patient.
She wrote: friend.
She was halfway through the medical history section (all unknowns) when her phone buzzed. She'd texted Jasmine an hour ago: stuck at the hospital, don't ask, tell Cols I'll have the Fair edits by Monday.
Jasmine had responded then with a string of question marks. She was responding now with: be there in 20.
Myles typed back: you don't have to
Jasmine: already booked
Myles put her phone away.
Jasmine Rubio arrived eighteen minutes later with two cups of cold brew from somewhere and the energy of someone who had been awake for thirty-six hours and was running entirely on narrative curiosity. She was also a photographer and occasional photo editor at the same small agency Myles freelanced for, and she had the specific superpower of appearing wherever something interesting was happening at the exact moment it was most inconvenient.
She found Myles in the hallway outside A's room, still holding the intake forms.
"Okay," Jasmine said, handing her a cold brew. "Ano'ng nangyari?"
"I found a girl," Myles said.
"You found a... like, found found?"
"She was outside Brew Bros. She hit her head. She doesn't remember anything."
"Anything?"
"Her name starts with A."
Jasmine looked at the forms. "A Leal." She looked up. "Myles."
"She needed a last name."
"You gave her YOUR last name."
"It's not permanent."
"Myles. That's the most-- you know what, actually no, it's so you." Jasmine tucked herself beside her and peered through the small window in the door. A was on the bed, eyes closed, an IV in her arm, the picture of composed unconsciousness. Jasmine's expression went soft for a moment. "Who is she?"
"Unknown."
"Ang ganda, beh."
"She has a head injury, Jas."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive, Myles, I'm just observing." Jasmine turned. "Nakunan mo?"
"She was injured."
"But did you?"
A pause. "I noticed the light," Myles said, with great dignity.
Jasmine cackled. Myles went back to the forms.
They sat in the chairs outside A's room. Myles was editing on her phone, muscle memory, when Jasmine said, very casually:
"So. You found a girlfriend."
"She is not my girlfriend."
"You gave her your last name."
"For the hospital forms."
"Andito ka sa labas ng room niya."
"I'm the only person she knows right now. Which is zero people, technically."
"You caught her when she fainted."
"There's a difference between catching someone and--"
"Myles." Jasmine put her cold brew down. "You found a beautiful stranger, dinala mo sa hospital, gave her your last name, and now ayaw mo nang iwan. If that's not the beginning of a romance drama, I don't know what is."
"It's the beginning of a paperwork nightmare," Myles said.
Jasmine settled back with the satisfied expression of someone who had already decided on the ending of a story. "Your girlfriend is in that room," she said, at a volume that was, charitably, a bit too loud.
From inside the room: the sound of someone shifting on a bed.
Then, clearly: "Myles?"
They looked at each other.
Myles went in.
A was awake. She was sitting up slightly, IV still in, looking around the room with the same calm she'd had on the concrete ledge outside Brew Bros. When she saw Myles, something in her face settled, the way a question finds its answer.
"You stayed," A said.
"You fainted on me," Myles said. "I'm now obligated."
A looked past her at Jasmine, who was hovering in the doorway working very hard on her expression.
"That's Jasmine," Myles said. "She's a co-worker. She's here because she appears wherever things are happening and she cannot help it."
"Hi," Jasmine said warmly.
"Hi," A said. Then, looking back at Myles: "I heard something about a girlfriend."
Myles turned to look at Jasmine.
Jasmine had the audacity to look delighted.
"Jasmine was joking," Myles said.
A considered this. She looked at Myles with that clear, unhurried gaze. "Are you?"
Myles opened her mouth.
The nurse knocked on the open door. "Miss? Tapos na po 'yung forms?"
Myles went out to the nurses' station, handed the forms over, and answered the follow-up questions with the energy of someone who was going to have words with Jasmine later. Name: A Leal. Friend, not girlfriend. Head injury from suspected fall. No known allergies because there is no known history. She didn't know her full name. She was working on it.
When she came back, Jasmine was sitting in the chair beside A's bed, and A was nodding at whatever Jasmine was saying with the attentive, receiving expression of someone taking notes.
"Jas," Myles warned.
"I was just making kwento," Jasmine said, with serene confidence, "how you two met."
Myles stopped. "What."
"Company event. Myles was shooting it, you were a guest, you'd been making eyes at each other all night. Landian across the room, malala. And she finally came up to you by the catering table," she said this with fondness, like it was a story she'd told before. "That was about a year ago. Very low-key. Alternate at each other's apartments. You know how she is." She said this to A, gesturing at Myles like a tour guide presenting a portrait.
A looked at Myles. There was something in her expression-- warm, wondering, slightly uncertain in the way people are uncertain about things they feel but can't fully source. "A year," she said.
Myles looked at Jasmine.
Jasmine looked at the ceiling.
"The doctor said you should be cleared to leave tomorrow morning," Myles said, because she needed to say something. "They want to monitor you overnight."
"Okay," A said simply. She lay back against the pillow. Her hand, on top of the blanket, was close to the edge of the bed. Myles sat down in the other chair and did not take it, which was a decision she was fully aware she was making.
"Am I staying with you?" A asked. "After?"
Myles thought about several things at once: the reasonable answer, the practical answer, the answer that Jasmine would use against her for the rest of their professional relationship.
"Yeah," she said. "You are."
A closed her eyes. "Okay." And then, so quietly Myles almost didn't catch it: "Good."
Jasmine, from across the room, gave Myles a look that contained entire paragraphs.
Myles stared at the wall.
Outside, QC was waking up into a hot Saturday, all traffic noise and jeepney exhaust and the particular loud aliveness of a city that had no off switch. Inside the room the light was flat and gray-white, and A was breathing slow and even, and Myles, who had not planned any part of this morning, sat in a plastic chair beside the bed of a woman whose name she had made up, and did not leave.